SECURITY SEMINAR SERIES
| Title: |
The electronic voting enigma:
hard problems in computer science |
| Speaker: |
Rebecca
Mercuri, Bryn Mawr College |
| Date: |
Friday, 18 October 2002, 16:00 |
| Place: |
Lecture Theatre 2, William
Gates Building |
Abstract:
Although it might appear that modern technology should be able to
provide secure, auditable, anonymous elections, this turns out to be a
difficult problem for computer scientists. Vote collection and
tabulation involves processes for system security, program provability,
user authentication, and product reliability, all of which harbor
inherent flaws. These matters are further compounded by sociological
and legal technicalities – such as the prevention of vote-selling and
protection from denial-of-service attacks. This talk will address these
subjects from a computer science standpoint, focusing on those which are
considered to be "hard" (the CS word for "presently unsolvable").
Although these computer systems can not achieve all desired election
goals, suggestions will be made regarding design enhancements which, if
implemented, could improve these devices to the point where they are
almost as good as mechanical lever machines and hand-counted paper
ballots.
Related:
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