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Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

engineering.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#111

Post by pi-squared »

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot.

I've been hearing these complaints for years now, I don't buy it. It's a problem, solve it. Start from here - everyone has a digital signature or certificate or another mumbo-math-jumbo, the system for collecting votes is open source. You have an account at the web service and you can see that your vote has been cast for that candidate that you wished, so who watches the watchers - everybody. Pick two authorities - one counts votes, other distribute keys. One gets a summary of votes only, the other has the mapping of key-person.

Sure there are problems. But it sounds to me like laziness and lame excuses.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#112

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

matt4077 wrote: post #77
ElijahLynn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of the arguments against online voting. However, it isn't really realistic to do re-counts right now, nor do people do them regularly. If the people doing the counting are bought then that is an issue too. Both ways suck right now. One thing that I would like to see is an open source, standardized system though. There was/is an effort towards this right now. http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_s…

I don't get the complexity the US creates around voting. I live in a fairly large city (Berlin, Germany, around 3 million I believe). - I walk 150m to my polling place. It's similar for most people. - I've never waited more than 5 minutes - The polling place is run mostly by volunteers, about 5 or 6 per place, with civil servants filling spots that can't be filled. Costs are neglible. - I get a paper ballot, I mark m…

One issue is the cost and logistics of it all. In Sweden we therefore have three different elections on the same day. Campaigning tend to focus on the national election, thus the others gets a back seat and quality suffers.

Also, I've helped some smaller parties with the ballot distribution. It's not a small task for a small party to ensure each an every polling place in the country has ballots. Just the physical logistics of it is hard enough, but then you also have to deal with all the people who seem to think that only established parties has a right to participate in the election in the first place. The barrier to entry is quite high. Perhaps that is a feature though.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#113

Post by Frqy3 »

vacri wrote: post #37
ElijahLynn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of the arguments against online voting. However, it isn't really realistic to do re-counts right now, nor do people do them regularly. If the people doing the counting are bought then that is an issue too. Both ways suck right now. One thing that I would like to see is an open source, standardized system though. There was/is an effort towards this right now. http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_s…

> However, it isn't really realistic to do re-counts right now, nor do people do them regularly. Australia uses paper ballots, and every election there's a seat or two somewhere that there's a recount. The major parties get their volunteers[0] to scrutinise the officials as they count as well, so you have multiple opposing interests scrutinising the actual count. Every vote basically gets at least three pairs of eyeb…

And sometimes those recounts uncover issues of ballots having gone missing [0].

[0] http://aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2013/wa-senate...

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#115

Post by Natanael_L »

dave2000 wrote: post #68
doctorstupid wrote: post #60

I feel that our fears are misplaced towards the wrong kind of voting machine, the one that collects the vote. The other kind, the one placing the vote, is far easier to manipulate. Facebook and Google have the mechanisms at their disposal to influence elections globally, and within a couple of election cycles could probably have the world's democracies more aligned to the interests of the US.

That's what I was thinking, although I don't think Google and Facebook are a problem as they can only provide slightly different choices from within a narrow range that people are already interested in. It's the relentess torrent of brainwashing across all media which frames people's opinions and doesn't allow them to think seriously outside of the narrow choices (2 party system, pro/anti [issue]) which ensures that…

Can't you do something with multi-stage voting on multiple independent machines? A way to do error correct coding and consistency enforcement such that no one malicious machine can successfully alter a vote?

I'm thinking smartcards could make it reasonably easy to use, where you simply repeat your vote to some degree and where the chip verifies that the voting machines are all saying the same thing.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#116

Post by tomtomtom777 »

pi-squared wrote: post #111

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing th…

> It's a problem, solve it.

Why exactly is it a problem? Why not just vote by red-pencil?

Obviously there is a small drawback of it taking a bit more time.

Then again, one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote. This is important because it prevents selling votes or blackmail, and seems impossible with any online voting system.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#117

Post by Natanael_L »

dibujante wrote: post #22
RangerScience wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any solution where I can verify my vote, but someone can't coerce me into showing them?

Probably not. You could make it anonymous - the unique combination of your vote, your key, and the election blockchain could produce a password unique to you. This would allow you to verify that your vote was counted, but would not allow anyone else to do so - if they coerced you, you could run your key, the blockchain, and the opposite vote and produce a different password and your attacker would be none the wiser.…

Decoy votes.

https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/an-mp...

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#118

Post by tremon »

pi-squared wrote: post #111

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing th…

buy a plane ticket

Not anonymous.

sending people to Mars

Not online.

I can securely communicate with people

Either not anonymous, or not verifiable.

Edward Snowden is able to send private documents

Not available to the general population.

I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick

Eeuw.

Online voting is a complex problem, and goes counter to all other online systems we have. No other system guarantees strong anonymity, strong verification and strong access control at the same time.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#119

Post by lb1lf »

pi-squared wrote: post #111

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing th…

With all due respect, buying plane tickets and voting are quite different processes; when buying a ticket, everybody has an interest in knowing WHO you are, being able to connect your ticket with your credit card and whatnot.

When you vote, we're very interested in NOT being able to connect you with your vote - heck, in some countries it can even be dangerous if the powers that be find out what you voted. (The results being rigged to ensure they remain in power does not mean there's no interest in finding out who the opposition are!)

Also, we would like to be reasonably sure that you voted as you wished and that you were not under pressure to vote one way or the other; this, too, is much easier to keep under control if you have to go to a dedicated location to vote, rather than just clicking a few buttons on a computer in your home.

And, obviously, we'd like to be reasonably certain that the votes have not been tampered with after they were cast; one of the major benefits of paper ballots is that they do require quite some effort to manipulate after the fact - ballot stuffing is a lot easier if all you have to do is add entries to a database.

My preferred voting mechanism would be a hybrid - you go to a designated voting station, where you find a machine in the booth. The machine lets you choose whatever list or candidate you wish to support, then after you've confirmed your selection, it adds your vote to a tally AND prints a paper receipt, which is then deposited in a ballot box. This receipt shows your choice in plain text.

Now, you have the best of both worlds - the machines can give a (preliminary) result the second the ballot stations close; if anyone wants to contest the vote, there's no need to resort to computer forensics to decide whether the data may have been tampered with - simply count the ballots like we've done for the past few hundred years.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#120

Post by michalskop »

pi-squared wrote: post #111

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing th…

There are many problems.

Is the hardware open-sourced, too? It should, there are known back-doors in many hardware nowadays (not talking about the unknown).

Plane ticket, electronic banking, etc. - they have an immediate feedback that corrects mistakes (or worse, attacks), elections should not have such feedback, because one should not be able to prove how they voted afterwards (because of buying votes or coercion to vote in family, workplace, church, etc.)

How do you "see" that you have voted for your choice? Because you monitor tells you so?

Maybe let you start with your queuing problem (I have never waited in one to vote and do not even know personally anyone to do so).

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