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Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

engineering.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#21

Post by RangerScience »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #7
swalsh wrote: post #2

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…

Electronic voting is an entire field of research. As with cryptography, do not come up with your own methods. Here are some problems with your method: allows coercion (is not receipt-free), violates vote secrecy (attacker can just force voter to reveal password), allows ballot stuffing, allows partial results (no voting under equal circumstances), probably completely relies on server for "security" of passwords, salt…

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#22

Post by dibujante »

RangerScience wrote: post #21
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronic voting is an entire field of research. As with cryptography, do not come up with your own methods. Here are some problems with your method: allows coercion (is not receipt-free), violates vote secrecy (attacker can just force voter to reveal password), allows ballot stuffing, allows partial results (no voting under equal circumstances), probably completely relies on server for "security" of passwords, salt…

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

Probably not.

You could make it anonymous - the unique combination of your vote, your key, and the election blockchain could produce a password unique to you. This would allow you to verify that your vote was counted, but would not allow anyone else to do so - if they coerced you, you could run your key, the blockchain, and the opposite vote and produce a different password and your attacker would be none the wiser.

But then if you find that your password has changed, how do you prove it? I don't think there's any way to prove election fraud without violating election confidentiality, even for paper ballots. How do you propose stopping election fraud with paper ballots? The current defense is merely "it is hard."

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#23

Post by [deleted] »

RangerScience wrote: post #21
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronic voting is an entire field of research. As with cryptography, do not come up with your own methods. Here are some problems with your method: allows coercion (is not receipt-free), violates vote secrecy (attacker can just force voter to reveal password), allows ballot stuffing, allows partial results (no voting under equal circumstances), probably completely relies on server for "security" of passwords, salt…

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

[deleted]

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#24

Post by adwf »

Strom wrote: post #19
adwf wrote: post #12

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…

You're choosing a suboptimal attack spot in your paper voting attack scenario. Instead of manipulating the thousands of people around the country who count & send out the results of those booths, it's easier to manipulate the far fewer people who do the aggregation for final results. Also a computer voting system that is exploitable via "one hack" is inexcusably badly designed. Yes hacks happen & adversaries have zer…

It's still a 3-point of failure versus a thousand in a paper vote.

I've seen the British election many times, there are hundreds of people in the counting hall for every district. They count, then they shuffle the ballots around and have different people recount. It would take the bribery of thousands upon thousands of people. People who are under constant scrutiny, not just by those around them, but on TV also.

A computer is almost trivially suborned in comparison. Even our most important pieces of security software, such as openssl and others, get hacked from time to time. If such hugely important - massively used, massively tested - open-source projects get hacked, why on earth would you want to risk computer voting?

It's just standard programmer NIH hubris; we think we can do it better, therefore we should.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#25

Post by smt88 »

eximius wrote: post #20
adwf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't bribe open source. 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.

> trusting the government to anonymize the data correctly and make it secure in transport

Large banks don't always succeed at that. The government makes huge mistakes all the time. What makes you think this is possible?

The issue is that perfect security is impossible either with physical or digital voting. All we can do is minimize the consequences of an inevitable mistake or breach.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#26

Post by jagbolanos »

RangerScience wrote: post #21
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronic voting is an entire field of research. As with cryptography, do not come up with your own methods. Here are some problems with your method: allows coercion (is not receipt-free), violates vote secrecy (attacker can just force voter to reveal password), allows ballot stuffing, allows partial results (no voting under equal circumstances), probably completely relies on server for "security" of passwords, salt…

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

Yes, with end-to-end voting you can be certain that your vote wasn't modified but you can't prove to someone whom you voted for https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/index_files/randomness_paper....

Using interactive proofs you can know that the machine won't modify your vote, and using zero-knowledge proofs plus a distributed key you can decrypt and randomize, being certain that votes haven't been lost and without revealing whom people voted for.

Additionally with a public ledger like the blockchain, you can be certain that your vote is there (checking your signature), and when votes were cast.

Using something like colored coins you can ensure that no additional votes are created.

The problem that I do see with remote voting is that I could be right next to you when you vote and coerce you to vote for the person that I want

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#27

Post by adwf »

eximius wrote: post #20
adwf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't bribe open source. 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.

You can still hack open source though. Some of the highest profile security projects like openssl get hacked. Sometimes it just takes a simple misconfiguration to get hacked, like with Debian a few years ago.

The point is, computers provide a single point of failure. Bribing enough of a country's electoral officials to shift a vote without being detected is immensely more difficult in comparison to finding a zero-day in some voting software.

The only guarantee that open source provides, is that we'll probably find the bug eventually. A malicious state actor that wants to influence an election has absolutely no incentive to let people know that they've found a vulnerability with any sense of alacrity.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#28

Post by ElijahLynn »

Um, I don't think there is much legitimacy of elections right now. How the fuck did Trump buy his way into the Republican party for one? Do I really think my vote counts right now?

"Online voting could threaten the fundamental legitimacy of elections?"

The author does have some valid points, I just thought it was funny that some people think our elections are legitimate.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#29

Post by ElijahLynn »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

Some of the people behind 'wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet' (we do not trust voting computers) are active in the CCC and have some pretty good arguments on why electronic voting really is a danger to democracy. 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…

I agree with some of the arguments against online voting. However, it isn't really realistic to do re-counts right now, nor do people do them regularly. If the people doing the counting are bought then that is an issue too.

Both ways suck right now.

One thing that I would like to see is an open source, standardized system though.

There was/is an effort towards this right now.

http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_solution

Stops Secrecy in Vote Tabulation: OVC has a team of scientists ready to program computer software for voting machines and electoral tabulation that would be publicly owned or open source. Open source software could be checked by any party or group by hiring a capable computer programmer.

Provides Paper Trail: The OVC recommended procedure for tabulating elections relies on a paper ballot that is then fed through a scanner into a locked ballot box so that all originals are saved in case of the need for a recount or audit (See Sample Ballot).

Scientifically Verifiable: In addition to open source voting machine and tabulation software, the Open Voting Consortium is also working on a database checklist for standard practices in vote tabulation that would assure transparency and accountability. Some aspects of the OVC concept will soon be enfolded into California legislation.

Saves Money: Typical voting machines cost between $2,000 and $3,000, but OVC open source software could be run on any personal computer (PC) and ballots could be printed on a normal printer. OVC envisions PCs with tamper-proof cases as the new voting terminals at a savings of hundreds or thousands of dollars per terminal.(See page on OVC Cost Analysis).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8CSKdMTARY OVC at LinuxWorld 2008

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#30

Post by Natanael_L »

jagbolanos wrote: post #26
RangerScience wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

Yes, with end-to-end voting you can be certain that your vote wasn't modified but you can't prove to someone whom you voted for https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~sdoshi/index_files/randomness_paper.... Using interactive proofs you can know that the machine won't modify your vote, and using zero-knowledge proofs plus a distributed key you can decrypt and randomize, being certain that votes haven't been lost and without revealin…

My approach to achieve what you describe:

https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/an-mp...

It is based on multiparty computation, and individual smartcards for the voters (the simplest secure solution).

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