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PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

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Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#191

Post by rtkwe »

runarberg wrote: post #188
rtkwe wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still the problem that you can still coerce and verify then use surveillance and the fear of surveillance to keep people from changing their vote. Random rechecks the day the polls close would keep a lot of people from risking changing their vote after the initial check-in. Even beyond any theoretical security measures one huge benefit of in person voting is it limits the available attack. With IPV to steal a…

I do think that voting should be as streamlined and easy as possible. If electronic voting becomes a thing, you should still be able to do an in-person voting at a poll both on election day, an in-person absentee voting at a designated place, a mail-in absentee voting, etc. in addition to the e-voting. All of these (except for in-person voting on election day) should have a sealed timestamp and a public key/barcode a…

The problem with being able to go back and revote/nullify is it makes counting very complicated to do with non-attrubution.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#192

Post by runarberg »

rtkwe wrote: post #191
runarberg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that voting should be as streamlined and easy as possible. If electronic voting becomes a thing, you should still be able to do an in-person voting at a poll both on election day, an in-person absentee voting at a designated place, a mail-in absentee voting, etc. in addition to the e-voting. All of these (except for in-person voting on election day) should have a sealed timestamp and a public key/barcode a…

The problem with being able to go back and revote/nullify is it makes counting very complicated to do with non-attrubution.

idk. It is already done quite successfully in many democracies, including Iceland and Estonia.

I’m guessing the vote is sealed with a key or a barcode, if a later vote arrives, a system will order a previous vote with a matching key/barcode to be destroyed. Finally on voting day, the link between any personally identifiable information is destroyed.

EDIT: Just to clarify, there should never be a time when a ballot is unsealed and a link between a barcode and a person exists in the system. A counter scans an absentee ballot before unsealing it, if the person voted in-person the scanner should reject the vote and order it to be destroyed the link could have been destroyed at any point between then and when the person showed up to the polling station. If they didn’t show up, the scanner will order the link to be destroyed, the counter will then pass this ballot on to be counted. Importantly the counter (nor any human for that matter) never has access to a link to a personally identifiable information, all the counter sees is the barcode.

EDIT 2: I don’t know if this is how counting is done in democracies that allow you to nullify a previous vote by voting again, but it is a system that could work, conjured up by a mere spectator.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#194

Post by rtkwe »

runarberg wrote: post #192
rtkwe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with being able to go back and revote/nullify is it makes counting very complicated to do with non-attrubution.

idk. It is already done quite successfully in many democracies, including Iceland and Estonia. I’m guessing the vote is sealed with a key or a barcode, if a later vote arrives, a system will order a previous vote with a matching key/barcode to be destroyed. Finally on voting day, the link between any personally identifiable information is destroyed. EDIT: Just to clarify, there should never be a time when a ballot is…

That probably works better for smaller countries. Here in the US mail in voting kind of works that way in that the ballots are sealed until they're 'accepted' and then the ballots are removed and the identifying shell envelope is discarded. The big slow down is actually going through all the submitted votes and validating then counting, most in person votes here in the US are counted via machine immediately at the polling place.

Somewhere between 25-50% of votes depending on state are cast through some early mechanism and under this none of those could be counted until election day which is a large increase in the number of votes that need to be counted and makes them more difficult to count.

One other benefit of being able to count everything in person on the day it's cast is the votes don't have to move outside the polling place for initial counting which makes monitoring easier.

It's a nice and convenient idea but I don't see the small benefit of being able to change votes (how many people honestly want to change their vote?) vs the large increase in complexity.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#195

Post by runarberg »

rtkwe wrote: post #194
runarberg wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk. It is already done quite successfully in many democracies, including Iceland and Estonia. I’m guessing the vote is sealed with a key or a barcode, if a later vote arrives, a system will order a previous vote with a matching key/barcode to be destroyed. Finally on voting day, the link between any personally identifiable information is destroyed. EDIT: Just to clarify, there should never be a time when a ballot is…

That probably works better for smaller countries. Here in the US mail in voting kind of works that way in that the ballots are sealed until they're 'accepted' and then the ballots are removed and the identifying shell envelope is discarded. The big slow down is actually going through all the submitted votes and validating then counting, most in person votes here in the US are counted via machine immediately at the po…

Like previously stated being able to change the vote is crucial to limit the effectiveness of voter intimidation. You simply vote however your intimidator orders you, and then you change your vote afterwards.

