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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

#291
post #282
post #269

I don't understand the need for e-voting. Germany's entirely paper-based system works fine! After voting closes, volunteers count the votes for a few hours and we get a result.

The only potential benefit I can think of is getting results faster, but it's really not important enough to optimise for. Maybe a dual system of paper ballots and e-voting could be good so that they cross check each other. Can't stuff paper ballots without manipulating the digital counter, can't manipulate the digital counter without stuffing ballots. A digital counter also enables meta analysis which could identify…

Another possible benefit I've heard of is it can stop some kinds of voter intimidation:

Someone gets hand of an empty ballot, they fill in the ballot and give it to you and tell you to come back with another empty ballot. Rinse and repeat. Of course, with today's smartphones there are simpler ways to do this. Also moot if you can vote by mail, which is why voting by mail is a really bad idea.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In Canada, for federal elections at least, you're assigned to a specific location and station. You can't vote anywhere else. There's a separate process for mail in ballots to confirm you didn't vote in advanced voting or on election day as well.

Same in the US. You can try voting again at other stations, especially since they don't require ID. You just need the name of somebody assigned to that station, who hasn't already voted. There is a signature check if there is a suspicion, but that's rarely done. But that's practically never done. The risks are too high, and to have a significant impact would require enough votes to make it certain you'd get caught.

You still need id in Canada; either that or someone at the same polling station to vouch for you.

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=bkg&do...

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, I am in favor of in-person voting requiring proof of citizenship The appropriate time to verify citizenship is the one that already happens: during registration. Poll workers only need to verify who you are and that you're registered.

In my experience there was no verification other than verbally verbally confirming address and name.

At https://covr.sos.ca.gov/ I have to positively state that I am a US citizen an tie my name to a driver's license or SSN. Neither driver's license nor SSN confirm that one is a citizen (I had both before naturalizing), but both of them are tied to citizenship information in some database. I know I had to attend the Social Security offices in person to provide proof of my naturalization in order to receive an SSN card without the words "valid for work only with DHS authorisation".

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

#294
post #284
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada also uses hand counted paper ballots and it works great. There's no need to make large-scale voting electronic, and I'd never trust it without major social institutions in place that can provide the kind of oversight we have with good old paper ballots.

Brazil uses fully electronic voting and it works great.

No, it doesn't. Every single election bunch of weird stuff happening regardless of the winner. Paper ballots are much better.

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

#295
post #269

I don't understand the need for e-voting. Germany's entirely paper-based system works fine! After voting closes, volunteers count the votes for a few hours and we get a result.

Drawing two crosses on a piece of paper every couple of years has really nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is when one can vote on all topics on any level (local village, town, district, county, state, ...) using the computer at home. This is possible to implement using the algorithms/data structures available today. We actually do basically everything online today - except voting.

For instance, such a system would be immune to corruption. That's one of the major reasons such a system will likely never appear.

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

#296
post #269

I don't understand the need for e-voting. Germany's entirely paper-based system works fine! After voting closes, volunteers count the votes for a few hours and we get a result.

Wider participation in voting? Easier to vote for people who can’t travel to the voting station, for myriad reasons? Just more efficient for everyone involved?

And bigger picture, once you prove a system that’s easier, more efficient, reliable… you could expand to more votes on more things. Like… the Swiss do.

—-

(A German advocating for paper-based bureaucracy… whatever next? ;) )

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

#297
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…

You can have e-voting systems that protect ballot secrecy and are verifiable. You can use homomorphic encryption or mixnets to prove that: 1) all valid votes were counted 2) no invalid votes were added 3) the totals for each candidate is correct And you can do that without providing proof of who any particular voter voted for. A few such systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting https://www.belenios.org/ A…

Why are you lying?

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Voting

> The centralized server must be trusted not to violate ballot secrecy,[7] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing trust amongst several stakeholders.

> The ballot auditing/reconstruction device must be trusted to ensure successful ballot auditing (also known as cast-as-intended verifiability),[7][16] this limitation can be mitigated against by distributing auditing checks amongst several devices, only one of which must be trusted.

So neither secure nor anonymous...

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

#298

While this sounds like it allowed remote voting, it's interesting that some places (e.g. The Netherlands) went back to 100% paper instead of voting machines. That causes counting to take quite some time, with estimates/interim counts in between. I don't understand why voting machines can't just print your vote on a piece of paper behind a plastic window for you to see while also recoding the vote in a database. That…

> The database is the instant answer at election closing time, and then you can take some days to count the papers as confirmation that nothing weird happened.

You are misunderstanding "who to trust".

The source of trust in a paper vote election is your party's representative + independent election observers. You believe them that they were sitting at the polling station all day, watching both the voting and counting, and nothing fishy happened. You don't have to trust the state officials in any way, and you don't have to trust any one else either. Just your party - which is kind of the point. The only people you maximally trust is your party.

In your proposal, you are saying that to trust the outcome, I must trust the state officials - the ones who built the machines. Those are exactly the people I distrust to do a fair election.

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

#299

While this sounds like it allowed remote voting, it's interesting that some places (e.g. The Netherlands) went back to 100% paper instead of voting machines. That causes counting to take quite some time, with estimates/interim counts in between. I don't understand why voting machines can't just print your vote on a piece of paper behind a plastic window for you to see while also recoding the vote in a database. That…

Ireland has both paper only voting, and a PR-STV voting system. Counting can take, literally, days (the most recent EU election took five days to fill all the seats). It is a spectator sport for a certain type of nerd.

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

#300
post #229

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…

I'm not from the U.S. but as my country's elections work the same way, I feel compelled to weigh in on this. Here in the UK, you go to your local polling station, you give your name, they check it against the list, then cross you out and hand you a ballot. (This was tweaked in the last few years to require government ID, but the process remains the same. More on that later).

While it's true you could in theory say you were anyone on the list, you'd have to first know you were picking a name that wasn't going to be used, or hadn't already. This is already something of a reach. If someone uses a name that had already been used, or someone turns up later to vote and finds their name crossed out, it's going to set off alarm bells.

On top of the logistical challenges, this is a high-effort endeavour. A single person going to multiple polling stations repeatedly doesn't scale super well. Obviously you can try and do this en masse but the more people are involved the harder it would be to keep secret. If you're trying to rig a local council election with low turnout, it might make a meaningful difference. Does it work if you're trying to swing a congressional race or higher? I see the mentions of carousel voting, and am aware of the likes of Tammany Hall, but these are more of an open secret. What the likes of the GOP are alleging is that there's an invisible epidemic of voter fraud to engineer distrust of the system generally.

Sadly in the UK our long-established voting system was tampered with by the government of the time, who took a leaf from GOP voter intimidation and suppression tactics and mandated government-issued ID at the polls to solve a an almost non-existent issue, leading to tens of thousands of eligible voters being turned away at the polls. Thankfully this moronic and clear abuse of process is likely to be reverse before our next major election, however.

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