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Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

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Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#101

Post by schroeding »

crazygringo wrote: post #98
schroeding wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the US does, but in Germany all ballots are poured onto a big table and then sorted into staples for each candidate / party. Especially since the votes / crosses are always at the same position for each staple, it is trivial to keep an eye on 5, 6 staples at once, and the remaining parties get almost no votes anyway. After that, the staples are split into 10s and counted by two people, independently…

>> 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 > But will people do this at scale and do people trust that they do so? The latter is the most important. Yes, absolutely. This is the most important, and that's what makes it all so easy! If you don't trust, verifying your own vote is a click away. If you think there's somethi…

Well, agree to disagree. :D I see your points, and I would agree that the majority would still keep their trust.

> I don't understand why you think people wouldn't trust this.

Because people are not always rational beings, often don't understand statistics and, in my experience, the set of people not trusting journalists and having doubt on past elections having significant overlap. If you are not convinced the press isn't lying, and maybe just prints what the government wants, you will not expect that they uncover election intervention. And your friends may be on a list of the city hall, "they" know that they vote for certain parties[1]. This is basically verbatim what voters sometimes tell you, why they don't vote via mail. It's easy to transfer those fears onto electronic voting.

It's very hard to keep believing in serious election fraud if you see how (this kind of) analogue voting works, though. You have to trust nobody, only yourself, at least in regards to your local polling station.

> The whole process you're describing for physical polling places is a million times more work for any individual. It requires a massive amount of time and attention.

Yes, I don't disagree. It's significantly more work, inefficient and antiquated. All true. I'm just not convinced that the convenience of electronic / online voting is worth the risk that a) a fuck-up due to any kind of bug / security problem and b) people losing even the slightest bit of trust into elections because of "magic computer", even if they are caused by delusions, would pose.

[1] Germany has no "registration" as Republican or Democrat (w/ German parties of course) like the US has - they don't have such lists

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#102

Post by _heimdall »

sanbor wrote: post #66
mariusor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. There are methods for preventing all the issues Tom Scott raises.

Voting with pencil and paper is easy, everybody can participate in the voting process and understand it. Also, paper and pencil are more sustainable (can be made from recycled paper and trees, which you can plant, as opposed of mining minerals, shipping, and maintaining thoudsands of computers, with batteries in case there is a power outage).

Especially with something like voting, it is worth considering those who actually can't use paper and pencil.

In college I worked in a research lab building accessible voting systems. We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Its both amazing to see how adapted a person can become to living in a world that assumes a certain level of physical ability. Its also amazing to see how horribly inaccessible most voting systems are.

With paper ballots, for example, you are usually limited to sitting in a booth with a poll worker and telling them how to fill in your ballot. That does technically work, but breaks voter privacy and you have no way of knowing if they filled it in right because, well, you can't see the ballot.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#103

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

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.

efficiency != democracy

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#104

Post by JanisErdmanis »

mariusor wrote: post #89
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> why does a voter want to see their ballot?

Because of potential malware on the client's device that can manipulate a vote before it is cast.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#105

Post by Gud »

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.

We can get to that when we pick the low hanging fruit first. In Switzerland, they hold votes 4 times per year, in municipal, cantonal and federal referendums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#106

Post by JanisErdmanis »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #77
mariusor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. There are methods for preventing all the issues Tom Scott raises.

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.

One way to achieve verifiability is through deniable tracking numbers computed locally in network-disconnected devices. To ensure that they are deniable, they can only be computed after all tracking numbers along the votes are made publically available, which can be realised by publishing a secret code that the voter inputs into the device. That way, when the coercer/briber asks for a vote to be cast in a certain way, the voter can select another tracking number from a public list and show it to them. Meanwhile, computation on the device ensures that it does not have access to resulting tracking numbers and corresponding votes with which it could deceive the voter. Meanwhile, the cryptographic proofs ensure that every voter has one unique tracking number. This is the general idea of the Selene system.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#107

Post by throw0101d »

_heimdall wrote: post #102
sanbor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting with pencil and paper is easy, everybody can participate in the voting process and understand it. Also, paper and pencil are more sustainable (can be made from recycled paper and trees, which you can plant, as opposed of mining minerals, shipping, and maintaining thoudsands of computers, with batteries in case there is a power outage).

