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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

#161

Post by klackerz »

michalskop wrote: post #127
midoreigh wrote: post #114

Ultimately, is paper the gold standard we should stick to? Nope. Come to India and watch how voting machines are used efficiently in almost all elections, from local bodies to Lok Sabha elections.

Efficient maybe, but trustworthy? How can you know that the voting machines are not rigged in any way? (The same goes for e.g. Brasil.)

No party has dominated elections in India over the years since the EVM has been introduced. The Election Commission is the autonomous authority responsible for conducting all elections in India and there has been no information of corruptions regarding them till now.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#162

Post by mantas »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #148
mantas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure votes are bought offline too. But it's much more difficult. The people who sell votes don't care to "change their mind". They get their reward and they're happy with that. People who would bother to change their mind, don't sell their votes in the first place.

Why would it be much more difficult? The difference is "upload a photo of your ballot" versus "upload a screenshot of your vote".

The usual scheme is, buyers pick up sellers and drive them to polling places. Police is usually on the look out for cars that frequent the polling stations. Or park just around the corner. The sellers usually are homeless-ish/addicts/etc. Large amount of such people raises awareness. Sometimes approaching such people and asking what's up is enough. They don't bother to lie and just tell they sold their vote to some guy in black BMW for €xx.

Now if online voting was allowed, the buyers could just take the seller's signature device and do voting himself. 100% the vote is correct. No possibility to get caught at polling station. The sellers don't hang around the polling station, thus less chance to raise awareness.

In addition to that, buyers could buy the device en masse from the addicts/homeless/etc and have a ready-to-use voting farm.

All in all, yes offline vote buying happens and it's not rocket science. But online vote buying would be much easier, quicker and less chances to get caught.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#163

Post by fatdog »

Yes, the problem with societies is the security of their voting mechanisms.

Physical ballots are manipulated and forged all the time. Doing it online just dispenses with the pretense of legitimacy altogether.

In the majority of elections, voting is an empty ritual that dresses up a transfer of power that was already decided among a tiny minority of essential power brokers.

Voting should be done online if onlyso that people will stop believing the fairy tales it facilitates.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#164

Post by FatalBaboon »

> In fact, online voting is such a dangerous idea that computer scientists and security experts are nearly unanimous in opposition to it.

Stopped reading.

Online voting is not just about electing presidents.

If you can poll the people easily, you have a democracy where people directly chose, instead of having a mafious bunch in a grand building making what corporations want the law, ahem I meant doing what is good for you.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#165

Post by NobleSir »

eyko wrote: post #109
NobleSir wrote: post #16

I'm not going to claim that "current" electronic voting machines are good, but the article makes no convincing arguments beyond an "I am a computer scientist" appeal to authority that it "couldn't" work. Honestly if you are going to talk about the problems involved in voting at least discuss some of the interesting anonymity preserving and deniable cryptographic techniques people have come up with- ring signatures, b…

Online voting is quite different from electronic voting machines. I've heard it being referred to as i-voting (online) vs e-voting (electronic voting machines).

Thanks I didn't know those terms.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#166

Post by rlpb »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #160
rlpb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read my post? "One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this."

We have a chance at detecting purely electronic hackers also. For example, hackers made 574 attempts to connect to one of my servers as root since the logfiles were rotated. This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.

Let's say I'm an abusive husband. If my wife has the choice of voting online, I can force her to choose online voting, make her vote at home and in front of me, and nobody has any way of detecting my coercion. If my wife has no choice but to go to a polling booth, election observers absolutely do have a chance of detecting my coercion.

> This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.

No, it's a demonstrable fact. You have created an "electronic hacker" strawman here. The problem I am raising is that of coercion, not a man in the middle. You have not been able to provide any means of mitigating it when not using a physical polling booth.

Problems such as "electronic hackers" are only problems on top of the problem of vote coercion, which is clearly made much worse with any ballot system that does not use physical polling booths.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#167

Post by timwaagh »

i do not think these concerns are legitimate any longer. if internet security was impossible then my bank account (along with others) would have been hacked long ago. everybody banks online. this is just conservative backlash. the real problem with elections is that a lot of people do not bother to vote, which put the legitimacy of the elections into question. online elections can help solve that.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#168

Post by yummyfajitas »

mantas wrote: post #75

I'm strongly against online voting. The problem #1 is buying and manipulation of votes. Security and/or anonymity is much smaller issue IMO. In my country, barely 50% of people vote. Most people don't care about politics. "Incentivized" votes is a huge issue there. People are routinely brought to polling stations and given a thank-you beer on return. Agitators are using all kind of borderline-blackmailing techniques…

I think you've stumbled across a bigger issue - democracy is fundamentally broken since no one has any incentive to vote correctly.

I know a lady who's a likely Trump voter. But she also donated money to Hillary in order to get the "woman card". https://shop.hillaryclinton.com/products/the-woman-card She's pretty honest that it's just entertainment for her - like voting on American Idol.

Think about how many elections have been swayed due to "I support Obama because I'm not racist", "Bush looks like a cool guy to get a beer with", "boo yeah Trump - take that liberals who look down on me", etc? (Amusingly, neither Bush nor Trump will ever get a beer with you, teetotalers both.)

People get away with this because their vote doesn't matter. If they vote wrong, they won't lose anything. So why not just do what makes you feel good? You've got no skin in the game.

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#169

Post by yummyfajitas »

rlpb wrote: post #166
yummyfajitas wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a chance at detecting purely electronic hackers also. For example, hackers made 574 attempts to connect to one of my servers as root since the logfiles were rotated. This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.

Let's say I'm an abusive husband. If my wife has the choice of voting online, I can force her to choose online voting, make her vote at home and in front of me, and nobody has any way of detecting my coercion. If my wife has no choice but to go to a polling booth, election observers absolutely do have a chance of detecting my coercion. > This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just…

Again, let me point out communist terrorists have already hacked this. Selfie in the voting booth. "Chance of detection" is just an assumption that some magic occurs because things are physical.

Your hack also works for absentee voting, which we already have. Do you propose eliminating that as well?

Re: Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy

#170

Post by programLyrique »

gambiting wrote: post #78
matt4077 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Poland here, same process. Well, I don't think I can actually watch them count, but then again, I never tried.

In France, if you can vote, you can even count, and people can volunteer when they cast their ballot. The president of the voting station will usually also ask young voters to help.
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