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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

#181

Post by whoopdedo »

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…

Any solution that begins with "Everyone has..." is going to raise the question of cost. What's that rule that some systems which attempt to achieve 100% coverage will approach infinite cost?

Travelers pay a high price for the complex air travel reservation system we have now. Poor people don't fly on airplanes, but poor people will have to vote.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#182

Post by DennisP »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #148
mantas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure votes are bought offline too. But it's much more difficult. The people who sell votes don't care to "change their mind". They get their reward and they're happy with that. People who would bother to change their mind, don't sell their votes in the first place.

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

That's why it's illegal to take a photo of your ballot, at least in most states in the U.S.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#184

Post by netheril96 »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #175
mantas wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

When the holder of the identity agrees, it is not a theft. Of course it is still criminal, but how could you reliably enforce that?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#185

Post by vlehto »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #168
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 you've stumbled across a bigger issue - democracy is fundamentally broken since no one has any incentive to vote correctly. I know a lady who's a likely Trump voter. But she also donated money to Hillary in order to get the "woman card". https://shop.hillaryclinton.com/products/the-woman-card She's pretty honest that it's just entertainment for her - like voting on American Idol. Think about how many election…

I just finished reading Kant's perpetual peace. He says something like "war protects from despotism".

I'm a Finn. During the cold war we we're situated right next to Leningrad, but still pretty much free-trade capitalist liberal democracy. Our country has very little corruption, very good primary education, free health care, conscription and long line of very very well liked past presidents. Everybody had skin in the game.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#186

Post by clamstew »

noonespecial wrote: post #89
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'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.

When Austin gave its citizens the task to make a decision, they voted against uber/lyft, and now both companies have left the city. Currently feeling like we shouldn't give more voting power to citizens on everyday issues, since the media and lobbies can get people to do crazy things like give up easy cheap and safe rides.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#187

Post by tveita »

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…

This is already accounted for in many voting systems. You can either get a new ballot after you take the picture as "proof", or as a last resort you can spoil your ballot.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#188

Post by pc86 »

noonespecial wrote: post #89
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'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.

> Ignorance is no excuse and lack of criminal intent is no defense.

For many, many crimes intent is indeed a requirement.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#189

Post by tveita »

clamstew wrote: post #186
noonespecial wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

When Austin gave its citizens the task to make a decision, they voted against uber/lyft, and now both companies have left the city. Currently feeling like we shouldn't give more voting power to citizens on everyday issues, since the media and lobbies can get people to do crazy things like give up easy cheap and safe rides.

Uber and Lyft spent millions of dollars in campaigning to make people vote in their favor according to the reports I've read.

If "media and lobbies" can get people to vote in their favor, why didn't the side with the money and lobbyists win the vote?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#190

Post by alanwatts »

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…

>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. Computers just need the one hack.

And yet it remains far easier to hack a human administrator than to hack the system they administrate.

So it's really 1000 easy hacks vs 1 really hard hack.

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