14 April 2005
Papal Elections
The conclave of cardinals will meet next Monday on 18th April in the Sistine Chapel in Rome (as illustrated) to elect the next pope. This date was decided by a meeting of the General Congregation of the College of Cardinals (as illustrated) earlier this month.
Bruce Schneier has an interesting posting on the papal election process, analysing the process from a security perspective Schneier on Security: Hacking the Papal Election. Given the recent intense debates on the validity of various electronic voting systems, it is interesting to see similar rigour applied to an analysis of a much older form of voting.
For a more straight forward explanation of the electroral process there is a very informative WikiPedia entry: Wikipedia: Papal Election and a specific page on this year's conclave Papal Conclave 2005.
Of course, the Vatican itself will be covering the process on its own website: Vatican Website.