Police extend detention of e-voting critic

Wikileaks anyone?

Hate to say it, but it's government behavior like this which legitimize wikileaks.

As much as they'd like to misdirect blame onto those who uncover the bug, there's no getting around the fact that those who implemented the technology are really at fault.

The government are also at fault for claiming the devices were totally secure in the first place without due diligence.

Don't they know .... you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, even with binary*

"“This is a very sensitive case with repercussions at the national level and police should be given time,” Magistrate V B Srikhande said in court on Thursday, .."

Actually, it has repercussions at the international level as it reveals that elections using such machines are easily rigged, and that is bound to be known by manufacturers/wholesalers and is most probably their secret weapon of mass destruction of democracy selling point.

Roll up, roll up, get your guaranteed fascist dictatorship virtual machine, right here.

* But you can obviously try.

Back to the simple stuff

I've got no objections to e-voting, it seems to make sense as long as we have confidence that it works and is verifiable. The last bit seems to be the problem (hello George W!) and a bit of good old fashioned dot-matrix, fanfold paper that would hopefully never need to be looked at seems to be a reasonable and cheap backup.

Yet another shithole dictatorship.

When will the wankers in charge of these countries* realise that, generally, countries gain wealth by being free not by being fucked by the government?

*luckily the UK, where I reside, is just escaping being one.

There's your proof

that the officials, and apparently not just the election committee officials, are unfit for service. QED.

I call again for their wholesale dismissal and blackballing from government service. Nothing less will do.

No, paper trails do not work

Paper trails *do* *not* *work*, and won't solve the problem. The problem is that you are counting a *copy* of the vote, which cannot be proved to be accurate.

In a traditional pen-and-paper election, voter anonymity comes from the fact that all ballot papers are mutually indistinguible before they are marked; integrity of counting comes from the adversarial relationship between the parties involved (candidates and their representatives do the counting, none of them trust any of the others, so the only way they can agree on a result is if it's correct); and unalterability comes from the fact that the *actual* ballot papers are counted (there is no copying involved).

The only way I can think of to mechanise the process without involving any copying is to use as the replacement for the "ballot paper" a quantity of stored energy, delivered under the control of the presiding officer; which is then used, under the control of the voter, to initiate one of a set of different possible actions per candidate.

Dear Indian Magistrate:

It is already too late, your election process has been irrevocably determined to be susceptible to fraud. Holding the guy who disclosed this in jail will not make your election process less susceptible to fraud. It will make both your citizens and the citizens of other countries more suspicious of the corruption levels within your country. While you are correct that this is a highly sensitive matter, you seem to be engaging in Bizarro world logic and further irritating that sensitivity. Let the whistleblower out of the clink and resolve the matter in open debate.

Thank-you.

Justice?

I don't have much confidence in the Indian judicial system!

They've had in in a cell for a week, have they actually charged him with a crime yet?