The Florida election debacle. The November 2000 Presidential election was one of the closest in American history. In five states, the candidates were separated by less than 1% of the vote. As the night wore on, it became clear that the next President would be whoever won the state of Florida, with its 25 electoral votes. Texas Governor George W. Bush had a lead, but Vice President Al Gore was narrowing the margin as votes came in from traditionally Democratic parts of the state. Finally, at 2:16 AM Eastern time, the networks began calling the state, and therefore the presidency, for Bush. Vice President Gore conceded. But, barely an hour later, the count tightened to the point that the winner was unclear. Gore called for a recount in four counties. And thus began the saga of recounts, legal maneuvers, and court challenges that dragged on for 35 days and became known as the Florida election debacle.  »

Many computer scientists have argued that voter-verified paper receipts are necessary to insure that votes are reliably recorded. Reread the relevant section of this week's lecture and answer the following questions:

• Are voter-verified receipts necessary?
  
  
  1. If there are no receipts, how will voters know their votes have been correctly recorded?
  2. If there are receipts, how do we know that voters will pay enough attention to detect errors, especially when they are disinclined to draw attention to how they have voted?
  3. What are the chances that software will miscount votes, either by accident or design? Would it be possible to cause miscounts in order to throw an election?
  4. Is this laundry list of voting-machine failures sufficient proof that electronic voting is unreliable?
  5. Can the use of open-source software mitigate or eliminate the need for receipts?
  
  
• If receipts are necessary, should they be paper receipts?
  
  
  1. Would it be possible to tamper with the paper receipts and affect the outcome of a recount?
  2. Which is more likely--having an e-voting machine miscount votes, or having someone stuff a ballot box full of paper receipts?
  3. What about other audit mechanisms, such as the one in Section 3.1 of this paper, involving devices made by more than one manufacturer? Would it provide better security? Or is it also vulnerable to tampering? Would it be more confusing to voters than paper? »