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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

#81

Post by dlitz »

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.

The problem is harder than it sounds when you're talking about something as high-value as a national election (especially in the US).

Have you read "Reflections on Trusting Trust"?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#82

Post by dlitz »

Findeton wrote: post #80

Well he should try http://agoravoting.org

How does this guarantee a secret ballot, i.e. that voters remain unable to prove to a third party that they voted in a particular way?

Low-value elections don't necessarily need secret ballots, but it's important for high-value elections, like selecting the POTUS.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#83

Post by thaumasiotes »

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?

We already allow remote voting for anyone who wants it.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#84

Post by Synaesthesia »

mantas wrote: post #75

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…

I think there are big opportunities here for the extension of democracy. Democracy as it stands is quite weak - technically a Polyarchy, meaning that elected officials make decisions which we ratify. This could mean citizens could participate in decision making.

The same reason is why the government and many people will try to oppose it, because greater democracy is a threat to any power system.

The reason why people feel disconnected from politics is by design. The rulers don't want the people to participate, they want them passive.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#85

Post by DanBC »

adwf wrote: post #46
tgb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've counted votes a couple times before and can tell you that where I come from in the US recounting is minimal (if done at all). We pair up with a person of our choosing and then count and recount. Collusion is trivial. Just make sure the total counts add up and that your results aren't so wildly disproportionate from the other people's that they'd get reexamined when all the pairs' numbers are summed. I don't know…

Yep - this is the kind of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XydeHaqxBbg It's almost impossible to imagine that someone could bribe that many people to influence an election in the UK. There are 650 seats with over 100k population per seat. I just can't imagine it being bribable on a large scale. Maybe some tiny constituency in a tiny district might get influenced, but the absolute smallest is about 20k votes. Th…

Some UK seats are marginal. You only need to manipulate a few dozen votes to influence those seats.

That's much easier to do.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#86

Post by adrianN »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #84
mantas wrote: post #75

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…

I think there are big opportunities here for the extension of democracy. Democracy as it stands is quite weak - technically a Polyarchy, meaning that elected officials make decisions which we ratify. This could mean citizens could participate in decision making. The same reason is why the government and many people will try to oppose it, because greater democracy is a threat to any power system. The reason why people…

Do you really want citizens participating though? I have no clue about what it takes to run a state and I'm not a lawyer and can't really read new laws. Also, I have a job and very limited free time that I don't want to spent on keeping up with new developments in politics.

So my opinions are likely very biased and quite useless for the political process. Even elected officials seem to have a hard time reading all the things they vote on, letting Joe average vote on almost everything seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#87

Post by pmontra »

vacri wrote: post #37
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. Australia uses paper ballots, and every election there's a seat or two somewhere that there's a recount. The major parties get their volunteers[0] to scrutinise the officials as they count as well, so you have multiple opposing interests scrutinising the actual count. Every vote basically gets at least three pairs of eyeb…

Italy here, it works in the same way. Parties have their watchers. I expect this to happen in every country, unless there is only one real party and the others are there just for the show.

In every paper based system problems can arise outside the voting site: parties can buy votes but that's the same with internet voting. With the internet and computers an attacker has the benefit of changing a vote every 1,000, on the client or on the server or on the network (MITM). That's enough to win many close elections. I wonder how parties could watch against that. Are we going to end up with computers with rootkits for every major party fighting each other for the right to vote on our behalf?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#88

Post by pmontra »

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 easier to manipulate the far fewer people who do the aggregation for final results.

It is but parties have their watchers spread around the country to report counts to their central. Any substantial difference will be noted and end up in a recount.

What saves us is the mistrust between parties. With internet voting watching each other would be more difficult. Actually I believe that there will be no internet voting where parties really don't trust each other. There will be internet voting were parties are very naive (almost impossible for politicians) or they somewhat agree not to rig the elections (again, too naive to believe?) or to decide them in advance.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#89

Post by noonespecial »

adrianN wrote: post #86
Synaesthesia wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are big opportunities here for the extension of democracy. Democracy as it stands is quite weak - technically a Polyarchy, meaning that elected officials make decisions which we ratify. This could mean citizens could participate in decision making. The same reason is why the government and many people will try to oppose it, because greater democracy is a threat to any power system. The reason why people…

Do you really want citizens participating though? I have no clue about what it takes to run a state and I'm not a lawyer and can't really read new laws. Also, I have a job and very limited free time that I don't want to spent on keeping up with new developments in politics. So my opinions are likely very biased and quite useless for the political process. Even elected officials seem to have a hard time reading all th…

>I'm not a lawyer and can't really read new laws... Even elected officials seem to have a hard time reading all the things they vote on...

And yet you're expected to follow them. All of them. Ignorance is no excuse and lack of criminal intent is no defense.

We've got a bigger problem here than how the votes are cast.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#90

Post by Joof »

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?

Voting is done by entering a short key. No characters appear on the screen. Only last vote counts.
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