Not really. If this guy is to be believed, the Diebold system is far more prone to fraud (and *uncatchable* fraud, and fraud on a *mass* scale). Of course, any voting system which could be designed by humans can be defrauded, but perfection is an unrealistic standard.
Example: forge some ballots (or steal them before the election).
Oh, it's as easy as that? "just" forge (or steal) ballots?
Someone distracts the judges for about half a second, and whlie they're looking the other way, you slip an extra hundred votes for your guy in the box.
Heh. Sounds like a good I Love Lucy episode. And again, I marvel at how easy you seem to think that would be. "just" have "someone" distract "the judges" (all of them, apparently).
Of course,
-stuffing "an extra hundred" ballots into the voting slot is not so easy if you make the slot small enough. how long is this "distraction" anyway?
-creating "hundreds" of fraudulent ballots is hard, painstaking work, or the fraud is too obvious (like if they're all done with the same handwriting, pen, etc)
-once those judges are through being "distracted", don'cha think they'll figure out that none of them were watching the box, and wonder what shenanigans may have taken place? Won't they be suspicious of the "distraction"? And heck, if fraud is as easy as "distract the judges" then the truth is that you can do that with *any* system.
I'm sorry, but you seem to have conjured up a worst-case, preposterous scenario. For some reason paper ballots aren't good enough because they wouldn't survive all sorts of wacky hi-jinx (what if there's an asteroid strike??), but meanwhile, elaborate systems involving "cards" and "sleeves" and double- and triple-checks of books are deemed superior (presumably because they involve "technology").
We really can do better. It's just that the current method isn't enough better.
The current method is WORSE than paper ballots in almost every respect other than time-of-counting. And when it comes to paper ballots, "we really can do better" is an unsupportable statement unless you actually specify a system which really is better. You have not.
There really is no good reason to be dissatisfied with a paper ballot system. "They COULD BE defrauded due to [wacky scenario]" is not a good reason (wacky scenarios can be invented for any voting system). "They are imperfect" is not a good reason (nothing humans can come up with is perfect). The only reason we seem to be left with is that they're not "technological" enough, and that we won't know election outcomes in prime time on election night.
Boo hoo.
I pray you're not an election judge.
They are 1) "motor voter", and 2) the laws that allow the mentally deficient, "disabled" (insert whatever term you like, I'll describe what I'm talking about in a moment) to "vote" via "assistants" who "help them vote."
Now, before anyone gets all snippy, here's what I'm talking about. A few years ago, I lived in a town that had a large state facility. The facility changed names every few years, becoming increasingly Orwellian with each succeeding wave (and man, they sure are succeeding!) of Political Correctness. It started out as "The State Home" (itself a euphemism). Later, it was "The Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities". Last I heard, it was "The Center for Human Development".
Nice lofty terms, eh? Sounds almost like a think-tank. In reality, it was quite the opposite. It was the place that the state housed those who were born with the most tragic "disabilities" imaginable. The sort of almost frightening birth defects that society chooses to hide from itself, to pretend do not exist. I'm talking about people who are in a very real sense not "people". People who were born essentially without a brain. Just enough of a brainstem to allow them to breath and maintain basic life support. No cognition, no "speech" -- unless you consider loud, random, gutteral grunts and screeches to be "speech".
Now, here's the kicker.
These people vote!
How on Earth, you might ask, can people without any cerebral tissue manage to vote/i>?
That's a good question. And, as fate would have it, it's a question that's been addressed by the law.
They "vote" by having an "assistant" drive a shortbuss load of them to the polling place, wheel them inside, and then proceed to "assist" them to "vote".
Get the picture yet?
These tragic cases are used as tokens, for unionized state-employed socialworker types to cast votes en masse.
It made it into the local paper -- once -- when someone who saw it happening was outraged, and contacted the rag. As far as I know, that was the end of it. I presume the practice continues, and, I presume it is not restricted to that one community.
In fact I'd be surprised if it's not happening all over the country.
And, I'd be surprised if it's not limited to people afflicted with such dramatically obvious "issues."
I'd be surprised if it's not happening anywhere you've got large numbers of people who are sufficiently "disabled" to be unaware that someone is voting "on their behalf." The profoundly retarded, institutionalized mentally ill, etc.
I don't expect to be surprised.
As to the topic of vote-counting software, anyone who even suggests it's complex code is IMO immediately suspect. Tallying up lists of numbers via simple addition is not even "CS101" level "programming". It's more like, "Introduction to Computers" type stuff.
Now, adding the crypto protection is a bit harder, but it doesn't make the actual tallying any harder.
In short, if Rubin (the "R" in "RSA") is concerned with the black magic going on inside those boxes, then everyone should be concerned.
But, as I said above, there's plenty to be concerned with apart from electronic tallying -- and no one seems very concerned about it. Working up a sweat over potential for fraud over e-voting while disregarding the fraud potential with motor-voter and "assisted voting" is like leaving your lifeboat and climbing back onto the Titanic because you forgot to shut off the faucet in your stateroom.
Well, considering the fact that "this guy" is one of the three fathers of modern crypto, I'd think it might be worth listening to what he has to say on the matter.