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

Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

news.err.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 144 posts

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#21

Post by rimantas »

Lewisham wrote: post #5
josephlord wrote: post #2

How does a voter or independent voter know that the code that has been verified is actually running on the machine that they connect to? You have to trust the sys admins. And as we all know: something is trusted if it can break your security policy.

All voting systems that I know of require trust, with or without machines. Do you trust the person counting your ballot to count correctly? There's a district in the UK that prides itself on always being the first to return results. I would be fairly worried about the ballot counters there. Eventually someone has to trust someone to execute correctly. Unless there's some voting system I'm not aware of that doesn't re…

There usually are representatives of various political parties at each polling station during elections in my country. How do you watch electroing vote counting? How do you recount in case of doubt?

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#22

Post by rimantas »

pwr wrote: post #15

Sadly many of the identifiers are named in estonian. Limiting this project to estonian developers only. I'm aware that this is _estonians_ voting system, but i'm sure there are developers all around the world who would be interested in contributing (especially security audits would be interesting) to this project without the necessity to reverse engineering/translating the code.

Must be Estonian thing. I had to deal with the system that was also born in Estonia but went international later. Estonian comments and names did not make it easier.

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#23

Post by josephlord »

Lewisham wrote: post #5
josephlord wrote: post #2

How does a voter or independent voter know that the code that has been verified is actually running on the machine that they connect to? You have to trust the sys admins. And as we all know: something is trusted if it can break your security policy.

All voting systems that I know of require trust, with or without machines. Do you trust the person counting your ballot to count correctly? There's a district in the UK that prides itself on always being the first to return results. I would be fairly worried about the ballot counters there. Eventually someone has to trust someone to execute correctly. Unless there's some voting system I'm not aware of that doesn't re…

There are a number of checks that can (and are) put in place in physical paper based elections that mean large scale collusion is needed to make large scale fraud work.

1) Observers at polling stations.

2) Sealed ballot boxes.

3) Observers from many parties and neutrals at counts.

4) Physical votes retained and recountable.

It isn't going to be completely secure but if you measure the systems security by how few people you could rig an election with it is an order of magnitude harder [edit: to rig].

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#24

Post by revelation »

Lewisham wrote: post #5
josephlord wrote: post #2

How does a voter or independent voter know that the code that has been verified is actually running on the machine that they connect to? You have to trust the sys admins. And as we all know: something is trusted if it can break your security policy.

All voting systems that I know of require trust, with or without machines. Do you trust the person counting your ballot to count correctly? There's a district in the UK that prides itself on always being the first to return results. I would be fairly worried about the ballot counters there. Eventually someone has to trust someone to execute correctly. Unless there's some voting system I'm not aware of that doesn't re…

Thats why any person can act as an observer if they so wish and oversee the person counting your ballot. I can not possibly do the same with a turing machine.

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#25

Post by josephlord »

Anderkent wrote: post #7
Lewisham wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All voting systems that I know of require trust, with or without machines. Do you trust the person counting your ballot to count correctly? There's a district in the UK that prides itself on always being the first to return results. I would be fairly worried about the ballot counters there. Eventually someone has to trust someone to execute correctly. Unless there's some voting system I'm not aware of that doesn't re…

There are theoretical cryptographic systems where each voter can verify that his vote was counted properly, without revealing his vote to anyone. I don't think any have been implemented in practice.

That in itself is a problem because the ability for the voter to prove who they voted for opens them to coercion or bribery. Although doing it online (or by post) opens that risk anyway.

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#26

Post by revelation »

mzf wrote: post #19
Anderkent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are theoretical cryptographic systems where each voter can verify that his vote was counted properly, without revealing his vote to anyone. I don't think any have been implemented in practice.

The voters can check their votes by following method: http://www.vvk.ee/public/Verification_of_I-Votes.pdf

That doesn't verify anything. They are shuffling encrypted data between devices, but none of that is connected to the actual results. This isn't verification, it's smoke and mirrors.

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#27

Post by halviti »

technimad wrote: post #4

No matter how open the code is. It is extremly hard, if not impossible, to ensure this code is running on the actual systems. E-voting sounds intersting in theory, but in practice it is basically not worth the trouble. It is way more complex than a regular system with ballots and the only gain is that the results can be published sooner.

(1) Even the simplest paper ballots are already counted by computer (central tabulators). Central tabulators that run on insecure computers and do all of their math using the most rudimentary microsoft access databases (no password protection, little user control, remote access via dial-up modem).

(2) Slot machines are already protecting millions upon millions of dollars from countless people who would love to be able to modify those machines' behavior.

(3) A backup-paper trail would reduce error and allow for recounts. You vote, a receipt gets printed, you confirm that the printed paper represents your vote, and you're done. (The paper stays with the election commission)

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#28

Post by Already__Taken »

relix wrote: post #17
DanBC wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has had problems with fathers using the votes of everyone in their family via postal voting. I'd be interested to see if electronic voting fixes that, or makes it worse.

It fixes it somewhat, depending how far the person will go to claim those votes: iirc you get a week to vote, and the last vote you make counts. So even though your father might stand next to you and watch as you vote for his candidate, you can always recast your vote later. This doesn't solve the problem in case the person keeps an eye on you from the time you voted until the deadline, or steals your ID card until a…

You can build in some tolerances of this to the system like you say cast vote at any time however surely at some point these people must call the police about their situation. Technology can't fix this issue it can only kid of accomodate it.

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#29

Post by lazyjones »

DanBC wrote: post #8
relix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with that last sentence though. It's not more complex because you don't need to spread booths all around the country, get volunteers to sit a whole day at the booths, secure the ballots, count the ballots, recount the ballots, etc... It takes a lot of logistics to do papervoting and it's probably more expensive too, compared to a centralized datacenter. They probably still have booths for people without…

The UK has had problems with fathers using the votes of everyone in their family via postal voting. I'd be interested to see if electronic voting fixes that, or makes it worse.

Austria allegedly has a problem with nursing homes getting many (mail) votes for the parties who have political influence on staff decisions. I can imagine that there are similar problems everywhere, but electronic votes might cause much bigger issues because it's too easy for ruling parties to manipulate the central systems where votes are stores/counted (they were planned to be deployed in the interior ministry here, the one held by Ernst Strasser [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Strasser#2011_cash_for_i...] for 4 years).

Re: Estonian E-Voting Source Code Made Public

#30

Post by bragh »

pwr wrote: post #15

Sadly many of the identifiers are named in estonian. Limiting this project to estonian developers only. I'm aware that this is _estonians_ voting system, but i'm sure there are developers all around the world who would be interested in contributing (especially security audits would be interesting) to this project without the necessity to reverse engineering/translating the code.

Not only identifiers, but comments and log messages too. I guess the code doesn't hold up to the high opinion I had of Cybernetica AS.
Post reply on HN