Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#271

Post by Vexs » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #268

zanny wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please explain to my mother how this system would work. And should this system fail, or simply be faked, how would I know? PublicVotes' first claim is to be "fair". Fairness is a property of the form of election (eg approval voting vs first-past-the-post), not the voting system. I'll scan the docs, see if there's any merit, but right out of the gate the starting assumptions are way off base, so don't have much hope f…

I mean the best way to explain it is to say "I put my vote on several pieces of paper, and give it to several people. One person could edit it, but that would conflict with everyone else. Everyone can see who I gave my anon vote to, and can verify that it all matches up." It's abstracted by a lot, but blockchain is basically just a public ledger.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#272

Post by ethbro » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #262

ethbro wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the sophistication needed to tamper with paper ballots. There's certainly a "boots on the ground" requirement for tampering, but the knowledge requirements are trivial compared to crypto attacks.

The physical chain of custody can be guaranteed with paper ballots. Yes, you can burn ballots, or stuff the box, but if you're minding the store, someone would notice. Source: former poll judge, inspector.

I defer to your expertise but did you ever work in third-world countries? (To use the phrase as a proxy for inadequate political/physical infrastructure)

To use the engineering aphorism, just because it can be done doesn't mean it is done. I'm curious about how physical security/verification works in that environment vs a hypothetical crypto solution.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#273

Post by nine_k » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #225

nine_k wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe representative democracy is broken (there are reams of good texts written about it). OTOH direct democracy may be not as broken, since the effects of voting are much more immediate and local. See Switzerland that constantly keeps voting against populist measures like lowering the retirement age. It lasted ~850 years so far, longer than almost all European states and 100% of American states. Switzerland is compa…

Direct democracy is still broken. If I vote wrong I suffer nothing, but I may gain positive feelings.

The point of voting is usually to determine what is right or wrong. If you're a god having all the answers, you need devotees that just obey your scripture, not citizens with a privilege to vote.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#274

Post by badsock » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:35 PM UTC

franciscojgo wrote: post #228

I am strongly against the view of the author. I see that the majority (or a large portion) of voters are fanatics that vote based on affiliation and fanaticism, not policies nor experience. Ie. The voting numbers are largely biased towards the political fanatic crowd. I see online voting as a way to increase the number of ordinary people that vote. Getting the voting population to 80%+ or more is good for democracy.…

People in this thread are assuming we can just solve the security issue if we try hard enough. We can't. It would mean securing every single voter's computer, and that's preposterous.

There is no consensus algorithm or blockchain that will work if the voter's computer or phone is compromised. To name just one avenue of attack: if you have control of the video output then you can swap the name of two candidates. That's all it takes. You figure out which candidate is most likely to win in several key ridings/districts, and then on all of the computers that you've infected with your virus you swap their name with the the candidate you'd like to win. The voting software would never know, the voter would never know. Any confirmation step, like printing out a receipt, can be similarly be trivially defeated.

Whoever is in control of that virus - be it a fanatic, foreign government, or corporation - can now decide an election.

The only way around this is to have a 100% secure device dedicated to noting but voting that you mail out to each voter. Even if you could build such a thing (which is likely impossible considering that the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people across many countries go into making a device - hardware and software), that's far more expensive and awkward than a mail-in ballot.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that online voting would be the end of democracy. For any definition of practical, it cannot be secured. If it cannot be secured, it is not democracy.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#275

Post by nine_k » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #223

nine_k wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe representative democracy is broken (there are reams of good texts written about it). OTOH direct democracy may be not as broken, since the effects of voting are much more immediate and local. See Switzerland that constantly keeps voting against populist measures like lowering the retirement age. It lasted ~850 years so far, longer than almost all European states and 100% of American states. Switzerland is compa…

People have generally not established direct democracies throughout history for a reason . I personally never want to see a direct democracy in the US, because if you want to have your faith in your countrymen destroyed go spend an hour sitting on a bench outside a Walmart and just watch humanity at work. The vast majority of people are borderline illiterate emotional animals. You don't see or interact with them beca…

> borderline illiterate emotional animals

This may be true in some cases; this is why I think universal vote, without any limitations, is not a good idea. Voting is a privilege and a job of running (a small piece of) your country. Compare it to a jury duty.

This, again, may be false in some cases. Unless the voting process is framed as a sports match (like it usually sadly is), the emotions are much easier to keep in check, and reason is easier to listen to, even without an advanced university degree.

