"No Peeking" 2008
During the period when CDS polls are open, no individual shall be permitted to examine any files or data streams containing data generated by CDS voting machines. All such data shall be kept strictly confidential until the polls are closed and the results are certified by the Scientific Council and announced by the Chancellor.
Discussion:
In democratic societies one of the most important privileges of citizenship is the right to a secret ballot. Most democratic societies go to great lengths not only to ensure that an individual can cast an anonymous ballot, but that the security of the ballot box itself is maintained from the opening of the polls through the announcement of the official results. It is generally agreed (and specified by election laws in most democratic countries) that if any person were to be permitted to examine incoming voting data at any time during the polling there would be enormous potential for misuse of the information and serious impact on the final result. History and even current events are rife with examples of compromised "democratic" voting processes throughout the world that involve access to polling data prior to official certification.
To ensure that the voting process is not compromised either by manipulation of the data or by sharing of incomplete data, the CDS voting process should not require or allow any individual to access aggregate voting data while the polls are open. The current process provides every individual voter with a receipt, and in the event of a voting system failure, those receipts could be used to reconstruct any lost data.