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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

Bender wrote: post #109
zahlman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by jeffbee »

SoftTalker wrote: post #138
superxpro12 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Voting is only from 9-4" and you have a real job. Let's not pretend this wouldn't immediately be taken advantage of in certain places where disenfranchisement is real.

Get an absentee ballot then. And I've never seen such limited hours in my lifetime. Usually it's 6am-6pm on election day. And many places now have early voting, you have 20-30 days to find a time to go vote.

[flagged]

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

#143

Post by jfengel »

Joker_vD wrote: post #118
jfengel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA threads the needle by simply not having verifiable voting. And it turns out it works pretty well. Despite countless hours and lawsuits dedicated to finding people who voted more than once, only a handful of cases have actually turned up. It's not that there are no checks. You have to give your name, and they know if you've voted more than once at that station that day. To vote more than once you'd have to pre…

> You have to give your name, and they know if you've voted more than once at that station that day. So you go to other stations, duh. It's called "carousel voting" [0], if done on a large, organized scale. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_voting

And in Russia, it is. That's why they call it "карусель".

In the United States, it hasn't been. The article you link to doesn't even mention the United States. To do it on a large scale requires cooperation from the people running the election, and the US isn't (yet) that corrupt.

The US system isn't completely robust against it, and perhaps some day it will be a problem. But right now there is no evidence that it is a problem, and all of the attempts to "fix" it are clearly aimed at preventing some people from voting.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

SoftTalker wrote: post #124
d1sxeyes wrote: post #78

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.

That's life. Figure it out. It's really an insult to a group of people to imply that they aren't capable of being a functioning adult in society.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by wat10000 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #124
d1sxeyes wrote: post #78

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.

That's life. Figure it out. It's really an insult to a group of people to imply that they aren't capable of being a functioning adult in society.

Making things more difficult means fewer people will do it. It's foolish to insist that it's all or nothing. It's not about being capable, it's about marginal effects in large groups of people.

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

#146

Post by Ardon »

Bender wrote: post #109
zahlman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I agree with your point that attempts at cheating are inevitable, the rest is confusing though:

We have a long and storied history of coming up with extremely disturbing capitol punishments performed in public, and yet those punishments coexisted with much higher rates of criminality then now.

Stealing from the church in history carried some pretty gruesome deaths, and yet plenty of people still stole from the church, etc.

People are chronically bad at transferring future risk to their current decision making. Any consequence that relies on people being able to model a future problem against their current desires/needs is always going to have a lot of transmission losses. You end up trying to make ever more horrible punishments to overcome the losses in transmission.

I think the goal should be the smallest possible functioning consequence, which is possible by being close to the 'crime'. The very best way is when community can do it immediately. Like if someone does something fucked up, but then their buddies go 'that was fucked up dude', I am very confident this will prevent then from doing it again much more efficiently then a distant jail sentence. (among all the other ways too, there's never one clean action to take to solve problems on a societal level)

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

#147

Post by jfengel »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #133
Joker_vD wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to give your name, and they know if you've voted more than once at that station that day. So you go to other stations, duh. It's called "carousel voting" [0], if done on a large, organized scale. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_voting

Interesting. In Canada, for federal elections at least, you're assigned to a specific location and station. You can't vote anywhere else. There's a separate process for mail in ballots to confirm you didn't vote in advanced voting or on election day as well.

Same in the US.

You can try voting again at other stations, especially since they don't require ID. You just need the name of somebody assigned to that station, who hasn't already voted. There is a signature check if there is a suspicion, but that's rarely done.

But that's practically never done. The risks are too high, and to have a significant impact would require enough votes to make it certain you'd get caught.

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

#148

Post by jfengel »

buckle8017 wrote: post #119
jfengel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA threads the needle by simply not having verifiable voting. And it turns out it works pretty well. Despite countless hours and lawsuits dedicated to finding people who voted more than once, only a handful of cases have actually turned up. It's not that there are no checks. You have to give your name, and they know if you've voted more than once at that station that day. To vote more than once you'd have to pre…

[flagged]

Sure. And the weak evidence still isn't powerful, because so much effort had to be expended to gain it. If cheating were widespread it would have been detected much more easily.

Instead, efforts to clean up the voter rolls never cause people to get caught. But they do cause many legitimate voters to lose the ability to vote.

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

#149

Post by ramon156 »

ericmay wrote: 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…

We should at least start with electronic voting to compare it against real voting. I know there have been more smaller local tests, but they are not comparable.

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

#150

Post by beej71 »

jabedude wrote: post #132
d1sxeyes wrote: post #78

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.

Neither is voting free, what's the argument here?

> Neither is voting free

It's pretty free. You sit down at your table, fill out your ballot, and drop it in the mailbox. You don't even need a stamp. (In some jurisdictions.)

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