Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Want computer voting? Want it to be secure? Here is how to do it.

Just about everyone in America today votes on some sort of computer. Now and then, someone writes a story about how someone discovered that their computerized voting machines are insecure and easily subject to election fraud. Here is a story about the machines in the state where I vote—Virginia.

Okay, we’re really smart. Let’s build a secure computer voting machine. Let’s not start with Windows whatever or OS X or even Linux. Let’s start with a blank slate. Too expensive? I think not. Keep reading please.

Let’s write an operating system that does not allow any funny business to be occurring in the background. That is known as a single-tasking operating system. Let’s also write an operating system that doesn’t allow anyone to be logged on in the background where we can’t see them. That is known as a single-user operating system.

Okay, so now we are at single-user, single-tasking operating system. Hmmm, sort of sounds like CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) from the 1970s.

So now we need to write a new version of CP/M with voting software that will run on it: one program to allow entering votes and one program to move the voting numbers to a floppy disk, uh, er, or something like that.

Expensive? I doubt it. I estimate that two smart operating system programmers can write this and have it running in two days. Let’s be safe and allow them an entire week. My estimate is based on how long it took me to write a simulated multi-user, multi-tasking operating system in grad school when I had almost no idea what I was doing.

Exciting stuff? Hardly. But then again, all we want to do is count votes that are cast one at a time. Who made this so difficult?