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To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

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Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#151

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

cmiles74 wrote: post #149
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the data is worthless if you cannot trust the way is has been acquired.

I'm not sure there's a way that a skeptical person can ever trust that data, short of physically handling each piece of paper and manually summing up the totals. People are as much of a black box as any software. I suppose the only benefit of people is that they are more difficult to coordinate.

The point is not using people in place of machines as trust anchors. The point is that you remove the trust anchor (or move it to the public at large, really).

In a properly run paper election, there is no individual that you have to trust. In principle, anyone can go and watch, and usually there are representatives of many/all parties in every polling place, watching every step of the process. It's not just that people are more difficult to coordinate or control in general, it's that if someone distrusts you, they can come and watch for themselves.

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#154

Post by scaryclam »

frobozz wrote: post #105
richardknop wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of EU nationals living in UK who have no right to vote. But they are physically in UK. I think vast majority of them would never think about fraudulently voting. But think about it logically, if voter ID is not required than it is easier to fraudulently vote. That seems logical to me. Do you have counter argument?

Voting still requires registration, which requires eligibility. At this point, you are also checked for uniqueness, so you can't just keep moving house to get more and more votes. You can't just turn up at any polling station and say "give me a ballot paper", you turn up at the right polling station for your address and tell them your name and address. They cross you off the list and if the same person tries to vote…

Though, here in the UK, I've actually had more than one polling card show up at different addresses. Technically, I could have traveled to the other town and voted there as well. Not that that's legal mind.

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#155

Post by cookiecaper »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
danirod wrote: post #3

Electronic voting is a bad idea and I'd be suspicious on anyone trying to promote it. How can you know that even if the source code for the voting machine is open, the voting machine is running the exact same source code? How can you know nobody has tampered the code the instance is running? I'm glad my country is still running on paper ballots and glad we require voter ID.

Where is the good old Anonymous when we need them? We need a high-profile hack of some local elections to drive that point home. Something done completely for teh lulz, leading to a result so absurd the elections would have to be redone.

It doesn't matter what gets done, it matters how it's portrayed. Such a hack would just be used by the media to vilify their target-of-the-week, and politicians to institute ever-more-prominent centralized electronic controls that don't grant any related protection, but allow them to expand their personal influence and institutional surveillance surfaces (see also: TSA).

In fact, the media is already trying to CYA, and the state is already trying to expand control, by claiming that such a hack was perpetrated by a nation-state in the 2016 election, and that that's why they were so egregiously wrong in everything they said about Clinton/Trump in the preceding 18 months.

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#156

Post by JumpCrisscross »

huhlig wrote: post #148
scierama wrote: post #136

"The blockchain is an undeniably ingenious invention – the brainchild of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto." It isn't even definitively known who invented blockchain, it is behind the pyramid scheme known as bitcoin and no, no way should that ever be used in voting system computers.

If you consider Bitcoin a pyramid scheme I would love to hear your treatise on fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and capitalism in general.

I'll bite. What's the failure mode for a paper-money based fractional banking system with deposit insurance that makes it a pyramid scheme?

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#158

Post by slim »

blackkettle wrote: post #115

No. To protect voting, don't use software. Everyone needs to be able to _understand_ as well as be able to verify that they successfully voted. Besides the issues with what software the machine is actually running, most people cannot comprehend or understand that software - even if it is open source. That is not acceptable for an open democratic society, or to sustaining it. In this particular situation it should not…

Voting with paper does not scale. You can't make people vote everyday for example, which is required if you'd like to implement direct democracy.

On the other hand, with direct democracy, the stakes are lower for each vote. So there is less incentive to manipulate the vote. So it makes sense to use e-voting for direct democracy.

In the end the voting mechanism in democracy is not really about precision, it's more about getting an acceptable outcome for all the parties

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#159

Post by EGreg »

blackkettle wrote: post #115

No. To protect voting, don't use software. Everyone needs to be able to _understand_ as well as be able to verify that they successfully voted. Besides the issues with what software the machine is actually running, most people cannot comprehend or understand that software - even if it is open source. That is not acceptable for an open democratic society, or to sustaining it. In this particular situation it should not…

That's silly. Do you need to use paper and pencil to do banking? If we as a society and individually can trust our money to technology then why not voting?

Having a merkle tree and voting from your device instead of a polling station is not just more convenient - it's more secure too. Everyone can verify their vote was counted!!

And right now? Right now we have a government database of who voted for what. That's crazy.

Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software

#160

Post by scaryclam »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #138
maxerickson wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of disruption is extremely high for voting, for pretty much everyone. For other systems, a disruption is just inconvenient for most people. Like if I can't use my credit card for a day, I don't care (of course this may be of more consequence for some people). Same thing with a power outage (and people that need it can have a backup for grid power; how do you have a backup for legitimate governance?).

>For other systems, a disruption is just inconvenient for most people. Like if I can't use my credit card for a day, I don't care Would there not be far more immediate and direct inconvenience if no one could use their credit cards for a day, than if they couldn't vote for a day? (Assuming the following day both systems were back up and running) What is so inconvenient about have to wait an extra day to cast a vote o…

Where I vote, if you couldn't vote that day, you don't get to vote. So, yeah, I'd prefer to be able to vote than eat for that particular day, given that the consequences can be so vastly different (someone manipulating the voting system to win, and then execute their damaging agenda vs being kind of uncomfortable for one evening).

Credit cards are a convenience, voting is both a privilege and (in most western countries) a right. They're not really comparable in their importance.

You also ignore the biggest problem: voter fraud. It's so much easier to mess with the vote with electronic voting than it is with paper ballots. Technical people don't like electronic voting, because they understand this. There's no way to be sure no-one's manipulating a voting machine. You'd need to physically interfere with each single person and their single paper ballot with paper voting. That's way harder to pull off.

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