Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting • Hacker News Board

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#51

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 08, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

Strilanc wrote: post #45

sideshowb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a mathematically perfect voting system could be substituted in entirety. Replace the whole damn thing with your own one in an identical case running system.out.println("my favourite candidate wins! ");

The correctness of cryptographic voting systems is determined by their publicly observable behavior, not by their internal implementation. It's the protocol that's secure, not the specific hardware or software implementation. So the attack you're describing doesn't really apply.

[deleted]

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#52

Post by mehrdadn » Wed, May 08, 2019, 8:47 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #49

mehrdadn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If John Doe is listed as having voted, but is fake, how would you know he's fake?

There are also lists of who lives in a county/state/country. If you suspect foul play you can further look up if John Doe is a person that lives in the 'right' place. Of course this doesn't solve the case where John Doe is a real person that is allowed to vote, but actually stayed home.

How in the world would you know to suspect foul play from specific people though? Especially when they can be a very small fraction of the population?

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#53

Post by johnisgood » Wed, May 08, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

Loosely related as it is about democracy: https://www.anthonyflood.com/rothbarddemocracy.htm

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#54

Post by yorwba » Wed, May 08, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

Strilanc wrote: post #45

sideshowb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a mathematically perfect voting system could be substituted in entirety. Replace the whole damn thing with your own one in an identical case running system.out.println("my favourite candidate wins! ");

The correctness of cryptographic voting systems is determined by their publicly observable behavior, not by their internal implementation. It's the protocol that's secure, not the specific hardware or software implementation. So the attack you're describing doesn't really apply.

Having a cryptographically secure voting protocol doesn't protect you if the human-computer interface is compromised to alter the votes as they are being entered into the system. You get a code to verify that "your" vote was counted correctly, but because you're not supposed to be able to prove who you voted for to prevent vote-buying, you can't tell that the voting machine has slipped you the wrong code.

It may not be an admissible attack in the model within which protocols are proven secure, but it's still an attack that could affect real-world systems.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#55

Post by rahuldottech » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

YokoZar wrote: post #12

The mechanism for voter verification is based on homomorphic encryption. Numberphile made a video on this topic recently, with a few basic explainers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho

Numberphile is amazing. Definitely some of my favorite content.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#56

Post by pauljurczak » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:07 AM UTC

Strilanc wrote: post #45

sideshowb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a mathematically perfect voting system could be substituted in entirety. Replace the whole damn thing with your own one in an identical case running system.out.println("my favourite candidate wins! ");

The correctness of cryptographic voting systems is determined by their publicly observable behavior, not by their internal implementation. It's the protocol that's secure, not the specific hardware or software implementation. So the attack you're describing doesn't really apply.

"publicly observable behavior" is a bit of a misnomer - general public can indeed observe ElectionGuard in action, but it will not know what it sees. Fortunately, Microsoft advocates using paper ballots as a backup.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#57

Post by YokoZar » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

lamchob wrote: post #50

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030/

How is this relevant? This isn't an electronic voting system. It's a system for verifiable receipts that attach to paper systems.

> ElectionGuard provides a complete implementation of end-to-end verifiable elections. It is designed to work with systems that use paper ballots, supplementing today’s tabulation process by providing a means of public verification of the accuracy of reported results.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#58

Post by YokoZar » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #35

I shall repeat it like a mantra: voting beeing slow inefficient is a side effect of it’s transparency. You want a voting system were a average voting helper can look at it and say: “There was nothing fishy there, I saw it”. This is because it is about trust and not only about secrecy and security. Your electronic voting system can be mathematically perfect, but if nobody average can say from the outside that everythi…

This isn't an electronic voting system. It's a system for verifiable receipts that attach to paper systems.

> ElectionGuard provides a complete implementation of end-to-end verifiable elections. It is designed to work with systems that use paper ballots, supplementing today’s tabulation process by providing a means of public verification of the accuracy of reported results.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#59

Post by mcny » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #21

Mindless2112 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who voted is public record (depending on your state [1]), so the numbers should add up. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-public-v...

Also, there is another scenario. Let's say the rules allow to change the vote later. A voter votes for candidate X and gets a link that allows to verify that the vote is recorded. But several hours later the server software re-votes for candidate Y. If the voter bothers to check results after election, they will find that their vote was altered. But the voter has no proof that they didn't vote for candidate Y, and el…

» And one more scenario: before closing the elections, officials can make a list of people who didn't vote and vote for them. If they didn't vote they probably don't care about elections and won't find out that someone voted for them.

This could already happen today. This is why all major candidates, even in these united states, send their own observers and not simply trust election officials to do their job.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#60

Post by ddebernardy » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

dao- wrote: post #29

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always - spoiled ballots can sometimes count, or indicate growing dissent in society. Not voting can achieve neither. Here's a case from last week of a spoiled ballot giving someone a majority of one: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/ballot-pape... Was that the result the voter intended? Probably not, but who knows? :)

I don't understand your example. That ballot paper was counted as a Tory vote, i.e. not as spoiled.

As I understood the story (the photo of the ballot that is sometimes circulated is just one taken from Twitter), the ballot had Brexit written all over it, and an arrow pointing at the Tory candidate's name, so ended up counting it as a Tory vote because of that.