OTOH if you don't trust your countrymen, I wish you all the luck in importing infallible Martians to help you rule your country as e.g. a king. On this planet the only way used to be growing and educating some portion of your countrymen to be able to run the country (without running it into the ground). This applies to kings and dictators to a very high degree. This as well may apply to a wider mass of voters.

I suspect this is what happened to the Swiss: centuries of local self-rule and rather immediate consequences of it, combined with living in rather harsh conditions most of its history, must have educated people not to take the voting lightly. I don't see modern Swiss killing Muslims or Hispanics on sight (it's not the Reformation wars time), but I do see a ban to build minarets [1]. Apparently the fallout was pretty small, without a "culture of fear", Muslims fleeing the country or something like that. Sometimes a minority has to listen to the majority; it's best when the compromise is as small as this ban. Regular not listening to the majority and alienating them makes for what you fear: the mob running over the castle of the highly-cultured but insolent lord.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#276

Post by pm24601 » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

seangrogg wrote: post #267

athenot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article indirectly addresses that in the last paragraph: paper is something everyone understands. I'm all for improving processes with technology but I'll have to admit that even though I've been neck deep in Software development for 2 decades, the block-chain solutions require a fair amount of mental work for me. They may be good but I don't readily understand them. And I can guarantee you that my parents don't.…

While that's a decent premise and I agree that less than 5% of the US population understands blockchains, I would also reckon they don't understand HTTP (or HTTPS) protocols, B-trees, networks, cryptographic hashes, or even the compilers that underpin much of technology. But they're more than willing to trust these things with the entirety of their liquid assets if it spares them a 20 minute trip to the bank. I think…

However, with all of those. If there is a problem: either the consequences are not significant. Or there is a paperwork around to a problem, which includes laws and judges.

With online voting, we are deciding the judges that get to say - "everything is totally perfect with the way I got elected."

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#277

Post by badsock » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #220

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…

As I said elsewhere in this thread, blockchains/consensus algorithms won't work. If the computer/phone that the software is running on is compromised and the attackers have control of the video and/or input devices, there are many ways of misdirecting the voter to make the wrong selection - in that case the whole stack of protocols and algorithms work just as they were intended, but it doesn't matter because the selection of the candidate was decided by the virus, no the voter.

And it doesn't take much to swing an election - you don't need to compromise many machines. So you end up needing 100% security on almost 100% of the voters' devices. That's simply not possible.

People have a hard time believing that we can't fix the security problems with online voting. We can't fix them.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#278

Post by germanier » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #217

matt4077 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Looking almost exactly the same. Rural (well rural in Germany is not the same as rural in the US) polling places might have 100 voters assigned instead of 1000 and people know each other but that's about it.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#279

Post by germanier » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #112

matt4077 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One issue is the cost and logistics of it all. In Sweden we therefore have three different elections on the same day. Campaigning tend to focus on the national election, thus the others gets a back seat and quality suffers. Also, I've helped some smaller parties with the ballot distribution. It's not a small task for a small party to ensure each an every polling place in the country has ballots. Just the physical log…

I have a question: Does every party has to supply a seperate piece of paper and the voter then chooses which piece of paper to put into the ballot box? What do voters do with the non-chosen ballots, i.e. how is the secrecy of the vote protected?

The system I know from Germany is that there is one ballot per election and the voter puts a mark which party/candidate they choose with a pen on that.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#280

Post by germanier » Tue, Jun 14, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #206

matt4077 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's what most people that are not from the US don't understand: When I go to vote on election day, I'm not voting for one person/party or even three people/parties. The typical ballot in my neck of the woods is double sided and has ~30 questions: National elections (President, HoR rep, maybe senator), state elections (Governor, SoS, local rep/senator, corporation commission, referendums/ballot initiatives), county…

I never had 30 elections on one day in Germany (I think 5 was the absolute maximum) as we elect fewer positions in general and don't combine most elections on one day. Usually the federal election is the only vote on that day with some states specifically moving their state election day by one week to avoid a clash. The only usual combination is regional/European elections or state/regional elections for the small states. Referendums (there only a few) are usually tacked onto another election if there is one in a reasonable timeframe.

The elections each use a seperate ballot (and often seperate ballot box) and are counted one after the other with the most important election being counted first while the rest is still locked away in sight.

But yeah, for 30 ballots that system might break down.