In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online • Hacker News Board

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#201

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 9:40 AM UTC

KorematsuFred wrote: post #193

C1sc0cat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't vote = don't get any benefits. You would have to have an allowance for certain Disabled and Housebound voters and maybe be allowed to miss one election.

That is worse. It means people on welfare might be willing to vote more and hence peters would vote to steal from paul. Probably an argument that only those who pay certain amount of tax alone should be able to vote.

Lovely so who gets to decide who the "active citizens" are.

I think we have moved beyond that sort of limited franchise.

Btw "active citizens" is a reference to the French revolution

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#202

Post by pedrocr » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #194

pedrocr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose if you are a part of a larger organization, you can post several spotters around every voting station. But that will increase the chance of them being spotted and spoofed by the police. It's easy enough to deploy spotters without being found out. Just deploy spotters as exit pollers, they're already part of any modern election :)

Exit polls are not done everywhere, and in some countries they are even illegal. Just make soliciting around poll stations is illegal and the problem is solved.

Eliminating exit polls seems like a really bad idea. They're one of the only ways to validate an election system that doesn't depend on the system itself. When you have wild discrepancies, particularly in some precincts, you know to investigate. And it seems you'd want that particularly when you've implemented a complex electronic voting system.

And thinking about it some more the Estonian system seems perfect for vote selling. You just provide your ID card and PIN in the last day of early voting and get it back the day after the election. The buyer can vote in your name and hold your ID card to make sure you can't vote in the booth.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#203

Post by pedrocr » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

antidesitter wrote: post #180

pedrocr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel free to point out where you previously discussed receipt freeness. I'm not going to go around spelunking on my old comments to prove to you that your attacks on me are unfounded. Do your own homework if you care about this for some reason but this is getting extremely aggressive for no reason. > And if you did, then why didn't you mention it in your comment, which gives the false impression that any verifiable…

> I'm not going to go around spelunking on my old comments to prove to you that your attacks on me are unfounded. Do your own homework if you care about this for some reason but this is getting extremely aggressive for no reason. You're asking me to prove a negative. I merely said I doubted you knew about receipt freeness because you didn't even mention it as an obvious counterpoint to your claim, which is a reasonab…

This seems pointless but I'll clarify the main thing in case you really haven't understood my point.

> You've failed to show that receipt freeness introduces something else that fundamentally "breaks" which wasn't in the original system, despite repeatedly claiming this is so (see also "They fix this issue and introduce others", a claim made with absolutely zero evidence).

The issues that are introduced are exactly all that attack surface that I described how to exploit. You keep insisting that the math checks out but that's not in dispute. The mathematical properties of a well designed electronic system are fine. It's the actual engineering realities of such a system that makes it massively easier to exploit. All those examples I gave and many more are now failure modes you have and didn't before.

> Are you asking what the advantages of e-voting are?

Yes. I live in a country that has heavily invested in e-government but runs very efficient paper elections. I go in on a Sunday at my convenience and get the results for the whole country 2 or 3 hours after the polls close, extremely accurate predictions maybe an hour after. I know of no advantage electronic voting would bring that would be worth the extra cost, let alone the risk and complexity. It's a (very poor) solution looking for a problem.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#204

Post by darawk » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

jakeogh wrote: post #195

darawk wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things are possible now, yet they don't happen. I see no reason to think electronic voting would make it more likely. And in fact, we have a test case: Estonia. Is there any evidence of any of this happening there?

By definition, electronic voting is easier to game. Simple example: you just asked for evidence on a procedure that didnt have a physical paper trail.

I asked for evidence of a specific phenomenon. The specific phenomenon I requested evidence of would be no easier to have evidence for in the electronic or paper case.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#205

Post by runarberg » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #200

runarberg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then vote for the party your intimidator picked, show them you voted for them when asked. Then simply vote again for the party you want (during election day if you are afraid they will show up unexpectedly again before election day), voiding your intimidated vote. Your intimidator will never know who you voted for during election day (unless they spied on you, but you also have that problem for non-digital votes)

What in this is stopping the intimidator checking with you after the vote closes?

Then lie to your intimidator and tell them you didn’t vote in the physical election, only in the absentee.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#206

Post by runarberg » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #202

runarberg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exit polls are not done everywhere, and in some countries they are even illegal. Just make soliciting around poll stations is illegal and the problem is solved.

Eliminating exit polls seems like a really bad idea. They're one of the only ways to validate an election system that doesn't depend on the system itself. When you have wild discrepancies, particularly in some precincts, you know to investigate. And it seems you'd want that particularly when you've implemented a complex electronic voting system. And thinking about it some more the Estonian system seems perfect for vo…

You might be right about the exit polls. Perhaps this can only be applied in countries that have strong independent monitors (which Estonia should have being an EU member). Regarding vote selling, I don’t know how it is in Estonia, but in Iceland voter ID is pretty lax. You can provide an ID in the form of passport, drivers license, bank issued debit cards, etc. As a buyer I have no way of knowing if I'm witholding all possible IDs from my agent since they might have several debit cards from several banks, more then one passport (through dual-citizenship), etc.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#207

Post by jakeogh » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 6:44 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #204

jakeogh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, electronic voting is easier to game. Simple example: you just asked for evidence on a procedure that didnt have a physical paper trail.

I asked for evidence of a specific phenomenon. The specific phenomenon I requested evidence of would be no easier to have evidence for in the electronic or paper case.

It takes much less energy and time to modify something electronically. Once physical items are required to be collected, edited or destroyed then evidence becomes significantly more durable.

Re: In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

#208

Post by k0htlane » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 6:59 AM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #202

runarberg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exit polls are not done everywhere, and in some countries they are even illegal. Just make soliciting around poll stations is illegal and the problem is solved.

Eliminating exit polls seems like a really bad idea. They're one of the only ways to validate an election system that doesn't depend on the system itself. When you have wild discrepancies, particularly in some precincts, you know to investigate. And it seems you'd want that particularly when you've implemented a complex electronic voting system. And thinking about it some more the Estonian system seems perfect for vo…

It should be noted that ID+PIN is not just for the elections: it covers all of the e-services from online health records to online banking, also including digitally signing documents in your name. So I would assume that people wouldn't trust their ID+PIN to strangers.