Especially with something like voting, it is worth considering those who actually can't use paper and pencil. In college I worked in a research lab building accessible voting systems. We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Its both amazing to see how adapted a person can become to living in a world that assumes a certain level of physical ability. Its also amazing to see how horribly inacc…

> We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community.

Already a solved problem, e.g.:

> On election day and at advance polls, your polling station will have tactile and braille voting templates that you can use to mark your ballot. Simply fit your ballot into the template and use the braille and embossed numbers to find the space next to your chosen candidate's name.

* https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=spe/to...

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#108

Post by nihzm »

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

From your long sibling thread I gather that for you it is more important to be able to verify the votes by yourself through the output of the voting system (the excel example) than to be able to reason through the voting system itself. Whereas for schroeding it is more important to be able to conceptually understand and scrutinize the voting process as a whole, even though it might be difficult for any single individual to check on that their own vote was counted. Correct me if the summary was not fair.

Suppose we bring the two ideas to the extreme and imagine two voting systems:

- an extermely complex, completely opaque voting system that can only be managed by experts to function correctly, but with a perfectly infallible way to individually check that their vote was correctly counted

- an extremely obvious and straightforward way of voting such as paper ballots that are securely physically transported to a central location (all of them) and counted by people surrounded by observers (all in one sitting). clearly any individual cannot check that their vote was actually counted

If there is a disagreement about the result of a vote because, let's say for the sake of the example that the losing party thinks they should have won; In the first system everybody can of course check their votes, but what if the losing party questions the checking system itself? Then it is on the experts to justify why the vote is correct (can they do it?). On the second system, because everybody can reason through it, it is on the losing party to prove that the vote was not performed correctly, by pointing at some part of the (simpler) voting procedure.

I think that the second system is more robust in the sense that when there is a disagreement, it is easier regain everyone's trust. With simple procedures, the disagreeing party can make more meaningful demands on the people who manage the voting system to check that the vote was correct. In the first system it is the opposite, and because by definitions it is only understood by experts the losing party cannot do anything but to claim that the whole system is rigged.

So, since voting systems are ultimately a tool to collectively take decisions, I'd say that there is more value in having a simple procedure than efficiency and extremely precise feedback for individual votes. The trust in voting systems is different than the one in credit card processing systems.

Of course real electronic voting and real paper voting are neither of these two extremes, but choosing the e-voting moves us closer to the first system, while paper voting to the second.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#109

Post by _heimdall »

throw0101d wrote: post #107
_heimdall wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with something like voting, it is worth considering those who actually can't use paper and pencil. In college I worked in a research lab building accessible voting systems. We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Its both amazing to see how adapted a person can become to living in a world that assumes a certain level of physical ability. Its also amazing to see how horribly inacc…

> We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Already a solved problem, e.g.: > On election day and at advance polls, your polling station will have tactile and braille voting templates that you can use to mark your ballot. Simply fit your ballot into the template and use the braille and embossed numbers to find the space next to your chosen candidate's name. * https://www.elections.ca/content.…

Sure. I don't know if those specific devices were around 20 years ago, but there are various options.

Another part of our goal was to build a voting system that was accessible by default, meaning everyone was able to use the same device regardless of any disabilities they may have.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#110

Post by Terr_ »

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.

I believe that when Grandma laments/boasts that "kids these days just know technology", it's often a confusion of confidence with competence.

The elder generation grew up with stuff where you had to be more cautious of damaging it, while the younger generation is far more confident with "randomly mess around until it works", because they grew up with products that were designed to be more forgiving.

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