Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

blog.citp.princeton.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 532 posts

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#21

Post by dbcurtis »

gpt5 wrote: post #5

The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…

Mostly agree, but we don’t have to give up the benefits of direct digital tabulation for quick results. I would like a paper audit trail. Print my ballot-as-cast for on a paper roll that scrolls by under a window. I can verify it before leaving the voting booth. Recounts and challenges can be a computer scan of the paper roll. None of this is hard. Costs a bit more, but buys trust in the system.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#22

Post by ss1996 »

I agree with the risks, the overall theme being it's much easier to potentially manipulate a million internet votes than physical. In other worlds, internet vote manipulation scales significantly more than physical.

But I could make the argument with any high trust internet system.

Let's take another high trust activity we do on the internet - banking. Internet banking gives a hacker the ability to steal millions while sitting across the world. This is the same argument the authors make about changing a million votes.

So it really comes down to the pros vs cons. That's the more important discussion imo.

Do the benefits of internet voting outweigh the cons?

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#23

Post by earleybird »

travisgriggs wrote: post #18
gpt5 wrote: post #5

The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…

What if some level of efficiency (not necessarily internet) improves turnout and participation?

A question we all have to ask ourselves. What would I trade for efficiency?

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#24

Post by jpollock »

foolfoolz wrote: post #15

* “all your money lives on the internet and it’s safe” * “internet voting is insecure” who wins?

Internet voting needs to be anonymous and non demonstrable.

Internet money needs to be the opposite, and reversible through the courts.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#25

Post by Panzer04 »

To some extent, I think the cost of paper voting is almost a feature. It takes more work and effort to corrupt a paper voting system enough to change an electoral outcome, it helps more people gain familiarity with the electrical process and places an additional weight on the decisionmaking,

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#26

Post by DJBunnies »

kaashif wrote: post #13
DJBunnies wrote: post #8

I believe the piece we're missing is the government (citizen?) service which issues (manages, replaces, revokes) constituents' cryptographic tokens for use with such things. Then our voting systems could be electronic, secure, open, verifiable, and mostly private; assuming effective oversight / this organization does not issue fraudulent tokens or leak keys or identities (big assumption, but I don't think it's imposs…

Isn't a vote being verifiably tied to a person actually a bad thing? Then you can actually check what e.g. your wife or kids voted for and punish them if they vote wrong. Or get people to pay for votes, but doing that at scale is obviously hard. Maybe this isn't what you meant by verifiable, but there are systems with this property and they are bad.

Verifiable in this context means I can verify my vote was tallied correctly.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#27

Post by deathanatos »

dbcurtis wrote: post #21
gpt5 wrote: post #5

The most important feature of public elections is trust. Efficiency is one of the least important feature. When we moved away from paper voting with public oversight of counting to electronic voting we significantly deteriorated trust, we made it significantly easier for a hostile government to fake votes, all for marginal improvements in efficiency which don't actually matter. Moving to internet voting will further…

Mostly agree, but we don’t have to give up the benefits of direct digital tabulation for quick results. I would like a paper audit trail. Print my ballot-as-cast for on a paper roll that scrolls by under a window. I can verify it before leaving the voting booth. Recounts and challenges can be a computer scan of the paper roll. None of this is hard. Costs a bit more, but buys trust in the system.

Some paper jurisdictions have this, essentially. E.g., where I live: the ballot is a paper ballot. You vote by filling in a circle/bubble. (If you're familiar with a "scantron" … it's that.)

It looks like a paper document intended for a human, and it certainly can be. A machine can also read it. (And does, prior to it being cast: the ballot is deposited into what honestly looks like a trashcan whose lid is a machine. It could presumably keep a tally, though IDK if it does. It does seem to validate the ballot, as it has false-negative rejected me before.)

But now the "paper trail" is exactly what I submit; it's not a copy that I need to verify is actually a copy, what is submitted it my vote, directly.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#28

Post by bschwindHN »

ss1996 wrote: post #22

I agree with the risks, the overall theme being it's much easier to potentially manipulate a million internet votes than physical. In other worlds, internet vote manipulation scales significantly more than physical. But I could make the argument with any high trust internet system. Let's take another high trust activity we do on the internet - banking. Internet banking gives a hacker the ability to steal millions whi…

Internet banking is not anonymized. Voting should be.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#29

Post by terminalshort »

Which of these vulnerabilities do not apply to any other internet system? And yet all of everyone's money is accessible over the internet and that seems to be working fine. If they really care about security at this level then they should ban all non in person voting methods.

Re: Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

#30

Post by terminalshort »

jpollock wrote: post #24
foolfoolz wrote: post #15

* “all your money lives on the internet and it’s safe” * “internet voting is insecure” who wins?

Internet voting needs to be anonymous and non demonstrable. Internet money needs to be the opposite, and reversible through the courts.

It can't be anonymous. There has to be some form of IDV to ensure it is a registered voter.
Post reply on HN