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Public trust demands open-source voting systems

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Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#141

Post by nostrademons »

ncr100 wrote: post #24
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 >

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

First video:

Arguments against electronic voting: 1) one person can change millions of votes 2) vulnerable even outside the country 3) even if you audit the software, it's hard to verify that the audited software is what is actually loaded on the machines 4) even if you check hashes of the software, how do you check the software that checks the software (this is a restatement of the Ken Thompson Hack) 5) proprietary software 6) USB sticks are insecure 7) final computer tallying everything is owned and located in a single place 8) XSS attacks on e-voting pages.

Arguments for physical voting: 1) centuries old, many attacks have already been tried and failed 2) no identifying marks on ballot = no opportunity to pressure voters to change their vote 3) multiple people involved in each stage of the process

I realized after typing that out that YouTube has a "Show Transcript" function, so try that for the second video.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#142

Post by patrickmcnamara »

hannofcart wrote: post #57
bkummel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True! In The Netherlands, where I live, we still vote on paper ballots. The ballots are counted by hand. The counting is public, anyone can go and observe the counting.

This is in no way intended to be disparaging: there are processes that work within the scale of small European nations that simply won't at larger scales.

The Netherlands would be the 4th biggest state if it was part of the US.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#143

Post by Yizahi »

ericmay wrote: post #27

My preference (I think) is we have a federal holiday "America Day", (call it Trump day for all I care) where we celebrate, hand out cookies, friends and family get together, etc. and we all vote in person . One of the weaknesses in our democracy is the insistency of doing things virtually - it's the same weakness exposed by social media. Electronic systems are always going to be subject to hacking and manipulation, a…

National mandatory holiday for voting would eliminate soo many issues and concerns. It really should be a must in every country, at least for the biggest elections. Inbefore "lazy urupeons are wrong, no holidays is the only true way!!!" there are 11 federal holidays in the USA, same as in many European countries, and the sky didn't fall down because of that. Adding 0.20-0.25 holiday per year won't return a country to dark ages or anything.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#144

Post by teddyh »

jancsika wrote: post #108
teddyh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User name checks out.

I mean, you left yourself open to that glib, low-effort criticism when you wrote this: > no software or programmable hardware That's obviously too stringent. Consider: 1. Precinct hand-counts every single paper ballot bubble sheet. 2. Precinct hand-counts every single paper ballot bubble sheet, then confirms the hand count by feeding all the ballots into an electronic bubble-sheet reader. Your claim is that #1 is mor…

If your proposed process is implemented, it will take about 5 seconds before the precinct realizes that they can just feed it all to the machine and sign whatever number which comes out as the “hand-counted” one. Especially as they will be dinged whenever their count differs from the machine, which will be assumed by their superiors to be more trustworthy.

More seriously, even though some cars are programmable, I did not mean that nobody could use cars to transport ballot boxes. I obviously meant that the official results should be the manually-counted one; machines could conceivably be used to get interim results faster, and/or to double-check a count to see if it needs to be counted again. But I was serious about requiring absolutely no machines involved in the counting of the official results.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#145

Post by philips »

yongjik wrote: post #138

Stop me if you heard it before, but paper ballot with automatic counting machine is the way to go. You still get real time update, and you have a physical ballot box that's constantly under watch of volunteers from multiple parties. And if there's any dispute (there will be disputes) you can simply bring out the boxes and count again. It's a simple, cost-effective system which is impossible to hack. Electronic voting…

And how would you feel if those counting machines were closed source?

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#146

Post by xorcist »

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.

If you can independently verify the election result, then it does not matter if any of the counts were made using proprietary software.

If you can not independently verify election results, what good does published source code do?

Elections are a process, not a result.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#147

Post by teddyh »

shadowgovt wrote: post #115
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These system used for voting means that humans don't hand tally hundred of millions of votes. They tally those in a voting district only. Those them get aggregated with other districts and so on until the whole states and then the country is counted. The problem with the accuracy assumption of electronic voting is that a) its all coded without errors and b) someone hasn't deliberately but code into manipulate the vot…

We have good reason to believe a is true and b is false; the machines get tested to death before election day.

As mentioned in the video, there is no amount of “testing” which could prove the absence of malicious software or hardware. None.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#148

Post by yongjik »

philips wrote: post #145
yongjik wrote: post #138

Stop me if you heard it before, but paper ballot with automatic counting machine is the way to go. You still get real time update, and you have a physical ballot box that's constantly under watch of volunteers from multiple parties. And if there's any dispute (there will be disputes) you can simply bring out the boxes and count again. It's a simple, cost-effective system which is impossible to hack. Electronic voting…

And how would you feel if those counting machines were closed source?

How do you feel that the paper bill counter in your bank is closed source? It does not matter because it's trivial to verify. The counter says "here is a pack of one hundred ballots for candidate A," and if you're in doubt, you just count them again. While representatives from candidate A's and B's team are watching.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#149

Post by belorn »

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 lifecycle do get interrupted with early voting and postal voting, and as past elections where I live have shown (Sweden), some number of boxes of votes will generally be discovered after elections. The postal system are not designed to be 100% reliable and some portion of mail do get lost, fail in the sorting process, or get sent to the wrong location and put into the "fix it later" process which will miss the election deadline.

Software and hardware is still magnitude more vulnerable to intentional misbehavior, and even accidental mishaps has a higher risk of massive negative consequences, and its harder to discover failure compared to boxes of votes that has a physical presence.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#150

Post by raincole »

estimator7292 wrote: post #91
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 >

Aren't most paper ballots processed by machine anyway? Every ballot I've ever cast has gone through something akin to a Scantron machine. The cost of human labor to count all ballots by hand will be enormous. Probably worth it I suppose, but this really is something that should be primarily automated. But again, trust in software. Sigh, why can't we just have nice things?

> The cost of human labor to count all ballots by hand will be enormous

In Taiwan, this is how it's done. Every ballot is counted by human. It's completely public: you can just walk in any polling station during the counting process and watch they count.

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