Reply #8: MA: Professor lectures about electronic voting [View All]

[rumpel]

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

By: Andrew Trull, Collegian Correspondent
Issue date: 4/6/07 Section: News

As the United States approaches the 2008 presidential election, voting systems across America are under scrutiny. Controversy over electronic voting machines in past elections has led to skepticism over their reliability. Professor Ron Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department addressed an audience in the University of Massachusetts Amherst Computer Science building Wednesday on problems facing the system and potential improvements.

Electronic voting machines do not produce paper records of cast ballots and the absence of a tangible record can lead to tougher security issues regarding tampering and tallying accuracy.

For Professor Rivest and fellow electrical engineers and programmers, there are two main issues facing U.S. voting systems. The first is ensuring votes are "cast as intended" ? that the voter can easily cast and submit a correct ballot. The second issue is ensuring votes are "counted as cast" ? that the votes are tallied correctly.

http://media.www.dailycollegian.com/media/storage/paper874/news/2007/04/06/News/Professor.Lectures.About.Electronic.Voting-2827272.shtml