Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#61

Post by jgmjgm » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #37

badsock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

> make good decisions on a scale of several years I work with government often. I am often outside begging to be given access to help my community with one civic project or another. Interactions that take hours in open source communities, take months to coordinate with City staff. I'm the last one to advocate taking the brakes off the car, but there are many many many parts of government where decisions require sever…

I see your point and often share your frustration. However, none of what you said necessitates electronic voting. In fact, it may be detrimental to the democratic process at the local level. A couple thoughts: (i) First, taking time to do something means that people that don't agree get a chance to discuss and possibly mobilize against it. (ii) More subtly, forcing people to vote between options means that the options themselves have already been codified. This process of choosing what to choose between is fundamental to local governance. A somewhat absurd example but imagine being given the choice between reducing the tax rate on the wealthiest people to 20%, 15% or 5%. Sure, we can vote on that but it doesn't seem very democratic...

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#62

Post by ph14nix » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

What fascinates me in the electronic voting is not the economical benefits of it or computers being involved, but the guarrantees provided by the cryptography. Not the paper itself, but the handritten signatures are driving me crazy.

Of course, the particilar implementation of an electronic voting protocol can be hacked. Also, some cryptographic algorithms are not proven to be completely secure, so there is a chance that someone will learn to break them. We should take those facts into consideration and be aware.

What about paper elections? Aren't they fundamentally broken because of their protocol? I go to the election, sign a ballot paper and drop it into a box. Then some people from the government report me the voting result. Why should I trust it? Because I trust all the people who were involved in collecting the ballots, counting them and so on?

Why should I trust people at all if the cryptography allows me to verify their actions?

You are afraid of voting machines being hacked? No problem, let's use paper. I'm OK with paper certifying my vote as long as my digital signature is printed on it (in hex, QR-code or whatever). Alternatively, the government can publish an open protocol of internet voting so that everyone can use an implementation that he accepts to be secure.

Should be noted that I am not very proficient at cryptography. All I know is based on a couple of books and a university course.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#63

Post by HashThis » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

When the voting lines require 3 hours to vote, single parents with small kids skip voting. Voting booths are expensive and during cutbacks, people have to travel far and have 3 hour lines. This happened in Arizona and other places in primaries this year. Friction equals far less voting. Vote at home electronically on your phone means far more voters.

Far more voters is worth complexity. Security should just something we must engineer and deliver. Maximizing people voting is the real goal, outside of engineering excuses and worries.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#64

Post by pedrocr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

ph14nix wrote: post #62

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

What fascinates me in the electronic voting is not the economical benefits of it or computers being involved, but the guarrantees provided by the cryptography. Not the paper itself, but the handritten signatures are driving me crazy. Of course, the particilar implementation of an electronic voting protocol can be hacked. Also, some cryptographic algorithms are not proven to be completely secure, so there is a chance…

You trust paper voting because voting booths are operated by representatives of the different candidates. When it comes time to count no one will let their opponent steal votes for themselves. And the reason you can't add your digital signature to your vote is that you could then prove to someone you had voted for candidate X and collect your bribe.

People that want to propose complex electronic voting systems need to first understand the requirements of an election and how the paper voting achieves them. There's quite a lot of well thought-out systems thinking in paper voting that people just don't know about.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#65

Post by ClayFerguson » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #11

ClayFerguson wrote: post #7

I invented something like this myself that used a checksum based form of ensuring data can't be tampered with. The key point is that anyone can look up how it recorded THEIR vote without anyone else being able to. Uses a hash of social security number for that (plus other personal identifiers). Websites can be written to allow a simple form-based trivially simple gui that allows anyone to look up how their vote was r…

Pen & Paper will always be more trustworthy, transparent, and safe than any blockchain-bs. Part of the reason is that to compromise a paper ballot you need thousands of corrupt volunteers (and if you can find them, you have much bigger problems anyway). The other part of the argument is that the security isn't enough for a voting system. You need /obvious/ security, and a mathematical proof just isn't obvious enough.…

With all due respect the only way you could claim blockchain is not safer than paper is if you don't understand blockchain. With a large database that is distributed on 1000s of different computers (identical DB), everyone is free to analyze what happen and tampering IS IMPOSSIBLE. Blockchain is the only technology that is indeed hack-proof. Sure it can be incorrectly implemented, making it hackable, but the technology itself IS secure. If it weren't then hackers could just attack BitCoin and program it to say they have more money than they do. If you understand BitCoin then you understand how this is impossible. Learn what a distributed ledger is.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#66

Post by pedrocr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

barnacs wrote: post #12

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

Electronic voting is strictly more expensive than paper voting. All those machines are expensive and you still need the voting places and staff.

If you're willing to do away with the requirement that you can't prove to someone else who you voted for then you can implement mail-in voting. Still paper and you can have an election every day if you want. Some US states use that. Once you go that route a simple HTTPS website run by the government that you authenticate to is all you need for electronic voting with the same guarantees.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#67

Post by pedrocr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

carlcortright wrote: post #60

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

A lot of non technical people often ask why we can't vote online. Part of our responsibility as computer scientists is to present them with the options.

This isn't a proposal for online voting, it's for electronic voting in polling places. If you allow online voting you've relaxed your election guarantees (more similar to mail-in votes). If that's what you want a simple HTTPs website run by the government with authentication is all you need.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#68

Post by pedrocr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #58

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Voting machines are not a problem as long as they are note connected to the internet. They are distributed, based on different standards and access to them rely on physical access plus 75% of them have a paper trail. They are as secure as anything out there IMO even if the boxes can be easily hacked.

>They are as secure as anything out there IMO even if the boxes can be easily hacked.

They're much less secure than just dumb paper and pen. That's the point.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#69

Post by ClayFerguson » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #38

ClayFerguson wrote: post #7

I invented something like this myself that used a checksum based form of ensuring data can't be tampered with. The key point is that anyone can look up how it recorded THEIR vote without anyone else being able to. Uses a hash of social security number for that (plus other personal identifiers). Websites can be written to allow a simple form-based trivially simple gui that allows anyone to look up how their vote was r…

Any system that allows someone to confirm their vote is a system that allows people to be forced to vote for someone.

The "system" in blockchain is always a single database file (that changes over time) but that can be downloaded by anyone at any time, and it's history can be analyzed in private and in secret by anyone any time. It has a checksum at any point in time, so you can know for sure your copy has not been tampered with, or even write a web app to allow others to analyze it, and none of the analysis forces anyone to do anything. You are apparently very confused about how this technology works.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#70

Post by pedrocr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #46

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

It doesn't matter what election system we have, so long as people are willing to spread and believe questionable claims of vote rigging. For example, there was a claim doing the rounds that Trump won because the GOP systematically purged black voter registrations in the three key swing states in numbers larger than his victory margin - if paper voting was used, that would just be the more prominent claim instead, or…

Paper voting makes this better though. A key feature of the system is that the count is done by representatives of each candidate all counting the paper ballots together and not letting each other cheat. They also all man the voting booths throughout the day verifying that none of them is stuffing the boxes with votes. Anyone can understand and trust this system, whereas a cryptographic construct that Voter suppression and other ways to make less people vote are the same in both kinds of voting.