Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

blog.citp.princeton.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 532 posts

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#311

Post by somenameforme »

badestrand wrote: post #237
golem14 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

By that logic we have to get rid of mail-in voting as well because there could always be a sledgehammer guy standing next to someone in their own home.

In reality sledgehammer guy is never the threat, it's somebody fabricating votes. This can be done in a completely illegal fashion as in complete identity fraud, legally grey areas like ballot harvesting, or more socially palatable forms of identity fraud like somebody voting on behalf of family members who would not otherwise be voting.

And the biggest problem of this all is that it's basically impossible to prove because there's no meaningful identifier at any given point in the process. The only real evidence you'd have is a bad signature, yet in 2020 some states ceased comparing signatures and signature comparison was, in general, bizarrely under attack by certain interest groups.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#312

Post by energy123 »

gpt5 wrote: post #5

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…

Yes, and this isn't a tech problem. It's a civics problem. Being secure is necessary but insufficient. We need to be maximally impervious to false allegations of insecurity. Having an election process that's comprehensible and transparent is part of that.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#313

Post by endgame »

golem14 wrote: post #142
ggm wrote: post #3

I 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"...

There are some really clever systems that let you prove that you voted without leaking how you voted.

Unfortunately, explaining them to Joe Q. Public in such a way that he's going to trust your election is a very tough sell, whereas counting paper is a much easier process to explain.

And that's before you begin worrying that the developer of your whizz-bang mathematically-provable voting system is a) going to win the bid to build it for the government, b) implements it correctly, and c) isn't subverted while doing so.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#314

Post by somenameforme »

godelski wrote: post #279
zamadatix wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do think so, but there is also a material difference in needing to be intimidated at the time of the vote being cast vs any point in the future as well.

I think the bigger concern is that mail in ballots lead to fake ballots being submitted. Though I've seen no convincing evidence of this happening at any meaningful scale and the arguments seem unconvincing since you don't get a ballot unless verified with a state ID and your ballot has a unique ID associated with your name, preventing a double spend. Personally, my concern is that with mail in ballots some nutjob th…

In 2020 a number of states were sending out mail-in ballots to every single registered voter, even if they didn't request it. Those states were CA, CO, DC, HI, NJ, NV, OR, UT, VT, and WA. [1]

[1] - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#315

Post by shushpanchik »

EGreg wrote: post #266
pdpi wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are lots of reported cases in Russia, when your manager requires you to take photo of your paper ballot and show it to them, otherwise you have problems.

You can try to google-translate [this, for example](https://holod.media/2024/03/08/soprotivlenie-putinu/#h-3-%D0...)

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#316

Post by creata »

xp84 wrote: post #289
ggm wrote: post #3

I 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…

At this point the main problem here is one of trust either way. Most Americans, of any party affiliation, believe that one party’s officials are presiding over a vast conspiracy to steal every election. The Left thinks the GOP is intimidating real citizens who happen to be immigrants from voting by trying to pass laws for proof of identity, and the Right thinks Democrats are trucking in illegals to stuff the ballot b…

There's plenty of evidence of voter suppression in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#317

Post by endgame »

badestrand wrote: post #237
golem14 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

By that logic we have to get rid of mail-in voting as well because there could always be a sledgehammer guy standing next to someone in their own home.

Yes. Here's a 2014 BBC article about that:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26487418

The article quotes one Mr Richard Mawrey QC:

> "Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud… on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability."

> "Now I know that there is a very strong political desire to keep the present system. What I'm saying is that if you keep the present system, then however many safeguards you create, fraud and serious fraud is inevitably going to continue because that is built into the system."

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#318

Post by somenameforme »

pdpi wrote: post #253
zug_zug wrote: post #249

Earlier 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.

In the sort of scenario you're talking about the dictator doesn't care how people vote. 'The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.' If he has such a lack of control that a mere election, which is to be counted fairly, could have him leave power, then it'd be somewhat farcical to declare him a dictator with all the connotations such a term implies.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#319

Post by autoexec »

dylan604 wrote: post #264
zerocrates wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

Checking each ballot for completeness sounds like a good improvement to the system. Right now people are just expected to mark carefully and double-check their work before feeding their ballot into the machine and request a new ballot if they mess up.

It might slow things down a little bit, but making sure that the machine can detect a vote for each race/question (even if it's just "Abstain") would make sure people didn't forget to fill out something and help prevent the fill-in-the-bubble equivalent of hanging chads.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#320

Post by somenameforme »

vineyardmike wrote: post #274
zug_zug wrote: post #249

Earlier 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.

I agree with the other comment about dictators and similar threatening voters, but at a mundane level: domestic violence. People do, in fact, threaten or coerce their spouse and that extends to voting. Being able to audit from a secure counting room and being able to produce an always-available-online permanent record is different.

You haven't in any way prevented this scenario. Somebody could just as well demand that their spouse take a photo or video of their vote. Yeah no cameras allowed in the voting booth is a rule, but it's not like it's enforced or even realistically enforceable.
Post reply on HN