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Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

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Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#291
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if lots of experts come out that way, including people you already trust otherwise? Eg assume both Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds etc say they have reviewed the code?

Reviewed the code -- but did they inspect the machine? Check the network for reliability? Review the crypto for replayability? RNG that's is actually random? How many expert do we need? Do we need cross-domain experts to check if any domain experts missing anything between the gaps? For paper voting, it is literally just check the box is empty before voting and nobody get near the box unexpectedly

> For paper voting, it is literally just check the box is empty before voting and nobody get near the box unexpectedly

That depends on how complicated your voting system is. Have a look at the complications they have in Australia..

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voting system you described is not a verifiable voting system. If you have a verifiable voting system, you don't need to know what code is running on the election machines. That's the whole point of having a verifiable voting system. You asked "how do you know your vote was counted". You can google for examples of how this works in verifiable voting systems.

In a verifiable voting system, voter usually get a recipe that he can verify, in later time, their vote have been counted. But what stop same recipe is handed out twice? Do you do transparent log? Second system to audit those? How general voters are supposed to understand this? Just pick a voting station with lower computer literacy, and you can do whatever you want ..

> In a verifiable voting system, voter usually get a recipe that he can verify, in later time, their vote have been counted. But what stop same recipe is handed out twice?

Different solutions exist for this problem, which is known as a "clash attack". For example, in the Floating Receipts voting scheme, those things that you call "recipes" are pre-printed on ballots and hidden under scratch strips. The scratch strip is removed at the time when the ballot is dropped into the ballot box. If the manufacturer of the ballots were to pre-print the same "recipe" on multiple ballots, it would be discovered during the verification phase, because you would in some cases have 2 different votes cast on 2 different ballots which would contain the same "recipe". So both voters look up the "recipe" online and they are supposed to discover only one vote corresponding to the "recipe".

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#293
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The thing about secret voting is that you want to make it impossible to verify that a particular person voted for a particular party. Otherwise it becomes possible to threaten people with violence if they don't show confirmation that they voted for the correct party, it also becomes possible to pay people $1000 if they can show confirmation of voting for the other party, people may start using the confirmation as a social thing to proudly prove which side they're on, etc.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains are only verifiable and reliable in so far as everything that exists exits in the blockchain. As soon as it interfaces with the real world you start hitting the Oracle problem [1]. That you are not aware of this and still push for even considering it as an alternative to paper ballots is part of the problem. We need constitutional amendments that ban all forms of electronic voting in every democracy. [1]:…

The main issue is that centralized electronic systems can be hacked at scale. That's what the paper solves, it slows everything down making it difficult compromise results en-masse. Verification is much simpler and cheaper than voting itself, and can be distributed. A distrusting community, for example, can build their own easily auditable tools, running on their own random machines, to verify the integrity of their…

> You may also be overlooking that we have the benefit of a reliable root of trust in the form of manually provided government documents and IDs that are carefully provisioned.

I'm not overlooking it, self-interested political parties are, but you are conflating the authentication problem with the voting problem. Moving to electronic voting does not solve the authentication problem, it just adds one more problem.

> You think in 10,000 years it will still be impossible to run a vote electronically?

Yes.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I understand because we had the same problem until 1912 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1enz_Pe%C3%B1a_Law that the problem was solved with secret obligatory in person elections. It was not easy. The 1930 were weird. All the last century was weird. This century is weird too, but at least elections are quite transparent.

> 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.

That's weird. I'm not sure how we ensure everyone has a good site to vote, because I expect some provinces to use all the dirty tricks that are barely legal. It's a good question. My guess is that elections are obligatory here (nobody really checks that, but there is a threat of a fee or something if you don't vote). So people wait outside the voting locations until they can vote, and if the queue is too long they get angry, and may start a small riot, and get the TV, and the federal government may decide to do something like investigating the local corruption.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Argentina, in some places there were a few types of fraud, for example chain voting. (I can't find local case, but see [1] [2].) People can be paid or coerced to participate in such a scheme. The solution was that you get a signed envelope when you enter, go to a isolated room alone and put the ballot inside and they verify the signatures of the closed envelope before you vote. With remote voting, nobody can…

>Here in Argentina, in some places there were a few types of fraud, for example chain voting Thanks for pointing out another vulnerability of in-person voting that mail-in voting doesn't have, due to its distributed nature. Chain voting is something that's only practical to organize when everyone in the group is voting at the same place and at the same time, so the chain doesn't need to be coordinated in advance . As…

> Thanks for pointing out another vulnerability of in-person voting that mail-in voting doesn't have, due to its distributed nature.

If they implement something like that here, I expect in some places that people is ask to go to the local party office and left the ballot/envelop with the code. It is easier. Voting chain is a trick to avoid the in-person checks.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government can issue fake IDs and vote in their name. Especially in countries where there are many migrants who receive citizenship, you can easily issue some extra IDs and nobody notices.

This attack vector is no different with paper ballots.

With paper voting you need both fake IDs and people. You need to recruit people ready to commit a crime, and transport them between polling stations. If you want to add million fake votes, you need somewhere about 100 000 accomplices, each voting 10 times. For comparison, with electronic voting to commit fraud, you need just one patriotic or corrupt system administrator willing to protect the country from an undesirable candidate. It is not difficult to find such type of person.

Electronic voting significantly lowers the barrier for commiting fraud by election administrators.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We might be talking about different forms of electronic elections. What I am talking about is remote electronic voting, when people vote from home using a website or app.

> If you count 1000 people entering and 1000 total votes that doesn't mean 1000 individials voted.

This means that if someone wants to vote 10 times, they need to come 10 times and hope that no election monitor will be surprised by seeing the same person 10 times. If you want to add million fake votes, you need to recruit 100 000 people voting 10 times each, you need to bribe thousands of election staff to let them vote 10 times, basically you need to involve a whole army of people and hope nobody notices nothing. Of course it is possible to find 100 000 corrupt people, but it is difficult to hide such large-scale operation.

For comparison, in electronic voting all you need is to have one patriotic sysadmin willing to enter fake data to 'save the country' from an undesirable candidate. The barrier for large-scale fraud is much lower.

So, basically with electronic voting election fraud requires corrupting less people and it is easier to hide.

> Additionally, if you have 1000 people entering and 1050 total votes; which 50 do you discard?

You nullify results at that polling station as the winner cannot be reliably determined.

> 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.

How can you be a poll worker in electronic elections? In my country typically the code and procedures are developed by a contractor or governmental organization. The code is not always even published. The best you can do is be an election monitor, but they have very limited tools in case of electronic elections, like observing stats on count of people voted. In contrast, election monitor at paper voting can see the whole process with their own eyes.

Re: Belenios: Verifiable online voting system

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government can issue fake IDs and vote in their name. Especially in countries where there are many migrants who receive citizenship, you can easily issue some extra IDs and nobody notices.

This attack vector is no different with paper ballots.

To clear possible misunderstanding, I meant remote electronic voting over Internet, not voting in a polling station in-person using voting machines. Those are more transparent and verifiable.
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