Belenios: Verifiable online voting system • Hacker News Board

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#271

Post by baobabKoodaa » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #255

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You speak as if I'm advocating for e-voting systems over paper voting systems. I'm not. In general, most paper voting systems that are used in practice are more secure than most e-voting systems that are used in practice. > 1. Paper ballots are in some ways more ambigous, because there are many ways to scribble a sign into a circle, a fraction of which will not result in the intended outcome Look, I tried to cover al…

> You speak as if I'm advocating for e-voting systems over paper voting systems. I'm not. In general, most paper voting systems that are used in practice are more secure than most e-voting systems that are used in practice. Keep in mind that my point was specifically about high stakes elections and you reacted to it without making that limitation. Don't you think my conclusion about your comment follows kind of natur…

> Keep in mind that my point was specifically about high stakes elections and you reacted to it without making that limitation.

I was also thinking of high stakes elections when I wrote my response to you, even if I did not explicitly say so.

> I have never seen an election where a vote isn't ticking or checking a ballot box, maybe this is different in Finland?

In Finland you typically scribble down a number. Yes, it's harder to accidentally spoil a ballot if you only need to tick or check a box.

> Having worked with computer vision systems and programmed them I can tell you there is no 100% guarantuee that the result that air-gapped machine showed the voter in the voting both is the same as what is reached later – not even if we assume the exact same machine to be used for the count.

But in this hypothetical example the computer is not used to count the votes, it is used to write on paper. Because a computer can unambiguously draw the number "7" on a piece of paper, and the voter can unambiguously verify that the number is correct.

> Also: That isn't necessarily what I'd call a E-Voting system.

I wouldn't call it such either.

> If we are to look for a good comparison we should compare the best way to do paper based elections to the best way to do it digitally and draw our comparisons from that.

And that is what I did in my thesis. The best way to do in-person paper based elections is (a variant of) Floating Receipts, which is a better system than (a variant of) Civitas, which is the best way to do remote e-voting.

At this point I am very confused what you feel disagree about. We went into the weeds over some minor issue regarding spoiled ballots, and I feel like you are drawing way more conclusions from that than you should.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#272

Post by evantbyrne » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 6:03 PM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #270

evantbyrne wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how much can/should the state do about people in the same household hypothetically stealing each other's ballots? The registration process requires ID, so I'm not convinced additional authentication is needed.

Don't limit your imagination to households, although that's also a problem. What about apartments that receive all their ballots at the same time, or congregate living shelters, etc. etc.? It's not that hard to conceive of collecting tens or even hundreds of ballots if you have the right access to mail. The state should eliminate this problem by requiring everyone to vote in person on election day with voter ID using…

People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at any scale, and having so many controls in place, we can safely assume it is not happening. But sure, perhaps mailed ballots could be improved to further combat the possibility of mail theft.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#273

Post by evantbyrne » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

kleton wrote: post #245

paavope wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gon…

You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Delivering absentee ballots on behalf of other people is not ballot box stuffing. Taking a clip of something completely mundane and attributing imagined facts and motives to it is not evidence of a stolen election. There is still an audit trail for all of those ballots from registration, to requesting the absentee ballot, to printing, and to shipping. Where are the people claiming they lost their absentee ballots and getting flagged as double-voting because someone took their ballot? This is according to all available data a made-up problem by people who are clearly worried that the "wrong" demographic is going to vote against their candidates of choice.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#274

Post by baggy_trough » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

evantbyrne wrote: post #272

baggy_trough wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't limit your imagination to households, although that's also a problem. What about apartments that receive all their ballots at the same time, or congregate living shelters, etc. etc.? It's not that hard to conceive of collecting tens or even hundreds of ballots if you have the right access to mail. The state should eliminate this problem by requiring everyone to vote in person on election day with voter ID using…

People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at…

I've tried to explain this, but I will repeat. Nobody orders them any more; they are sent by default. That includes to the lowest engagement voters who may not even be aware of them.

We should not expect there to be much evidence that this is happening because the system has in effect, if not by intention, been designed to prevent any such evidence from being collected.

That is why there is some legitimate doubt in the tamper proof nature of our elections.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#275

Post by evantbyrne » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #274

evantbyrne wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at…

I've tried to explain this, but I will repeat. Nobody orders them any more; they are sent by default. That includes to the lowest engagement voters who may not even be aware of them. We should not expect there to be much evidence that this is happening because the system has in effect, if not by intention, been designed to prevent any such evidence from being collected. That is why there is some legitimate doubt in t…

Must be a state-specific thing. Here is Michigan we still need to request them separately. Either way, it's still authenticated at time of registration, and it would still be relatively easy to catch. Someone would notice for all of the reasons mentioned plus there are cameras everywhere in residential areas these days. People are occasionally convicted of voting fraud btw. It's just extremely rare because it's an incredibly high risk and low reward crime.

