There's got to be some way to put votes on a blockchain. More important than voting electronically is being able to verify your own vote was not tampered with, and that all the votes add up as reported.
To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
171–180 of 237 posts
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#172No. 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 abo…
neither do the attacks, which is the point
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#173No. 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 craz…
With electronic banking I can verify that my money are where they should be.
With electronic voting, I can't be sure my vote got counted, and even less sure others weren't tampered with.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 abo…
The fact that it doesn't scale is exactly why we should stick with it. We want voting to be hard, distributed, and diverse. That prevents a single county or state from destabilizing the rest of the country. It should prioritize accuracy over speed and all else. It's like an ecosystem. The more homogeneous the system then the more vulnerable we are to a single virus (or hacker) we become.
Wait, why do we want voting to be hard? If voting is hard, that means it takes more time to vote, and not everyone is equally able to take extra time to vote. A disproportionate percentage of the voters will end up being people with more time and/or more flexible schedules.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you can't pay people to vote for a particular candidate.
Do you know how people take photos of themselves voting at "secret-keeping" poll-stations? How about politicians, which publicly give lucrative promises to their particular electorate? If they want to sell their vote - it is their choice. I'd only say that the right of citizens to secede from such a society must be respected too.
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Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#176This story has been posted four times now. Click the 'past' link at the top.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 craz…
With electronic banking I can verify that my money are where they should be. With electronic voting, I can't be sure my vote got counted, and even less sure others weren't tampered with.
That's right.
And now do both things _publicly_! For money (or others things you own) you will need a Torrens-like title system with a replicated database among your fellow-citizens. For voting - it will be a database replicated on DVDs (or something that can be read, say, by a microscope:)
You may be astonished how secure that will be.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you can't pay people to vote for a particular candidate.
Do you know how people take photos of themselves voting at "secret-keeping" poll-stations? How about politicians, which publicly give lucrative promises to their particular electorate? If they want to sell their vote - it is their choice. I'd only say that the right of citizens to secede from such a society must be respected too.
>Do you know how people take photos of themselves voting at "secret-keeping" poll-stations?
That's illegal, and (somewhat contradictorily) not non-repudiable. You can take a picture of yourself with "ballot marked for candidate I'm paid/coerced to vote for" and then step right out and say "oops, I messed up my ballot, give me another one" and then submit that.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#179Electronic 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.
The vote processing chain is lengthy, it is inevitable that a computer system will be inserted somewhere in that chain. Right now the push is to have these systems right at the front, facing the voter, but that isn't the only time the votes are processed electronically. In my district we vote by coloring in little circles with a #2 pencil, we then feed that directly into an electronic machine that tallies the results…
> While the paper I handled is stored in the machine, I am sure that the results are transmitted to the next link in the chain through some computer system
I've worked with the New York City Board of Elections [1]. We have what I consider to be best in class: electronically-scanned paper ballots.
When a voter walks in, their name is checked against the rolls and the stub number on the blank ballot they're given is recorded. The voter marks the ballot in confidence and then inserts it, themselves, into an optical scanner. The scanner increments a "public count" by one and drops the ballot into a locked box.
At the end of the day, the public count is compared to the count at the beginning of the day. (These counts are publicly recorded for each machine and do not increment down over the life of the machine.) The aggregate votes to each candidate are then printed to a tape and posted publicly.
The machine also uploads these data to a USB drive, which is taken to a computer at the poll site for electronic transmission to the Board. Before transmission, anyone may compare those numbers to the tape or pubic count. (The scanner workers have to certify the electronic transmission before it's sent.) The NYPD then collects the machines, paper ballots and tapes.
Throughout the day, anyone may see the public count at each scanner. At the end of the day, anyone may review the publicly-posted tapes. Stub numbers for the paper ballots issued and public counts recorded are reconciled, with multiple poll workers certifying the reconciliation.
It's a messy system, but it's robust. The public count means you'd have to compromise everybody at a poll site to add or destroy ballots. (Or, you'd have to predict who won't vote and manually commit fraud.) To tamper with the votes, you'd have to compromise machines before they print their tapes. You'd then have to hope the Board's random audits don't attempt to reconcile the paper ballots with the compromised tapes.
Re: To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software
#180Electronic 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.
Came here to say that. Transparent voting boxes, ballots in envelopes, manual redundant counting done by people, usually voter who were nicely asked if they can come help back in the evening. That's what we use in France, you get the official result a few hours after the closing of the voting stations. The whole process is watchable, from the sealing of the box the morning to the count in the end and parties send obs…
Or make voting last multiple days instead of just one.