EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | David B. Aragon
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Encryption: Voters' Rights Outlast the Technology Cryptographic technology is rapidly advancing, and must do so to stay ahead of hackers; techniques regarded as adequate a few years ago have already been superceded.12,13.14,IS,16 The time scale of advances in cryptography is shorter than that of Federal elections and very, very much shorter than political careers. Suppose that private information about voters, "protected" by encryption, were captured during the next election and stored for later decoding. It is quite possible that it could be decoded while most voters still live in the same districts, while many of the same officials still hold office, and while the same parties are positioned to mete out rewards and punishments. Thus the political and privacy implications, and the potential for voter coercion, are almost as severe as if the decryption had been done immediately. The VVSG should ban the transmission of private voter data over any public network, regardless of whether encryption is used.