Public trust demands open-source voting systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#71

Post by babyshake » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

pie_flavor wrote: post #53

ncr100 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(META: Anyone want to summarize the 20 minutes of video, and make it more relevant to this conversation than simply, "No." ?)

Haven't watched it, but to summarize what I imagine someone aligned with me would say: A ballot's entire lifecycle can be watched as it goes from the stack to the booth to the dropbox to the counting pile. Poll watchers are vestigial as soon as voting machines are involved; it becomes the honor system, which is not trustworthy enough in a system where the parties do not trust each other. The best you have is 'we have…

The thing is, a software based voting system with a sufficient number of checks and balances preventing tampering seems to be a lot more trustworthy to me than human poll watchers and workers. It wouldn't surprise me at this point that there may be moles in parties that are secretly from the other party.

And the other related issue is that in 2025, it simply should be possible to vote from your phone in a way that verifies your identity, if you'd like, using the faceId/fingerprint biometrics that most smartphones from recent years have.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#72

Post by abdullahkhalids » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

Areibman wrote: post #26

From a process perspective, how can a constituent know with absolute certainty that their vote was counted, every voter in the system was legal, and the final tally was authentic? Especially when there's no way to even audit what you voted for after the fact? Every time I try to get to the bottom of this, it always boils down to "trust the system" which makes me uneasy.

Each polling station should have representatives from multiple parties as well as independent observers.

> how can a constituent know with absolute certainty that their vote was counted

The representative of your party plus independent observer said all votes at your polling station were counted. You know both those community members and know them to be generally honorable. Ergo your vote was counted.

> every voter in the system was legal

None of the observers at the polling station, or the station head claimed any illegal person voted.

> the final tally was authentic

The observers all signed as witnesses on the final tally.

This is not the "system. it is humans you know who are telling you what they saw. If you can't trust other humans at their word, democracy cannot fundamentally work.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#73

Post by oceansky » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

Brazil and India are doing fine

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#74

Post by nbngeorcjhe » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

ether3ric wrote: post #59

I've been saying it for years. We are more than capable of creating an official USA app that every American can download, test their knowledge on a topic, and vote. If X.com can implement polling, why can't the US Gov? In my opinion, they want to portray the illusion of democracy, not actually implement it.

democracy is an awful idea, the average person is barely even sentient

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#75

Post by jonathanstrange » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

oivey wrote: post #58

I don’t really understand the blind trust in paper in person ballots. Historically and currently, elections are stolen all the time whether paper or not. Off the top of my head some recent ones: election irregularities in Venezuela and the Russian referendums in Crimea. If people in power want to cheat, they will. Shuffling around the tech isn’t going to do all that much to change things.

That's a non-sequitur. Election manipulation is orders of magnitudes easier with voting machine manipulation and might not even be traceable. With paper ballots, you have to swap thousands of ballots that are handled by thousands of people, corrupt or prohibit independent observers, deal with election commissions and overseers, and so on. You can have recounts. With voting machines, you just have to push a software patch to these machines or manipulate the software that interfaces with them. No recount will help.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#76

Post by oceansky » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

Areibman wrote: post #26

From a process perspective, how can a constituent know with absolute certainty that their vote was counted, every voter in the system was legal, and the final tally was authentic? Especially when there's no way to even audit what you voted for after the fact? Every time I try to get to the bottom of this, it always boils down to "trust the system" which makes me uneasy.

It's ultimately an impossible problem. There's little thing you can trust 100%.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#77

Post by tuesdaynight » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #47

The technology forum that despises technology, what a world. We should be expanding voting access, not taking it back to the 19th century. Vote with whatever means you have: wanna show up physically and hand-write your ballot, great!, wanna mail it in, go for it!, wanna vote via website or app, have fun! Who gives a shit man, it's not going to be the end of the world or even substantially change things no matter what…

It's frustrating, honestly. Everyday we trust some tech with our lives, but voting? It's unacceptable. Oh, you can have this cryptocurrency that you can use to buy things without the government or anyone else getting to spy on you! But voting should be only with paper and pen because you can not trust machines!!!

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#78

Post by floweronthehill » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #14

teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

Ironically, that results in worse count accuracy. Humans are actually quite bad at hand-tallying hundreds of millions of datapoints. Our eyes go glassy but we press on anyway. Machines are very good at doing that kind of tedious labor accurately. Whether human beings will put more trust in a system that we know will be wrong , but it's wrong for comfortable meat reasons, over a system that might be compromised but wi…

I've counted paper ballots for multiple presidential elections in my country.

People who think it's not safe should really spend some time learning how it works. It's impossible to cheat at scale. Each ballot is verified to be correct my multiple eyes. A person is reading, one is writing down the name, one is verifying and some other things I don't remember.

To cheat you need to have everyone in on it. A whole town involved to cheat and to at best win one polling station. It's safe because anyone can attend the counting, so each party can send someone to check no shenanigans is going on.

So the more votes you want to be winning by cheating the more people must be brought in the conspiracy. That's impossible to be unnoticed at the scale of a city, much less at the scale of a country.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#79

Post by tmaly » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #29

teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.

there are even ways that paper ballots can fail. there needs to be a better process that has proper controls and checks regardless of the format used.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#80

Post by fmbb » Tue, Oct 21, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

oceansky wrote: post #73

teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

Brazil and India are doing fine

How do you know? How can their citizens know?

They don’t have stellar democracy grades from The Economist’s index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index and both seem worse off in the last ten years than the ten years before.