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Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

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Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#241

Post by atoav »

gloosx wrote: post #235

Personally I think the biggest flaw in any online voting system is that a network-connected computing device cannot be trusted by any party. Email inbox can not be trusted or verified. Such a simplistic online voting would never stand a chance against malicious actors who are somewhat more sophisticated and creative. The future of paper voting can be something like a quick fingertip-actuated DNA sequencer which will…

I think there is a niche for electronic voting for low impact decision making. Used as such it could actually make societies more democratic.

Elections that have the potential to shift the power structure of a state are not low impact decisions. Paper ballots being slow and labour intensive is a feature, not a bug for really high stake decisions like who is in charge of a nuclear arsenal for the next years.

The more I know about electronics and programming the worse I think the idea of E-voting is for such occasions.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#242

Post by JanisErdmanis »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #164
JanisErdmanis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That genuinely doesn't seem to solve anything to me. Sure you can generate all these secret codes but then why wouldn't a briber ask for you to take a picture or video of the screen with all the codes and secret? OCR and computer vision is quite good nowadays and most people are carrying a video camera in their pocket, so the process can potentially be scaled. Bonus points if its install the Purple App and ask the vo…

It is tough to convince oneself that all attack vectors are being considered. The key idea is that a coercer or briber cannot always monitor their subjects, which leaves a window of opportunity for voters to cast their desired vote and set up fake credentials for their devices. This assumption, however, falls apart when the coercer or briber asks for voters’ devices and corresponding PIN codes during the voting period. I am motivated by the belief that such an attack vector is, in most cases, unrealistic.

Regarding your suggested attack vector, where the briber asks for a video of the screen showing how the number is displayed on the screen, this can be resolved with fake credentials. When creating a fake PIN code, the voter can specify inputs and outputs to the device with which the video can be taken. Fake credentials can further create fake credentials, so it is not possible to distinguish them.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#243

Post by EGreg »

atoav wrote: post #206
EGreg wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All? Really? How would you make such a sweeping statement? Can you list the systems you had looked at?

Huh? Yeah, all . I teach electronics at the University level and I know: 1. How hard it is for already highly educated people to understand electronics and programming 2. What kind of complexity is needed on how many technological layers to just even have it work reliably and how much more complexity is needed to have it formally variable and tamper-proof 3. How many attack vectors exist in such systems — many of whi…

That didn’t answer my question. What systems have you looked at?

Saying “all systems” is such a sweeping statement, it is very unlikely to be true.

Technology always improves and if you looked at any modern system, people some day in the past would be incredulous that it could possibly replace a bunch of smart humans with pen and paper.

Experts said airplanes couldn’t ever fly and the wright brothers were fools. Then they said there are many safety problems with airplanes. If you told someone it would be the safest form of travel for long distances, people would laugh. Just as you are laughing now. They would claim their logic would hold for “all” forms of air transportation.

People laughed that a chess playing program could beat a human, citing seemingly (to them) insurmountable challenges much as you do now.

You could have said exactly 1,2,3 about the Internet and many other things in the past.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#244

Post by nihzm »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #221
nihzm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's enough for the average voter to trust that some other people - independent experts - are able to verify the vote. I don't agree. This is plausible within a coesive electorate, but it feels like moving the problem. What guarantees that the experts are trusted by the voters? And more importantly, assuming that at some point the system (experts) is trusted, how is the trust in the voting system retained over time…

Sure the people can overthrow a government with a revolution, but the situation deteriorating to that point is pretty much the worst case scenario I can imagine.

But do you agree that there needs to be something that keeps reinforcing the collective trust in the voting system such that this worst case scenario is not reached? If so, do you have an idea what that something could be when using a complex e-voting system? The best I can come up is to educate the public, but that is almost wishful thinking.

rraghur says in the siblilng comment that keeping the voting systme open via OSS / reproducible builds / etc could be a source of trust, but I don't think that is sufficient for most people. We need a stronger argument, and I don't have one.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#245

Post by kleton »

paavope wrote: post #230
kleton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try very hard? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXAp8My7Js

So there is a clip of someone dropping multiple ballots in a drop box. Apparently [1] that is not necessarily fraudulent, you can drop multiple ballots from family members. There were international observers in the 2020 election and they found no evidence of fraud [2], and many mainstream media sources that I hold reliable, (e.g. [3]) fact-check multiple claims of election fraud and nothing has showed up that would s…

Different people could look at the same clip and assign different probabilities to P(ballot stuffer) vs P(Family ballot courier). It would depend on your Bayesians priors. If a person from a high trust society like Sweden or Finland were to see this video, they might have a prior expectation of someone being helpful. Whereas there are much lower trust societies in the world where that would not be the case.

We've gone from "haven't seen evidence" to "seen evidence at probability P-prime". Trust in an electoral system is an important enough issue that this should be investigated to the same thorough degree as a capital crime.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#246

Post by baobabKoodaa »

nihzm wrote: post #244
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure the people can overthrow a government with a revolution, but the situation deteriorating to that point is pretty much the worst case scenario I can imagine.

