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Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

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Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#81

Post by JumpCrisscross »

legitster wrote: post #33

I want to point out that voting in Washington state is incredibly easy. They mail you a ballot, and a packet with detailed information on every single candidate and issue, and then you can drop your ballot just about anywhere - supermarket, mailbox, probably the street (who knows). It's probably the best voting system, hands down. I don't buy that a smartphone magically hits some convenience threshold that turns out…

> It's probably the best voting system, hands down.

The disadvantage to this system is the erosion of the secret ballot. Someone (e.g. an employer, spouse or friend) can now ask you for proof of your vote.

(I think absentee ballots should be voidable in person.)

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#82

Post by annoyingnoob »

Vote is the new app that makes voting easy. No more paper booklets full of legal mumbo jumbo. Just press the Vote button and Vote does the rest, done and done.

Vote automates your votes by choosing the best candidates for you using SocialAI technology.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#83

Post by Klathmon »

joshuaheard wrote: post #25

I don't understand why a bank's website is secure enough to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I can't cast a single vote online.

Because one can buy you a nice yacht, but the other can buy control over the most powerful military in the world, the stakes are just significantly larger for an election.

The reward provides a sort of ceiling on how much time and money can be spent on trying to break a system. Even if you could get access to a few billion dollars by somehow "hacking" a bank and get away with it, that means that you'd only be spending up to a few billion to do it, and you may spend a few years to plan, but not much more.

But trying to "hack an election"? I would be shocked if there weren't multiple countries spending billions of dollars across literally decades of time trying to find the best way to influence and hack elections in other countries.

Do you really think that ANY software is secure enough to withstand a team of a few thousand of some of the most talented developers money can buy working full time for decades on trying to break it? Because that's the kind of threats that elections face. And if that election happens at all on the internet, the adversaries can be literally anywhere in the world and still attack it.

There are also auxiliary reasons why electronic voting isn't ideal. It removes the ability for the average person to validate the security of their election themselves without a software engineering degree (in a paper election anyone can go watch the locked ballot box all day to ensure there is no tampering, and they can count along with everyone else at the end of the day). It introduces accessibility issues, it adds unnecessary bottlenecks and dependencies (there have been countless stories of there not being enough voting machines or them breaking down causing lines to get multiple hours long and in many cases prevent people from being able to vote before polls close. There's even evidence this has been done on purpose to sway elections by preventing people in some areas from voting as much as people in others), and it's really expensive!

And what are the benefits to electronic voting? slightly faster counting? (you can get results in minutes instead of hours...)

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#84

Post by specialist »

skue wrote: post #9

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…

Oh boy.

Thanks for links. I know, and have occasionally crossed swords with, most of the players mentioned.

Our conservation districts fund their own elections. They don't have the budget to pay to be on the normal ballot. The only fix would be for state government to appropriate the money. People like Toby Nixon have floated this reform at various times the last 20 years. Otherwise, there's no push.

Current WA SOS Wyman is ok, for a Republican. While she does nothing to expand the franchise, she does not share Sam Reed's, her predecessor and mentor, technophilia.

KC Exec Constantine absolutely knows better. He played a role in both of my efforts to protect the secret ballot (prohibit voter id from being printed on ballot) and delaying a major risky overhaul of KC Elections in 2008. Constantine is a wicked smart politician. So I wonder what his angle here is.

The automated signature verification has three show stopping flaws. High error rate, both positive and negative. Blackbox. Is another form of rent seeking by vendors; last time I checked, vender gets $0.10 per voter per election (not just per ballot cast).

I'm very proud of Seattle Times' editorial board on this issue. They learned, matured, adapted. I spoke with them 10+ years ago about election integrity. They were wicked smart, painfully polite & earnest, respectfully disagreed. One of my best interactions as an activist. While I disagree with Seattle Times on most everything (else), they are a worthy opponent.

I know nothing about the vendors mentioned, Tuck and Finney. I assume they're typical consulting bozos chasing sales and haven't really thought about the policies involved, and don't know enough to know they're bozos.

Gael Tarleton would make a great SOS.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#85

Post by mslong »

chimeracoder wrote: post #70
mslong wrote: post #51

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?

> 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.…

Good points, but it just means you have to move the verification process upfront like I lay out in another comment further up this chain.

Bottom line is that we have a literal army of software engineers in this country that are capable of figuring this stuff out if it was a priority to get voting to 100% turnout. We split the atom and landed on the moon, I'm pretty confident we can figure out mobile voting.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#86

Post by egypturnash »

Analemma_ wrote: post #76
existencebox wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has candidly started to scare me, after a good # of years voting with the packet (and I assure you I _research_ far beyond what the packet contains) is the fact that I'm often Still Clueless at the end. A toy example is a recent tax levy for some hospital funding. While the packet contained some thousand-foot information on what it was for and amount/etc, there was NO breakdown as far as I could tell, even onlin…

This is why local news is incredibly important, their job is to decipher this for you. For national things like Presidential elections, I couldn't care less who my local newspaper endorses, but for local elections I care quite a lot. If you're in the Seattle area, try to support the Seattle Times or the Stranger; they have different political leanings and you may like one and hate the other, but they both do good wor…

When I lived in Seattle my voting process was basically "find the Stranger's recommendations, read through them, and very occasionally look deeper into one issue or office". This is definitely an important function of local news, they spend hours trying to make sense of this stuff and tease out hidden connections so you don't have to.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#88

Post by the_snooze »

joshuaheard wrote: post #25

I don't understand why a bank's website is secure enough to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I can't cast a single vote online.

The security and privacy requirements are much tougher with voting. In banking, the people involved know who's doing what. Voting has to be completely private to prevent voter intimidation. Banking can be insured and transactions reversed. Elections can't.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#89

Post by cwkoss »

deogeo wrote: post #68
all_blue_chucks wrote: post #48

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.

Also your phone's keyboard transmits predictive text data re: write in candidates.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#90

Post by legitster »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
legitster wrote: post #33

I want to point out that voting in Washington state is incredibly easy. They mail you a ballot, and a packet with detailed information on every single candidate and issue, and then you can drop your ballot just about anywhere - supermarket, mailbox, probably the street (who knows). It's probably the best voting system, hands down. I don't buy that a smartphone magically hits some convenience threshold that turns out…

> It's probably the best voting system, hands down. The disadvantage to this system is the erosion of the secret ballot. Someone ( e.g. an employer, spouse or friend) can now ask you for proof of your vote. (I think absentee ballots should be voidable in person.)

Personally, I have never had this happen nor heard of it happening. Not to say it shouldn't be a concern, but I am reluctant to buy in to the idea based on a complete hypothetical.

Needless to say, someone demanding to see my vote counts as a felony still in our state. Maybe it occasionally happens? But it would take thousands of deliberate felonies to meaningfully change an election.

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