Punchscan.org
Punchscan is an optical scan voting system invented by David Chaum that allows voters to take a piece of the ballot home with them as a receipt. This receipt does not allow voters to prove how they voted to others, but it does permit them to:More here Punchscan.org
- Verify that they have properly indicated their votes to election officials (cast-as-intended)
- Verify with extremely high assurance that all votes were counted properly (counted-as-cast).
I saw the demo video and am impressed. This is a really good method of solving all the major issues in voting. Pre-vote tamper proof, verifiable and post-vote tamper proof. My big complaint about paper receipts is that it could be used by fanatical pastors, union bosses or other unethical individuals to enforce a voting agenda on subordinates.
Darwin at the Zoo
Our own species has been talking, volubly and passionately, for at least 50,000 years, and it's a fair guess that arguments about right and wrong were prominent in our conversation pretty much from the beginning. We started writing things down 5,000 years ago, and some of our first texts were codes of ethics. Our innumerable volumes of scripture and law, our Departments of Justice, High Courts, Low Courts, and Courts of Common Pleas are unique in the living world. But did we human beings invent our feeling for justice, or is it part of the package of primal emotions that we inherited from our ancestors? In other words: Did morality evolve?From Scientific American
This is a really fascinating area. Now that we know we aren't alone in tool-making, counting, abstract thinking and other trademarks of humanity, what is left after ethics? What makes us human? Is it all down to faith and reason?