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ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#11

Post by maze-le »

deevolution wrote: post #6
maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

Care to explain why you think pen and paper is the best solution?

It is documented all the way down to a single vote (some voting-computers must implement a paper-trail as a secondary feature, here it is free). Tempering is very hard when there are enough volunteers, providing oversight over the procedures. Everyone (not just security specialists, versed in reverse engineering) can verify if a vote has been tempered with.

Well that said, I don't think its the "best" solution per se. It is wasteful -- a lot of paper must be produced for this single task. It is not completely free of loopholes, but they are burdensome and can be verified by a second count. And I can understand why countries like e.g. India or Indonesia use computers in this situation, millions upon millions of people cast their vote over a limited time period -- it's a logistical nightmare.

But it is far better than trusting a computer, that by definition "can do everything computable". And falsifying an election is definitly computable.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#12

Post by bradbeattie »

ch wrote: post #10

Cool use of Hom encryption, but does nothing about disenfranchisement.

Gerrymandering, preference distortion through no proportional voting systems, Duverger's Law. I mean, I'm glad people are working on the problem-space of democracy, but I'd guess that other issues more greatly effect voter disenfranchisement and apathy.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#14

Post by jldodds »

maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

It will be possible to use ElectionGuard as the core of optical scan systems. This will give end to end verifiability properties on the recording and counting mechanisms.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#15

Post by mises »

shinigami wrote: post #13
maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

It's a terrible idea. Paper-only elections are easily corrupted. The right answer is combining paper & electronic.

But tampering with a paper-only election requires physical interference and working across many different locations. It is much easier, if you have the talent, to break into an electronic election.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#16

Post by jlev »

bradbeattie wrote: post #12
ch wrote: post #10

Cool use of Hom encryption, but does nothing about disenfranchisement.

Gerrymandering, preference distortion through no proportional voting systems, Duverger's Law. I mean, I'm glad people are working on the problem-space of democracy, but I'd guess that other issues more greatly effect voter disenfranchisement and apathy.

The problem in 2016 wasn't that anyone "hacked" our election, it's that they hacked our electorate. Turns out that people's opinions are much easier to change than cast ballots.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#17

Post by lukifer »

deevolution wrote: post #6
maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

Care to explain why you think pen and paper is the best solution?

The trust model for elections is fundamentally a human one: the hundreds of thousands of American volunteers (mostly senior citizens) operating via transparency, norms, and good faith. All the tech in the world, even the most solid FOSS crypto, couldn't fix it if the process were corrupted at the human level.

The best reason to use pen and paper is to ensure that the process is auditable and legible to the most number of regular citizens, not only for security and integrity, but for perception and public trust, which are arguably the most important backbones of democracy. (We may have low confidence in some aspects of our system, like gerrymandering and voter roll purges, but we almost take for granted that once one is in the booth, there's a high reliability that one's vote will be counted correctly.)

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#18

Post by mises »

northernjames wrote: post #4
maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

100% agree. If automation is needed, use scantron technology (where you fill in bubbles on actual paper), which can be manually audited if necessary. No firewalls, phishing, spectres or meltdowns.

"It is very important that you use a No. 2 pencil. It is very important that you fill in the entire circle darkly and completely. If you change your response, erase as completely as possible. Incomplete marks or erasures may affect your score."

And here I was, thinking I was done with scan-trons when I finished high school.

But seriously, couldn't you modify a scan-tron's firmware to falsely report results? It's much harder to tamper with every person in an election across wide geographical areas.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#19

Post by 24gttghh »

mises wrote: post #18
northernjames wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. If automation is needed, use scantron technology (where you fill in bubbles on actual paper), which can be manually audited if necessary. No firewalls, phishing, spectres or meltdowns.

"It is very important that you use a No. 2 pencil. It is very important that you fill in the entire circle darkly and completely. If you change your response, erase as completely as possible. Incomplete marks or erasures may affect your score." And here I was, thinking I was done with scan-trons when I finished high school. But seriously, couldn't you modify a scan-tron's firmware to falsely report results? It's much…

A hand recount of the physical ballots would hopefully expose the correct count if a modified scan-tron was miscounting.

Re: ElectionGuard – A free open-source voting SDK

#20

Post by 52-6F-62 »

maze-le wrote: post #2

It may not be a popular opinion around here, but the best election guard is doing them with pen & paper.

I'm not 100% convinced[0]. In Ontario we have a decent system that involves scanned paper ballots that gives you a visual confirmation. It allows for fast tallies and a physical backup.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/watch-cctv-footag...

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