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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

#121

Post by bauc »

mclemme wrote: post #8
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…

I can't see how that in any way can be anywhere near secure enough. Online voting for anything important, is a bad idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

Electronic voting of any kind is dangerous, it's amazing how much trust is used in any voting but how little can be afford when it's electronic (online or in person machine based).

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#122

Post by guard-of-terra »

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…

Buying votes is orthogonal to online voting. One can buy offline votes as well.

If anything, online voting system can let you "change your mind" later, robbing buyer of vote they paid for.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#123

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

jyriand wrote: post #97
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #92

Terrifyingly, Estonia thinks it is such a good idea they use it in national elections. A good look at potential problems with their system is here: https://estoniaevoting.org/

Here is a response to this "independent" report: https://www.ria.ee/en/e-voting-is-too-secure.html

Wow, this is a rather… childish response. It doesn't actually rebut the claims being made, they seem to dismiss everything with “so what”, as if they do not actually understand what is wrong. And the rest of the post is just deflection by making ad hominems, or complaining about things that weren't what the researchers said.

For example:

> 1. Debian Linux packages were downloaded from a place that the experts didn’t like.

> So they should’ve been downloaded a distro from a .ru or .su website?

They should have been downloaded over a secure connection and verified. Do you know what a MITM attack is?

> 2. The icon of a poker website could be seen on the desktop (was it actually a poker website or ‘an icon similar to the icon of a poker website’?).

> Of course, having this icon on the desktop of course discredits the user of that computer, their country and the entire European Union.

That they have gambling software, whose legitimacy is uncertain, installed on computers used for preparing servers for elections is concerning. Why introduce another possible threat vector?

> 4. The WiFi password of the local guest network could be seen on the wall.

> Oh dear, because the election servers (with the telephones and computers of all guests) are certainly connected to that WiFi network, their ILO ports greedily open.

No, the election servers aren't connected, but the computers used to prepare data for the election servers are.

> 5. The cameraman who shot the audit filmed an elections observer in such a manner that his password was captured on film.

> We do thank you for this observation – we will improve our cameraman’s training – but this is an error of the supporting process (the audit) and not the main process (the elections).

So? You've still had your password compromised.

I could go on.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#124

Post by jimhefferon »

The current issue of consumer Reports magazine has an editorial arguing for online voting. They are very well thought-of. If you think it is a bad idea (I do), you might hope to have some effect by writing the editor (I did). http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/contact-us/index...

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#125

Post by PinguTS »

pi-squared wrote: post #111

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing th…

If you do not have the time to go to a physical place and stand in line, then you are lazy. If you are lazy in the first place, then I doubt that you have real political interest in the second place, which means you will do uniformed decisions anyhow.

Political decision making needs some burden. You need to take your time. It not a decision do you want a Burrito or a Pizza for tonight.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#126

Post by lb1lf »

rmc wrote: post #108
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…

One of the biggest problems with evoting machines is that the voter has no way to guarantee that the machine has correctly recorded their ballot.

Which is why the voting machine should print a paper receipt which in plain text tells what vote you cast; this receipt is then deposited in a ballot box.

If a result is disputed, simply count the paper ballots like we do today.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#127

Post by michalskop »

midoreigh wrote: post #114

Ultimately, is paper the gold standard we should stick to? Nope. Come to India and watch how voting machines are used efficiently in almost all elections, from local bodies to Lok Sabha elections.

Efficient maybe, but trustworthy? How can you know that the voting machines are not rigged in any way? (The same goes for e.g. Brasil.)

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#128

Post by frobozz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #79
pdkl95 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 par…

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

Even though observers are supposed to behave in an impartial and accurate way, partisan observers help ensure accuracy by their partisanship.

If an individual counter is bought by Party A, observers from Parties B and C are there. When the teller puts some of Party C's votes in Party A's pile, Party C is there to bring it to the attention of officials. If it is likely to be close between A and B, and a teller puts a spoiled, party D, or independent paper in A's pile, then B will note it.

Once these things have been raised, they are recorded and read by more officials and observers. That increases the number of people you need to buy off in order to effect a change in the result, which in turn increases the chance of being caught or having to buy off someone who cannot be bought in your favour.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#129

Post by tremon »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #123
jyriand wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a response to this "independent" report: https://www.ria.ee/en/e-voting-is-too-secure.html

Wow, this is a rather… childish response. It doesn't actually rebut the claims being made, they seem to dismiss everything with “so what”, as if they do not actually understand what is wrong. And the rest of the post is just deflection by making ad hominems, or complaining about things that weren't what the researchers said. For example: > 1. Debian Linux packages were downloaded from a place that the experts didn’t…

They should have been downloaded over a secure connection

That's not how apt works. The connection is assumed unreliable, the verification happens after download with the Debian keyring (already installed, and can be independently inspected and verified).

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#130

Post by skrause »

lb1lf wrote: post #126
rmc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest problems with evoting machines is that the voter has no way to guarantee that the machine has correctly recorded their ballot.

Which is why the voting machine should print a paper receipt which in plain text tells what vote you cast; this receipt is then deposited in a ballot box. If a result is disputed, simply count the paper ballots like we do today.

And since you can't know that the computer actually recorded what was printed on your paper receipt you have to dispute the result by default if a good democratic process is important to you.

So if you have to count the paper balloty anyway, why even bother with spending all that money for a voting machine?

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