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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

#411

Post by triceratops »

WalterBright wrote: post #410
triceratops wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But no verification is done on that The official website says they collect either a driver's license number, state ID number, or the last 4 digits of your Social Security number. With that it should be trivial to flag potentially fraudulent applications for further investigation. Do you have a source that says they don't use that information for verification? https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/voter-registrati…

"An official list of citizens to check citizenship status against does not exist. If the required information for voter registration is included – name; address; date of birth; a signature attesting to the truth of the information provided on the application; and an indication in the box confirming the individual is a U.S. citizen – the person must be added to the voter registration file. Modifying state law would re…

That does say anyone can challenge a registration. But I agree it's dumb not to perform basic checks with provided information.

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

#412

Post by WalterBright »

mjevans wrote: post #398
WalterBright wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Washington State we get mailed ballots, which we fill in and mail in. But the ballots are not even printed on security paper. They don't have a serial number on them, either.

The filled out ballot is intended to be fully anonymous. It is then slipped into a security sleeve to make it harder to read within the envelope. The envelope is sealed and signed by the citizen. Security is provided by the envelope which is the attestation that the citizen cast their ballot. Offhand, the county voting office is likely required to retain the ballot as part of the state/federal records. I haven't chec…

Once the ballot is removed from the envelope, it is just a sheet of paper with votes on it. There's no name, serial number, or signature on it.

Hence "stuffing" in more ballots cannot be detected.

Printing the ballots on security paper will not eliminate this risk, but it will make it much harder.

I don't know if there is an auditable "chain of custody" of ballots from mailbox to the counting center. The fraud here would be "losing" ballots that are from precincts that tilt significantly in one direction or another.

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

#413

Post by WalterBright »

triceratops wrote: post #411
WalterBright wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An official list of citizens to check citizenship status against does not exist. If the required information for voter registration is included – name; address; date of birth; a signature attesting to the truth of the information provided on the application; and an indication in the box confirming the individual is a U.S. citizen – the person must be added to the voter registration file. Modifying state law would re…

That does say anyone can challenge a registration. But I agree it's dumb not to perform basic checks with provided information.

> That does say anyone can challenge a registration.

Yes, it does. But who and how is someone going to challenge 100,000 registrations? This issue was brought up in the paper, and people objected to it saying such was an invasion of privacy.

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

#414

Post by rmunn »

TeapotNotKettle wrote: post #404
rmunn wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those 62 lawsuits were thrown out on procedural grounds, such as lack of standing (which I think was a bad reason: if the losing candidate doesn't have standing to challenge an allegedly fraudulent voting system, then who does?). But that means they never reached the fact-finding stage, so citing those cases as meaning "there was no fraud" is not supported by the evidence. The cases thrown out on procedural g…

And in each of those 62 cases they gave up there and then ? Tells you something

They didn't give up, they appealed. Most of the appeals, as I recall, were also decided on procedural grounds, but by that time it was (IIRC) "this is moot, we're not going to overturn the result of an election that was decided last year".

If I've gotten any of my facts wrong, corrections (preferably with links) would be welcome — I don't have time right now to go dig up five-year-old news articles, I'm in the middle of a project.

But no, they didn't give up then and there.

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

#415

Post by jjmarr »

tauneutrin0 wrote: post #325
dmos62 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

One of the main goals of an electoral system is to ensure that the population trusts that their views are fairly represented. The reason that paper voting is so good in this regard is that everybody can fully understand the entire process. It is so very, very simple. And if you need proof, you can go see the counting for yourself. The issue with electronic voting is that there is far greater complexity. There are man…

> The reason that paper voting is so good in this regard is that everybody can fully understand the entire process. It is so very, very simple. And if you need proof, you can go see the counting for yourself.

I volunteered as a scrutineer for a major Canadian political party as a teenager. You show up and watch the electionworkers open the ballot box and count the ballots. The ballots were counted fairly although some people couldn't tick the boxes correctly.

It's unclear how such a system would work in the United States, though, because you've merged all elections into a single voting day. If people struggle with ticking a single box from 5 options I can't imagine what a multipage ballot binder would be.

