From: MaxFreedom@sws5.ornl.gov 
  
 Woodchuck Bill  writes: 
  
 > Dave Sill  wrote in 
 > news:wx01xh9lwtu.fsf@sws5.ornl.gov: 
 > 
 >>>>   2) Registered via notarized letter 
 > 
 > Those could be forged easily. 
  
 Of course. But we're talking about Usenet voting here. Raising the 
 level of effort required to submit an invalid vote from "none" to 
 "little" will stop almost everyone from making the effort. 
  
 > A dishonest person could order a bogus notary 
 > stamp via the web, and use it to "notarize" dozens of identities, if they 
 > are determined enough. 
  
 Those stamps aren't cheap, and there's postage and effort involved in 
 submitting each registration request. Also, if the UVV see a 
 suspicious number of notarizations from a single notary, they can 
 at least attempt to verify that notary. 
  
 > This would cause too much work for the 
 > votetaker..verifying if the letters are real. 
  
 They don't all have to be verified. Fraud will be much more obvious 
 with physical registrations than with e-mail. 
  
 > Being an international 
 > system, how would one practically verify if someone is a registered notary 
 > public in a country like the Central African Republic, or Chad? 
  
 Good question, but it's academic until we see a suspicious number of 
 registrations from a single notary in a backwater country. 
  
 The goal isn't to make fraud impossible, just to make it much less 
 likely without imposing too many burdens on the voters or UVV. So far 
 I haven't seen any better suggestions. 
  
 -- 
 Dave Sill                     Oak Ridge National Lab, Workstation Support 
 Author, The qmail Handbook                 
 : Almost everything you always wanted to know. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)