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Public trust demands open-source voting systems

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Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#231

Post by Spivak »

yachad wrote: post #211
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…

Brown hands typed this comment

I can assure you I am as white as they come, my family being a mix of Quebecois and Irish I'm "wears sunscreen in the winter" pale.

I'm at a loss for why you would assume something about my racial background from my view that voting should be made easy and convenient in a democracy. I'll go even further, in addition to being able to vote digitally you should automatically be registered to vote when you establish residency, voting should be compulsory*, and it should be a national holiday. But outside the bigger picture I selfishly want this because I don't want to bother driving to my polling place when I could voted in less time than it took to type this reply.

* I wouldn't have any punishment for not voting, that would be a huge mess. But I would have it on the books in the hopes that people would follow it simply because it's the law.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#232

Post by AfterHIA »

lynx97 wrote: post #168
AfterHIA wrote: post #123

It might be an aside but it would be, "really groovy" if the general public started to realize that, "democracy" is a way of life and a set of considerations that furthers an open public discourse and attempts to maximize human felicity and reduce cruelty. In an oxymoronic sense it's the public voting on things that actually kills real democracy. https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/Antirepresentationa... https:/…

No. Democracy is not about reducing cruelty, or any other vaguely activists points of views. It is about having people choose where they want to go. It might be that these choices unveil that humanity, statistically speaking, is actually a cruel bunch. And, what you think is cruel, might be just fair to someone else. Democracy is about surfacing the human nature.

I can't edit my previous comment so I'll continue:

This isn't and has never been true in a universal sense. Athens was democratic plutocracy with slaves. The United States didn't have popular democracy until well until the 20th century and it's worth noting that it was the Southern Democrats which wanted to restrict the basic political rights of blacks in the name of, "popular sentiment." The Fukuyamist position which takes a naive view of western democracy as totalizing in a historical sense is being rapidly called into question all over the world. People (almost) universally want the expansion of the their quality of living and political autonomy in a sense which includes but also transcends the ability to cast a paper ballot. We see with Trump that this naive notion has, "serious flaws." In the 1930's the Nazis came to power under a democratically elected conservative government. Democracy means pragmatism. Pragmatism means something about, "having a superior conversation about what we would like to be." The ability to cast a vote is an extension of this sentiment-- it isn't its foundation. We see that in the general experience of the Chinese middle class. They live under a totality but neighborhood associations and not actively being managed by the CCP results in many reporting feeling freer under this system than under ancillaries geopolitically.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#233

Post by tadfisher »

didibus wrote: post #195
tadfisher wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret ballot requirement foils this. Transaction identities are well-known and public; voter identities are secret and unverifiable. Any attempt to link ballots with identities to prevent double-voting also reveals how someone voted.

Crypto identities are anonymous. I don't see the issue?

Crypto identities are identities, as much as human names or Social Security numbers. If you know who the identity represents, then you know that human's transaction history for all time on that blockchain.

Ballots do not have any identifying information, intentionally. There is no tracking number or possible mechanism to de-anonymize a ballot back to the human who cast it. Notably, there is not even a unique identifier for a single ballot that could potentially be used to identify a person.

Most importantly, there is no value that is unique to the ballot that I can use to verify that I am indeed the person who filled it out, so some nefarious organization could threaten me or my family to produce proof of how I voted. Or pay me, or influence me based on the outcome.

So there is no "identity" that you can record in a blockchain to prevent that identity from casting two ballots in the same election.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#234

Post by tadfisher »

didibus wrote: post #210
tadfisher wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, there are several aspects to voting that blockchains don't address: - The Human Identification Problem (not sure if there is a more official name): uniquely identifying a human being. If you solve this, you solve many forms of fraud (anything rooted in identity fraud) and eliminate entire industries dedicated to reducing fraud losses. Best attempt so far has been the Estonian ID system [0]; Sam Altman tried…

Well it would still be the government that gives you a "voter id". That part wouldn't change. It would still be a manual verification of your IDs and what not. But once you have a "voter ID" you actually vote online. I believe you can do this with crypto. It's still anonymous. The government verify you, then give you a signed key that you use to generate your voter ID locally yourself. The network accepts your voter…

As I wrote in the other thread, tying a vote to an ID that is unique per-person violates the secret-ballot requirement.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#235

Post by NekkoDroid »

thadt wrote: post #5

* Opens Github repo * Opens Cargo.lock [1] and pnpm-lock.yaml [2] * Closes Cargo.lock and pnpm-lock.yaml * Goes to find a Tylenol At least with open source we can see the sausage getting made... [1] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/Cargo.lock [2] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/pnpm-lock.y...

