Re: Secret votes HOWTO

[Seth Arnold <sarnold@willamette.edu>]

* John H. Robinson, IV <jhriv@ucsd.edu> [010331 17:54]:
> but it is harder to scan for 33 numbers than (say) 8.   but other than
> that, the results are the same: a unique, reporoduceable identifier that
> is difficult to surreptitiously change.

Well, the md5sum/sha1 hash could be truncated to some smaller range if
the problem is *that* bad -- such a truncated hash is used in IPSEC; the
only real problem is an increased likelihood of collision -- out of 313
voters, even 32 bits ought to be plenty to avoid casual collisions.

However, it may be preferrable to convert the bits into alphanumerics --
a-zA-Z0-9, perhaps add two punctuation marks to bring the total to 64
characters (six bits each) -- this gives us 128/6 = 23 or 160/6 = 27
characters for md5 or sha1. Another option, used with S/Key, is to
convert the hash into several short english words.

Although, scanning for the 32 numbers shouldn't be that bad: double
click in one xterm, '/<middle_click>' in the other xterm.... 

Yeah. I like Raul's amending of John's suggestion. I'll think about it
for a few days and see if I can think of any problems with this idea. It
manages to capture ID, vote, and random data all in one easy bundle. :)

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