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USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

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Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#301

Post by ghaff »

djsumdog wrote: post #232
koheripbal wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people actually tabulating the results is still very very small - especially in key swing state districts. You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.

2000 and Bush Gore. They had three official recounts. The number was always different, but not by much .. but it was still higher than a 1% margin of error. The FL ballot was pretty garbage and since then, most states have avoided punch-out/butterfly ballots. The Supreme Court ended up appointing Bush and the nation's voting commissions learned an important lesson. But like OP said, volunteers could see the process.…

Whatever objections there may be to the (mostly) winner take-all system by state, one advantage is that it tends to contain disputed results/recounts to one or maybe two states which is generally a lot more manageable than if it were the whole country.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#302

Post by jlokier »

pwg wrote: post #257
foepys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the average citizen verify what is actually happening and that their vote is actually being counted? That when they vote for X that the counter for X is increasing by 1? By verify I mean full understanding of the process without the need to believe somebody who calls themselves an "expert".

> How does the average citizen verify what is actually happening and that their vote is actually being counted? Volunteer to be a poll worker and to be one of the witnesses during the counting process. You can then watch every step of the process occur openly and see that the votes are being counted accurately. If you watch the process accurately count all of the vote papers in the box at the end of the day, you can…

If there are enough randomly selected volunteers, you can reasonably assume trust in their witness accounts together.

You don't need to volunteer there personally.

But wait... what if everyone assumes the volunteers are mostly ordinary citizens doing their civic duty? What if, in reality, anyone can apply to be a volunteer but the system systematically always chooses its own plants...?

And when you volunteer, as luck would have it they pick someone else "at random".

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#304

Post by dmckeon »

owenmarshall wrote: post #263
eloff wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at all a required feature of electronic voting.

I have seen systems that allow for a real vote as well as a masked vote - so you get verified votes but have a fake vote to show if you want or need. But consider: at this very moment, right above you is a comment with a picture of ballot that was filled out improperly and lead to a tied election. If we can’t teach people to fill in a circle properly, how in the world do we expect them to use or understand a system t…

A system that was used in some counties in California a few years ago used a paper ballot that was marked by the voter, and then fed by the voter into an optical scanner (made by Eagle, IIRC) which either successfully scanned the ballot, xor returned it to the voter in cases like: extraneous marks, votes for too many candidates in a multi-seat poll (like 4 candidates marked for 3 city council seats among 11 candidates) and similar. The voter could exchange their improperly marked ballot for a fresh blank ballot and start over. The net effect was that all ballots scanned by the voter needed no further inspection - an effect that is sadly lost in vote-by-mail.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#305

Post by the_snooze »

hrktb wrote: post #293
aoowii wrote: post #48

Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting? It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort, but one person can DDoS an entire network and no one can vote and the whole election needs to be scrapped. Not even the strongest cryptographic or software systems are free from exploits (especially over time) and there's no way to be sure…

> Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting? I think that’s an extreme position that would be hard to argue keeping, in particular in the current situation. I see it the same way we deal with money: what is fundamentally different that makes us accept electronic money transfers as core part of our life but argue there’s no way electronic voting could be possible ?…

>what is fundamentally different that makes us accept electronic money transfers as core part of our life but argue there’s no way electronic voting could be possible ?

The requirements aren't as strict for money as they are for civil elections. Financial transactions are frequent, so an error isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. All parties to a transaction know what everyone did; there's no requirement for strong privacy, so being able to roll things back is an achievable (and desirable) failsafe. Money also solves money problems, so you can insure transactions and mitigate losses.

Elections don't have those properties.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#306

Post by benrbray »

hpcjoe wrote: post #153
aoowii wrote: post #48

Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting? It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort, but one person can DDoS an entire network and no one can vote and the whole election needs to be scrapped. Not even the strongest cryptographic or software systems are free from exploits (especially over time) and there's no way to be sure…

> It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort No, sadly, it's not [1][2][3]. As some of the texts note, the premise that fraud happens or not is highly politicized. People on one side believe it happens/happened. On the other side, they believe it to be impossible. Though, curiously, those who believe it to be impossible also strongly believe in voter suppression, which would b…

> the premise that fraud happens or not is highly politicized. People on one side believe it happens/happened. On the other side, they believe it to be impossible.

> Though, curiously, those who believe it to be impossible also strongly believe in voter suppression, which would be a form of election fraud.... Can't have suppression without fraud[4]. Can have fraud without suppression, as this would be one potential form of fraud. Suppression requires fraud. Arguments to the contrary aren't logical.

No, you're missing the point. There is a difference between election fraud (the election itself meddled with by those who administer it) and voter fraud (whereby US or foreign citizens not involved in the administration of the election nevertheless interfere by submitting fraudulent ballots / hacking / etc).

The correct statement is "the premise that VOTER FRAUD happens or not is highly politicised". Everyone agrees there is fraud, we just disagree about which kind:

The Republican party frequently claims that voter fraud is common. Everyone else (including historians and cryptographers) claims that electoral fraud is a more common and widespread problem. In recent years we have seen:

* voter registration purges

* shutting down of polling places

* refusal to provide voting infrastructure to native american reservations and other "remote" places

* extreme gerrymandering

* sabotage of the USPS

* misinformation spread through social media (advertising false election dates, etc.)