Why stuff ballot boxes when you can just make it harder for people that typically vote against your party to even get their ballots in the first place, or divide up cities in convoluted boundaries to prevent non-white communities from being able sway districts? All perfectly legal methods that have worked well for the GOP, which didn't even win the popular vote with their last president. That is the real reason GOP leadership pushes anti-absentee ballot narratives and DNC tries to expand those programs.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#276

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 7:57 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #223

matheusmoreira wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not enough. It's not enough at all. Experts are easily compromised. The system by which power is transferred from the people to representatives needs to be literally self-evident. Any system that the "average voter" cannot understand should be literally unconstitutional. Deviating from this puts the results of all elections in doubt. People will question the results, and they will have a point because the system…

Okay, so you will only accept some theoretical, idealistic, perfect voting system, which at this time does not exist. And until one is invented, you want all non-perfect voting systems to be "literally unconstitutional". How do you want government to function until a perfect voting system is invented? Should we just have dictatorship until that time?

No one said anything about "perfect". I said black box systems that nobody but "experts" understand should be literally outlawed. Nowhere did I claim the system had to be "perfect". It needs to be a simple enough system that even laymen can understand, not some computer black box.

What you fail to understand is that an "election" whose results can't be trusted is equivalent to a dictatorship. Actually they are even worse than dictatorships. In a dictatorship, at least you know you are being oppressed. When unreliable elections are institutionalized, they give an air of legitimacy to the dictator's rule, you're constantly gaslit by the dictator and his political and ideological supporters into believing that the oppression is just the democratic process at work.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#277

Post by baggy_trough » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

evantbyrne wrote: post #275

baggy_trough wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to explain this, but I will repeat. Nobody orders them any more; they are sent by default. That includes to the lowest engagement voters who may not even be aware of them. We should not expect there to be much evidence that this is happening because the system has in effect, if not by intention, been designed to prevent any such evidence from being collected. That is why there is some legitimate doubt in t…

Must be a state-specific thing. Here is Michigan we still need to request them separately. Either way, it's still authenticated at time of registration, and it would still be relatively easy to catch. Someone would notice for all of the reasons mentioned plus there are cameras everywhere in residential areas these days. People are occasionally convicted of voting fraud btw. It's just extremely rare because it's an in…

All of these things are problems that weaken trust in the system.

Widespread absentee ballots are bad, early voting is bad, gerrymandering is bad, lack of voter ID checking is bad, non-secret voting is bad. I'd like to see them all done away with.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#278

Post by throwaway48476 » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 8:44 PM UTC

mariusor wrote: post #212

throwaway48476 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far more familiar with cryptography concepts than the average person but I wouldn't trust myself to audit a crypto system or implementation.

Do you feel the need to audit the ballot process when casting a vote? Do you wait until the station is closed and watch the people count the votes? Do you know what to look for in regards to ballot tampering? Do you know who is allowed to count the votes? I think that the details of the vote will indeed be opaque to most voters, but I think that's the case right now for most of us. As a voter you must have some trust…

Not really. I know the voting process is 'fortified'

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#279

Post by gloosx » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 9:09 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #259

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…

> The future of paper voting can be something like a quick fingertip-actuated DNA sequencer which will imprint your DNA hash right into the paper ballot, This would mean the end to the secret vote.

Why so? It would calculate the hash, and to reverse it back to the original DNA is an irrationally expensive computation. On top of that, voter simply putting a random seed phrase for doing another 650000 pbkdf2 iterations would take this task to close to level impossible – at the same time the ballot itself will remain verifiable by the original voter.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#280

Post by romwell » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 10:20 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #250

romwell wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 s…

Hi from the US.

You don't seem to understand that what you see as problems to be solved are seen as features by half of our politicians, who would rather have people not vote at all.

These are the vulnerabilities of in-person voting that mail-in voting does not have.

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

No, that's not the case. I can't organize elections in Texas because I'm not in charge of organizing elections in Texas.

And people in charge of elections in Texas make sure that urban neighborhoods (which are likely to vote for the other party) don't have enough polling places to go to.

Oh, and did you know it's common in the US to have churches as polling locations? It's especially great when you're voting on issues like separation of church and the state, abortion, gay marriage, etc.