81–90 of 532 posts
A single compromise once can have incredibly bad long term consequences for the majority of a ruling elite gain power indefinitely.
I agree with the risks, the overall theme being it's much easier to potentially manipulate a million internet votes than physical. In other worlds, internet vote manipulation scales significantly more than physical. But I could make the argument with any high trust internet system. Let's take another high trust activity we do on the internet - banking. Internet banking gives a hacker the ability to steal millions whi…
Bank fraud happens all of the time and at scale. However, it is entirely insurable and reversible.
Election fraud is not reversible. Trust cannot be restored in the way that a bank account can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US overwhelmingly uses paper voting (often paired with electronic tabulation). We can't "move back", it's where we are. Electronic tabulation introduces little risk when the ballots are paper.
Yep, I believe Louisiana is the only US state that does electronic voting without a paper trail. [1] And not all paper systems are good either. I'm sure everyone remembers the disaster that was the punch card system used by Florida in the 2000 election... [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state
The thing about paper ballots is that the ways to cheat with them are well-known ("finding" ballots in the trunk of a car, "losing" ballot boxes on the way to the counting center, counting the ballots behind locked doors with observers not present, and so on), and have been well known for centuries. So the counters to them (ballot boxes sealed with an official seal once full, only sealed ballot boxes will be opened a…
It got made into a 1992 movie called "An American Story" (which covers many things, the Battle of Athens being just one of them). I have no idea how accurate the movie is (I know it's not 100% accurate, but how much it changed I don't know).
The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…
What if some level of efficiency (not necessarily internet) improves turnout and participation?
The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…
> We should move back to paper voting. We already use paper voting. If you mean go back to a time before voting machines, then I fear that would actually reduce trust because the amount of tabulation errors, data entry, and spoilt ballots would skyrocket. The only people who are increasing doubt in voting machine are the same people who are trying to disenfranchise voters and not accepting the results of past electio…
I believe the piece we're missing is the government (citizen?) service which issues (manages, replaces, revokes) constituents' cryptographic tokens for use with such things. Then our voting systems could be electronic, secure, open, verifiable, and mostly private; assuming effective oversight / this organization does not issue fraudulent tokens or leak keys or identities (big assumption, but I don't think it's imposs…
Another reason (besides what I mentioned in another post below) why such a secure system will never see the light, even if we can technically build it, is that the average person will start to question: why do we still need to vote for representatives if we have such a system in place? Can't we as citizens vote directly on bills/acts? Which makes sense since the current system was designed before all these tech and connectivity.
The thing about paper ballots is that the ways to cheat with them are well-known ("finding" ballots in the trunk of a car, "losing" ballot boxes on the way to the counting center, counting the ballots behind locked doors with observers not present, and so on), and have been well known for centuries. So the counters to them (ballot boxes sealed with an official seal once full, only sealed ballot boxes will be opened a…
I strongly disagree. If the system is transparent enough and provides mechanisms for verification and control - No reason to distrust it. I would prefer a system where even in 20 years I can go online and check how my vote was counted in older elections - this way stealing my vote would be impossible. The issue is how to preserve privacy...
Understandable, but then vote-buying becomes possible. The reason vote-buying is impossible in a secret ballot is because you can't prove how you voted to anyone else. If you can look up your own ballot even five minutes after it's dropped into the box, then you can show your screen to someone else who then hands you $100 for voting the right way, and elections change from being "who has persuaded the most voters?" into "who has the most money to buy votes with?"
Tom Scott made a solid video on this years ago[0]. I would love to go back to paper elections, even with all its problems (hanging chads anyone?). Let's make attack scaling as difficult as possible. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…
If efficiency is low enough to significantly affect turn out, you cannot trust the results.
> We should move back to paper voting.
Nowhere in the US is electronic voting used from what I know of. Estonia is the only country I know of that does internet voting, but my info could be out of date.