> * Goes to find a Tylenol

Watch out that you don't catch the autism :) /s

> [1] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/Cargo.lock

> [2] https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite/blob/main/pnpm-lock.y...

These files are actually cursed and I want all drives that contain their data destroyed with acid. But I have a slight feeling other voting software isn't really any better, even though in theory it should be relatively simple software in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#236

Post by Aloisius »

didibus wrote: post #195
tadfisher wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret ballot requirement foils this. Transaction identities are well-known and public; voter identities are secret and unverifiable. Any attempt to link ballots with identities to prevent double-voting also reveals how someone voted.

Crypto identities are anonymous. I don't see the issue?

Crypto doesn't limit participation, unlike voting.

At some point, one needs determine whether voting transaction 123 by votecoin address 3456 was made by a valid voter and that the voter has only voted once.

So how do you do that? If a central authority does it by say, issuing votecoin addresses to voters or asks voters for their self-generated addresses, then your ballot is no longer secret since they can see exactly who voted for what.

If a voter shares their votecoin address with anyone, then anyone can see how they voted inviting vote buying and pressure schemes.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#237

Post by okanat »

harimau777 wrote: post #208
okanat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That sounds like a solid system! Thanks for explaining! Is there any way to prevent the observers from knowing who votes? I could see a scenario where a party chooses observers that are likely to intimidate potential voters (e.g. KKK members in a majority black polling station).

That's why participation from opposition and actual members of the public in the area of election is important. If you and your friends / family are afraid of intimidation, you show up. Gather as many people as you can as observers. In my countries (of residence), being there is your unalienable right. Nobody can legally kick you out. If 50 black people show up in a station where KKK tries to intimidate them, KKK will back down given an actual democratic state.

If those people still feel unsafe, they are not living in a democracy but under an authoritarian regime. You cannot really have a non-violent, fair democracy under such regime. Democracy isn't just elections. It is creation of bunch of non-elected institutions that guarantee the fairness of the elected stuff. Judicial branch, expert organizations and regulators are all part of it. This has to come from realization that the alternative is violence. Sometimes needed violence. Most resilient democracies in the world like France are direct results of multiple violent events happened because institutions were not capable of striking the balance. Suppressing large swaths of people is just a powder keg. In true democracies, people from all views should have a good mutual understanding that alternative governance systems exist and may even be viable or more stable, but they will be murdering each other and they themselves will eventually be victims to the violence too.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#238

Post by okanat »

makeitdouble wrote: post #225
okanat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a lot to digest for a 7 years old, and you're still brushing over how you do a population survey, count the constituents and how to make that a trustworthy process. My point: reality is messy and simplicity isn't a guarantee of reliability. The things hat really work in our societies are pragmatic, not simple.

Sure. Probably you shouldn't dump it at once but let the 7 year old ask questions one at a time. I think you can still explain it one at a time. I am aware that readers of HN are not 7 year olds.

Now try explaining any kind of encryption system that gives the same level of confidence to a high-scholer or even CS students in as many words as I used in that comment.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#239

Post by nickthegreek »

themafia wrote: post #157
bogwog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.

Ohio has this.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#240

Post by tecoholic »

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

Umm.. I wouldn’t say fine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj9w43p7741o.amp

Things have always been iffy. No one knows for sure.

Edit: That link is the most recent example. Googling for voting machines themselves would bring more examples. Every election cycle we go through reports of malfunctioning, no audit, audit not matching, extra machines appearing, machines being taken around by politically connected, even things like pressing any button on the machine voting for the same party…etc., but ECI has been pushing it aside and refusing to open up. This recent one became an issue because the manipulation (allegedly) went a layer deeper into the voter rolls themselves and they are public data.

We don’t know what’s up with the machines.

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