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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

#171

Post by mamon »

timwaagh wrote: post #167

i do not think these concerns are legitimate any longer. if internet security was impossible then my bank account (along with others) would have been hacked long ago. everybody banks online. this is just conservative backlash. the real problem with elections is that a lot of people do not bother to vote, which put the legitimacy of the elections into question. online elections can help solve that.

Not voting is perfectly legitimate choice for a voter. Also, deciding who to vote for is hard decision to make if you are not that much into politics.

I would rather have people staying home than casting random votes based on their emotions, or who they happened to see on billboard on their way to voting point.

Voting should be a conscious effort, so making it too easy to vote is counterproductive.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#172

Post by mkingston »

mantas wrote: post #100
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…

I'm not sure if I'm reading your comment correctly. I totally agree we should aim towards educated and politically active society. However, educated bit should come first. Then we can start making it easier to participate. Tiering the barrier of coming to polling place won't educate people by itself.

This comment papers over a huge problem. How educated is educated enough?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#173

Post by burkaman »

FatalBaboon wrote: post #164

> In fact, online voting is such a dangerous idea that computer scientists and security experts are nearly unanimous in opposition to it. Stopped reading. Online voting is not just about electing presidents. If you can poll the people easily, you have a democracy where people directly chose, instead of having a mafious bunch in a grand building making what corporations want the law, ahem I meant doing what is good fo…

Nobody will take your comment seriously if you proudly announce that you didn't read the article.

Why not just think "hmm, I wish the title was a little more specific" and then keep reading with the understanding that this particular article is about elections?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#174

Post by dforrestwilson »

FatalBaboon wrote: post #164

> In fact, online voting is such a dangerous idea that computer scientists and security experts are nearly unanimous in opposition to it. Stopped reading. Online voting is not just about electing presidents. If you can poll the people easily, you have a democracy where people directly chose, instead of having a mafious bunch in a grand building making what corporations want the law, ahem I meant doing what is good fo…

Exactly.

Representatives made a lot of sense when the fastest mode of transit was by horse and buggy, and it took weeks to get a letter from Atlanta to Philadelphia. They make very little sense in an instant and digital age.

Internet 1.0 may not be built for online voting, but eventually some sort of internet with a ubiquitous online ID system will be implemented.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#175

Post by guard-of-terra »

mantas wrote: post #162
guard-of-terra wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be much more difficult? The difference is "upload a photo of your ballot" versus "upload a screenshot of your vote".

The usual scheme is, buyers pick up sellers and drive them to polling places. Police is usually on the look out for cars that frequent the polling stations. Or park just around the corner. The sellers usually are homeless-ish/addicts/etc. Large amount of such people raises awareness. Sometimes approaching such people and asking what's up is enough. They don't bother to lie and just tell they sold their vote to some g…

"could just take the seller's signature device and do voting himself"

That's identity thieft, which should be punishable by a few years behind bars.

Also, make those signature devices tethered to receiving whatever equivalent of Social Security payments, and addicts/homeless will not let anybody lay a finger on it.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#176

Post by Houshalter »

FatalBaboon wrote: post #164

> In fact, online voting is such a dangerous idea that computer scientists and security experts are nearly unanimous in opposition to it. Stopped reading. Online voting is not just about electing presidents. If you can poll the people easily, you have a democracy where people directly chose, instead of having a mafious bunch in a grand building making what corporations want the law, ahem I meant doing what is good fo…

It doesn't work because the public is uniformed on 99.99% of issues. And most don't have the patience to listen to the long debates and do the research on every single issue.

If shitty TV significantly influence major elections, imagine how bad it would be if we were a direct democracy.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#177

Post by lb1lf »

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…

We've got a simple way to defeat this particular attack in Norway - the ballots are in the booth. You can take a dozen if you like.

Electoral workers inspect the booth regularly to make sure all parties' ballots are available.

If you cannot find a particular party's ballot, you are encouraged to take the remainder of another couple of ballots (So that you won't have to walk over to staff, asking them to provide more ballots for party X), leave the booth, bin the ballots and ask staff to refill the booth with all valid ballots.

Once you leave the booth (which is right in front of the electoral clerks), you head over to the desk with the voter register, your identity is confirmed against the register and then your (folded) ballot is stamped, immediately after which you put it in the ballot box. Only ballots with a stamp on them are counted, eliminating the risk that someone would (quite literally) go ballot stuffing by folding several ballots and trying to get them put in the ballot box; only the stamped one counts, anyway.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#178

Post by koolba »

Frqy3 wrote: post #96
adrianN wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think this issue could be overcome by a proxy/delegate style system. With the ability to change proxy/delegate at any time, we would have ongoing accountability and move away from the problems of election cycles. Even better from a representation viewpoint (but more complex from a design viewpoint) is the option to have different proxies/delegates for different decisions/topics. The real problem is balancing tradeo…

> I think this issue could be overcome by a proxy/delegate style system.

A proxy system should have an automatic expiration (1-month, 1-year, etc) as well.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#179

Post by lb1lf »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #160
rlpb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The good thing about physical is that it demands much more effort to tamper with results.

Also, the mechanisms we put in place to prevent tampering are easily understood by just about anyone, not just people with CS degrees - which lends credibility to the process, which I find to be a benefit.

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