61–70 of 197 posts
This is for a voluntary county board position without regulatory power that by statute needs to be elected by March when no one is paying attention. So someone decided to try this out. OTOH, the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent [1] and FWIW the Seattle Times recently wrote an Editorial also opposing the practice. [2] Bottom line, this h…
Absolutely amazing that almost all techies in this thread are against this. Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level. What are we at right now, 60% on average, maybe? Our nation's policies would change immediately with such a massive swing in vo…
Not that I'm scared of some malicious foreign hacker getting paid to break the voting system.
I'm just terrified of the human being getting paid to do the programming in the first place. Never trust them. -(Source: I live inside one of them.)
All this reminds me that I have to remember registering to volunteer at the voting booth for the local French elections in a couple weeks.
You know, those local elections where no one will agree on anything, except the results - who will have been (not that painfully) counted and recounted from good old paper ballots by volonteers who could have spent their Sunday night on hacker news like serious techies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level Why not just allow everyone to vote online, with no registration? Just type in your full name and select a candidate, no email or password required. It'd guarantee 100% turnout - maybe even >100% turnou…
Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically fathom?
Someone might have an interest in impersonating you to steal your tax refund -- these scams do happen.
Impersonating a bunch of voters is potentially easier when you're just presenting yourself as a computer with an internet connection rather than a flesh-and-blood human body.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level Why not just allow everyone to vote online, with no registration? Just type in your full name and select a candidate, no email or password required. It'd guarantee 100% turnout - maybe even >100% turnou…
Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically fathom?
A single fraudulent vote doesn’t benefit anyone, but thousands of them benefit someone greatly, and it’s difficult to trace, as it looks the same as a regular vote.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wholeheartedly disagree-- if casting a ballot was as easy as sending a text instead of receiving and then mailing a letter or going to a polling location, I would predict much higher participation. People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. Votes only matter as groups! So obviously you have to make it as braindead simple to vote as we have made everything else. What I…
> People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. If someone has that worldview I'm OK with them not voting. I'm not sure that X% more participation would improve our collective decision making. In essence we'd be diluting the vote of those who care the most with those who think voting by mail is too hard.
So for example, these people see the interests of people of retirement age represented much better than the interests of under-30s. They see this as part of the cause of rising college costs, and rising house prices transferring wealth from the young to the old.
By this model, every non-voter that starts voting is a step towards more even -and hence more just- representation. And if you're in a demographic with a below-average voting rate, the state better serving your needs.
Of course, that's a largely academic argument in the election of the board of supervisors for a conservation district, who probably don't have much influence on matters like house prices.
Beyond the security implications (which are huge and ought to be a deal breaker on their own), this seems to have a huge problem in that it's not private. Your abusive spouse/boss/dealer could tell you that they want to see you use the app to vote their way, and there's not much to prevent it. While going to a local precinct is inconvenient, no one knows what you do once you walk in that booth. That's important to av…
While I'm in total agreement, and think that this is likely a bad idea, doesn't the same problem exist with mail-in voting? An abusive party can hover over your shoulder while filling it out, and then walk you to the mailbox.
At least a mail-in ballot usually has a "receipt," (that serial number thing that's torn off at the top/bottom) although it does little to show or prove a vote was counted, especially with the subjectiveness of interpreting handwritten marks. The bigger problem is electronic voting has no real records making it far easier to manipulate because there's nothing permanent to recount.
I suggest that to solve the receipt issue, privacy, speed of counting and accuracy to the best degree available, it's best to:
0. Make voting day a national holiday.
1. Mail every voter a durable, physical RFID token (signed by a closely-held private key) that has an unique code that is not recorded who it is given to. If they haven't received one before voting in-person, they can receive a random token.
2. The voter is first checked to make sure they haven't yet voted by keeping a database of "has voted"... completely independent of actual votes.
3. The voter either drops-off the RFID in a container in a booth for their vote preference, or they mail it sealed in two envelopes (outer mailing info, inner vote preference).
4. Votes are counted both by weight and by RFID scanning (whole containers of votes are scanned in batch) for redundancy.
5. Voters can check online in real-time if their vote was counted by searching for the RFID code they used.
6. Recounts are a matter of mass-scanning large containers (with appropriate chain-of-custody) of votes.
7. Tokens are reused to reduce waste.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically fathom?
No one has an interest in impersonating you to pay your bills. Someone might have an interest in impersonating you to steal your tax refund -- these scams do happen. Impersonating a bunch of voters is potentially easier when you're just presenting yourself as a computer with an internet connection rather than a flesh-and-blood human body.
Beyond the security implications (which are huge and ought to be a deal breaker on their own), this seems to have a huge problem in that it's not private. Your abusive spouse/boss/dealer could tell you that they want to see you use the app to vote their way, and there's not much to prevent it. While going to a local precinct is inconvenient, no one knows what you do once you walk in that booth. That's important to av…
Seattle has long ago decided that advantages of remote voting outweigh the disadvantages. If your boss doesn't give you time off to go vote you are essentially being coerced not to vote anyway. The only difference here is whether the post office or a TLS connection are more trustworthy to deliver your vote.
Edit ("posting too fast"): For paper votes, no computers need be involved at all - they can be counted and summed by hand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle has long ago decided that advantages of remote voting outweigh the disadvantages. If your boss doesn't give you time off to go vote you are essentially being coerced not to vote anyway. The only difference here is whether the post office or a TLS connection are more trustworthy to deliver your vote.
Not just TLS connection, but the whole stack of voting software vendor, OS vendor, and phone hardware. Edit ("posting too fast"): For paper votes, no computers need be involved at all - they can be counted and summed by hand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level Why not just allow everyone to vote online, with no registration? Just type in your full name and select a candidate, no email or password required. It'd guarantee 100% turnout - maybe even >100% turnou…
Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically fathom?
Because the threat models are completely different.
For starters, if you get your taxes wrong, or if someone fraudulently tries to file on your behalf, it's a reversible process. You can fix it after-the-fact.
Ballots have to be anonymous (secret ballot) and also non-verifiable (to prevent vote-selling). There's no redoing an election later on, or asking a person to confirm their previous vote.