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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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any ballots that are cast under same-day registration are cast as provisional and will go through the full verification process if the election is close enough where those ballots are necessary. Source: actually ran a fucking election precinct. Non-citizens aren’t casting ballots illegally.

They literally just charged someone in Philadelphia for illegally voting in every federal election since 2008. Non-citizen, ordered deported back in 2000 but still in the country. There's not been a reliable audit to show the extent to which this happens (probably not enough to affect even local elections), but to say that it isn't happening is just a lie.

If you listen carefully to the "ballot access" side of this argument (actually informed people and politicians, not random on the internet), you will see they don't ever say it does not happen.

What they say is that it does not happen enough to plausibly come close to affecting the outcome. And this is widely supported, including by right-wing organizations (as a sibling comment observes).

As with most issues, there is a trade-off here. As you tighten controls to prevent improper voting, you prevent some people from realistically being able to vote (it's just too hard, time consuming or expensive for them to meet the documentation requirements), and discourage others. This is particularly bad for the 1-2 elections after the rule change, which most people won't know about until they show up to vote. IMO, this is really the point of the changes.

And you have to weigh that negative against the supposed benefit. But that benefit is really hard to find. It's very clear that intentional voter fraud (fraud in registration, or in-person impersonation) is extremely rare, and does not come anywhere close to affecting outcomes. It's already a crime, and we seem to be pretty good at catching it.

The other argument for a benefit is that it improves voter confidence in elections. I reject this, since the only reason the public at large has any real concerns is because of intentional misinformation by the right. You can't lie to people to convince them there is a problem, and then use that to justify your heavy handed solution.

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

#312
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 10% of drivers lacked car insurance, would your solution be to remove the legal requirement to possess a valid insurance policy to operate a motor vehicle because it discriminates against the poor?

No. Because operating a motor vehicle is a very dangerous activity. This a very is a poor analogy that you have here.

Nobody ever voted someone dangerous into power? Was voting for Hitler a harmless act?

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

#313
post #15

Stories like this probably scare some people off from electronic voting but I don't think this is that big of a deal. When we finish voting operations in my area we load the ballots up on someone's personal vehicle and they take them down, securely, to where they need to go. That vehicle could get blown up and those ballots could be gone, though I think we could still get a record of the results. That being said for…

> That being said, I am in favor of in-person voting requiring proof of citizenship I think this is fine if it also then means that obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens. This is where such arguments tend to get stuck in the US. If you require proof of citizenship, but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expen…

>obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens.

I do not think it is that straightforward. Making it more accessible makes it possible for people with less skin in the game able to vote. Imagine how invested someone who owns several properties and businesses in a city is and how much they care about the success of the city compared to some other person who is just renting an apartment and has not even a job in that city meaning they could move at any time. The vote of the first person is much more important than the second. Trying to make voting overly accessible may make more people from the second category start voting which could result in bad decisions being made because people can easily move away if things go wrong.

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

#314
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the reason for electronic voting. The UK manages to tally up paper votes overnight, even from far-flung Scottish islands. Electronic voting is literally solving a problem that nobody has.

The UK is the world's 22nd most populated and 78th largest country.

Australia also has paper ballots.

The area isn't that much of a problem

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

#315
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…

The Italian way looks similar to the Swiss way. In detail:

When I go to cast a vote in Italy I bring with me my state issued photo ID (everybody has one, I mean: must have one) and a state issued sheet of paper with the address of the place I must go to vote and a grid of empty spaces. I don't have to register to vote, basically I'm registered at birth. The people at the polling station take my two cards and look for me in their registry. They mark that I came to vote, stamp an empty space on the second card and handle me the paper ballots. I think that in this way it's both anonymous and verifiable. When the card with the stamps is full, they mail me a new one.

The state definitely know where people live. Babies are registered when they are born and people have to register any change of their address of residence. It's been like that at least since Italy became a country in the 1860s.

By the way, how do I know that they counted my vote as I cast it? I can't know it. I must trust that they did not open the box and replaced the ballots, but people from the several competing parties visit the polling station and can attend the counting. I trust that process much more than something happening inside a computer program.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA threads the needle by simply not having verifiable voting. And it turns out it works pretty well. Despite countless hours and lawsuits dedicated to finding people who voted more than once, only a handful of cases have actually turned up. It's not that there are no checks. You have to give your name, and they know if you've voted more than once at that station that day. To vote more than once you'd have to pre…

This. The process in my precinct is roughly... - Enter queue - A front of queue, show ID of some sort (various accepted) to volunteer - They scratch you from the list and hand you a paper scantron sheet - Go to private booth, fill out scantron - Go to exit, scan ballot (it scans and then drops into a locked box for manual tally later, if necessary) The "easy" ways to vote fraudulently are also easily caught... fake I…

>A front of queue, show ID of some sort (various accepted) to volunteer

This is explicitly not required, at least last time I volunteered as a polling place worker. You should NEVER be required to show ID to vote, at least in CA.

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

#317
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can, you just need an anonymous voting mechanism that's sufficiently naive. You use the verifiable process to restrict access to that anonymous mechanism. In Canada, at both federal and provincial levels, you walk up to a desk and identify yourself, are crossed off a list, and handed a paper ballot. You go behind a screen, mark an X on the ballot, fold it up, take it back out to another desk, and put it in t…

> you walk up to a desk I think the day I _must_ walk go a desk to vote is the day I'll give up. Voting by mail is one of the best things occuring here (in Switzerland). You get the voting stuff by mail, make your crosses, put it back into the postal box and it's delivered for free (as in beer) to the government.

> it's delivered for free (as in beer) to the government

Not everywhere though; it's up to the canton or municipality to implement this. It's literally the only reason I still buy stamps. Should be made a thing at the federal level imho.

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

#318
post #294
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> bunch of weird stuff happening

Every election has "bunch of weird stuff happening" because every election has losers that don't like to lose, either with paper or e-vote.

To use a soccer analogy, it is like the losing team that blames the referee.

The ones complaining about "bunch of weird stuff happening" are just playing Trump.

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

#319
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…

> ...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.

Isn't that what secure hashes do? ID to hash is anonymous and checking for duplicate hashes verifies only voting once.

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you even know? The people who have claimed for decades that there is rampant cheating have spent years and millions of dollars and have found so little that it actually proves the case against their claims. Further, it has been shown that what sounds like reasonable checking ends up preventing 100-200 legitimate votes for every one illegal vote prevented. HN guidelines say not to get political, but it is…

I’m not saying we have widespread voter fraud. My gut feeling is that we don’t. But I’m a very trusting person. I always believe people when they ask for money on the street because their car broke down. I don’t know how you can confidently say there isn’t meaningful voter fraud. How would you even verify past elections? You can point to millions spent on commissions and lawyers, but those can’t go back and generate…

I think you need to start with proposing how a person could fraudulently vote.

If you show up to the polling place, you need to list the name and address of a registered voter in that district. How do you know this information?

If you use a relative or acquaintance whose name and address you know they're registered at, when they show up to vote it will be noted that they have already voted. They can then put in their preliminary ballot, and presumably their signature will more closely match the fraudulent one and the real one will be counted.

There are enough basic hurdles to this that I don't see how it can even be done at scale.

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