Hmmmm...electronic voting is a tricky subject. There are many problems with it, maybe even more so than paper voting. A sample of the potential problems:
- Needs to be encrypted VERY heavily.
- Corruption can still occur (someone can always alter a DB after the vote to conform to their personal ideology).
- Verification of geographical location.
- Verification of identity.
- Making sure it is "one man, one vote". If this is difficult with just-for-fun polls like the one at the Monastery Gates, imagine how difficult (and important) it would be to implement a proper checking scheme in real elections.
There would be all these problems plus the fact that someone could still screw things up at almost any point in the system. A liberal sysadmin could write a script to discard all Republican votes on the election server (or vice versa, but I don't know any Republican sysadmins).
I love the idea of a electronic voting system, but it must be looked into with great caution before implemented (if it is at all).
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. redmist.
AUTHOR. God (Larry Wall/Alan Cox hybrid).
CONTACT. redmist@users.sourceforge.net