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Debian decides to allow secret votes

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Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#51

Post by grumbel »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danuker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with Debian's practices, but electronic voting can't work for a nation because: - centralization (there must be a central, corruptible place where the voters are authenticated or the votes are counted) - software is untrustable: https://www.win.tue.nl/%7Eaeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html The USA has had a Diebold voting scandal. Other countries are using a paper-based voting process which can be supe…

Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale compared to a website that lets you vote. Everyone could get a notification on their phone when they are asked to vote on something as opposed to having to fill out paper and send it somewhere to…

> it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored.

That's a bug, not a feature. The point of not doing that with paper voting is that it makes selling your vote difficult, as nobody else can verify what you voted for. You on the other side know that you put the ballot in the box and can stay around to see if the votes in the box get accurately counted.

With electronic voting you lose that. You either have to blindly trust the system or by allowing vote verification make it easy for others to sell the votes.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#52

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

Will they inform us who voted for this? Just a little joke. Interesting how on one hand personal attacks can and are being weaponized when they have nothing to do with software, yet on the other hand you have the potential for nefarious, ignorant, or incompetent decisions to be made without quickly understanding why and if you want to go along with it.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#53

Post by dtech »

zozbot234 wrote: post #38
dtech wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use ranked choice voting so this shouldn't matter, as far as I understand RCV eliminates the lowest option one-by-one, passing the votes to the next option on each ballot as if the eliminated option never existed. The discussion seems to be about ballots with 3 > 2 > 4, and when 3 was eliminated the votes went to 2, allowing it to pass. That's a bit strange because you'd expect a ballot to always have 3 next to…

3 > 2 > 4 is very clear in that it means "I would most prefer to reaffirm public voting, but I do support secret voting so long as verification is allowed. I oppose secret voting without verification.". It's a meaningful vote. Why are people disagreeing about this?

Because public voting is the status quo, so 3 & 4 are identical in what they would (not) change in the procedures. 3 is just an additional statement of support. If you support public voting (3) you also support 4 over 1/2.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#54

Post by gjulianm »

charcircuit wrote: post #48
qsort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper voting ensures privacy and voter verification, something even the best electronic solutions can't properly handle. No thanks, I can actually show up and vote once every few years.

>Paper voting ensures privacy So do ZKP based voting systems. >voter verification What do you mean by this? If you mean signatures you can have people sign their signature on their phone or desktop. >I can actually show up and vote once every few years This is a lot of friction which prevents many people from voting.

> So do ZKP based voting systems.

Assuming no vulnerabilities on the ZKP system, a perfect implementation and no information leak from other sources.

> What do you mean by this?

I assume that ensuring that the person voting is who they claim they are. If someone steals the certificates of that person, they could impersonate them.

> This is a lot of friction which prevents many people from voting.

In Spain (and I guess in a lot of other countries) voting in-person means walking to the closest polling center (99% of the time it's less than 10 minute walk) on a Sunday, picking up the paper, doing the queue (maybe another 10 minutes) and walking out. The alternative is mail-in voting, which usually takes a few minutes of walking to the closest post-office, signing some documents and waiting for the ballot to come. Compare that with getting the certificates, storing them securely, downloading the program to do the voting, installing it, praying it works, then using the program and cast the vote. Think of all the people who aren't good with computers, and how easy would it be for them to do all those steps correctly.

In the ideal case I agree that electronic voting systems would be better. But the world is not ideal, quite a lot of things can go wrong with them because of their complexity and detecting those issues will be difficult. On the other hand, paper voting is fairly simple, the number of things that can go wrong is low and easy to detect by anyone.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#55

Post by M2Ys4U »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danuker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with Debian's practices, but electronic voting can't work for a nation because: - centralization (there must be a central, corruptible place where the voters are authenticated or the votes are counted) - software is untrustable: https://www.win.tue.nl/%7Eaeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html The USA has had a Diebold voting scandal. Other countries are using a paper-based voting process which can be supe…

Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale compared to a website that lets you vote. Everyone could get a notification on their phone when they are asked to vote on something as opposed to having to fill out paper and send it somewhere to…

> Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored.

