So all doubts would be quelled by using a WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many) device to record votes? I don't think so.
It is not the code that is the problem. Electronic DRE sufferes from one
critical difference from optical scan or other paper based systems. Paper
is a write-once medium. Memory cards are read-write.
People have concerns about black-box technologies. They are being asked to trust what they can't see. This is reasonable and must be addressed by having trusted experts review the system and expose its strengths and weaknesses. Eva's posting was claiming that it wasn't possible for any expert to do that.
Of course our dear friend Paul Craft has followed up with a good
response:
[This note comes from Paul Craft, from the Florida--- Guy
Department of State Division of Elections, a
long-time subscriber to this list. --LFC]----- Original Message -----
From: Craft, Paul <PCraft@mail.dos.state.fl.us>
To: 'Lorrie Faith Cranor' <lorrie@research.att.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 9:13 AM
Subject: RE: Waskell Response to Shamos' DRE ChallengeI am so (darn) tired of hearing conspiracy theories about "hidden code". If
you do a decent job of examining and testing systems, proper acceptance
testing, maintain strict release control and maintain reasonable security
over your equipment, you don't have to worry about "hidden code". If you
fail to do all of these things, then you will have much bigger problems than
"hidden code".Paul Craft