Pret­-A­-Voter targets fraud

[Demeter]

Source: Financial Times

Scientists in Britain and Luxembourg are developing an electronic voting system that could plug security loopholes and curb the potential for electoral fraud.

The encrypted Pret-A-Voter (PaV) prototype will be easy to use, cheap to run and “more secure than anything available at the moment”, said James Heather of the University of Surrey, one of the specialists working on the project...Under PaV, a vote is cast on an encrypted sheet of paper in a polling station. After voters tick off their preferences they divide the perforated voting sheet in half.

The left hand strip, which lists the candidates’ names in random order – which differs on each ballot – is discarded. The right hand strip, which contains the voting marks, is read electronically and the votes registered on computer. The paper is also used as a receipt, so that voters can track their ballot online. Since the voting information is encrypted, it can only be interpreted by specialist electoral staff.

The software-independent technology guarantees the accuracy of the count and helps to remove bias that can occur under coercion...The prototype, developed by scientists from the universities of Birmingham, Surrey and Luxembourg, recently secured £1.5m funds from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and will be ready for full production by 2015.



Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3b991ff2-9e31-11de-b0aa-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

[santamargarita]

1. How are Republicans expected to steal an election...

with a machine that won't connect to RNC servers?

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Cool. I liked the look of it back in March (it's been around 3 years or more)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5219417&mesg_id=5221432

and that it's got some decent funding sounds good too.

Technical paper: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/research/pubs/trs/papers/988.pdf

[badgervan]

3. Great.....

... maybe they can invent a time machine and send both inventions back to Florida, November 2000.