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Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

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Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#101
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expensive Where in the US do you find it's difficult for people to get an ID? Where is it not? What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier? What constitutes an ID being expensive? Nearly every country in the world requires proof of citizenship to vote. How…

> What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier? Not the OP, but except for passports (and passport cards)... there isn't really any federal-level ID in the US (and passport booklets/cards are expensive , just a bit over $100 IIRC). The nearest equivalent in the state level are driver's licenses, which are also on the expensive side considering the an…

> most states do not have a per se ID

I haven't researched this thoroughly, but what state will not issue an ID that is equivalent in every way to a driver's license except that it isn't a license to drive? I just checked Mississippi, Wyoming, South Dakota, and West Virginia, all of which do, so clearly being rural, poor, or both isn't enough to stop states from doing it. (The detailed politics are, as you say, a mess.)

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#102
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many states these are available without proof of citizenship. When people say proof of citizenship they usually mean a passport or REALID.

Most state-issued Real IDs don't count as proof of citizenship under the SAVE Act. https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/will-save-act-allo...

Under the SAVE act, you kind of have to have a passport or don't vote in some states.

Which is why I'm pretty sure it's not gonna pass. Both republicans and democrats depend heavily on mass votes from, let's just say, a lot of people who are, generally speaking, not the sort to have passports.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#103
post #12

I don't care how much maths and encryption you use, you can't get out of the fact that things can be anonymous (no one can know how you voted) or verifiable (people can prove that you only voted once) but not both. - Switzerland usually gets around this by knowing where everyone lives and mailing them a piece of paper 'something you have' - South Africa gets around this by putting ink on your fingernail I've read qui…

You can have e-voting systems that protect ballot secrecy and are verifiable. You can use homomorphic encryption or mixnets to prove that: 1) all valid votes were counted 2) no invalid votes were added 3) the totals for each candidate is correct And you can do that without providing proof of who any particular voter voted for. A few such systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting https://www.belenios.org/ A…

> You can have e-voting systems that protect ballot secrecy and are verifiable.

In these systems the voter cannot verify that their vote was secret as they cannot understand, and much less verify the voting machine.

> And you can do that without providing proof of who any particular voter voted for.

Which is good for preventing the sale of votes, but keeps things obscure in a magical and correct box.

How can I tell the machine didn't alter my vote if it cannot tell me, and just me, who I voted for? The global sanity checks are worthless if the machine changed my vote as I entered it.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#104
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, I am in favor of in-person voting requiring proof of citizenship I think this is fine if it also then means that obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens. This is where such arguments tend to get stuck in the US. If you require proof of citizenship, but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expen…

> but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expensive Where in the US do you find it's difficult for people to get an ID? Where is it not? What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier? What constitutes an ID being expensive? Nearly every country in the world requires proof of citizenship to vote. How…

Until 1986[1] most Americans didn't get a Social Security Number until their first job.

In The Matrix (1999) there's a scene where Agent Smith explicitly remarks that Neo has an SSN as proof he's a law-abiding citizen in a white-collar job.

[1] when it was made a requirement to claim tax deductions for dependent children. Even today, if you don't want the tax break, you can opt out at the cost of ruining your child's life!

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#105
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current bill Trump is pushing for requires "documentary proof of citizenship ", this can actually be very hard. It means an original/certified birth certificate, as well as any subsequent name changes (mostly married women). This is completely unnecessary. We establish citizenship, very reliably, at time of registration. This is on of the main jobs of the registrar of voters. They have plenty of time to look up t…

Some states only require a piece of mail and checking a box saying you are legally allowed to vote to register. Then when you checkin to vote the workers are not permitted to ask for ID to prove you are the person you claim to be. At no point during that process is there presentation of proof of citizenship.

