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Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

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Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#41

Post by mathnmusic »

endisukaj wrote: post #40
Chinmayh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, you are saying that everything in my bank account is public information. If there is an incentive to get to know who a individual person has voted for, then it would be with all parties. And if you think there is just one party that is much stronger as compared to others. Then, it doesn't matter if you vote or not. They are just being nice by letting you vote.

> If there is an incentive to get to know who a individual person has voted for, then it would be with all parties. Buying votes is a thing. If it's easy to verify that you voted for X party then it's very easy to sell your vote.

And if selling vote becomes possible, it's also possible to be forced to "sell" it for an unfair price.

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#42

Post by chatmasta »

hsienmaneja wrote: post #10
LinuxBender wrote: post #2

Multiple engineers have testified before congress that they were ordered to make systems easy to hack. This has been going on for decades and nothing has changed AFAIK. I suspect everything will go fully electronic with no paper-trail, despite my having a paper trail every time I fuel up my vehicle.

Citation?

Probably OP is referring to this testimony [0] from Clint Curtis [1] which went viral around 2016.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0qivPudp6U

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#43

Post by decebalus1 »

gnulinux wrote: post #36

Wow this thread is very depressing. I'm really sorry to say that this time I strongly disagree with HNers. I'm a previous human rights activist and I worked in a lot of past elections in Turkey. I am very opinionated on this issue and I strongly believe the future is software-only votes. Naive reasons why we should use software-only voting: 1. Humans can do mistakes. Machines can't do mistakes (unless humans who prog…

> Humans can do mistakes. Machines can't do mistakes (unless humans who programmed them did mistakes)

That's an incredibly limited view of the issue. Machines can make mistakes regardless of human intervention (albeit probably indirectly, because humans have an unprecedented level of influence on reality). First, there are known software glitches caused by unexpected bit flips. Second, software systems can grow to a level of complexity where unless you invest orders of magnitude more time in theorem provers for it you cannot guarantee that 'machines can't do mistakes'.

Electronic voting is an interesting problem and I agree with you, it's probably the future. But it's not a near future or not as near as you'd think. Electronic voting is vulnerable to attacks which cannot be detected when they happen. Armies of diverse human observers for paper ballots are much more effective for detecting fraud.

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#44

Post by rossdavidh »

squozzer wrote: post #35

Most software people I know aren't particularly persuasive. One trait noticeably missing among them is the ability to simplify a complex topic without losing too much relevant information. But even if some are, ways exist to undermine an expert's credibility about a complex topic. For example, when Robert Oppenheimer began warning people about the dangers of nuclear war, the attacks came. Once the government felt com…

Good point on the average persuasiveness of software people.

On paper receipts, the idea is that it allows for recounts. Not that paper is invulnerable, but the fact that more people understand how paper works than understand how software works, makes it a better option, I think (speaking as a software person).

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#45

Post by rossdavidh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34

The way I could see doing it would be to hack several states' voting systems, and totally mess with the results so that they are clearly incorrect. Like, Trump wins California and Massachusetts over Hillary by 99% - something obviously, blatantly wrong. Note well: I am not advocating actually doing this. But that's what I think it would take.

I suspect you might be right, and I wonder how many not-clearly-incorrect hacks will happen before the first clearly-incorrect one does.

But, if one were doing that, better to cause Mickey Mouse to win the state, it is a more clear signal. But I'm not the person to send that signal, which is why I was thinking about how else to communicate it.

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#46

Post by Chinmayh »

endisukaj wrote: post #39
Chinmayh wrote: post #21

I am not sure why Software should not be used. My solution would be 1. Open Source software, which can be verified by everyone. 2. Voting via an app with authentication as good as or through your bank account. 3. After Voting, We should be able to query and verify who our vote is with - on a particular day of counting, and get whole history of our votes. An individual persons vote is append only. Please, do let me kn…

> Open Source software, which can be verified by everyone. What makes you think that the open source software you verified is the software actually loaded on the machine you are using to vote. What about the software on the machine that counts the votes? > Voting via an app with authentication as good as or through your bank account. What about voter secrecy? Logging in and then voting defeats the purpose of voting.…

Why do you think that paper ballots cannot be faked? Why do you think counting paper votes is better?

You can't force people to declare their vote, If they don't want to. If the country is totally lawless, then I don't think voting will change it anyway.

Just because we can query some info about ourselves, doesn't mean anyone else can. That is clear malicious intent.

Re: Ask HN: Could programmers convince society not to use software voting systems?

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

Chinmayh wrote: post #46
endisukaj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open Source software, which can be verified by everyone. What makes you think that the open source software you verified is the software actually loaded on the machine you are using to vote. What about the software on the machine that counts the votes? > Voting via an app with authentication as good as or through your bank account. What about voter secrecy? Logging in and then voting defeats the purpose of voting.…

Why do you think that paper ballots cannot be faked? Why do you think counting paper votes is better? You can't force people to declare their vote, If they don't want to. If the country is totally lawless, then I don't think voting will change it anyway. Just because we can query some info about ourselves, doesn't mean anyone else can. That is clear malicious intent.

> Why do you think that paper ballots cannot be faked? Why do you think counting paper votes is better?

Faking paper ballots is easy; getting any substantial number of fake paper ballots into the count in a system with the kind of controls associated with paper ballots virgin hg in the US, OTOH, is not.

> Just because we can query some info about ourselves, doesn't mean anyone else can.

Yes, it does. That is, it means that the information is permanently more to your identity. It means it's subject to vote buying/retaliation, because people can choose you into proving your vote and can reward or punish you for it.

> That is clear malicious intent.

That doesn't mean it can't be done.

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