But do you agree that there needs to be something that keeps reinforcing the collective trust in the voting system such that this worst case scenario is not reached? If so, do you have an idea what that something could be when using a complex e-voting system? The best I can come up is to educate the public, but that is almost wishful thinking. rraghur says in the siblilng comment that keeping the voting systme open v…

Of course there needs to be some level of public trust in the elections. I think that trust could come from the E2E verifiability of the voting system, and related to that, trust in the ability of independent experts to verify that the election was conducted fairly. (When the result of an election is verifiable by third parties, there is no longer a need to audit what software is running on the official machines, so there is no need for reproducible builds etc.)

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#247

Post by noodlesUK »

gloosx wrote: post #235

Personally I think the biggest flaw in any online voting system is that a network-connected computing device cannot be trusted by any party. Email inbox can not be trusted or verified. Such a simplistic online voting would never stand a chance against malicious actors who are somewhat more sophisticated and creative. The future of paper voting can be something like a quick fingertip-actuated DNA sequencer which will…

In practice, I think that there are a number of fairly high quality voting systems available. A key part of that is maintaining a secret ballot.

1. Widespread voting in person at a number of distributed sites, with paper ballots and either hand counting or machine counting with risk limiting audits. This is pretty technologically trivial to implement, but requires manpower.

2. Widespread postal voting as it's done in places like Oregon, where there's a non-serialised ballot inside a serialised envelope. All voters are sent an envelope and ballot via postal mail, and the return can be done at either a drop box or through the postal system. On election day, all valid envelopes are opened and emptied under the watchful eyes of observers from each party. They are then counted by hand or with machines and risk limiting audits.

What should not exist are voting machines. There should always be a paper ballot in the process somewhere that is human readable.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#248

Post by lesuorac »

codedokode wrote: post #179
lesuorac wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-digital systems have claims of fake ballots being inserted all the time. I don't think the answer to people being suspicious of digital systems is to abandon them. It's to either disprove their suspicion or add controls so they become disproven. https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2020 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2016 https://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+stuffing+2012

With analog voting you can at least count people coming and see their ballots when tallying. With digital systems this is typically a black box where you have to trust the government.

I don't think you understand how wrong your post is.

Literally no election updates the raw tally of candidates the second a ballot comes in. If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted. Literally some of the cases of fraud are the same person entering multiple times and voting multiple times. You will need a control beyond "count people". (And if your control is to just do mail-in voting process in-person then what's the point).

Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard? This is where the mail-in votes have a better control than a simplistic ballot box as you only start co-mingling the votes once you know it's legit.

W.r.t. Digital systems, there's nothing that stops there from being a paper audit trail you can verify. [1]

Also, you don't need to "trust the government" (aka your neighbors) you can volunteer yourself to be a poll worker at your local elections to see how things are done or you can run to be on the board of elections in your local government. And if you're working the election you only need to trust yourself to have made it secure.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#249

Post by JanisErdmanis »

atoav wrote: post #198
illiac786 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a simple trust problem. No one is counting all ballots in the entire country, they trust others to do so, and do so in a truthful manner. Same for machines, they’ll have to trust that some people did their job and checked these machines. Not saying this will happen any time soon though ;)

One question: How would a machine have to look that you use in a high stakes process, that someone else (potentially your adversary) purchases and setups and that you and the majority of the electorate can be able to trust? Elections with paper ballots are somewhat straightforward in that regard. Any party member that doesn't trust the process can literally apply to check part of it and be able to see for themselves…

> But the few experts that are able to verify the process and have the computer knowledge

It sounds like you are not familiar with the concept of verifiability or more precisely E2E-V for evoting systems that can be attained. The goal is to never trust the software that is running the machines or officials and thoose are kept accountable with a public cryptographic evidence produced along with final tally. They still are trusted with not sabotaging the process and assuming that one or few parties are not corrupt to ensure vote anonimity, but never with integrity.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#250

Post by gus_massa »

romwell wrote: post #218
synecdoche wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The in person secret paper ballot voting system on voting day appears to be a system with some of the least drawbacks, which is likely why it has been so popular. Mail-in systems work too, with their own set of benefits and drawbacks, and is used in combination with the above in some countries.

>in person voting appears to have least drawbacks Citation needed. Specifically, what are the drawbacks of mail-in voting compared to in-person voting? >Mail-in system is used in some countries The US is one of those some countries . And in the US, with a long history of voter disenfranchisement and an abysmally low voter turnouts, where the election day is always a workday , mail-in voting is absolutely the best sys…

Hi from Argentina:

> -people having difficulty to vote on a workday

We vote on Sunday.

> -difficulty getting to the polls

My poll station is half a mile away (or less). I can go walking or by bus that is free that day.

> -lack of polling places in "undesirable" neighborhoods (and super long lines as a result)

I vote in a school that has like 20 voting rooms. The waiting time is usually like 10 minutes. Last year in some rooms the waiting time was like 1 hour and people was angry. In that cases vote for the other party.

> -varied ID laws

Everyone has an ID here. It has a nominal cost, but if you ask nicely you can get it for free.

If the idiots here can organize an in-person voting election, anyone can.

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