[$] Cryptography and elections
Transparent and verifiable electronic elections are technically feasible,
but for a variety of reasons, the techniques used are not actually viable for
running most elections—and definitely not for remote voting. That was one of the
main takeaways from a keynote at this year's linux.conf.au given by University of
Melbourne Associate
Professor Vanessa Teague. She is a cryptographer who, along with her
colleagues, has investigated
several kinds of e-voting software; as is
probably not all that much of a surprise, what they found is buggy
implementations. She described some of that work in a
talk that was a mix of math with software-company and government missteps; the latter may
directly impact many of the Australian locals who were in attendance.