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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

#71

Post by Tortoise »

jagbolanos wrote: post #51
vacri wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are electronic means if you're a crypto-nerd, but for the general public, paper ballots suit. You know your vote is marked to your preference when you put it in the box, and no-one can make you prove it one way or the other. You should also be able to stick around (or get someone to stick around for you) and confirm that the box you used is included in the counting, should you desire to.

I've been talking with people involved in elections in Honduras and they explained a technique that is normally used for paper ballots. It's called "La Cadena" (the chain) and it works like this. A person goes to the voting center and gets a ballot That person goes to the booth and marks the ballot That person skips entering their ballot and goes out Shows the ballot to the coercer, verifying the vote The coercer giv…

It's also trivially easy to defeat this. Here in Canada, your ballot has a counterfoil with a number on it. That number is only removed immediately before you deposit your vote into the ballot box. This ensures that the ballot you deposit is the same one you were given by the polling clerk.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#74

Post by germanier »

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?

I've seen the following idea implemented: You can cast your vote as often as you want with only the last one counting. Sure, in practice there are a lot of things to consider to make it foolproof and it might be impossible to do securely - I don't know. But it's worth considering.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#75

Post by mantas »

I'm strongly against online voting. The problem #1 is buying and manipulation of votes. Security and/or anonymity is much smaller issue IMO.

In my country, barely 50% of people vote. Most people don't care about politics. "Incentivized" votes is a huge issue there. People are routinely brought to polling stations and given a thank-you beer on return. Agitators are using all kind of borderline-blackmailing techniques on older/less educated people.

Online voting would make this A LOT easier.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#76

Post by vacri »

jagbolanos wrote: post #51
vacri wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are electronic means if you're a crypto-nerd, but for the general public, paper ballots suit. You know your vote is marked to your preference when you put it in the box, and no-one can make you prove it one way or the other. You should also be able to stick around (or get someone to stick around for you) and confirm that the box you used is included in the counting, should you desire to.

I've been talking with people involved in elections in Honduras and they explained a technique that is normally used for paper ballots. It's called "La Cadena" (the chain) and it works like this. A person goes to the voting center and gets a ballot That person goes to the booth and marks the ballot That person skips entering their ballot and goes out Shows the ballot to the coercer, verifying the vote The coercer giv…

An interesting tactic, but that kind of coercion would also work with online voting - standover men forcing you to vote on their computer, where they can see and track you. I imagine this would be particularly effective in poorer areas with less access to computers.

Complicity is always going to be hard to work around (it's the primary fault vector of electronic voting), but it seems 'the chain' wouldn't be too difficult to detect - the standover men would have to farm the ballots from the outgoing people and get them back into the line going in (but again, complicity to look the other way...)

Vote stuffing is easy to workaround - have the ballot papers custom-marked as they're handed out.

> technology at least you should reduce the possibility of cheating

Technology also opens up lots of new avenues for cheating. It also has the problem of not being understandable by the layperson if they have to manage it in any way at all.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#77

Post by matt4077 »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #29
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_s…

I don't get the complexity the US creates around voting. I live in a fairly large city (Berlin, Germany, around 3 million I believe).

- I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people.

- I've never waited more than 5 minutes

- The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible.

- I get a paper ballot, I mark my vote with a pen

- After 6pm I sometimes return and watch the counting. I can freely walk around between the people sorting the ballots and look at anything I want

- Did the same with friends last time around, we each had a bottle of beer, nobody cared. They were mostly older people happy to get a few visitors and talk a bit of politics.

- Pretty accurate first results (not exit polls) usually around 9pm.

- I can check the counts from my polling place the next day. Votes for the large party are in the lower 3-digits, so it's possible for me to specifically verify a few results.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#78

Post by gambiting »

matt4077 wrote: post #77
ElijahLynn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_s…

I don't get the complexity the US creates around voting. I live in a fairly large city (Berlin, Germany, around 3 million I believe). - I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people. - I've never waited more than 5 minutes - The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible. - I get a paper ballot, I mark m…

Poland here, same process. Well, I don't think I can actually watch them count, but then again, I never tried.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#79

Post by TeMPOraL »

pdkl95 wrote: post #49
ElijahLynn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_s…

> However, it isn't really realistic to do re-counts right now, nor do people do them regularly. About half of the states require by law a recount by hand at a random selection of voting locations. > If the people doing the counting are bought then that is an issue too. That's why you have hostile observers from opposing parties present. > open source software So you have the source. Now prove that it is installed at…

> > If the people doing the counting are bought then that is an issue too.

> That's why you have hostile observers from opposing parties present.

That's probably why GP wrote "bought", not "asked nicely to miscount in their party's favour".

That said, it's probably a game neither party would like to play too much, as it seems it could spiral out of control and turn into a race to bottom, sucking out more and more party money.

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