This is usually a smart crowd. I’m utterly mystified at the number of comments in this thread confidently stating that the US must go back to paper ballots when 99% of the country already uses them. It just takes a quick google search to know this.
Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
261–270 of 532 posts
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#262>Voters should not be able to prove to anyone else how they voted – the technical term is “receipt-free” – otherwise an attacker could build an automated system of mass vote-buying via the internet. But receipt-free E2E-VIV systems are complicated and counterintuitive for people to use.
This can easily solved be done via letting people forge receipts. Then anyone can forge a vote to give to someone offering to buy them.
The receipt is in fact the best part of such systems as with paper voting it is impossible to verify if your ballot was counted or if it got "lost."
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
P.S. On the subject of counting ballots behind closed doors, look up Athens, TN in 1946 if you haven't heard about it before. It's a fascinating story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29 has a very long account, but the short version is: the sheriff of McMinn County was widely believed to be cheating on ballots by, among other things, having his deputies count the ballots behind closed doors. I…
There's a town in Alabama that skipped elections for 60 years; they'd just hand it off to a buddy. Someone finally registered to run and won by default, so ten days later they had a secret do-over to avoid a Black mayor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbern,_Alabama#Mayoral_dispu...
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Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people spend time making their selections on the computer, then compare every single selection on the print out? Deniers could say the computer randomly prints votes to skew in certain candidate/party direction knowing not everyone would catch it. all it would take is one person saying their printed ballot does not match their specific selection, and the whole thing would become chaos.
The person you replied to is talking about ballots that are just on paper, filled in with a pen, and scanned. So there's no computer making printouts.
Same but different issues. Now you have to know that the dots were filled in correctly to be readable. Having someone make an obvious attempt at selection but not readable by the reader is also problematic. No reason to not count their vote. You may laugh about not being able to do it correctly, but it happens.
Only if the scantron shows that each position on the ballot was counted and the voter is not allowed to leave until the person monitoring the scan confirms with the voter their ballot was scanned would this give confidence. Any issues with the scan, and the voter is allowed to correct the issue. There should never be an issue of reading the ballot by the scanner as an acceptable outcome.
of course, all of this is assuming in person voting only
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#265>Voters should not be able to prove to anyone else how they voted – the technical term is “receipt-free” – otherwise an attacker could build an automated system of mass vote-buying via the internet. But receipt-free E2E-VIV systems are complicated and counterintuitive for people to use. This can easily solved be done via letting people forge receipts. Then anyone can forge a vote to give to someone offering to buy th…
then it's not a proof of who you voted for
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such a weird argument. I've never met anybody with a sledgehammer threatening votes. Feels like a willfully absurd excuse to avoid having an audit trail in elections.
Then you haven’t lived under a dictatorship. It might not be a sledgehammer, but breaking voter secrecy and pressuring people to vote the “right” way is very much a thing.
Can you actually back this up? I have seen this argument before thrown around like dogma, even though I have NEVER seen it in the modern world.
The closest I can think of is rare cases like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#267Earlier 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.
> We can't "move back", it's where we are. vote by mail (and similar ballot harvesting, bulk ballot dropoffs with hazy chain-of-custody as from a nursing homes and immigrant communities) are new, based on paper, and open to abuse. It's not where we were. traditional absentee balloting was a small scale thing used by college students, military personnel, etc. and if it was messed up, it was not likely to change outcom…
> open to abuse.
This claim is frequently made and never backed job with any compelling evidence.
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#268I live in an economy where people vote with pencils on paper in cardboard booths and at scalable cost, it just works. Obviously the cost also has to scale linearly for the 200+m voter economies, and time becomes a factor, but for community acceptance I still think paper and pen/pencil beats machine hands down. (this is Australia. we have compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your…
The problem, as I understand it, is that if you can prove to yourself that your vote was counted right, you can also prove it to the guy with the sledgehammer next to you saying "it would be a shame if something happened to your family, so prove how you voted"...
Proving that you voted is different than proving you voted for a specific candidate.
In fact, the one isn't nearly as big of a privacy concern (if any at all). I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me the former could be done with some XOR scheme, but proving that both you voted and your vote counted for a specific candidate while keeping that a secret is a much more difficult task
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose I'm an optimist. I believe it is possible to create a secure online voting system. My life savings might be held at Fidelity, Merrill, or elsewhere, my banking is online, 90% of my shopping is online and it all has "good enough" security. Plus most banks seem to be well behind the state of the art in security. I believe with the technologies we have available today, we could create a secure, immutable, audi…
People of limited technical ability can understand the checks and balances of a paper voting system, which legitimizes outcomes. No digital voting system I'm aware of has this characteristic.
They can't understand the cybersecurity of a banking app either yet they use those.
Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Because you can’t make me sign my ballot? Because without my signature the ballot is void. I can also show up in person to cure my vote if you force me to sign it at home btw. It’s not impossible - I won’t deny it. But we haven’t had any substantial evidence despite the current administration trying to claim otherwise. If we are to roll back mail in ballot, let’s also make voter ID free and easy, and also make Electi…
Ballot harvesting is a thing. Activists “kindly” “help” the elderly and dementia addled fill out their ballots.