Geneva’s citizens voted in favour of every one of the issues on the ballot yesterday 27 September, and 60,000 of them voted over the internet. That includes about 10,000 Swiss citizens abroad who were able to vote electronically for the first time. The security of voting over the internet is of great concern to election officials everywhere, and they try to make sure that the vote is tamper-proof.
The Geneva cantonal information technology department worked with local firm id Quantique to produce the random numbers that found their way onto the electronic voting-enabled voting cards, in the form of a Pin number.
id Quantique has invented and marketed a quantum random number generator (QRNG), a machine that works on the quantum level to generate random numbers. Truly random numbers are impossible to duplicate. And computers are not good at generating random numbers because computers are very good at executing instructions.
The QRNG takes a stream of photons (light particles) and bounces them off a translucent mirror. Some of the photons bounce off the mirror, are counted and become “0s.” Other photons pass through the mirror, and become “1s.” This is enough to produce a completely random number, useful for the choice of numbers in lotteries, mobile phone recharge cards, and in statistical research. And elections.
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