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DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

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Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#131

Post by hyperion2010 »

dragontamer wrote: post #53
simongr3dal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I do agree that the paper trail is a great thing. I'm not fundamentally against electronic voting, but I haven't heard of a system that can really compete with the simplicity and verifiability of the immutablility you get from paper ballots inside ballot boxes being watched over by interested parties on all sides.

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. And I like it. The simpler the design, the better. Sometimes it takes a billion dollars and a couple of smart researchers to invent the "obvious" solution to a problem. We've got butterfly ballots, confusing electronics-only machines, and a variety of bad standards as the basis of our current voting infrastructur…

And suddenly I have another use case for my language for specifying scientific protocols. Counting votes in a way that is scientifically verifiable. Turns out keeping verifiable lab notebooks for legal reasons is a really similar problem to keeping verifiable vote tallies, also for legal reasons (hopefully). It is telling that we have better provenance systems for far more complex processes but we still haven't managed one for person one vote ....

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#132

Post by lpolzer »

Now if only they would introduce something like Single Transferable Vote (entertaining CGPGrey video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI), or another more effective voting system.

Probably won't happen though, as it would seriously shake up politics as we know it.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#133

Post by noir_lord »

fixermark wrote: post #106
gatherhunterer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still impossible to submit a vote without personally verifying it or deciding that you don't really care enough to review your choices. A peripheral device is one more thing than can break or be tampered with. The user experience issue is up to them to implement. In general, getting elderly people, low-income populations and other late adopters of technology to use touchscreens correctly has been much easier th…

I'm a poll worker so I have some experience with the problem. I agree with you that a peripheral is one more thing that can break or be tampered with, and I wouldn't recommend a mouse. Here's what I've observed (at least in the iVotronic systems we use in Pennsylvania): - since there's only one screen, and it's all touchscreen, users get consistently confused between pictures of buttons describing what the buttons do…

Burins around the edge of a screen is also what a fair few plane cockpits do, it’s a common and proven design.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#134

Post by yazaddaruvala »

snowwrestler wrote: post #9
swalsh wrote: post #4

My ideal voting system would allow me to have a real time feed of votes as they come in, so that at the end of the night I can check my records vs the "official" records. Names can be detached, all I need is a Ballot id. BallotId can be something as simple as the hash of RegisteredVoterId + password + Salt + ElectionId. As long as the voter remembers their password, they can look up their record, and the record can b…

Your ideal voting system is vulnerable to coercion ("log in and show me who you voted for or else") and phishing. Voting systems should provide confidence to voters that votes are counted correctly, but not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted after the ballot is cast.

If you really want a secret voting system such that the voter can’t access their own history, then just do not offer the password option. Instead a unique private key is generated, but never distributed to the voter or any other party.

- Key: Encrypted SSN

- Value: Unencrypted Vote

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#135

Post by bushin »

allworknoplay wrote: post #18
snowwrestler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ideal voting system is vulnerable to coercion ("log in and show me who you voted for or else") and phishing. Voting systems should provide confidence to voters that votes are counted correctly, but not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted after the ballot is cast.

Yes, thank you. People frequently forget critical lessons from history :p

like republicans are making US voting system horrible so that they could have a chance of winning, that lesson?

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#136

Post by yazaddaruvala »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #134
snowwrestler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ideal voting system is vulnerable to coercion ("log in and show me who you voted for or else") and phishing. Voting systems should provide confidence to voters that votes are counted correctly, but not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted after the ballot is cast.

If you really want a secret voting system such that the voter can’t access their own history, then just do not offer the password option. Instead a unique private key is generated, but never distributed to the voter or any other party. - Key: Encrypted SSN - Value: Unencrypted Vote

However, I’d personally prefer a system that was fully public. Problems: Social Pressure, Violent/Non-Violent Coercion, Retaliation.

Coercion could be a problem but with enough humans seems unlikely to be effective without the details of the conspiring entity to leak. If here are 10 jurors or a few judges coercion matters because it is easy to cover up. Coercion at scale has never occurred. Coercing any double digit percentage of 300 MM voters through violence or bribes or etc will leak based on the law of large numbers. Conspiracies stop being theories when they are validated by thousands/millions of people.

Social pressure is a bit trickier. It does force any minority voice to reconsider their vote. However, this isn’t different from most of history where a violent or non-violent revolution occurs. Most people lie about their opinion officially but build consensus privately. Until a point where the scale tips and both opinions are appropriate and debatable.

Retaliation is the biggest issue. But we already have some pretty good laws in place around discrimination based on politics. We can improve those, but also as a society we need to get better at debate without retaliation and hiding opinions doesn’t help that societal improvement.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#139

Post by swalsh »

agentdrtran wrote: post #65
swalsh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, this idea came to me before 2016. Post 2016, in this world where people are ready to commit violence purely based off their judgement of your political beliefs, this is a legitimate concern.

as we all know, political violence and coercion did not exist before 2016

Not what I said. It was not obviously a problem to me before the election.
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