* inability of voting box manufacturers to make guarantees about security and dodginess when it comes to conflicts of interest (like investments/ownership by politicians or foreign entities)

All of the above are examples of electoral fraud, not voter fraud.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#307

Post by hannasanarion »

the_snooze wrote: post #214
hannasanarion wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with absentee voting, the votes are still counted by hand. That's the part that has to be the most secure. With any paper voting system, votes can be impacted by some criminal scheme, yes, but only one at a time and with great individual effort. You have to blackmail a LOT of people to swing an election. Whereas with an electronic election, one attacker can change millions of votes with a single bit of malware co…

>But with absentee voting, the votes are still counted by hand. The verification is manual, but the counting probably isn't. At least in California, absentee (mail) ballots are exactly the same ones you get at the polling place. You put them in an unmarked envelope, which you place inside another envelope with your information and signature. The counting center verifies the information on the outer envelope and ensur…

Nonetheless, there is a physical paper record of every vote that can be counted by hand, the machine is just for a quick estimate of the count. There are only 2 points of trust in a mail election: the vote itself which could be compromised by blackmail or whatever (low risk because only one vote can be influenced at a time), and the scantron machine (low risk because the ballots can still be counted by hand to verify).

But if your vote is just a byte getting added to a database on a server from your personal computer over the internet, there are a hundred high-risk trust points. You have to trust the user, but also the website, the browser, the operating system, the network, the hardware, the server, the software running on the server and everybody who has ever worked on it, the counting software, the people operating the counting software, and a compromise at any single one of these points could change millions of votes without any possibility of detection.

In other words, in a scantron election, the legal vote is the paper, the electronics are just convenience. In an internet election, the legal vote is the ephemeral machine-generated bits on a wire, and that's where the problem comes from.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#308

Post by Steuard »

koheripbal wrote: post #160
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not. This is the consensus in tech. Well, at least in the infosec community, this opinion is held by the majority. For example, Bruce Schneier is an advocate of paper ballot for 20 years. * Voting Security (2004) https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/07/voting_secu... * Securing Elections (2018) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_elec... * See also: xkcd #2030 - Voting Software…

Neither of your two sources talk about crypto here at all. Crypto would allow voters to follow their vote through tabulation, in private, and see exactly how it's being counted. It has only two downsides... 1. People could prove who they voted for after the fact. 2. People who don't understand technology may not understand how it's so secure. ...but the reality is that these issues exist in the current system as well…

You can't prove who you voted for today: that's a crucial part of the electoral system, not a minor feature. How are you thinking that you could you prove who you voted for?

(Keep in mind that you can always request a new ballot if you've "spoiled" your original one, so a photo showing your completed ballot could easily be faked. And my memory is that it's officially illegal to take photos in a polling place anyway, so if you tried to take a picture as your ballot was being fed into the machine, the poll workers would stop you.)

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#309

Post by the_snooze »

godelski wrote: post #283
owenmarshall wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen systems that allow for a real vote as well as a masked vote - so you get verified votes but have a fake vote to show if you want or need. But consider: at this very moment, right above you is a comment with a picture of ballot that was filled out improperly and lead to a tied election. If we can’t teach people to fill in a circle properly, how in the world do we expect them to use or understand a system t…

Is the problem "people not filling in circles properly" or is the problem that there are other errors. If I'm not mistaken you're referring to the hanging chad issue. The reason it was an issue is because it is hard to see the chad. We're in tech, this should be unsurprising that machines don't work with 100% efficiency. If your machine (human or computer) is marking a ballot it would be unsurprising if the mark is t…

>Instead we should design a system that accounts for these errors in a clear and concise manner.

We already have these systems in deployment. My precinct uses optical-scan paper ballots where any mark inside the bubble is valid. You can fill, dot, cross, check, whatever---the machine will count it as a mark. If you have a stray mark that results in an overvote, the machine will reject your ballot, then prompt you to either correct the overvote or override the error. The scanner will also accept ballots fed in any orientation as long as it's not folded or wrinkled.

It's surprisingly robust and user-friendly.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#310

Post by mulmen »

wtracy wrote: post #254
mulmen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackmail doesn’t scale. In WA the ballot has a tab you peel off and can track through a webpage. It’s basically the system outlined above but we actually fill out a paper ballot then mail it in. The postage is prepaid. This solves basically all problems and works great. It’s independently verifiable. It’s anonymous. It’s accessible.

> Blackmail doesn’t scale. If elections in my district are historically won by a 10-20% margin, and my corporation directly employs 20% of the people in the district, then I think I could make blackmail scale just fine.

I’m not sure I follow. Are you threatening people’s jobs? Do you think you can reliably get away with that? This is the part where it doesn’t scale. You’re taking on an enormous risk to maybe swing a tight election by committing widespread extortion. It’s totally unrealistic and has nothing to do with voting in person, online or by mail. Your threat would apply to all of them.
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