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Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

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Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#231

Post by luz666 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #211
sonofhans wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it. Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.

As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots. The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or ba…

In Switzerland, it is only done in few cantons and only up to 30% of the population.[1] I have no idea how it is intended, but I personally interpret it like this: - It is mostly an experiment so far. - If it fails (thinking about exploitation), Switzerland does not lose a lot and just goes back to 100% paper-voting. - It is a free service to other countries to show what e-voting can be in best-case. - It does not show what could happen in worst-case. - The riskiest part of this experiment is the interpretation.

[1] https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#232

Post by mschuster91 »

ge96 wrote: post #217
ninalanyon wrote: post #201

Why is everyone so obsessed with automating voting? It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.

> And I was too late to register at the time.

That's a thing pretty much everywhere. Developed countries such as Germany automatically enroll everyone eligible based on the registration data (you gotta register at the local authority after moving), but even we have a deadline if you think you should be eligible but didn't get a voting invitation to sort that out.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#233

Post by ghufran_syed »

ge96 wrote: post #217
ninalanyon wrote: post #201

Why is everyone so obsessed with automating voting? It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.

I think the issue is that you can only be registered to vote in one jurisdiction. So being a citizen isn't enough (though as I understand it, many jurisdictions let you cast a provisional ballot in these situations)

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#234

Post by spiddy »

ritzaco wrote: post #12

I don't care how much maths and encryption you use, you can't get out of the fact that things can be anonymous (no one can know how you voted) or verifiable (people can prove that you only voted once) but not both. - Switzerland usually gets around this by knowing where everyone lives and mailing them a piece of paper 'something you have' - South Africa gets around this by putting ink on your fingernail I've read qui…

yes you can.

each citizen gets an anonymized private key via a secure channel (eg. postal) and use that to vote.

votes are double enveloped: outer envelop: anonymized id + inner envelop: vote.

mixnet separates the votes and cryptographically shuffles them to decouple relationships.

only at the end the shuffled votes are decrypted using the private key of the election itself that was split using shamir secret sharing (eg 5 out of 7 shares to reconstruct)

the thing that’s not clear from the article and it’s a shame is that it seems the failure was the hardware (the 3 USB keys) not the election software. This could be simply avoided by having redundancy on the hardware (2 USBs per share) or more shares themselves (5 out of 9 shares)

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#235

Post by alistairSH »

MC995 wrote: post #229
alistairSH wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd also need a fake ID. And be willing to risk a felony conviction to add a single vote. It just doesn't happen here, despite the GOP trying to prove otherwise for decades.

> You'd also need a fake ID For what? In my state there's no requirement to show ID. When I first moved here I attempted to show mine at the poll and the poll worker told me to quickly put that away and she didn't want to see it. I'm not even sure it's legal for them to ask for ID here, given her panicked reaction to me trying to show it. Since then I've voted in this state for around 10 years and it's always the sam…

Yeah, it's inconsistent between states. I'm in VA and an ID is required. Despite being a bleeding heart liberal, I'm ok with that safe-guard (despite much of the left being against the notion). I'd also prefer an actual national ID (not the half-baked RealID programs, which some states still haven't adopted).

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#236

Post by throwaway5752 »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #225
throwaway5752 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm a Republican in the United States. The only credential I want is proof of identity, just like most other countries, including our neighbors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws

That's not really enough, is it? I didn't say we shouldn't have proof of identity.

First, do we not have proof of identity? How often should we have proof of idenity? How many cases of fraud are there per year? How large is the problem?

Second, who should issue a different proof of identity? How much should it cost? Should the requirements be left to states or the federal government?

Third, who would administer this system. Would it be public or private, or left to states? What criminal and civil law should exist for misusing this law for witholding the right to vote on this basis? Would you trust a non-Republican leadership if DHS still was the agency verifying identity documents and storing soft-copies of them?

What you want isn't unreasonable, but you leave out so many details that your reasonable statement can be misused for ill intent and denying people their right to vote.

A fair follow up question for me to you might be "how do you feel about the additional requirements for married women to get reissued vital documents when they have changed their birth name to their husband's last name in the SAVE act?" When concerns like these aren't addressed in massive changes to voting laws, it makes lots of people uncomfortable that the changes aren't made in good faith.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#237

Post by moduspol »

trelane wrote: post #226
moduspol wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, most crimes aren't uncovered by lawsuits. They're uncovered by law enforcement. The reason people resort to lawsuits is because law enforcement does not rigorously investigate or monitor. Voting laws vary by state / municipality, and they're mostly run by well-meaning volunteers acting in good faith. When we're not sure how well the TSA is doing, we try to send prohibited items through, and infamously get abysm…

Red teaming, yes. But also, what other signals of fraud are we able to detect? What measures of validity (or signals that sending was attempted) are there? How are they distinguishable from honest voter errors?

It's going to be difficult with our current policies because we've erred on the side of making it as easy as possible for everyone to vote. We don't have a complete whitelist of citizens, it's against the law to require proof of citizenship to register to vote (unless that changed recently) and address verification in most jurisdictions isn't done more than the first time unless it's challenged.

To be clear, though, I don't think non-citizens are voting en-masse. My concern is that if you aren't even verifying they're citizens, you probably aren't really verifying that they are a real and unique person that isn't already registered.

Honestly I think if we actually wanted secure elections, we'd start with the red teaming and go from there. The signal to noise ratio of fraud is too meaningless to resolve without tightening up rules, which the results of the red teaming would give you the political capital to do.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#238

Post by bell-cot »

ge96 wrote: post #217
ninalanyon wrote: post #201

Why is everyone so obsessed with automating voting? It seems to me to be a 'solution' to a non-existent problem.

I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.

Without a real-time, probably national "who has voted & where did they vote" database - how would a "just show up and vote" system block a citizen from voting once in each of multiple jurisdictions?

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#239

Post by rayiner »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #211
sonofhans wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control. If you can centralize all voting results in a single place you can control distribution of them. If you are the only entity able to read the results then everyone else has to take your word for it. Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.

As the article notes, the Swiss do both. The normal system is a paper ballot based system. This was for secure e-voting for those unable to use paper ballots. The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question. sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or ba…

> The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question.

It’s not a United States issue. Look how Taiwan does vote counting: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. They don’t do it this way because of anything distinctive about American politics. Being self-evidently difficult to manipulate, without requiring voters to trust an opaque system, is an intrinsic benefit for voting systems.

Re: Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure

#240

Post by ge96 »

bell-cot wrote: post #238
ge96 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still annoyed in the US I can't just show up and vote. The one time I wanted to vote "sorry you're not registered" like what? I'm a citizen just let me vote, oh well. And I was too late to register at the time.

Without a real-time, probably national "who has voted & where did they vote" database - how would a "just show up and vote" system block a citizen from voting once in each of multiple jurisdictions?

SSN? To me this is one of those friction things, why is it hard? Like taxes, I would take an option rather than tallying up just pay a flat $5K fee or something under your expected tax bracket.
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