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Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

arstechnica.com

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Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#361

Post by tsimionescu »

EGreg wrote: post #297
roenxi wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it'd be impossible to implement. Either I'd have a record that I voted with no way to confirm who my vote was counted for, or I'd be able to prove that I voted for a specific candidate which opens a Pandora's box of problems (either coercion for voting for the wrong candidate or bribes for provably voting for a specific candidate). I mean sure, if someone can come up with a workable blockchain-based s…

First of all zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify stuff without being able to prove it to others But honestly, I think the whole idea of being able to prove how you voted being dangerous is overblown. The same people who say you don’t need an ID to vote because it’s a non-issue then come up with fantasy scenarios of masses of people being forced to prove how they voted, or bribed to do it LOL.

It is absolutely 100% not overblown. Voter punishment and suppression is a well established practice in many places. India's vote tallies for example have evolved to a pretty complicated system, because local powers were even instituting collective punishment on whole villages if they voted "badly". So, the vote counting system had to be adjusted to extend vote secrecy not just to the personal vote, but even to entire counties.

This is a very real problem with a well known history. Even in the USA, gerrymandering is facilitated by this kind of information. If votes were mixed during counting so that you didn't have information about vote counts in each polling place, it would have been considerably harder to come up with the crazy districts being used today in many places. Having personal identification of each voter would definitely have creative uses as well.

And as for bribing, in this very election we have Elon Musk publicly announcing he's giving out money to people who essentially pledge to vote (with some attempts at plausible deniability for committing this federal crime). I'm sure smaller and less loud election influencing is being attempted all the time - but it's hard to do if people can outright scam you and vote differently than what you paid them. Having an online proof of your vote would open up the floodgates to this at a massive scale. And there are plenty of people poor enough to see this as a lifeline.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#362

Post by mulmen »

In case anyone is wondering what the worst case scenario is here’s an overview of how voting works in Colorado:

https://www.cpr.org/2022/10/17/colorado-elections-ballot-cou...

Importantly there’s always an audit in which auditors verify random samplings of ballots. This audit process is overseen by judges from the Republican and Democrat parties.

So even if all the voting software was compromised the audit would still catch any manipulation in the vote entry.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#363

Post by night862 »

cm2187 wrote: post #360
worstspotgain wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with a randomized audit, such as this one for the 2022 primary [1]. If it flipped just one vote out of 100, and you drew an audit sample of just 1000 votes, the probability of detecting it would be 99.996%. [1] https://www.cpr.org/2022/07/13/colorado-counties-begin-audit...

What do you audit if both the tally and the paper ballot are consistent? The only check possible is the voter checking themselves before they hand over the paper ballot.

Are you saying that the only check possible is looking at it while its in your hand?

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#364

Post by roenxi »

EGreg wrote: post #297
roenxi wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it'd be impossible to implement. Either I'd have a record that I voted with no way to confirm who my vote was counted for, or I'd be able to prove that I voted for a specific candidate which opens a Pandora's box of problems (either coercion for voting for the wrong candidate or bribes for provably voting for a specific candidate). I mean sure, if someone can come up with a workable blockchain-based s…

First of all zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify stuff without being able to prove it to others But honestly, I think the whole idea of being able to prove how you voted being dangerous is overblown. The same people who say you don’t need an ID to vote because it’s a non-issue then come up with fantasy scenarios of masses of people being forced to prove how they voted, or bribed to do it LOL.

> First of all zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify stuff without being able to prove it to others

I doubt it, and I suspect if you try to point at a specific system to implement you will find that that none exist even in theory. I can verify I voted with zero knowledge, yes. But I can't verify who I voted for. So I can put candidate A into the machine, it switches to candidate B and we can all prove I voted in the election.

Conversely, if I can prove who I voted for then the scheme is vulnerable to the well known after-election issues because I can prove it to others. If I can only prove something with plausible deniability note that I probably can't tell if the machine switched my vote around. There might be something that can be done in the space, but it is a tricky one to resolve.

> But honestly, I think the whole idea of being able to prove how you voted being dangerous is overblown.

If you check you may well find it in a reasonable-worse-case scenario it is a matter of life-and-death. I think maybe literally zero government electoral systems make the voter's vote public (ie, we have near universal secret ballots [0])? There is a reason for that. If we wanted people to sign their name on the vote slip that'd be great for auditing - but we don't because that would set the system up for some really horrible failures. The one that leaps to mind is "if you don't vote for me and I get in, I will do [insert blank] to you" strategies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot#Chronology_of_in...

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#365

Post by itsmek »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #342
anigbrowl wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many products does Walmart sell, though? I don't think they advertise on 'right side broadcast network', which also inexplicably advertises 'Trump combat knives' during his rallies.

You can't accuse something of being a dog whistle only when Person A says it, but not Person B. It either is or isn't. To do otherwise would be applying a double standard.

I feel like you're missing their point. The person you're replying to made a convincing argument that differentiates Person A and Person B by considering the fraction of products sold and how that affects the probability of the null hypothesis (using that price by chance). That's not a double standard.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#366

Post by roenxi »

tedunangst wrote: post #308
roenxi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In traditional voting, there is a pretty decent chance you know the person who does the counting or can find someone in your community who can personally vouch for them. Living in my small town at one stage, I knew several of the tabulators personally and all of them by reputation. That is an extreme case, but even in a city these people are somewhat known quantities. With a voting machine that wasn't verified by a h…

What do you do when you know the vote counter and don't trust them?

What do you do when you live in North Korea and are worried about an elections integrity? At some point the answer is you survive as best you can.

But to fight corruption you need more transparency and to increase the costs of conspiracies, ie, to head in the opposite direction of voting machines.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#367

Post by mulmen »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #302
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #120

I think all US folks reading this should volunteer at their county's Registrar of Voters (or equivalent agency for their county). Spend one election working at a polling place, and another election working at the RoV HQ. See what it's like to go through the training, and what things are like on Election Day, and in the days leading up (for places that allow early voting, drop-off, etc.).

That seems like a massive waste of time and energy compared to just implementing mail in voting for everyone like Washington and Oregon have for so many years.

Washington and Oregon still need volunteers to monitor the drop boxes and retrieve, count, tabulate, and audit ballots.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#368

Post by mulmen »

rsync wrote: post #37

Paper ballots have very boring failure modes and need no explanation or technical support. When you see a system more complex than paper ballots, know that the additions are not there on your behalf .

Strongly disagree. As would any voter who had their vote suppressed in Florida in 2000 due to confusing analog voting machines, dangling chads, or “partially” filled bubbles.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#369

Post by zo1 »

javawizard wrote: post #318
gotoeleven wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.

Sounds great. How do you do that?

Are we talking about "Voter ID"? If so, isn't that being constantly derailed by the democrats? Just like all the issues with illegals and the border wall, which they don't seem to want to fix and make it impossible.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#370

Post by mulmen »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #78
Sparkle-san wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been the method of voting in Oregon for 25 years and Colorado for 10 years, when does the regret start? The current states that have all mail voting are also some of the least religious states in the country, you'd think the religious states would be pushing for it given the scenario you laid out. Colorado also had the second highest voter turn out nationwide in 2020 which supports the claim that all mail voting…

Oregon should never be the gold standard for how to do anything, ever. Can they even pump their own gas yet?

Ron Wyden seems cool.
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