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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

#61

Post by thegp »

Retra wrote: post #57
adwf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

>It's just standard programmer NIH hubris; we think we can do it better, therefore we should. It's not NIH at all. Electronic voting has not been implemented sufficiently. It could be done. It's not about doing it better, it's about doing it at all. It's not-invented-anywhere hubris, and that's plenty of reason to do something. People aren't much harder to manipulate than machines, and they're also just as transparen…

To be done sufficiently, you need to not only prove that your system is fair, reliable, scalable, tamperproof, anonymous etc., but also that you system actually runs. That combination is nigh impossible. That is the fundamental reason, bootstrapping that trust. Imagine you have a 100% open source system, cryptographically verified etc. How do I know that is actually what is running in the voting box?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#62

Post by [deleted] »

doctorstupid wrote: post #60

I feel that our fears are misplaced towards the wrong kind of voting machine, the one that collects the vote. The other kind, the one placing the vote, is far easier to manipulate. Facebook and Google have the mechanisms at their disposal to influence elections globally, and within a couple of election cycles could probably have the world's democracies more aligned to the interests of the US.

[deleted]

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#63

Post by bigger_cheese »

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…

My biggest worry isn't about software security. My worry about online remote voting is What is to stop physical coercion of the voter?

When you have to gather at a centralised polling point to anonymously vote you can be damn sure no one is standing over the voter's shoulder twisting their arm while they vote. If you are voting remotely via a computer screen who is to know?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#65

Post by askvictor »

magicfractal wrote: post #35
ccvannorman wrote: post #32

Maybe OT, but why is one of the requirements for a better voting system "anonymous"? What's wrong with a voting system in which every citizen's vote is transparent and available? Seems like it would be much less susceptible to fraud and easier to audit that way. I don't see a problem with anyone seeing how I voted! Maybe I am missing something?

It enables candidates purchasing votes

I don't see why this is such a bad thing. It happens anyway, let's just be honest and own it.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#66

Post by [deleted] »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #63
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…

My biggest worry isn't about software security. My worry about online remote voting is What is to stop physical coercion of the voter? When you have to gather at a centralised polling point to anonymously vote you can be damn sure no one is standing over the voter's shoulder twisting their arm while they vote. If you are voting remotely via a computer screen who is to know?

[deleted]

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#67

Post by EdHominem »

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.

> all it takes is trusting the government to [...]

Wait, what? All the system requires is trusting the incumbent government with the security of our vote?!

And the fourth Reich lasted forever.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#68

Post by dave2000 »

doctorstupid wrote: post #60

I feel that our fears are misplaced towards the wrong kind of voting machine, the one that collects the vote. The other kind, the one placing the vote, is far easier to manipulate. Facebook and Google have the mechanisms at their disposal to influence elections globally, and within a couple of election cycles could probably have the world's democracies more aligned to the interests of the US.

That's what I was thinking, although I don't think Google and Facebook are a problem as they can only provide slightly different choices from within a narrow range that people are already interested in. It's the relentess torrent of brainwashing across all media which frames people's opinions and doesn't allow them to think seriously outside of the narrow choices (2 party system, pro/anti [issue]) which ensures that there'll never be change which actually makes a difference (ie the environment, religious crazies controlling nuclear weapons, increasing gulf between rich and poor, companies subverting democracy via lobbying and trade agreements).

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#69

Post by imtringued »

askvictor wrote: post #65
magicfractal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It enables candidates purchasing votes

I don't see why this is such a bad thing. It happens anyway, let's just be honest and own it.

The only difference right now is that we don't receive a penny of the money spent on voting campaigns.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#70

Post by imtringued »

Dove wrote: post #34
ccvannorman wrote: post #32

Maybe OT, but why is one of the requirements for a better voting system "anonymous"? What's wrong with a voting system in which every citizen's vote is transparent and available? Seems like it would be much less susceptible to fraud and easier to audit that way. I don't see a problem with anyone seeing how I voted! Maybe I am missing something?

In a system where your vote can be verified, you can be coerced into voting a certain way.

That could be avoided by generating a new identity for each vote.
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