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Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

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Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#41

Post by skywhopper »

a_humean wrote: post #30

In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station. There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of th…

I think the key factor in the superiority of paper balloting systems over electronic is exactly what you describe: the process is understandable, visible, and verifiable to human observers. Electronic voting does not meet this standard in any way.

Would that more people in the US understood the difference.

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#42

Post by skywhopper »

yomly wrote: post #38
a_humean wrote: post #30

In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station. There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of th…

What's your point? That it's easily socially engineered? That it is archaic, inefficient and a waste of human time?

Efficiency is not and should not be the primary concern in a democratic vote. Rather, accuracy and verifiability are far more important. Very little human time is wasted on paper-based elections, but even if it took a relatively large amount of human time to implement an accurate, verifiable voting system, it would be well worth it.

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#43

Post by skywhopper »

joosters wrote: post #40
yomly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? That it's easily socially engineered? That it is archaic, inefficient and a waste of human time?

How is it a waste of time? We don't hold elections that often, nor do we need their results instantly. Voting with a pencil takes about as long as voting on a touchscreen. So why is there this stupid urge to optimise?

I would say voting with a pencil takes far less time for the voters. Electronic voting machines are inevitably going to be confusing to some people because they are built on asumptions about user interface that not everyone shares. But pretty much everyone who votes has a good intuition about how paper and pencil works.

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#45

Post by __s »

vkou wrote: post #25
dpacmittal wrote: post #24

I think blockchain is a perfect application for voting machines. Blockchain is public, immutable, cryptographic. Every voter can vote and then verify their vote was actually registered and was untampered via a web platform or something. The network can be run by the public. Ofcourse there is risk associated with the 51% attack, but it's still a more transparent process than what we have today.

Making everyone's voting record public is just about the worst possible idea for a voting system. Secret ballot is a feature, not a bug. It protects you from coercion and retaliation.

Using a system like ZCash the government could have citizens register a public address, then 1 token is distributed to each public address, votes work by sending the token to the candidate you vote for, whomever has the highest balance at the end of the election is the electee (this even allows for off ballot candidates, but up to rules). ZCash is designed so that you can't tell the contents of a transaction despite it being immutably on the blockchain

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#46

Post by yeukhon »

a_humean wrote: post #30

In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station. There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of th…

So why not have both? A receipt and eletronic? They should both matched.

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#47

Post by rangibaby »

ezoe wrote: post #34
a_humean wrote: post #30

In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station. There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of th…

In the Japan I walk into my local school/community hall(on rare occasion, the church was used, no more than a 5-10 min walk away), present the voting announcement paper the govt send it to my physical address, and use a pencil to write a name of a candidates on a piece of paper I was exchanged it with my voting announcement paper. In the Japanese writing system, candidate's name can be written in multiple ways. If wr…

So that's why candidate names are always written in hiragana on their posters!

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#48

Post by Klathmon »

yeukhon wrote: post #46
a_humean wrote: post #30

In the UK I walk into my local primary school/church/community hall (no more than a 5-10 min walk away), utter my name and address as identification (no other ID needed), and use a pencil to write a big 'X' against my preferences on a piece of paper I was handed when I entered the polling station. There are multiple local party volunteers (I was one in the last election) from all the major parties at all stages of th…

So why not have both? A receipt and eletronic? They should both matched.

Because you can't verify that both were recorded the same way.

And even if you fully count both records, what happens when there is a discrepancy?

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#49

Post by yeukhon »

Klathmon wrote: post #48
yeukhon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not have both? A receipt and eletronic? They should both matched.

Because you can't verify that both were recorded the same way. And even if you fully count both records, what happens when there is a discrepancy?

I am not familiar, but why not? Don't we only care about the authenticity of the vote (is the castor a citizen or not), and the votes.

Computer and hand count does its own thing, and in the end the numbers should agree.

Re: Virginia has decertified its most hackable voting machines

#50

Post by Klathmon »

yeukhon wrote: post #49
Klathmon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't verify that both were recorded the same way. And even if you fully count both records, what happens when there is a discrepancy?

I am not familiar, but why not? Don't we only care about the authenticity of the vote (is the castor a citizen or not), and the votes. Computer and hand count does its own thing, and in the end the numbers should agree.

Because once there is a layer of "electronic" between you and the vote, there are millions of things that can be done to falsify one side or the other.

4% of the time it prints a different paper receipt, it just makes the electronic numbers go in someone's favor by a few percent in a couple choice districts. Or it uses crafty UX to make people vote for people or things they normally wouldn't.

And what if the numbers don't agree? Are you just going to pick one side? Are you going to hold a re-election? Will the re-election have the same turnout? Will people not go because their side won by a landslide before? Will some people change their mind because the media is reporting that side "X" is behind the discrepancy? Or will it just give side "Y" the few extra weeks they needed to campaign and win?

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