[Tfug] OK, got a different tech challenge on FOSS voting...

[Andrew Ayre]

With a LiveCD running during the voting where will the vote counts be 
stored? Surely not in RAM?

Also how will you know if the CD burned successfully (i.e. you can put 
it in the CD drive of another PC and read it fully)? Can't power off the 
machine until you know that for sure. Right?

What is to stop someone swapping the CD for a pre-burned one that they 
created with their own copy of the OSS voting software? I.e. so it looks 
identical. Or does there now have to be a tech-savvy person at every 
polling station just to operate this and be able to tell these differences?

Come to think of it, what is to stop someone swapping the official 
LiveCD for one they created themselves earlier with a slightly different 
voting application.

So far the basic idea seems riddled with problems.

I think the bottom line is that when you have two people with a piece of 
paper in from of them (whether it is a piece of paper with an "X" or an 
optical scanner sheet with bubbles), there are no special skills needed 
for them to decide what that vote was.

If Pima County doesn't allow hand recounts then perhaps that is the 
problem to focus on rather than changing the voting technology from 
closed source to open source?

Andy

Jim March wrote:
> Let's say we have a LiveCD boot disk that contains Linux plus voting 
> application.  And at the end of the day it's going to burn data to a CD, 
> so that probably means a second CD drive needed?
> 
> FIRST question: is it possible to do a CD burn on a system that started 
> with a LiveCD?  (Have the machine be 3gig+ of RAM, create a RAMdisk, 
> copy CD crap to RAMdisk?, freeing the boot drive?  It would be fast as 
> hell in operation...)
> 
> Assuming the above is NOT possible: can we disable the ability to 
> connect USB hard disks, memory sticks and the like (maybe kill 
> USBFileSystem?) yet leave in the ability to burn to a USB-connected CD 
> drive which in turn is separate from the boot media drive?
> 
> The reason for this second question is that the easiest answer as far as 
> hardware goes is a touchscreen laptop.  That also gives you battery 
> backup (a needed feature).  Yet you don't want people loading crap off 
> of a memory stick.  I'm thinking this should be possible, perhaps by 
> restricting the user's ability to mount certain media types?
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
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-- 
Andy
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