Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#21

Post by fr0sty » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #15

Strilanc wrote: post #3

Internet voting is a bad idea. It's vulnerable to coercion. Even if we can guarantee the votes are submitted and counted accurately, it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote (or lose my job). At a polling station they prevent coercion by enforcing secrecy. One person in a voting booth at a time, no cameras in the voting booth, etc. If you can't prove you voted either way, you'…

> it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote (or lose my job). Then you just say you already voted and lie who you voted for. What will they do, confiscate your phone? (assuming phone voting). There are so many "outs" to the coercion scenario that it seems implausible that it would ever occur on any significant scale. What scenario can you think of where coercion would be a real…

> What scenario can you think of where coercion would be a real issue?

Forget about intimidation and consider bribery. Instead of a domineering boss threatening termination imagine a man with a laptop and a roll of $20 bills.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#22

Post by username3 » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:23 PM UTC

splat wrote: post #8

While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting ) Nothing would do more damage to the two-party system than for the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished.

Everyone should just have a profile they could update with their candidates ranked in order of preference. Representatives could know how they're doing in real-time. No more polling. On voting day, your list is locked in.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#23

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

Internet voting is untenable from a security perspective. An election is orders of magnitude more complicated than most online transactions, because your vote is just as important to me as my vote.

Whereas filing your taxes online is a one way transaction between you and the government, voting is one big symmetrical transaction between every member of the electorate. This makes it really tricky from a security perspective.

The reason that internet voting is worse than postal voting is the slowness of messing around with paper, the same reason which people tout as a positive. You cant change a million postal votes in a under millisecond from thousands of miles away. Think of the postal service as hash iteration.

For (lots) more info, see the following Google tech talk, "Electronic and Internet Voting (The Threat of Internet Voting in Public Elections)" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjmRwfkRXY

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#24

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

LeafStorm wrote: post #11

splat wrote: post #8

While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting ) Nothing would do more damage to the two-party system than for the argument "if you vote for a third party, you throw your vote away" to be demolished.

Instant-runoff voting would probably be more practical. It's already used in America in some jurisdictions, so promoting it to the more major offices like President isn't as big a leap as Condorcet (since Condorcet's not actually used by any US jurisdictions).

Also, instant-runoff is easier to explain, because it's literally the same as holding hypothetical runoff elections on election day.

With Concordet voting, listing someone as your second choice can cause your first choice to lose, which would probably confuse a lot of people.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#25

Post by eli » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #23

Internet voting is untenable from a security perspective. An election is orders of magnitude more complicated than most online transactions, because your vote is just as important to me as my vote. Whereas filing your taxes online is a one way transaction between you and the government, voting is one big symmetrical transaction between every member of the electorate. This makes it really tricky from a security perspe…

It's MUCH more difficult than banking or taxes. Not only must your vote be secure and counted; it must be anonymous! Not even you should be able to prove to anyone else who you voted for and there must be no audit trail that could tie an individual vote to a person.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#26

Post by NinetyNine » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:53 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #25

JonnieCache wrote: post #23

Internet voting is untenable from a security perspective. An election is orders of magnitude more complicated than most online transactions, because your vote is just as important to me as my vote. Whereas filing your taxes online is a one way transaction between you and the government, voting is one big symmetrical transaction between every member of the electorate. This makes it really tricky from a security perspe…

It's MUCH more difficult than banking or taxes. Not only must your vote be secure and counted; it must be anonymous! Not even you should be able to prove to anyone else who you voted for and there must be no audit trail that could tie an individual vote to a person.

Doesn't bitcoin solve this problem?

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#27

Post by eli » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #7

eli wrote: post #2

I reject the premise that the Occupy movement has very much to do with election administration. I'd bet voter apathy has more to do with the available choices on the ballot than difficulty in filling it out on time. Further, I don't think Internet voting is automatically a smart way to boost turnout. Same-day registration, early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting are simple and cheap ways to make voting much easie…

dealing with unequal access to computers and the Internet. How is that a problem when most public libraries provide free access, and traditional early and on-time voting are still available?

This is not the biggest challenge to Internet voting, but surely you agree that it's unfair that some people would now be able to vote from home while others would not? At least around me, you might wait an hour for a computer at the library during busy times.

If the point is to let people vote from home at their leisure, why not just mail everyone an absentee ballot?

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#28

Post by Aloisius » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:55 PM UTC

muuh-gnu wrote: post #20

Whether all people go voting or not is irrelevant as long as they only can vote for so called "representatives" who then make all the important decisions. It is more important to implement unfiltered direct democracy first. I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about. Thinking hard about changing _how_ to vote without changing _what_ you are allowed to vote on is…

Oh yes, because all the direct democracy systems that have been created have worked so well. You know what's worse than voting for representatives? Voting directly on dozens of bills that are so complicated that, unless you don't have a full time job, you have to rely on a bunch of summaries written by biased parties to interpret.

My favorite trick which happened in my city is having two bills that look nearly identical, except one looks better (more savings, more jobs, more whatever), but is actually illegal and will inevitably be struck down by the courts. The illegal one has a supersede clause in it so that if both are voted in, it undos the other, but since it'll be struck down for being illegal, nothing will actually change.

As someone whose state, city and county have implemented direct democracy, I can tell you it sucks. I'd rather have no laws passed then them passed directly via an uninformed electorate.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#29

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #25

JonnieCache wrote: post #23

Internet voting is untenable from a security perspective. An election is orders of magnitude more complicated than most online transactions, because your vote is just as important to me as my vote. Whereas filing your taxes online is a one way transaction between you and the government, voting is one big symmetrical transaction between every member of the electorate. This makes it really tricky from a security perspe…

It's MUCH more difficult than banking or taxes. Not only must your vote be secure and counted; it must be anonymous! Not even you should be able to prove to anyone else who you voted for and there must be no audit trail that could tie an individual vote to a person.

That's the ideal, but in reality even normal pencil voting can be hacked since it is pretty simple to take a picture of your ballot with a smartphone. Then you can prove whom you voted for.

Re: Internet voting: Exactly what the 99% needs

#30

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 11:09 PM UTC

Strilanc wrote: post #3

Internet voting is a bad idea. It's vulnerable to coercion. Even if we can guarantee the votes are submitted and counted accurately, it's impossible to tell if my boss was standing behind me telling me what to vote (or lose my job). At a polling station they prevent coercion by enforcing secrecy. One person in a voting booth at a time, no cameras in the voting booth, etc. If you can't prove you voted either way, you'…

On the contrary, most voters will carry a cell phone which is capable of taking pictures. So your corruption scenario is as applicable to the real world as it is to Internet voting.