"That no man should be the judge of their own case is the foundation of the rule of law. But in the Senate trial, nearly half the jury bears responsibility for the crime. They are not pleased that Trump’s second impeachment has returned them to the scene of their crime, because they know that they’re guilty and they’re about to do it again."
That's quality invective*, Will! Consider me a very happy subscriber.**
* I agree with you that it's not just invective. It's also factually true, depressingly. :(
** Despite that, I'm still a very happy subscriber! :)
And now a question to both you, Will, and to everyone else who reads this?
The short version:
1) Have you heard of "end-to-end verified voting"? [Further quick explanation along with _Popular Science_ / _Scientific American_-level explainers about it below]
2) And, given the state of trust in the USA today, is something like this necessary for the USA moving forward? Or, hahahah, silly boy! You think there's a technological solution to irrational paranoia?! Sure, the *rational* paranoia of your average Bruce-Schneier-like cryptographer/hacker/public-interest-technologist can be assuaged by clever design, but we're talking *irrational* -- nay, psychotic -- paranoia here!!
--------------
Quick elaboration [with obligatory prefatory allusion to that Pascal quote of "sorry if this is long, I didn't have time to make it short!"... sorry, folks]
"End-to-end verified voting" refers to a top-to-bottom redesign of voting to facilitate c comprehensive auditing of any election by any person or group who wants to do such an audit.
**The most talked-about aspect of it is the use of low-tech-but-high-concept cryptography to "square the circle" of this seemingly oxymoronic goal: maintain the secret ballot (i.e., no voter can convince another person how she or he voted) while still allowing any voter to verify her or his vote was indeed correctly included in the final tally.**
But by "top-to-bottom", one means *everything*, including but not limited to (a) verification of voter eligibility, (b) ballot design, (c) method of voters marking the ballots, (d) local precinct and county collection of the ballots, and of course (e) tallying the ballots to adding up all those tallys and making sure each voter can verify her or his vote was correctly included.
The field had a nontrivial flourishing in the 2000-2006 period due to both (1) the debacle in Florida 2000 and the significant doubts by some about Ohio 2004 (including, in case you've forgotten, a formal Jan 6, 2005 challenge to Ohio by Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer, see e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/electoral.vote.1718/ ... sigh, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... well, without the mob violence and almost successful autogolpe, of course... oy!) Since 2006, there's been some nontrivial pilot projects (e.g., some local elections in the US, also statewide elections in the Australian state of Victoria, but honestly have largely languished IMHO)
_IEEE Security & Privacy_ ( Volume: 2, Issue: 1, Jan.-Feb. 2004) ... [_IEEE Security & Privacy_ being sorta the _Scientific American_ of electrical engineers and certain computer scientists interested in security]
Abstract:
A new kind of receipt sets a far higher standard of security by letting voters verify the election outcome - even if all election computers and records were compromised. The system preserves ballot secrecy, while improving access, robustness, and adjucation, all at lower cost.)
Much longer but still sorta same educated-layperson's level explainer of how a voting system very much like the one in that 2004 article above was actually used in the Australian state of Victoria in their 2014 elections: https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.6822
"That no man should be the judge of their own case is the foundation of the rule of law. But in the Senate trial, nearly half the jury bears responsibility for the crime. They are not pleased that Trump’s second impeachment has returned them to the scene of their crime, because they know that they’re guilty and they’re about to do it again."
That's quality invective*, Will! Consider me a very happy subscriber.**
* I agree with you that it's not just invective. It's also factually true, depressingly. :(
** Despite that, I'm still a very happy subscriber! :)
And now a question to both you, Will, and to everyone else who reads this?
The short version:
1) Have you heard of "end-to-end verified voting"? [Further quick explanation along with _Popular Science_ / _Scientific American_-level explainers about it below]
2) And, given the state of trust in the USA today, is something like this necessary for the USA moving forward? Or, hahahah, silly boy! You think there's a technological solution to irrational paranoia?! Sure, the *rational* paranoia of your average Bruce-Schneier-like cryptographer/hacker/public-interest-technologist can be assuaged by clever design, but we're talking *irrational* -- nay, psychotic -- paranoia here!!
--------------
Quick elaboration [with obligatory prefatory allusion to that Pascal quote of "sorry if this is long, I didn't have time to make it short!"... sorry, folks]
"End-to-end verified voting" refers to a top-to-bottom redesign of voting to facilitate c comprehensive auditing of any election by any person or group who wants to do such an audit.
**The most talked-about aspect of it is the use of low-tech-but-high-concept cryptography to "square the circle" of this seemingly oxymoronic goal: maintain the secret ballot (i.e., no voter can convince another person how she or he voted) while still allowing any voter to verify her or his vote was indeed correctly included in the final tally.**
But by "top-to-bottom", one means *everything*, including but not limited to (a) verification of voter eligibility, (b) ballot design, (c) method of voters marking the ballots, (d) local precinct and county collection of the ballots, and of course (e) tallying the ballots to adding up all those tallys and making sure each voter can verify her or his vote was correctly included.
The field had a nontrivial flourishing in the 2000-2006 period due to both (1) the debacle in Florida 2000 and the significant doubts by some about Ohio 2004 (including, in case you've forgotten, a formal Jan 6, 2005 challenge to Ohio by Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer, see e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/electoral.vote.1718/ ... sigh, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... well, without the mob violence and almost successful autogolpe, of course... oy!) Since 2006, there's been some nontrivial pilot projects (e.g., some local elections in the US, also statewide elections in the Australian state of Victoria, but honestly have largely languished IMHO)
Explainer at the level and length of _Popular Science_ or _Scientific American_ http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/voting/papers/Chaum-SecretBallotReceiptsTrueVoterVerifiableElections.pdf
(which is the official, free version of:
_IEEE Security & Privacy_ ( Volume: 2, Issue: 1, Jan.-Feb. 2004) ... [_IEEE Security & Privacy_ being sorta the _Scientific American_ of electrical engineers and certain computer scientists interested in security]
Abstract:
A new kind of receipt sets a far higher standard of security by letting voters verify the election outcome - even if all election computers and records were compromised. The system preserves ballot secrecy, while improving access, robustness, and adjucation, all at lower cost.)
Much longer but still sorta same educated-layperson's level explainer of how a voting system very much like the one in that 2004 article above was actually used in the Australian state of Victoria in their 2014 elections: https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.6822