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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

#211

Post by openvote »

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…

Agreed. In 100 years people will look back at how basic our democracy had become. One choice from a selection of two, every 4 years. This dissociation with current issues is dangerous.

As democracy develops and citizens start to participate, we become more responsible for our decisions.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#212

Post by AdrienChey »

For a 2016 article about online voting, i'm really surprised to find no mention of block-chain related solutions... It seems most of the concern addressed here can be solve with this kind of "open-computing / open-data" technologies. If you are interested in this topic, I strongly advise you the reading of: https://medium.com/@DomSchiener/publicvotes-ethereum-based-v... And more generally what can be done with contract on the ethereum block-chain.

about anonymity: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=413196.0

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#213

Post by JumpCrisscross »

coredog64 wrote: post #204
mantas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up the Swiss style of democracy. They have elected officials for day-to-day tasks and frequent referendums for subjective matters. From what I saw, their referendum campaigns are great. You can make your own opinion with an hour or two of research, tops. Even with the very limited time, IMO few hours a year is worth it to be more involved with shaping your own society. Best of both worlds.

Look up the situation in California with referendums. More direct democracy is not always wine and roses.

Our Swiss Constitution was based on California's. We added cooling-down periods and made referendums binding to the Legislature, not directly law.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#214

Post by soundwave106 »

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…

I kind of agree. Some of the technical issues do seem like good points to think about, but a lot of the issues raised here (eg, coercion and the lack of anonymity) would also be applicable to ballot by mail / absentee ballots. Many nations have had ballot by mail for a while. Although there's been some fraud issues, I'm not aware of extensive fraud / anonymity problems. Certainly not to the point where the phrase "danger to democracy" is applicable.

Actually I would think electronic voting could be made more secure and less fraud-prone than ballot by mail, to be honest.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#215

Post by openvote »

Houshalter wrote: post #176
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.

People will participate in the issues they follow. Plus, voting on ethics is something anybody can do.

You are right about TV though. That would be a whole new level of debate.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#216

Post by vlehto »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #192
vlehto wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Suppose you vote wrong for some national socialist who will destroy the economy and kill the muslims. How much will you, personally, lose? I.e., multiply your actual losses by the probability of your vote affecting the outcome. Now compare that number to the 1 Euro worth of tribal satisfaction/self righteousness/other positive feels you get from voting for that national socialist. In contrast, consider a true "wisdom…

You need some goal to correctly target that "wisdom of crowds". So first we need democracy to set the goal: Gini-index vs. Pareto efficiency. Freedom vs. security. Protection of personal rights vs. right of group self determination.

Then throw into the equation some very polarizing stuff like abortion, drugs, animal welfare, inheritance tax, immigration and whatnot. Then watch as some political entity loots government budget while people are arguing. This happens in Finland too now that Russia is weak.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#217

Post by scott_s »

matt4077 wrote: post #77
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…

I don't get the complexity the US creates around voting. I live in a fairly large city (Berlin, Germany, around 3 million I believe). - I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people. - I've never waited more than 5 minutes - The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible. - I get a paper ballot, I mark m…

I live in White Plains, NY, which is about 45 minutes north of NYC. My experience is similar to yours. But the US is a big, big place. I wouldn't be surprised if your experience has more to being in a major city, than in Germany. That is, what is the experience in rural parts of Germany? Poorer parts of Berlin?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#218

Post by kuschku »

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…

> 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 for you.

Well, look at Germany. Merkel always does what the majority of people said they want in polls, because she wants to keep having her power (she’s running for her 4th term).

And yet, the results aren’t ideal either.

(Some call her "the walking infratest-dimap poll".)

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#219

Post by icebraining »

AdrienChey wrote: post #212

For a 2016 article about online voting, i'm really surprised to find no mention of block-chain related solutions... It seems most of the concern addressed here can be solve with this kind of "open-computing / open-data" technologies. If you are interested in this topic, I strongly advise you the reading of: https://medium.com/@DomSchiener/publicvotes-ethereum-based-v... And more generally what can be done with contra…

From your second link: "True, if you consider vote buying a type of electoral fraud, the scheme is not fraud-proof."

And of course, "vote buying" can be substituted by "coerced voting". Any system where someone can physically see the voter casting their vote is flawed, regardless of whatever tricks you then use to obscure it once it's in the system.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#220

Post by zanny »

AdrienChey wrote: post #212

For a 2016 article about online voting, i'm really surprised to find no mention of block-chain related solutions... It seems most of the concern addressed here can be solve with this kind of "open-computing / open-data" technologies. If you are interested in this topic, I strongly advise you the reading of: https://medium.com/@DomSchiener/publicvotes-ethereum-based-v... And more generally what can be done with contra…

This is the answer. You should never trust any one given voting machine. But it is much, much harder to corrupt large consensus networks, and blockchain based voting lets you maintain pseudonymity and it lets you verify the results with whatever computer you want.

Some neat features you can bake into a blockchain based voting protocol:

* You can have temporary identifiers in the confirmation stage. IE, you cast your vote, you can use other computers for the first couple minutes to verify that vote, but after that your vote is added to blocks as a signature rather than direct identifier tied to the block, meaning once committed neither you nor anyone else has a concrete correlation between you and your vote.

* Alternatively, you can have a dual ledger of voter and vote, where the two are not correlated, but you can identify who has or has not voted but not what they have voted for. This gives you less verification integrity but guarantees anonymity to prevent voter coercion.

* You can have kill switches built in, generated hash keys at vote time that will cancel a vote out unique to the vote, either in the confirmation phase or even when committed (basically the same as adding something to a balance and then removing it again).

* You can use one single protocol implementation for all public record voting, and then have membership restricted groups that define constituencies through sidechains. That way you can leverage an international network of computers to secure all votes you want secured, rather than have easily 51% attacked small chains for each vote or constituency. It would be distinct from trustless models in that you would need some kind of parent organization to arrange membership in voting groups and to establish vote blocks.

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