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Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

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Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#41

Post by pcl »

mightyham wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. The system must be something a bottom 15 percentile person can understand and doesn’t think is magic. https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG

Or universal suffrage is fundamentally flawed. If people can't understand mildly complex voting systems then why should they be contributing to making political decisions that are significantly more complex.

Because systems that try to impose qualifications on voter characteristics historically end up being abused.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#42

Post by crazygringo »

the_snooze wrote: post #10
throwaway48476 wrote: post #6

The goal of a voting system is not verifiability, but trust. Without trust elections have no legitimacy.

I think these are technically interesting systems, but "trust" really is the goal. "Verifiability" doesn't necessarily imply "trust," especially if it's shrowded behind inscruable crypto mumbo-jumbo. A voting system should be something voters and poll workers (i.e., local volunteers) can understand.

> especially if it's shrowded behind inscruable crypto mumbo-jumbo

HTTPS is shrouded behind inscrutable crypto, but nearly everyone trusts it with their credit card details.

Voting doesn't have to be any different. The implementation details don't matter, as long as there are easy-to-understand verification concepts such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted. And then journalists and other private election integrity observers who do random sampling from voter rolls and follow up on complaints. (This is not a complete list, just examples.)

And remember, physical voting is actually tremendously complicated as well -- inscrutable optical scanners detecting which bubbles you filled in, and then... what? Who's actually adding the numbers, and where, and how? The point is, the details aren't really important as long as we're vaguely aware that there are election observers and journalists trying to catch any irregularities, and we all know it will be major news whenever they're found.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#43

Post by thepra »

exabrial wrote: post #31

Personally I love the idea of a fully verifiable election. I do the the current election protocol my county uses is pretty good: you present id in one room, they check your eligibility, then you’re given an anonymous ticket, in another room you vote using said ticket, and get a receipt. You can see your but counted online using said receipt. There are two problems with this: 1. You can’t verify extra or in eligible v…

Please forget about showing up physically, it's noble to think of "you really care" but in places with organized crime they have ways to count if those that depend on them come and vote for their "right" choice. It has been estimated that around 20-30% of IRL votes in Italy follow the organized crimes choice.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#44

Post by staindk »

exabrial wrote: post #31

Personally I love the idea of a fully verifiable election. I do the the current election protocol my county uses is pretty good: you present id in one room, they check your eligibility, then you’re given an anonymous ticket, in another room you vote using said ticket, and get a receipt. You can see your but counted online using said receipt. There are two problems with this: 1. You can’t verify extra or in eligible v…

Why is the act of physically showing up so important? I think reducing friction can be a great way to get more people to vote.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#45

Post by [deleted] »

peterhunt wrote: post #8
SamBam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you prove that you voted how you said you did? If you took a picture of your ballot, or even if you filmed yourself putting it in the envelope and putting it in the mailbox, there's nothing stopping you from taking it out later, tearing it up, and going to vote differently in person.

Just do it in person. The voter fills out the ballot in front of the buyer, seals and signs the envelope, and hands it to the buyer in exchange for cash. The buyer then puts it in the mail on the voter’s behalf. The voter could go to a polling place afterwards and attempt to cast a provisional ballot but my understanding is that this is difficult, varies significantly state to state, and in many cases is not possible…

[deleted]

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#46

Post by breuleux »

declan_roberts wrote: post #34
AngriestLettuce wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, as long as it's a random sample

Absolutely, as long as I get to pick the random number generator that generates the random sample.

The way it would likely work is that a cryptographically secure open source random algorithm is made known long in advance which takes, say, a full hour to run on top of the line computers. In the hour before it is run, anyone can send in a number of their choosing, which are all added up (or rather their concatenation is cryptographically hashed) to make the seed. Then anyone can check that their number was indeed included and run the algorithm themselves to verify. It really only takes a single honest person to send in a 20-digit number to make it basically impossible to manipulate. Maybe I'm missing something.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#47

Post by pessimizer »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #25

As usual, good old fashioned pen and paper is worlds better than this or any other attempt by overzealous tech people with a hammer looking to hit this particular nail.

Good old fashioned pen and paper has tons of problems, and doesn't meet most of the guarantees that these voting systems are going after. Also, good old-fashioned pen and paper, when used, is surrounded by various systems and various equipment in order to: keep it anonymous and to make sure that a voter can't prove their vote to others, prevent false votes from being added and real votes from being thrown away, etc.

Which is why you get things like voting booths, indelible ink marks on people's hands, elaborate secured containers for cast votes with elaborate seals, and extensive timed processes around how votes should be handled while being moved or counted, including complicated politically-aware algorithms about the selection of observers and counters, and counter-observers (and even foreign observers.) The rules about spoilage in most paper and pen voting systems are probably more complicated and involved than the core algorithms of any of these voting systems. There's was no golden age of voting when elections were trustworthy.

Anonymity is a hard problem.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#48

Post by [deleted] »

peterhunt wrote: post #8
SamBam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you prove that you voted how you said you did? If you took a picture of your ballot, or even if you filmed yourself putting it in the envelope and putting it in the mailbox, there's nothing stopping you from taking it out later, tearing it up, and going to vote differently in person.

Just do it in person. The voter fills out the ballot in front of the buyer, seals and signs the envelope, and hands it to the buyer in exchange for cash. The buyer then puts it in the mail on the voter’s behalf. The voter could go to a polling place afterwards and attempt to cast a provisional ballot but my understanding is that this is difficult, varies significantly state to state, and in many cases is not possible…

[deleted]

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#49

Post by debugnik »

mightyham wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. The system must be something a bottom 15 percentile person can understand and doesn’t think is magic. https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG

Or universal suffrage is fundamentally flawed. If people can't understand mildly complex voting systems then why should they be contributing to making political decisions that are significantly more complex.

But we don't vote on complex political decisions; we vote on our representatives, people whose interests allegedly align with ours, which is much simpler to understand, and delegate the complex decisions to them according to their qualifications.

Whether the candidates themselves, all of them, can be trusted is a much more serious problem with democracy, I think, than "dumb" people affecting the vote.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#50

Post by evantbyrne »

baggy_trough wrote: post #39
evantbyrne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust is a social challenge, not a technological one. It is effectively impossible to stuff ballot boxes at scale in the US, but a large number of people still believe the last presidential election was stolen.

Why do you believe so?

Representatives from both parties are present for voting and ballot counting. They have observation areas. Plus they keep electronic and paper records. The few people who attempt voting fraud are easily caught. Parties abandoned ballot box stuffing in favor of gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics long ago.
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