PaulSnow t1_itrjuks wrote
Reply to comment by TheOfficialACM in I am the co-author behind ACM’s TechBrief on Election Security: Risk-limiting Audits. Ask me anything about election security! by TheOfficialACM
If the hash doesn't give feedback to the voter that the ballot is counted correctly, I think you need open source to ensure that is actually done correctly.
TheOfficialACM OP t1_itrmu5i wrote
The trick with these fancy e2e-verifiable schemes is that they're very good at providing the voter with evidence that everything worked perfectly, but if something goes wrong, and there are a lot of ways for things to go wrong, it's not necessarily easy to pinpoint the problem.
ElectionGuard happens to be open source, but that's not a requirement for security. In fact, the magic of e2e-verifiable schemes is that they create a much more interesting property called software independence, which means that we can verify a correct election outcome without being required to trust any of the software used by the election officials.
Risk limiting audits, by the way, are also a method of achieving software independence, without any cryptography at all.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments