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

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

#461

Post by Nursie »

themafia wrote: post #438
Nursie wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay the fine or spoil your paper. If significant numbers do this, it will be reported publicly. As it is though, people tend to vote for one of the parties on offer, of which there are many. And as it's also preference voting, Australia is not stuck in the trap of "better vote for A or B will get in" either. You can vote for C, with a fallback to D, E and F before putting in A as a back-stop.

> it will be reported publicly. Does this manifest as any real political outcome?

Who knows? The numbers that choose to take this action are pretty small so there’s no particular driver for any political reaction. Turns out if you make people show up, most of them decide they do want to vote.

We also have a lot of choice of parties here which helps. Shame the same 2 majors keep getting in but the smaller parties and independents do take some seats.

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

#462

Post by yonaguska »

direwolf20 wrote: post #433
somenameforme wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What's wrong with that?

People were being unknowingly registered to vote, even if they weren't eligible to vote when they would get IDs. People move. They get sent ballots. Now you have tons of ballots that aren't really valid, but they're out there and usable. It makes illegal ballot harvesting a lot easier as well if there's no active step where the ballot must be requested. I have to request my ballot every election. it takes 5 minutes, I can do it online and I assert that I'm a citizen and am eligible to vote. I can also do that by mail and I get a mailer to do so. There's no reason to not implement that safeguard.

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

#463

Post by jayknight »

tonymet wrote: post #20

paper & pen has tremendous value as a recording mechanism. Although it's slower at counting and indexing, it is far better at reproducibility and durability: * records last > 500 years with no electricity . corruption is obvious at first glance. ( bad records don't appear to be good). * counting is easily distributed by number of workers * readily visually inspected with no special tools . ideal for auditing * record…

My state uses a system that I think is the best of most worlds. You check in at one table, they give you a "receipt" that you give to another table who trades that for a little card. The card isn't linked to you at all and it gives you access to a voting machine. You enter your choices into the machine, which prints out a paper ballot that you can review and verify before putting it into the box as you leave. So, your vote is recorded by the voting machine for quick tallying, but your vote is also recorded on paper that is human and machine readable for verifiable re-counts if needed.

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

#464

Post by robomartin »

habinero wrote: post #416
what wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has trouble getting an ID. You need an ID to drive, to work, to open a bank account, to buy liquor or tobacco, etc. The idea that someone can’t get an ID is absolute nonsense.

It's not. Plenty of people do none of those things.

Not a problem. We should pay for them to get proper identification. This is likely an infinitesimally small percentage of the population qualified to vote. As the other commenter said, you need identification for most important things in life. Yet, again, if someone does not have ID and they want to vote, it should be easy and free. If they can't drive, we pay for an Uber. If they don't understand the process, we pay for a coach. Etc. This is the kind of process that reduces to zero over time. If you process 100K people on year one, there might only be a couple of thousand people the following year...and down to zero it goes.

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

#465

Post by abdullahkhalids »

creata wrote: post #413
crote wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Election security should not hinge on a "trust me bro" - especially when people are being convinced the other way by Russian propaganda talking heads on social media. Manual counting requires zero trust. In my country anyone is welcome to observe the entire process from start to finish, if they wish to do so. A few years back a fringe far-right party tried importing the voting integrity distrust over here, and recrui…

Don't these two situations (watching vote counts; understanding a complicated statistical argument that the vote is tamper-free) require the same kind of trust? 1. In both cases, everyone is theoretically capable of checking it themselves; they're theoretically zero-trust. In the former scenario, I'm theoretically capable of attending the vote count, and in the latter scenario, I'm theoretically capable of learning t…

You are correct on both points, which you elucidated well. Let's me differentiate the two systems based on "who-to-trust".

- The observe-system operates on an adversarial basis. The people observing the voting process are state officer, independent observer, each party's observers. If you vote for party X, then you trust that party and its people to do right by you. This include trust party X's observer, who additionally is often a local well-known person. You can actively distrust all the other observers and officers, and as long as your observer gives the A-Okay, you are happy with the result. This trust in your observer is a very simple human kind of trust. No expertise is needed by your observer. If you trust other observers, your trust in the result goes even higher.

- The stats-system is founding its trust in the trustworthiness of the stats experts. The problem is that (1) you don't know the stats expert personally. In fact, a huge chunk of the population in any country doesn't know anyone who is good enough at maths and stats. If people in your family are not the math type, your friends will also not be the math type. (2) It is incredibly easy to sling mud at the expertise and trustworthiness of an expert. This process is operating at a very high level these days on social media. Anyone remotely connected to politics is continuously character assassinated by others. Adopting a stats-system actually will actually increase this mud slinging to new heights.

The observe-system is better because as someone else has said, all the counters and anti-counters to it have been known for 100s of years. Breaking it requires breking 100s or 1000s of polling stations across the country. The stats-system has more central points of trust which can be broken more easily.

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

#466

Post by robomartin »

baggy_trough wrote: post #236
defrost wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing. Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct. This is hard to scale up into the hundreds. WRT mail-in ballots, these are common place in Australia. You post in a provided envelope to the AEC address, that outer enve…

> Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct. You are wrong. In person voting in the sanctity of the private voting booth prevents this.

You arguing with the wrong person. I am saying that we need to go to in-person paper ballots.

The comment you responded to was about the scenario of someone getting a bunch of ballots and filling them out at home or making their household fill them out at home the way he or she might want to.

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

#467

Post by robomartin »

mr_toad wrote: post #229
robomartin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong perspective. The minute votes go into the mail system there is no way to know just how many mail-in votes might be subject to fraud. In other words, your characterization has no basis in evidence. Note that I am not asserting that massive fraud has been committed anywhere. That statement would be as impossible to support with evidence as yours. The only thing you can state with absolute certainty is…

> There's absolutely nothing to prevent me from filling out all eight of them as I see fit and mailing them. Nothing. Until the other seven people try and cast votes.

Think that through for a moment.

Hint: They never see the ballots.

My point wasn't to paint a water-proof scenario. It is to illustrate just how unreliable and dangerous mail-in voting can be. There are other vectors for manipulation.

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

#468

Post by HaZeust »

bluGill wrote: post #439
HaZeust wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also do this today by telling someone to take a picture of their vote by smartphone or you'll shoot them. Millions post a picture of their ballot on high-energy political forums every 2 years already. This hypothetical is unhelpful.

Where I live phone use is not allowed in the room where the voting is

And "sharing proof of your internet vote" would not be allowed either. Doesn't matter, they have the same problem.

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

#469

Post by HaZeust »

luxcem wrote: post #402
HaZeust wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also do this today by telling someone to take a picture of their vote by smartphone or you'll shoot them. Millions post a picture of their ballot on high-energy political forums every 2 years already. This hypothetical is unhelpful.

Where I live, ballot are a piece of paper slipped into an envelope (not sealed). It's mandatory to take at least two different ballots before entering a voting booth. You can take a picture with one ballot inside the envelope and switch before leaving the booth.

That's pretty cool.

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

#470

Post by the_snooze »

galago wrote: post #389
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgia made sure African Americans had crowded long line voting locations with no access to water. It wasn’t hard to figure out why they were doing that. The South is still pretty racist.

I observed this in New England while living in a city with evenly distributed population. The polling locations were more abundant in the wealthier side of the city. This may not have been straight racism; there was no way for me to determine why this was the case. Looking at a map of median income and polling locations made it pretty obvious to me at least that polling location choice was biased.

It could be as simple as "wealthy areas get more county services." There are practical considerations when choosing polling places, like the availability of parking and enough space to accommodate a line, check-in tables, voting booths, and ideally separate entrance and exit doors. Public schools and county rec centers are go-to locations because the county (who administers the election) already owns them and they have the space needed. Churches are great too, but they require having an agreement with a private organization.
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