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

#416

Post by dataflow »

Muromec wrote: post #364
dirasieb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No other country is quite as heterogeneous as the US. there's no scientific link between race and the ability to go to a DMV once every 10 years

If you have to go to a specific DMV at a specific time, it's a link to a ZIP code and economical situation (i.e. having enough time during work hours just for that). That's a good enough proxy for race. Bonus points if you can also make a specific DMV for a specific ZIP code shittier experience on purpose. Nobody would ever try to do that in a-country, right.

FWIW, I don't think you're really addressing their point. What they're really saying is that they find it implausible that any significant fraction of the population is genuinely unable to go to the DMV once every 10 years. You're not really providing a counterargument, but rather just arguing that going to the DMV is more difficult for some people than others. Sure, but that's true for pretty much everything -- even just putting food on the table is harder when you're poor, yet people still find ways to do it.

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

#417

Post by [deleted] »

kshri24 wrote: post #388
everfrustrated wrote: post #302

The biggest advantage physical voting has it is follows human-scaling laws. Which often is a problem (inefficient) but for voting this is a massive benefit for one particular reason - due to lack of automation any fraud doesn't also benefit from the same automation so has to be large scale and widely distributed for it to be impactful (the fraud has to be distributed to the humans involved). Which isn't to say that i…

This probably only works properly in the developed countries. In developing countries like India we suffered through decades of "booth captures" [1] where armed gangs would take over a polling booth and cast votes for their political candidate at gun point. Villagers would be disallowed from casting their votes. In many instances, the polling booth itself would be set on fire, ensuring that those votes are never coun…

[deleted]

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

#418

Post by dataflow »

rmunn wrote: post #414
TeapotNotKettle wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in each of those 62 cases they gave up there and then ? Tells you something

They didn't give up, they appealed. Most of the appeals, as I recall, were also decided on procedural grounds, but by that time it was (IIRC) "this is moot, we're not going to overturn the result of an election that was decided last year". If I've gotten any of my facts wrong, corrections (preferably with links) would be welcome — I don't have time right now to go dig up five-year-old news articles, I'm in the middle…

> They didn't give up, they appealed. Most of the appeals, as I recall, were also decided on procedural grounds, but by that time it was (IIRC) "this is moot, we're not going to overturn the result of an election that was decided last year".

> If I've gotten any of my facts wrong, corrections (preferably with links) would be welcome

See "Post-Election Cases Decided on the Merits" in [1].

How do you reconcile the idea that voter fraud is common with the existence of so many cases decided on the merits against the plaintiffs precisely due to sheer lack of evidence? You'd think these cases with people looking so hard would've uncovered nontrivial fraud if it was common, no?

[1] https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-el...

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

#419

Post by max51 »

jfengel wrote: post #111
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…

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…

>And it turns out it works pretty well.

Does it?

This is the third election in a row where the losing party claim the election was not legitimate and/or hacked.

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

#420

Post by Muromec »

dataflow wrote: post #416
Muromec wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to go to a specific DMV at a specific time, it's a link to a ZIP code and economical situation (i.e. having enough time during work hours just for that). That's a good enough proxy for race. Bonus points if you can also make a specific DMV for a specific ZIP code shittier experience on purpose. Nobody would ever try to do that in a-country, right.

FWIW, I don't think you're really addressing their point. What they're really saying is that they find it implausible that any significant fraction of the population is genuinely unable to go to the DMV once every 10 years. You're not really providing a counterargument, but rather just arguing that going to the DMV is more difficult for some people than others. Sure, but that's true for pretty much everything -- even…

I think of it as another step in a leaky conversion pipeline, but instead of minimizing the dropoff the pipeline is optimized for maximizing. It's not that people are unable to fill 10 field form that sometimes randomly loses all your input, but more people will complete the form if it doesn't.

Another thing is when the id requirement is not just there, but added right before the election, so it's not "going to dmv once every 10 years", but "going to dmv this year especially so you can vote.

If I would be optimizing for the minimal dropoff, the policy would look like "passing the law that takes effect in 5 years from now, tasking the blah blah agency with increasing the id coverage and putting reminders how important it is to get an id and vote everywhere you look at, increased funding for the dmv and whatever". But no, it's has to be done with the urgency and framed as threat.

So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years, but that the intent behind passing such laws is not increasing integrity, but favoring a specific party. Even if doesn't actually work, it's still one of the worst things a party in a democratic system can do.

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