Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Public trust demands open-source voting systems

voting.works

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 292 posts

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#171

Post by ericmay »

saulpw wrote: post #124
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…

I agree with paper ballots, completely. But requiring voting to be in-person: how do you deal with citizens who are homebound, traveling, or working? Not literally everyone can get the day off--even if you suggest "shifts", there will be some people who won't be able to, whether because the hospital is understaffed and people will literally die, or because they don't have the resources to get to the voting hall on th…

In Ohio we have early voting, and then we also have absentee ballots which I think solves both of those challenges. We even have what's called curbside voting for folks who can't get out of their car.

I guess in some sense I'm arguing for the existing system [1], and not to move to any sort of electronic voting, but adding in a new federal holiday for the actual Election Day. It should be a celebration of democracy, a day of reflecting on our republic, and an opportunity to be patriotic with special programming and events, parades, etc. Just a hope/dream there.

I guess the main thing I'd like to say is, I think we should have the day off from work and we should all get together as much as possible as a society and celebrate this damn thing we have instead of sitting at home on the Internet just complaining and doing nothing all the time.

[1] Today we have ballot markets which electronically mark and print the ballot. I'm not quite as concerned about those being hacked (from a layman's perspective not any expertise), and then we have the actual ballot that was cast by the citizen that we can reference. When I think about open-source voting systems, electronic voting, etc. I think of doing it through your computer.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#172

Post by salawat »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #140
jonathanstrange wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust any democracy that uses electronic voting. It is not possible to secure voting machines and make them democratically accountable.

I agree but worry about what this implies for accounting and other financial systems. If we can't trust the voting machines to tell us what the vote totals are, how can we trust the bank computers to tell us who owns what?

Now you're getting it. Trust is the overriding problem, and it is a people problem, not a tech one.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#173

Post by bigstrat2003 »

nostrademons wrote: post #166
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'm watching him talk about the two key ingredients of an election (anonymity and trust, for those not watching the video) and thinking "We don't have those in U.S. elections". I live in California, where the voting method is vote-by-mail and you sign your ballot . That breaks anonymity right there, plus there's a barcode that matches address and ballot for traceability, so in theory anyone involved in the election p…

Because of the extreme diversity in voting methods in the US (it varies not only by state, but by county within the state) it's impossible to accurately make any generalization about voting in the US. For example, in my parents' county in Wisconsin, you show up at the polling place, they check you off the list of registered voters, and they hand you a ballot with no individual markings at all. Once you finish filling it out, you put it in a box with the other identical ballots, to be counted later. It's as anonymous as you could possibly ask for, except that they know that someone claiming to be you showed up and voted.

As far as party registration goes, is that required where you are? Because if so that's insane and the government there needs to change that. Everywhere I've lived you don't need to register any kind of party affiliation (and indeed some places you couldn't), you just register as a voter and you're good. Maybe it's different where you are, but if so just be aware that it is (thankfully) not universally done wrong in the way you describe.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#174

Post by matheusmoreira »

oceansky wrote: post #151
matheusmoreira wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha no. Voting machines caused absurd amounts of political instability here in Brazil. It's essentially become wrongthink to question the system. Our elected representatives have tried to add a paper trail to the machines twice now and it was ruled unconstitutional for total bullshit reasons. Our former president was banned from future presidential races because he questioned the machines. We have a judge loudly pro…

>Our former president was banned from future presidential races because he questioned the machines. Bolsonaro didn't question the electoral process, in fact, I doubt he even understand it himself. He questioned only the results, because in his mind he should have won by a lot. Not dissimilar than Trump's "stop the count!" on US paper ballots.

> Bolsonaro didn't question the electoral process

He did. For years, and during his mandate. I was there. Out of every stupid thing he said and did, they cited his perfectly valid criticism of the voting machines as the reason for his banishment from politics until 2030. I submitted news of that event to HN.

> Not dissimilar than Trump's "stop the count!" on US paper ballots.

Completely different matter. I'm very skeptical of claims of election fraud in the USA because it uses paper ballots. I have no trouble at all believing that our Magnitsky sanctioned judge literally named Lula president. They broke the guy out of prison to run against Bolsonaro for a reason.

In the end it's irrelevant. Bolsonaro's ordeal has revealed the deep truth of Brazil to the masses: the real power is in the supreme court. Discussing elections is utterly pointless since these judges are not elected. Elections are just a game they play to give this shithole a veneer of democracy.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#175

Post by jonathanstrange »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #140
jonathanstrange wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust any democracy that uses electronic voting. It is not possible to secure voting machines and make them democratically accountable.

