Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election • Hacker News Board

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#181

Post by modriano » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:02 AM UTC

addicted wrote: post #177

venantius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this sounds like the opinion of someone who has spent literally zero time investigating how universal the consensus is among voting security professionals about how paper is still the best, most reliable, most secure technology with which to run elections.

This is fair enough, but the issue is that at least in the US, youre not actually replacing paper ballot voting in most cases. The US currently has digital (often internet connected) polling booths, which bring all the security problems of mobile/net voting, and none of the benefits. I would much rather have mobile voting, as opposed to the current widespread digital voting booths system. Ideally, of course, we'd wan…

Mobile voting is a nightmare idea. A very large portion of the population is far from tech savvy, but to have mobile voting as an option, the entire voting base has the know how to correctly place a mobile vote, or else a significant percentange of the population could get duped into using a fake voting app/site and not actually voting. Authenticating voters is also a significant technical problem, as the barriers to voting have to be thin, but not so thin that one malicious actor with up to date voter registration information for a precinct could own that precinct. This also seems to suffer the same problems as DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines with regards to no way to ensure a voters vote is recorded correctly and accurately.

I have no confidence in any mobile voting scheme, and for an election, lack of public confidence in a process should be immediately disqualifying for said process.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#182

Post by ClayShentrup » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #165

specialist wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, I don't know what you're advocating for here. I greatly appreciate that you're chewing on the policy, problem, tech. For the USA, I no longer think polls are useful predictors, nor are exit polls useful audits or verification. For polling to work (be useful), like is done in Germany, requires the whole system to be designed as such. Our gold standard is the Australian Ballot. Private voting, public counti…

I agree with proportional representation applied within a bounding area of authority and letting representation by __area__ and/or __area of interest__ be by decided by the vote rather than distracting (which is subject to jerry mandering). I prefer the "Path Voting" method (which I have to google for with wikipedia path voting every time, since I can't remember how to spell the inventor's name). https://en.wikipedia…

http://scorevoting.net/rangeVcond.html

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#183

Post by fg6hr » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #82

Vote is the new app that makes voting easy. No more paper booklets full of legal mumbo jumbo. Just press the Vote button and Vote does the rest, done and done. Vote automates your votes by choosing the best candidates for you using SocialAI technology.

If I was an evil dictator trying to win elections, this is exactly how I'd appeal to the clueless majority.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#184

Post by fg6hr » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:19 AM UTC

joejerryronnie wrote: post #156

Me and 10,000 of my bots would like to participate in this election.

I'm pretty sure there is a competing botnet that would be happy to override votes of your botnet. If online votes are counted only once, then what matters is which botnet is faster and has a better link to the voting servers. High Frequency Voting, in other words.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#185

Post by fg6hr » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:29 AM UTC

joshuaheard wrote: post #25

I don't understand why a bank's website is secure enough to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I can't cast a single vote online.

Why does everyone downvote this comment? Imagine this is master Yoda is asking a naive looking question to make you think.

USA is ruled by laws, not people. The laws can serve as a veil between those who set them and those who follow them. Online voting enables the SkyNet plot: laws are voted for online, but it's AI who casts them.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#186

Post by fg6hr » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

mslong wrote: post #42

Absolutely amazing that almost all techies in this thread are against this. Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level. What are we at right now, 60% on average, maybe? Our nation's policies would change immediately with such a massive swing in vo…

If you wrote this with a double intent, you would be a great politician, seriously. By the double intent I mean that on the surface level this clever speech looks good and convincing, but between the lines it delivers the opposite evil message.

The techies are against this because they know the technical side and understand how fragile this seemingly secure system is. This is the equivalent of 737 MAX story: the execs shout how solid the plane is, while engineers cry the opposite. They speak up because they are on the losing side: if this system gets implemented, it won't be them who will control the votes.

The "major security risks" are intentionally there. These are backdoors that allow the right people to control the votes.

We don't need 100% voter turn out. We only need voters who care. There are a lot of people who don't care and have no time or desire to learn about what they vote for. These careless voters are often easily manipulated by media and thus someone who controls the media would love all these people to vote.

The nation policies would indeed change immediately: it would be a rapid erosion of those rights we still have; and if "forward thinking" means repealing 2A, then no thanks, I'd rather use my backwards thinking here.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#187

Post by conanbatt » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 10:49 AM UTC

slipheen wrote: post #23

Beyond the security implications (which are huge and ought to be a deal breaker on their own), this seems to have a huge problem in that it's not private. Your abusive spouse/boss/dealer could tell you that they want to see you use the app to vote their way, and there's not much to prevent it. While going to a local precinct is inconvenient, no one knows what you do once you walk in that booth. That's important to av…

I think low voting participation is a much more serious issue than coerced votes. If 10% of people more voted, there is no chance in hell you get a 0.1% increase in coerced voting.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#188

Post by conanbatt » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #22

sornaensis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wholeheartedly disagree-- if casting a ballot was as easy as sending a text instead of receiving and then mailing a letter or going to a polling location, I would predict much higher participation. People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. Votes only matter as groups! So obviously you have to make it as braindead simple to vote as we have made everything else. What I…

> People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. If someone has that worldview I'm OK with them not voting. I'm not sure that X% more participation would improve our collective decision making. In essence we'd be diluting the vote of those who care the most with those who think voting by mail is too hard.

> If someone has that worldview I'm OK with them not voting.

Then advocate for making it illegal for some people to vote.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#189

Post by swebs » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

deogeo wrote: post #99

swebs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that betray you? They're supposed to verify that this ballot belongs to you in the first place.

I'm confused - wouldn't that mean the vote isn't secret?

It won't go on record who you voted for, but someone at the office will have to confirm that you voted and enter in the vote. If mail-in ballots were completely anonymous, then someone could just print 10,000 copies and stuff the polls.

Re: Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

#190

Post by mslong » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #164

mslong wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, but it just means you have to move the verification process upfront like I lay out in another comment further up this chain. Bottom line is that we have a literal army of software engineers in this country that are capable of figuring this stuff out if it was a priority to get voting to 100% turnout. We split the atom and landed on the moon, I'm pretty confident we can figure out mobile voting.

I admire your confidence, but I always feel uneasy when I hear someone use the line: "We landed on the moon, so we can surely do ". Next time you try to use it, consider how much credibility you'd give to this argument: "We had men land on the moon and return safely, so we can surely land men on the sun and return them safely".

I am a software engineer. I just have the confidence in our community to believe we can use our skills to tackle hard problems in the world. My point is that other communities of engineers in the past didn't shy away from solving hard problems just because they were hard.