In that process there's no proof, but every state manages voter roles which your provisional information will then go through a further process.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#106
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current bill Trump is pushing for requires "documentary proof of citizenship ", this can actually be very hard. It means an original/certified birth certificate, as well as any subsequent name changes (mostly married women). This is completely unnecessary. We establish citizenship, very reliably, at time of registration. This is on of the main jobs of the registrar of voters. They have plenty of time to look up t…

Trump expects half of the US to get a passport in the next 6 months. These kind of fundamental changes require years of preparation. Either Trump is an incompetent moron or he has ulterior motives.

He's trying to prevent poor people from voting.

Requiring poor people to pay a hefty fee, which they probably don't have, to get a passport seems a fairly competent way to go about making sure poor people don't vote to me.

If I don't want poor people voting, then attaching a fee to voting doesn't mean I'm incompetent. It means I'm smart enough to know poor people don't have money.

By the way, I think all of this is horrible. Everyone should be equal before the law and should have their vote count without having to pay for that right. I'm just pointing out that this is a really good way to eliminate the vote of the poor.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#107
post #15

Stories like this probably scare some people off from electronic voting but I don't think this is that big of a deal. When we finish voting operations in my area we load the ballots up on someone's personal vehicle and they take them down, securely, to where they need to go. That vehicle could get blown up and those ballots could be gone, though I think we could still get a record of the results. That being said for…

i don’t think that requiring in-person “ID”-proofed voting and removing mail-in ballots (which is the best part of voting in CA) does anything to bring people back to reality…

Even if it were a holiday, people may not be able to travel or take time off from obligations. There’s no obligation to drive 2 hours to vote, to fly back if you work in another country, or to go get a new birth certificate because Real ID doesn’t prove citizenship even though you provide citizenship documents to it when you get one…

I’ve heard of a lot of takes here about what we should do for voting to make it “more secure” but all of this is actually a solution for a problem we just don’t have.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#108
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a machine voting system with paper fallback. You as a voter can review the paper protocol from your vote. If there is distrust, the justice system can review the paper trail as well.

I don't understand the reason for electronic voting. The UK manages to tally up paper votes overnight, even from far-flung Scottish islands. Electronic voting is literally solving a problem that nobody has.

The UK is the world's 22nd most populated and 78th largest country.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#109
post #99
post #12

I don't care how much maths and encryption you use, you can't get out of the fact that things can be anonymous (no one can know how you voted) or verifiable (people can prove that you only voted once) but not both. - Switzerland usually gets around this by knowing where everyone lives and mailing them a piece of paper 'something you have' - South Africa gets around this by putting ink on your fingernail I've read qui…

Sure you can, you just need an anonymous voting mechanism that's sufficiently naive. You use the verifiable process to restrict access to that anonymous mechanism. In Canada, at both federal and provincial levels, you walk up to a desk and identify yourself, are crossed off a list, and handed a paper ballot. You go behind a screen, mark an X on the ballot, fold it up, take it back out to another desk, and put it in t…

There will never be a technical or operational process that excludes cheating. The only deterrence that seems to work on humans and even then only most of the time is severe capitol punishment and that will only be as effective as people believe it happens thus requiring live streaming of the removal of cheaters heads without censorship. The current legal process of each country would have to be by-passed or people would just sit in a cage for 30 years. Even in such cases there will be people that sacrifice themselves if they think that bribe money can go to their family but that is at least a start.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the ID is nominally free, if I have to take a day off and pay for bus/train tickets to wait in line at some office, it’s not really free.

Some districts have limited DMV hours in advance of voting days. Coincidental how these might be Democratic leaning areas in Republican states.

I don't even know why this is downvoted. Standard technique in Texas. Harris County does not have 40 DPS offices for its 5 million people. The current backlog to get a DPS drivers license appointment in Harris County is 45 days. The next available appointment in Kerrville is tomorrow. That is inequitable.

But anyway, none of that is the real core issue with the idea of voter ID. The real issue is that there are many living Americans who were born in jurisdictions that steadfastly refused to issue birth certificates to Black people.

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