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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

#151

Post by yummyfajitas »

rlpb wrote: post #142
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…

Give me a way to permit online voting but also be sure that the person who is voting was not coerced. I think you'll find that this is impossible. At least with a polling booth, even if the voter is being coerced, it is difficult for the coercer to verify which way the voter voted. One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at dete…

It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources.

I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only time I voted, I did so fraudulently.

(The lack of voter ID laws in NJ made it very easy. To prove a point to a friend that voter ID laws allowed fraud, I voted as my friend. Then he voted as me. I won the bet.)

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#153

Post by guard-of-terra »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #116
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…

> It's a problem, solve it. Why exactly is it a problem? Why not just vote by red-pencil? Obviously there is a small drawback of it taking a bit more time. Then again, one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote. This is important because it prevents selling votes or blackmail, and seems impossible with any online voting system.

"one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote"

Why so? You can take a photo of your ballot after filling it.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#154

Post by batbomb »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #151
rlpb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a way to permit online voting but also be sure that the person who is voting was not coerced. I think you'll find that this is impossible. At least with a polling booth, even if the voter is being coerced, it is difficult for the coercer to verify which way the voter voted. One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at dete…

It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources. I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only t…

"In order to retrieve your votelocker key, you must publish your completed ballot and voting receipt to candidate.onion"

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#155

Post by Eridrus »

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…

> and I can securely communicate with people

At best, we have achieved this with major caveats such as:

a) Only if your device is not compromised b) You trust a CA to verify the identity of the remote host c) You trust whatever cert/key you see the first time for a given entity

Even in your proposed solution you have replaced one hard problem (voting) with another (key distribution & mgmt) and completely ignored people's desire for elections to have certain other properties (anonymous, uncoerced).

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#156

Post by IanCal »

frobozz wrote: post #128
TeMPOraL wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 offi…

Fundamentally you could buy people off. However you'd need to get the people counting, and the officials, and people in different parties, and not be spotted by any of the public that watch. And then do that again, simultaneously, in thousands of other locations, and not get caught or have anyone you tried to buy out go to the police.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#157

Post by rlpb »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #151
rlpb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a way to permit online voting but also be sure that the person who is voting was not coerced. I think you'll find that this is impossible. At least with a polling booth, even if the voter is being coerced, it is difficult for the coercer to verify which way the voter voted. One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at dete…

It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources. I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only t…

Did you not read my post? "One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this."

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#158

Post by IanCal »

sgnelson wrote: post #50
vacri wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The US has been down that road, and I forgive you for not knowing this (as you're Australian). But let me introduce you to Hanging Chad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount Although, calling this system a "Paper ballot" is not quite the truth. While it uses paper as the medium, the hole punching method is non-traditional in relation to basic written checks…

UK here, it's just a cross on a box. Nothing as complicated as these hole punching machines.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#159

Post by thegp »

Natanael_L wrote: post #110
thegp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Secure multiparty computation. You trust that the right software runs, because unless multiple mutually distrusting parties runs the EXACT SAME software in the same configuration, nothing will happen at all - and they'll hopefully never agree to collude on running anything but the officially agreed upon version. https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/an-mp...

So who do you trust enough to be distrusting parties? This to me seems to be the same problem as making it proof of work: if the incentives are big enough, the scheme collapses. Look at the creativity that lead to caging and other forms of voter suppression

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#160

Post by yummyfajitas »

rlpb wrote: post #157
yummyfajitas wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources. I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only t…

Did you not read my post? "One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this."

We have a chance at detecting purely electronic hackers also. For example, hackers made 574 attempts to connect to one of my servers as root since the logfiles were rotated.

This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.

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