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

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#251

Post by bruce511 » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

bigbadfeline wrote: post #243

bruce511 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago I attended an international conference on electronic voting. There were various papers on the form of elections (not on specific products.) The huge takeaway for me was not the technology (or lack thereof). Ultimately all existing (and proposed) systems have flaws. The key was public trust in the result. The first step to sidestepping democracy is to attack the legitimacy of elections. One can attack the…

> But in truth being Open Source has no (real) benefit. Software is easy to tweak, Open or not. But that's not the truth though. Open source software is not easy to tweak when it's deterministically compiled using reproducible builds and there are provisions for on-demand inspection of executables and hardware.

We looked hard at this question, but ultimately determined it was as prone to distrust as any other.

Firstly, inspection of code is a very technical skill, so there's a certain amount of reliance on a tiny group here. That tiny group then simply declares whatever they like. Understanding a complex C program, looking for obfuscated behavior is a very specific skill.

Secondly, given the tens of thousands of machines in play it becomes impossible to guarantee the code inspected is the code that runs. The GCC compiler itself, used to build the software could be altered. The kernel of the machine could be altered, and so on.

Yes, ultimately given enough time, it would be possible to detect problems. But getting a report years after the election is fruitless. Also, no doubt, with time, security issues in the OS and code will be retroactively discovered. There will be no way to determine if those flaws were used or not.

In short, you cannot determine veracity or correctness of the machine, in reasonable time. Making the code Open Source does not change this.

And again, it doesn't matter if the code is honest or not. It only matters what people believe. If anything having the code Open just means more opportunity for malicious actors to claim they've "found issues" without being specific.

The issue is not the software. And its not the software license. It's the environment of mistrust coupled with the willingness of people to accept obvious and blatant misinformation. (See vaccines etc).

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#252

Post by bruce511 » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

ruszki wrote: post #222

bruce511 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago I attended an international conference on electronic voting. There were various papers on the form of elections (not on specific products.) The huge takeaway for me was not the technology (or lack thereof). Ultimately all existing (and proposed) systems have flaws. The key was public trust in the result. The first step to sidestepping democracy is to attack the legitimacy of elections. One can attack the…

World went down on a completely different path. New wave authoritarians want to pretend that there is democracy, and they want to keep up the trust, even when elections are not free or fair at all.

I would argue the opposite. Authoritarians promote mistrust in elections (regardless of whether they win or lose.)

In the US for example, distrust is very high. Promoted by accusations of mail-ballot fraud, of illegals voting, by anything at all. This continues despite winning the 2024 elections.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#253

Post by fzeroracer » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

jcarrano wrote: post #20

Just use paper, count by hand, and abolish mail-in ballots and you should be fine.

> abolish mail-in ballots and you should be fine.

There is fundamentally no difference between a mail-in ballot and a ballot you drop at an arbitrary box somewhere.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#254

Post by ruszki » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 6:03 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #252

ruszki wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World went down on a completely different path. New wave authoritarians want to pretend that there is democracy, and they want to keep up the trust, even when elections are not free or fair at all.

I would argue the opposite. Authoritarians promote mistrust in elections (regardless of whether they win or lose.) In the US for example, distrust is very high. Promoted by accusations of mail-ballot fraud, of illegals voting, by anything at all. This continues despite winning the 2024 elections.

Venezuela, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, etc say otherwise.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#255

Post by tzs » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 6:12 AM UTC

jcarrano wrote: post #213

aweiland wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct on the idea maybe, but their implementation schemes are designed to disenfranchise those less likely to vote for them.

I don't believe that. Even in the most backward places where people can barely read they can manage to get an ID. If anything, it would have a leveling effect, by decoupling the voter id from things like driving, which have nothing to do with voting.

You are not correct. See the links in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42116609

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#256

Post by tzs » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

This is a solved problem, but for reasons I don't understand it has only been used in a few elections. Do this:

• Use paper ballots that are marked by the voter filling in ovals next to the name of the candidate or proposition they are voting for using a marker supplied by the election officials.

• These paper ballots can be hand counted or counted by simple optical scan machines that are already widely in use in many places.

• By using some clever chemistry in the ink when you print the ballots and in the marker used to mark it you can print a code in each of the ovals that is invisible until the oval is filled in using that special marker.

By using some clever cryptographic techniques to come up with those invisible codes you can make a system with the following properties.

1. After the election all of the cast ballots can be published, allowing anyone to do an independent recount.

2. Any individual voter after the election can, if they noted the code that was on their ballot for a particular candidate, verify that their particular ballot was included in the count and that their vote counted toward the correct candidate.

3. An individual cannot prove to a third party that they voted for a particular candidate.

Here is a paper on such a system: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf

Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity

Here is a paper showing how it satisfies item #3: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#257

Post by like_any_other » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:09 AM UTC

rstuart4133 wrote: post #215

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.

> I agree that paper ballots are better, You didn't define how paper ballots are better. Given that many electronic systems print paper ballots, I'm not sure how they could be said to be universally better. Electronic ballots can be much better than paper in two ways. Firstly, they are faster to count. I'm not sure why that matters, but it's true and seem people seem to think knowing the outcome quickly is important.…

Pharaos had to run a footrace to prove they were still fit to rule, meanwhile we sacrifice the security of our voting system so that the most feeble and feeble-minded among us can vote. In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. Then we complain how foolishly the public votes, and how easily they are swayed.

What a farce.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#258

Post by 1718627440 » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 7:39 AM UTC

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?

By having enough banks, so you can switch and having a regulatory authority inspecting banks?

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#259

Post by rstuart4133 » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

like_any_other wrote: post #257

rstuart4133 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that paper ballots are better, You didn't define how paper ballots are better. Given that many electronic systems print paper ballots, I'm not sure how they could be said to be universally better. Electronic ballots can be much better than paper in two ways. Firstly, they are faster to count. I'm not sure why that matters, but it's true and seem people seem to think knowing the outcome quickly is important.…

Pharaos had to run a footrace to prove they were still fit to rule, meanwhile we sacrifice the security of our voting system so that the most feeble and feeble-minded among us can vote. In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. Then we complain how foolishly the public votes, and how easily they are swayed. What a farce.

> In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote.

It depends on what you are after I guess, but it's almost certain that if the USA has compulsory voting Trump would not have won the last election. The people who don't usually vote; the feeble-minded as you call them, pull the vote toward the centre. Whatever Trump may be, he doesn't represent the centre of politics.

If the current USA polls are any indication, most USA voters are now wistfully thinking what might have been, had a system that forced those feeble-minded voters to get off their arses and vote been in place back in November.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#260

Post by arielcostas » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 8:14 AM UTC

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?

They are until you need to verify them and ensure nobody owns multiple identities. The following must be true:

- We should know whether you may vote (you are a citizen, over the legal voting age, and haven't been taken away that right because of a crime, etc.) - We should know whether you did or didn't cast a vote (to prevent you from voting twice) - We should NOT know who you voted for - You should be able to know the votes are counted towards the party intended

You can't solve that with crypto, since you need a way of proving your identity, while at the same time making the payload anonymous and not traceable back to you.