Which means somebody can hold a gun to your head and force you to prove that you voted and that your vote counted.

That is not, to put it mildly, desirable in an election.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#56

Post by charcircuit »

grumbel wrote: post #51
charcircuit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale compared to a website that lets you vote. Everyone could get a notification on their phone when they are asked to vote on something as opposed to having to fill out paper and send it somewhere to…

> it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. That's a bug, not a feature. The point of not doing that with paper voting is that it makes selling your vote difficult, as nobody else can verify what you voted for. You on the other side know that you put the ballot in the box and can stay around to see if the votes in the box get accurately counted. With electronic voting yo…

>That's a bug, not a feature

It's a trade off. I want to be able to prove that my vote was counted. How can I trust that my voice was actually heard by the system?

>as nobody else can verify what you voted for.

You can mitigate this problem by giving people a way to fake any vote outcome. The voter knows how to verify their actual vote, but someone else would not be sure if what they verified was real or fake. Also I doubt this type of buying votes with verification is that big of an actual thing. You can trivially do it with paper voting to by just asking them to stream themself voting or by taking a picture of their ballot.

>You either have to blindly trust the system

Having someone else count votes without the ability for you yourself to count votes and check to see if your vote was included is the opposite of blindly trusting the system.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#57

Post by throwaway48375 »

touisteur wrote: post #43
qsort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper voting ensures privacy and voter verification, something even the best electronic solutions can't properly handle. No thanks, I can actually show up and vote once every few years.

I agree. I don't understand the argument of reducing cost of elections and scaling. The current paper system in place in most works (at least in European countries where I've witnessed the process) and doesn't need to scale more. If actors in a democracy can't afford such a system, and the occasional (once, twice a year) walk to the voting place, 15 minutes wait and fellow-citizen interaction, can't we accept they do…

American here and I have had to wait >2 hours to vote multiple times. In the worst instance someone tried to illegally close the polling place even though people were still lined up outside. This is in clear violation of state law. So long as you are lined up to vote before the polling place closes they have to take your vote. To the sheriff's department credit (they are generally terrible) the deputy who responded refused to make people leave and told the worker they had to stay open. When I lived in a more rural area of the same county I would just walk in and vote within a couple minutes. I'm sure it isn't broken by design though.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#58

Post by charcircuit »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #55
charcircuit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale compared to a website that lets you vote. Everyone could get a notification on their phone when they are asked to vote on something as opposed to having to fill out paper and send it somewhere to…

> Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Which means somebody can hold a gun to your head and force you to prove that you voted and that your vote counted. That is not, to put it mildly, desirable in an election.

You can already do that with mail in ballots easily. Someone could also threaten you to record yourself filling out a paper ballot.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#59

Post by gjulianm »

rosndo wrote: post #46
ilammy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> zero knowledge proofs are [...] possible to check for yourself Only if you're an expert cryptographer, else you're deferring to the authority. > Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale That's a feature.

> Only if you're an expert cryptographer, else you're deferring to the authority. At least it’s still provable, a plenty of people can afford to hire their own cryptographers to do verification. Foreign observers can also do the same.

Paper voting is provable too. Vote and then observe the counting which is usually public. You can take a look at the box to ensure that it hasn't been tampered with.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#60

Post by XorNot »

charcircuit wrote: post #48
qsort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper voting ensures privacy and voter verification, something even the best electronic solutions can't properly handle. No thanks, I can actually show up and vote once every few years.

>Paper voting ensures privacy So do ZKP based voting systems. >voter verification What do you mean by this? If you mean signatures you can have people sign their signature on their phone or desktop. >I can actually show up and vote once every few years This is a lot of friction which prevents many people from voting.

Friction to prevent people from voting is a US phenomenon where voting participation (i.e. turning up and declaring something, even if it is an abstention) is not considered a legal obligation - and thus, the lack of participation is not viewed as a possible attempt to interfere with democracy.
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