I agree but worry about what this implies for accounting and other financial systems. If we can't trust the voting machines to tell us what the vote totals are, how can we trust the bank computers to tell us who owns what?

I would be very worried about banking security if there was only one bank and it was run by the government. Obviously, that's not the case, banks are private companies and there are thousands of them constantly competing for each other. They have a strong interest in tight security to remain trustworthy. They're also heavily regulated, probably even more than the voting system, and they're subject to financial auditing. I'm not an expert but would estimate that for these reasons banking is overall more secure than electronic voting.

I could be wrong, though. As far as I know, hardware companies nowadays cannot even be reasonably sure that the chips they use don't contain backdoors.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#176

Post by okanat »

okanat wrote: post #170
oivey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s just a signature or stamp, won’t the 7 year old ask why those can’t be faked or forged?

That's an inquisitive 7 year old. Definitely reward them. Let's explain. A good voting system needs to guarantee - Secrecy of who voted for whom - Transparency of everything else. The names of everybody in the process, the process itself and all the statistics should be verifiably public. Being an observer to your polling station must be a guaranteed voter right. Similarly all participating parties must have the righ…

You may ask how do you make sure nobody changes the votes in the box somehow?

First the box is in front of everybody. Second, before allowing people to throw votes in, you seal the box with an tamper evident seal. Usually pouring beeswax over a string works. You can have multiple seals for all sides.

Having a mark anywhere else but the box you cross / stamp invalidates the ballot. You put ballots in envelopes. Each envelope must have a single ballot inside.

A voter can replace the ballot if they made a mistake. They need to destroy their ballot in front of everyone.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#177

Post by lewiscollard »

colmmacc wrote: post #4

So they open the source ... how do I know that's what's running on the voting machine? There's really no good practical solution to this problem. What matters more is that there is a voter-verified paper audit trail and that this record is actually counted. At least by spot check risk-limiting audits, but ideally just count every vote manually to verify.

> There's really no good practical solution to this problem.

Remote attestation via trusted execution environments is a thing. It is not a theoretical one either. See, for example, Graphene OS's Auditor app[0]. Solving this for voting machines in particular would be a matter of good design, not of solving fundamentally hard problems.

[0] https://attestation.app/

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#178

Post by andrewf »

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?

Australia hand-counts. In a federal election, a voter will typically cast a preferential vote for the lower house, and a more complicated proportional vote for 3 senate seats. Rarely, they'll vote on 1 or 2 propositions ("referenda"). This seems comparable to a federal US ballot (first-past-the-post votes for house/senate/president).

The US casts 10 times as many votes - so it seems reasonable for the US to hire 10 times as many poll workers? Hand-counting is O(n) i.e. constant per-capita, and it scales horizontally.

Local and state ballots in the US can feature tens of elected positions and propositions, I could imagine hand-counting them to be quite expensive.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#179

Post by jonathanstrange »

salawat wrote: post #172
ElevenLathe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but worry about what this implies for accounting and other financial systems. If we can't trust the voting machines to tell us what the vote totals are, how can we trust the bank computers to tell us who owns what?

Now you're getting it. Trust is the overriding problem, and it is a people problem, not a tech one.

For clarification, my position is that electronic voting is not secure and cannot be made sufficiently secure to safeguard against catastrophic failure and abuse. That's orthogonal to the issue whether voters trust in the voting mechanism, which is also important.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#180

Post by shadowgovt »

teddyh wrote: post #144
jancsika wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most states (I don't have all fifty states' laws in my head) have a sample recount process; they generally trust the machine numbers but they will randomly sample some percent of precincts for a detailed hand-audit count. Any attempt to generally infect electronic systems falls afoul of this back-stop.

In addition, most states have a mechanism by which a candidate can formally challenge the results in a precinct, forcing a hand-recount. This usually has some kind of onus on the requester (I believe in PA for example you have to put up a bounty and if the hand recount results come out to the same result as the previous tabulation the state keeps the bounty as payment for the added cost of the forced audit). However, it is an option (and, most notably, not an option that anyone who claimed shenanigans in 2016 or 2024 exercised).

The problem of election integrity doesn't exist in a vacuum and didn't pop up overnight in 2016; states have been working the issue for a couple centuries and have a pretty good system. But it's a system that requires some detailed statistics and process control theory to understand, so I'm not surprised the median voter doesn't get it. There is, perhaps, a case to be made that for that reason alone we should go to manual, but someone's gonna have to spend the money on that if we're going to do it; it's going to be drastically more expensive than electronically-facilitated counting. And, indeed, people will have to accept that human counters will be less accurate than machine counters (because they're human; we don't train "computers" anymore as a discipline).

Post reply on HN