Safety Evaluation of the MERGE Voting Protocol – Digital Digest

Safety Evaluation of the MERGE Voting Protocol

Fascinating evaluation: An Web Voting System Fatally Flawed in Inventive New Methods.

Summary: The lately revealed “MERGE” protocol is designed for use within the prototype CAC-vote system. The voting kiosk and protocol transmit votes over the web after which transmit voter-verifiable paper ballots by way of the mail. Within the MERGE protocol, the votes transmitted over the web are used to tabulate the outcomes and decide the winners, however audits and recounts use the paper ballots that arrive in time. The enunciated motivation for the protocol is to permit (digital) votes from abroad army voters to be included in preliminary outcomes earlier than a (paper) poll is acquired from the voter. MERGE accommodates attention-grabbing concepts that aren’t inherently unsound; however to make the system reliable—to use the MERGE protocol—would require main adjustments to the legal guidelines, practices, and technical and logistical talents of U.S. election jurisdictions. The hole between concept and apply is giant and unbridgeable for the foreseeable future. Promoters of this analysis challenge at DARPA, the company that sponsored the analysis, ought to acknowledge that MERGE is web voting (election outcomes depend on votes transmitted over the web besides within the occasion of a full hand depend) and chorus from claiming that it could possibly be a part of reliable elections with out sweeping adjustments to election legislation and election administration all through the U.S.

Posted on November 25, 2024 at 7:09 AM •
10 Feedback

Sidebar picture of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.

#Safety #Evaluation #MERGE #Voting #Protocol

Leave a Comment