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Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

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Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#81

Post by oivey »

tossandthrow wrote: post #51
thepra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't think this is even more pronounced if the criminals can keep af gun to your head in your own home when voting? That said - I am yet to see any protocol that is resilient against not showing up IRL (due to the exact reason above).

Criminals showing up to your house, putting a gun to your head, and demanding your vote is a fantasy. You don’t need to defend against it because it’s a totally unscalable way to steal an election.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#82

Post by mariusor »

rayiner wrote: post #79
mariusor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that IT literacy is increasing fast enough that in the near future a significant percentage would understand enough about electronic ballots as people understand now about the paper ballots. And I think you're over estimating how many people "understand" paper ballots. Yes, they know the basics, but the details on how votes are counted, validated and secured might be a bit too much for a random Joe.

IT literacy is not increasing; if anything it's going down. My wife's Gen Z siblings grew up with iPads and think computers are magic.

OK, fair.

I meant it in the sense of the younger generation has more exposure to concepts like encrypted communication and peer to peer communication and encrypted ledgers, etc. They might not know how exactly they work, but they know they exist and have an inkling of their attributes as they pertain to data secrecy, auditability, etc...

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#83

Post by baggy_trough »

evantbyrne wrote: post #50
baggy_trough wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where I am located, there are ballot boxes literally on the side of the road, and we have universal absentee balloting. Anyone who can acquire ballots, perhaps from non interested voters, or those who can be pressured, can submit ballots and there would be no feasible way to know.

Election day, in person secret voting, with voter ID is the way.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#84

Post by fny »

oakesm9 wrote: post #14

Tom Scott videos which cover why electronic voting is a bad idea: https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQaZ3u https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=YdQgNC4uUZDUDbab

What if you want your citizens to be able to vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic?

It would be too burdensome with pencil and paper. Alternatives are useful.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#85

Post by schroeding »

crazygringo wrote: post #42
the_snooze wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Voting doesn't have to be any different.

Yes, it has to be. If you break the ability for the average citizen to understand exactly how and why your vote is counted, you undermine trust. Trust into the democratic process is the thing keeping a democracy alive.

If someone currently says " / interfered with the voting process!", I can tell them to just observe their local polling station or even become part of the polling station staff themselves. Be there, check that the election staff doesn't start throwing away votes and count correctly. Check that the numbers they count are equal to the one on the official result for the polling station. It's all paper. It's easy to follow.

If we put anything between this, which requires trust into a magic box with a display, I cannot do this. If your credit card is abused, you see it on your bank account, always. You cannot have the same certainty the same for an anonymous election - yes, they may have proof that their vote was correctly counted, but what about the polling station as a whole? The votes of the other citizens? Most people will not check, just as you may only get one observer per polling station max today (which is already enough to prevent fraud for the whole station, in the case of paper ballots).

"Trust the journalists" does not fly.

> And remember, physical voting is actually tremendously complicated as well

It doesn't have to be. You don't need complex equipment, you can count directly in the polling station after it closes. Paper and people suffice.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#86

Post by somerandomqaguy »

mariusor wrote: post #80
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, one of the goals in contradictory to the stated goal of an electronic voting system of voter verifiability. The problem is that when you can verify that your own vote has been counted a certain way, that can be used to influence the vote. $100 Amazon gift card if you verify that you have voted Purple. Lack of verifiability has been a feature to prevent a voter from willingly participating in manipulation.

I have a different comment where I'm stating that one way to counter the influencing of votes is through allowing the voter to cast their ballot any number of times until it ends. I can think of a method that allows a voter to decrypt the ballot payload only coupled with one or more keys from the parties that organized it. Ie, if I as an individual want to see the vote, I can't. But if I suspect my vote has been tamp…

I'm not sure how the solves the issue of a voter that wants to reveal their vote.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#87

Post by crazygringo »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #64
crazygringo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted. That's why I said: > such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted There absolutely has to be a way to easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted, and that it's part of the sum total. I don't know if Belenios specifically does this in a way that is easy to see, but there's nothing inherently difficult or impossib…

I would concede that it's possible, but if you don't trust the system overall then it is basically impossible to solve the problem. And it's not just about making sure that your own vote is counted. It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast. There are so many ways that illegitimate ballots can be cast, and I think an electronic system just makes it that much easier. At least with paper in person, someone…

> It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast.

Yup, I was clear that I wasn't giving an exhaustive list of the necessary things.

But that also has solutions that can be easy. The easiest is simply to make sure that the voting rolls are accurate, and that the size of the voting results has the exact same number of entries (because it also records every instance of not-voting).

So that if everyone who is an eligible voter, and therefore received a tracking number (even if they didn't vote), and they look up their tracking number and it's accurate (including "didn't vote") -- then there's no "place" to insert fake/stuffed ballots, because it would necessarily make the number of tracking numbers larger than the size of the voter roll. (And of course, voter rolls can be sampled randomly to determine they're made of actual real people as well, to whatever accuracy you desire.)

The point is, there are solutions to all of these things that don't involve some kind of blind faith in crypto. But rather just common-sense solutions where it's easy to understand that any massive gaming of the system will be detected.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#88

Post by crazygringo »

schroeding wrote: post #85
crazygringo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Voting doesn't have to be any different. Yes, it has to be. If you break the ability for the average citizen to understand exactly how and why your vote is counted, you undermine trust. Trust into the democratic process is the thing keeping a democracy alive. If someone currently says " / interfered with the voting process!", I can tell them to just observe their local polling station or even become part of the pol…

I completely disagree. You claim:

> Check that the numbers they count are equal to the one on the official result for the polling station. It's all paper. It's easy to follow.

I say that, using paper, it's not easy -- it's next to impossible for any individual to do.

On the other hand, if I can download a file of voting results, import it into Excel, and run SUM(), it's about a million times easier.

What's important to rely on is the fact that people are able to verify that their own votes are consistent with what's in the public votes (using something like tracking numbers), and we can also verify there isn't vote stuffing (which there's no room for, if the number of votes and "didn't-votes" equals the size of the voter rolls).

You claim this "requires trust into a magic box with a display" but that's simply not true. All it requires is the ability for everyone to verify that their vote got included accurately, that people who didn't vote got included as not voting, and that nothing got stuffed on top.

Paper and physical voting is actually far, far, far harder to independently verify and trust. It's just that until recently, we haven't had a practical alternative.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#89

Post by mariusor »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #86
mariusor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different comment where I'm stating that one way to counter the influencing of votes is through allowing the voter to cast their ballot any number of times until it ends. I can think of a method that allows a voter to decrypt the ballot payload only coupled with one or more keys from the parties that organized it. Ie, if I as an individual want to see the vote, I can't. But if I suspect my vote has been tamp…

I'm not sure how the solves the issue of a voter that wants to reveal their vote.

I'm looking at the problem through the lens of "why does a voter want to see their ballot". The answer which prevents the issue of vote buying is "to audit the validity of the vote", which then is ensured through putting some stop-gaps in front of viewing the vote in the form of requiring intervention from the entities organizing the ballot.

Ie, if a malicious entity wants to make sure that the votes they have bought are corresponding with what they asked, they need to go through a more difficult process than just asking the people they bought from to reveal their vote.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#90

Post by [deleted] »

fny wrote: post #84
oakesm9 wrote: post #14

Tom Scott videos which cover why electronic voting is a bad idea: https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQaZ3u https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=YdQgNC4uUZDUDbab

What if you want your citizens to be able to vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic? It would be too burdensome with pencil and paper. Alternatives are useful.

[deleted]
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