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I just look at the state of internet "security" and that tells me all I need to know.
Can I assume you also have the expertise to comment on the physical security of current voting systems by comparison as well?
Most arguments given against online voting systems are equally valid arguments against in-person voting and especially against mail-in ballots.
Those arguments are the red herrings.
Whilst standard paper voting may also be subject to fraud, it takes the manipulation of thousands of people in order to alter ballots across a whole country. Computers just need the one hack.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I assume you also have the expertise to comment on the physical security of current voting systems by comparison as well?
Exactly. Most arguments given against online voting systems are equally valid arguments against in-person voting and especially against mail-in ballots. Those arguments are the red herrings.
https://www.ccc.de/en/tags/wahlcomputer
The link between electronic voting and online voting is a strong one and one would expect the online voting situation to be far more suspect to all kinds of trickery than the one where the voting computer is set up in a booth. Even so, there are some unique ways in which a voting computer in a booth might be manipulated to give incorrect results that do not apply to online voting, but I don't think it matters much, as soon as it's just bits & bytes and audit trails who watches the watchers becomes the real issue.
Any voting system without anonymity and a way to do a re-count and some physical proof is fundamentally broken.
I have a way to make it better. I think combining old-fashioned checks and balances, with technology controls can make online voting about as secure as it is today (maybe more) and anonymous. To make it anonymous, its really just a password. When a user registers to vote, they create an online account. On the days that a user votes, they log into their account and create a ballot. They then create a password for the…
Interesting. I'm no subject expert so I can't critique this, but it sounds better than other online voting systems I've heard. I like the checks and balances in place too. Now I only skimmed this article, but I feel like most people who argue against online voting use arguments about how insecure it is that already apply to what's happening right now (voting software is a black box, can be hacked, etc etc, this also…
it's a lot harder to steal and alter 5000 ballot papers than 5, which is not the case with electronic systems.
The biggest problem with online/computerised voting is that it is a single point of attack for malicious actors. Even the best software security gets broken from time to time, online voting would allow zero-day attacks on elections - an absolute disaster. Whilst standard paper voting may also be subject to fraud, it takes the manipulation of thousands of people in order to alter ballots across a whole country. Comput…
Also a computer voting system that is exploitable via "one hack" is inexcusably badly designed. Yes hacks happen & adversaries have zero-days, but it's possible to build a computer voting system that is highly resistant to those scenarios. As a very simple example: have a standardized vote format that will be counted by three independently implemented systems, each on a different OS, running in parallel. A great system will go to far greater lengths for protection, but this should already show that a simple "one hack" wouldn't work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Most arguments given against online voting systems are equally valid arguments against in-person voting and especially against mail-in ballots. Those arguments are the red herrings.
Not really. Whilst paper voting fraud is definitely possible - maybe even easier than online fraud - in an election, paper ballots are distributed across an entire country. They require "hacking" 1000's of people in order to corrupt a national vote. Computer hacking just requires breaking the security of one application.
I find it hard to believe that a modern identity infrastructure (which we don't have, admittedly) combined with basic cryptography can't get us where we need to be.
We might not be able to cryptographically prove anonymity, but all it takes is trusting the government to anonymize the data correctly and make it secure in transport.