It also has the benefits of allowing voters who in absentee vote early for a candidate that later drops out (i.e. Washington State voters who voted for Elizabeth Warren) to correct their vote based on this new information.

Regarding monitoring. Mail in ballots are sent to the polling place on election night for counting. They are counted just like any other ballots and can be monitored as easily as in-person ballots. I suppose e-votes could as easily be printed out and counted in the same place.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#196

Post by dmytrish »

volkse wrote: post #157
Taek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot harder to kidnap citizens when they are armed and surrounded by other armed citizens, especially if all of those citizens have substantial firearms training. I endorse bringing guns to peaceful protests in a state where unmarked officials are kidnapping people in broad daylight. That is exactly the sort of reason that the right to bear arms is planted deep within our constitutional rights.

It completely boggles my mind that comments like these don’t get any pushback on HN. This insinuation that every citizen should own firearms just in case the state goes rouge is militant, irresponsible, and hilariously naive. A bunch of armchair freedom fighters who have no idea of the consequences of war think that their shiny “tactical” AR15 is going to stop a tank.. Let me ask you a direct question. Are you advoca…

A look from behind the southern border of Belarus: in 2014, Ukraine had had peaceful protests for more than two months before street violence started and ended. Then Crimea was annexed. Then the separatist war started, where most of weapons on the separatist side were supplied by Russia. Ukraine is a country with the same post-Soviet culture of "whoever owns weapons is suspicious", just like Belarus.

My point is that you don't "end up like Ukraine or Syria" by your own choice, and Belarus's only choice may well be between a "civil" war (i.e. proxy war with Russians) or being bent by Lukashenko to submit. I still hope that Belorusians will make it peacefully (Belarus is smaller and more unified than Ukraine), but I am afraid that it's not up to Belarusians to decide as long as Russia has the influence it has there.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#197

Post by taejo »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #175
hippich wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is true. But it is irrelevant in Belarus. See picture above representing a typical independent observer in Belarus.

Oh definitely. I wasn't trying to imply this is the situation in Belarus and I apologize if it came off that way, just that poll watching (like most things) can be used for both good and for evil, so it important to make sure there are safeguards in place for the latter.

One of those safeguards is just having more poll observers.

Of course, most of the time in functioning democracies it's going to be a lot more boring than that -- in my personal experience you just say hi to your counterparts from other organizations and then watch in silence as everything runs smoothly according to the rules.

EDIT: it should without saying that observers not being allowed to bring weapons into polling places should be one of those rules!

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#198

Post by heavenlyblue »

openasocket wrote: post #176

I'm sure there's a couple people reading about this and other events in Belarus and wondering why Russia is so involved with Belarus like this. I thought I'd add a little bit on context. Like Ukraine, Belarus serves as a buffer between NATO and Russia, and was once a part of the Soviet Union. But Belarus is especially important to Russia because of Kaliningrad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad . It's a part…

I've thought your general point was based on the fact that they were connected?

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#199

Post by openasocket »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #198
openasocket wrote: post #176

I'm sure there's a couple people reading about this and other events in Belarus and wondering why Russia is so involved with Belarus like this. I thought I'd add a little bit on context. Like Ukraine, Belarus serves as a buffer between NATO and Russia, and was once a part of the Soviet Union. But Belarus is especially important to Russia because of Kaliningrad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad . It's a part…

I've thought your general point was based on the fact that they were connected?

In an a NATO-Russian conflict, having free movement of Russian troops through Belarus means you only have a 50 mile gap to fight through to link up with Kaliningrad, as opposed to over 300 miles directly from the rest of Russia. At 50 miles Kaliningrad and Russian forces fighting from Belarus could have overlapping SAM cover and MLRS artillery support, it's well within the combat radius of attack helicopters, etc. And there are railway lines around that corridor that, once seized, would enable efficient transport of material.

Re: PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

#200

Post by some_random »

formerly_proven wrote: post #33
some_random wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't compare protests like this, it never looks good.

RoW thinks Portland is borderline civil war anyway. Only a true American could conceive of hundreds of masked, rifle-bearing men marching around and clashing with other groups as a protest.

Well, some parts of the world have different cultures I guess.
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