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Public trust demands open-source voting systems

voting.works

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Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#261

Post by arielcostas »

raincole wrote: post #150
estimator7292 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same in Spain. In fact if any count is challenged, the electoral authorities hold public recounts of the ballots a couple of days after the election

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#262

Post by arielcostas »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #235
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…

Maybe the solution is to have no software at all. Software can't be really audited at scale, human actions can

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#263

Post by arielcostas »

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).

Representatives from multiple parties are there, and there is at least a police officer nearby in case something happens. The people doing the intimidation could be kindly asked to leave, or not-so-kindly made to leave.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#264

Post by Terr_ »

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.

Hardly: History shows the repeated failure of the alternative, where only the "qualified" may vote.

Terrible people just corrupt the qualification-mechanism instead. That evil tactic tends to be more-effective and longer-lasting than trying to appeal to the lazy-stupid vote.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#265

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #162
teddyh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That pretty much undermines the entire concept of unit and integration testing. If you're saying we should be writing voting machine code in ML and keeping the firmware in Fort Knox, I'm going to make the argument that it's a lot cheaper to do sampled hand-counts to check against machine error or tampering... Which we already do.

> That pretty much undermines the entire concept of unit and integration testing.

It doesn't because even with unit and integration testing, software still fails and get hacked/exploited on a regular basis. What's worse with software voting is that a single good exploit could affect all the votes.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#266

Post by oneshtein »

bruce511 wrote: post #251
bigbadfeline wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Problem of distrust cannot be solved completely, but probability of cheating can be reduced significantly by using multiple independent vendors of voting machines, better if they are from different countries, AND using paper ballots, so voters will have choice.

Don't put all eggs into a single basket.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#267

Post by teddyh »

shadowgovt wrote: post #180
teddyh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, for…

> they will randomly sample some percent of precincts for a detailed hand-audit count.

This places a lot of trust in that “random” selection.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#268

Post by benadida »

Hey there, I'm the founder of VotingWorks, happy to answer questions.

We should have made it clear in that post that our voting system is not just open-source, it's also always paper ballots, mostly filled out by hand, sometimes by ballot-marking devices for voters who need or choose it.

Many good points in the thread about open-source not being enough. Indeed! But open-source is, in my opinion, necessary for public trust. Not sufficient, but necessary.

Reproducible builds – we hope to get there in the not-too-distant future!

Attestation – yes we have that! there's a quick and hardware-TPM-rooted way to check that a VotingWorks paper-ballot tabulator has not been modified since it left the VotingWorks floor. Takes 30 seconds, with a QR code on screen that contains all the attestation data and digital signature, unlocked only on successful secure boot.

Also, the build of the system from source is not done by us, it's done by a third-party testing lab, accredited by the Election Assistance Commission. States that want to can request the installation medium straight from the lab and install it themselves.

And if you want more, I spoke recently at USENIX security about what it takes to build a voting machine everyone can trust. It's a lot more about resiliency engineering than security.

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity25/presentat...

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#270

Post by shadowgovt »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #265
shadowgovt wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That pretty much undermines the entire concept of unit and integration testing. If you're saying we should be writing voting machine code in ML and keeping the firmware in Fort Knox, I'm going to make the argument that it's a lot cheaper to do sampled hand-counts to check against machine error or tampering... Which we already do.

> That pretty much undermines the entire concept of unit and integration testing. It doesn't because even with unit and integration testing, software still fails and get hacked/exploited on a regular basis. What's worse with software voting is that a single good exploit could affect all the votes.

It really can't. What is the mechanism by which it could? Different states use different machines and each individual machine is airgapped. A general supply chain attack would show up in statistical sampling audits (i e. hand recounts of small numbers of ballots, which we already do).
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