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

361–370 of 532 posts

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

#361

Post by ralph84 »

schmuckonwheels wrote: post #356
Tagbert wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live we vote by mail by filling in little bubbles with a pen. the counting is done by simple photoelectronic tabulators and there is a built-in, human readable record that can be checked by hand. It is very economical and hard to compromise at a scale that has any effect. i hate the idea of using internet voting. I also don’t trust the electronic voting booths where the whole action is virtual or the older me…

>Where I live we vote by mail by filling in little bubbles with a pen. >It is very economical and hard to compromise at a scale that has any effect. Vote-by-mail creates unnecessary opportunities for cheating, irregularities, and all sorts of foolishness. If you can fill in the bubbles, you could theoretically fill them in for other people. People living with parents suffering from dementia could fill out their ballo…

Ballot harvesting is viewed as a feature, not a bug, by the people who control vote-by-mail states.

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

#362

Post by NewJazz »

gbear605 wrote: post #215
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote buying and worse 'vote for me or I'll shoot you'. Buying is the more common scam but there are worse options for evil people

A related issue is “vote for my preferred candidate, or I’ll abuse you” as a way for husbands to control wives. That’s especially relevant when one party is favored by a majority of men while the other party is favored by a majority of women.

s/husband/boss

Or despot, or ruthless water district rep (lol)

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

#363

Post by crote »

schmuckonwheels wrote: post #356
Tagbert wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live we vote by mail by filling in little bubbles with a pen. the counting is done by simple photoelectronic tabulators and there is a built-in, human readable record that can be checked by hand. It is very economical and hard to compromise at a scale that has any effect. i hate the idea of using internet voting. I also don’t trust the electronic voting booths where the whole action is virtual or the older me…

>Where I live we vote by mail by filling in little bubbles with a pen. >It is very economical and hard to compromise at a scale that has any effect. Vote-by-mail creates unnecessary opportunities for cheating, irregularities, and all sorts of foolishness. If you can fill in the bubbles, you could theoretically fill them in for other people. People living with parents suffering from dementia could fill out their ballo…

> People living with parents suffering from dementia could fill out their ballots without them knowing and vote multiple times.

Or more subtle: watching them vote, with the implicit threat of violence if they vote the "wrong" way.

> The argument about not being able to take off on election day doesn't hold water.

In my country it is mandatory to give time off to vote if necessary. But the booths are open from 07:30 to 21:00, are located in a bunch of convenient locations (schools, libraries, train stations, shopping malls), and have basically zero waiting time, so in practice rarely anyone needs to make use of it.

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

#364

Post by beached_whale »

hackyhacky wrote: post #277
derektank wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re willing to do away with the secret ballot, you can eliminate a lot of the need for transparency in the mechanics. If people are able to check their own vote for discrepancies and speak to others to confirm their validity, you only really need to confirm that the final vote count is tabulated correctly (which again, is relatively easy to independently verify).

> If you’re willing to do away with the secret ballot We're not willing to do that. No modern democracy has public ballots. The reason is simple: secret ballots make it effectively impossible to buy votes, as there's no way to prove how any person actually voted.

Not just buy vote, coerce votes

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

#365

Post by crote »

BurningFrog wrote: post #34
ggm wrote: post #3

I live in an economy where people vote with pencils on paper in cardboard booths and at scalable cost, it just works. Obviously the cost also has to scale linearly for the 200+m voter economies, and time becomes a factor, but for community acceptance I still think paper and pen/pencil beats machine hands down. (this is Australia. we have compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your…

Australia really uses erasable pencil markings to vote? I would feel much better if they required ink.

The problem is that disappearing ink is a thing, and someone could swap out the source of ink (pen, stamp pad) in the voting booth.

Erasing is indeed a possibility with pencil markings, but this can only happen during the counting process - which should be open to anyone to audit, and anyone messing around with an eraser during the counting process would stand out like a sore thumb.

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

#366

Post by autoexec »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #354
autoexec wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what "Voters can check their votes" means since you have to make sure that nobody can take a receipt to see which way someone (including themselves) voted. You're also still stuck trusting that what your receipt said matches what actually got counted. The best paper record is the actual ballot you yourself marked and turned in. It shows exactly what the ballot said and it shows what your selection was.…

I think there's nothing wrong with giving people a way to check that their vote was counted for the party or person they intended.

It means that some people will be able to force others to vote a certain way, punish them if they don't vote a certain way, or even pay them for their votes. Those schemes are a lot less effective when you can't prove how someone voted. People can try to bribe you, or even intimidate you, but once you're in the voting booth you have the freedom to vote however you want and nobody can find out later which way you actually voted. That freedom is very important and worth keeping. You already know which way you voted, no one else needs to be able to check.

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

#367

Post by crote »

themafia wrote: post #293
ggm wrote: post #3

I live in an economy where people vote with pencils on paper in cardboard booths and at scalable cost, it just works. Obviously the cost also has to scale linearly for the 200+m voter economies, and time becomes a factor, but for community acceptance I still think paper and pen/pencil beats machine hands down. (this is Australia. we have compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your…

> we have compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your paper or walk away but we enforce with a fine, participation in the one obligation of citizenship Then my refusal to vote should be counted. If enough people refuse to vote then the entire election should be cancelled and new candidates found. Otherwise this is a ridiculous catch 22 of state bullying to no actual purpose. Who w…

Which country doesn't count spoiled or blank votes? And the whole "cancel the election and find new candidates" is pretty pointless when anyone can start a political party of their own and participate in the election.

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

#368

Post by ValveFan6969 »

Internet voting in general in not only insecure but an human rights act violation against our species. Look none other than the fascist utopia that is YCombinator where some rando can remove your comments simply because they do not like your joke or opinion.

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

#369

Post by fmobus »

quilombodigital wrote: post #297
marcosdumay wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think Brazil solved this by making sure to control the machine It's bullshit, we don't control anything. Our voting machines are Linux computers that never survived a public auditing, so the government stopped let the public audit them. If either China or the US decided to seriously invest into corrupting the hardware, it would be a several years long process but would actually cost less than our presidential…

It is false your affirmation that they are not audited by public organizations. Entities can register to see the source code in a controlled room. In 2024 for example the party União Brasil checked the code. In 2025 during the official audit 149 entities registered to check the code and attack the machine. Universities, ONGs, political parties, etc. Please check you facts before posting what you think Reference: http…

Letting "entities" audit the code in a closed room is not enough for me. The entire codebase should be open sourced publicly.

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

#370

Post by fsckboy »

mullingitover wrote: post #267
fsckboy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't "move back", it's where we are. vote by mail (and similar ballot harvesting, bulk ballot dropoffs with hazy chain-of-custody as from a nursing homes and immigrant communities) are new, based on paper, and open to abuse. It's not where we were. traditional absentee balloting was a small scale thing used by college students, military personnel, etc. and if it was messed up, it was not likely to change outcom…

> open to abuse. This claim is frequently made and never backed job with any compelling evidence.

you don't need to have "compelling evidence" to show that something is "open to abuse", you simply need to point out the threat vectors

as we know from all over the internet and from various financial frauds, rug pulls, insurance frauds, etc., if there is something to gain, there is no shortage of people who will abuse any system.

Post reply on HN