Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debian decides to allow secret votes

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 280 posts

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#61

Post by M2Ys4U »

charcircuit wrote: post #58
M2Ys4U wrote: post #55

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. 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.

Yes, which is why I also dislike postal voting and want to minimise its use.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#62

Post by Barrin92 »

pydry wrote: post #45
Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sometimes the case here in Germany, and one reason we do it is because our representatives are explicitly, by the basic law bound only to their own conscience . Representatives toeing party lines is seen as an impoverishment to democracy.

Representatives being able to conceal their legislative actions from the constituents that put them there is an impoverishment to democracy.

Not really unless you think of democracy only as a glorified strawpoll. Inherent in the free mandate that representatives here have is the idea that they can and should exercise their own judgement independently. Sometimes this may even be against their constituents (or anyone else) so a degree of secrecy is important. In legislative in general to make independent decisions.

Excess transparency means representatives will pander only for votes/money/attention, it's for example why every televised American congressional session makes you lose braincells. Because they're only talking to the TV, they're not actually deliberating.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#63

Post by gspr »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #52

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.

Yes, under "tally sheet" at https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_vote_secrecy/

Note that that still points to the dummy tally (a tally that lists who voted, but not what they voted for), but the project secretary usually publishes the real thing within a few days of vote ending.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#64

Post by gjulianm »

charcircuit wrote: post #56
grumbel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> How can I trust that my voice was actually heard by the system?

Most vote countings are public. I can go to my polling place, cast my vote, check that nobody tampers with the box, watch how they count every vote correctly, ensure that the written tallies are correct, and then verify that the central system tallies match with those I counted.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#65

Post by rosndo »

gjulianm wrote: post #59
rosndo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Paper voting is vulnerable to basic sleight of hand, and your ability to effectively monitor the count is somewhat limited.

Electronic voting can be much better, but it is of course not a terribly easy problem to solve.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that paper voting is particularly problematic. But I do think that electronic voting could make voting easier and more accessible.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#66

Post by gspr »

pydry wrote: post #22
the_lonely_road wrote: post #4

Apparently by a single vote and the legitimacy of the vote is in question due to some technicality I didn't care to reread until I understood. What I don't understand is why the project is NOT already secret voting? Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation? I googled the first three that came to mind (f…

Which countries hide the votes their representatives make in parliament? What would you think about the ones that did?

Then the question becomes: are we the DDs more like MPs or more like citizens? I'd say we're more like the latter. MPs work for the citizens, and therefore their work must be open to scrutiny. Secret votes of citizens, however, is the norm.

(Full disclosure: In spite of what I wrote above, I did vote NOTA above all other options. I am not confident that I'm ready to change the status quo.)

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#67

Post by gspr »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #50
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that elected representatives' votes are also, as a rule, not secret.

do we elect Debian developers?

Exactly. I view DDs more as the citizens of a democracy, rather than the elected representatives of the citizens.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#68

Post by gjulianm »

rosndo wrote: post #65
gjulianm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paper voting is vulnerable to basic sleight of hand, and your ability to effectively monitor the count is somewhat limited. Electronic voting can be much better, but it is of course not a terribly easy problem to solve. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that paper voting is particularly problematic. But I do think that electronic voting could make voting easier and more accessible.

I don't know how vote counting is done in other places, but I've seen it in my country and it's not vulnerable to basic sleight of hand, at least not for more than one or two votes. Poll workers are all citizens randomly selected, the president of each table takes envelopes from a transparent box, opens them, shows them to the other three or four workers of the table (plus any observers that want to be there) and declares the content of the vote.

> But I do think that electronic voting could make voting easier and more accessible.

I don't think so. Think of all the people who have difficulty with basic computer/phone tasks, either because of knowledge or accessibility issues. Do you think all the steps to securely cast votes with an electronic system are going to be easier and more accessible for them?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#69

Post by nulbyte »

contravariant wrote: post #36
zucker42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian uses the Schulze method (if things haven't changed recently), so I do not see how that would have an impact on the result.

As far as I can tell the Schulze method does not satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives condition, and so adding an extra option can have an effect on the end result. However the upside is that you can actually recalculate what the result would have been if you remove one of the options, since the voting results are summarized as the number of people who prefer A to B, which shouldn't change if you remov…

If you remove option A, it would necessarily be a different outcome for someone who would have voted for A over B.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#70

Post by pja »

hutzlibu wrote: post #23
the_lonely_road wrote: post #4

Apparently by a single vote and the legitimacy of the vote is in question due to some technicality I didn't care to reread until I understood. What I don't understand is why the project is NOT already secret voting? Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation? I googled the first three that came to mind (f…

"Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation?" I would argue a software project and a nation state is not the same kind of organisation. I am not involved in debian, so I would not judge what is the best system for them, but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make sports, v…

Voter intimidation can happen in volunteer communities too.
Post reply on HN