Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by yazantapuz » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 12:45 PM UTC

lategloriousgnu wrote: post #344

godelski wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proving that you voted is different than proving you voted for a specific candidate. In fact, the one isn't nearly as big of a privacy concern (if any at all). I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me the former could be done with some XOR scheme, but proving that both you voted and your vote counted for a specific candidate while keeping that a secret is a much more difficult task

In Australia, which has mandatory voting, they literally just check your name off the voter roll when you arrive at the polling station. Each polling station has a list (digital or paper) of people registered to vote in that electorate. After your name is checked off, you then proceed to a booth where you mark a piece of paper before folding and placing that paper into a plastic collection box on the way out. It's ve…

Years ago in Argentina, a corrupt politician forced a small community to vote for them using a clever trick. They instructed the voters to fold their ballots into a specific shape or figure. Since the paper wasn't torn or damaged, the votes remained legally valid. This allowed the politician to ensure the exact number of promised votes were in the ballot box during the count

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

#442

Post by pepa65 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 12:47 PM UTC

tamimio wrote: post #53

I think this relies on the old argument that anything connected to the internet is potentially insecure. While it might have some truth, practically we all do very sensitive stuff securely while connected to the internet. The risk is there, always, but you put all the measures to mitigate it and even prevent it. The idea that a malware could be on a phone “altering things automatically” feels like a 90s FUD cliche. I…

Bingo! I was wondering where the sane voices were on this topic.

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

#443

Post by croon » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

rstuart4133 wrote: post #435

croon wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had this discussion many times before, with people smarter than me, and I have not yet reached a counter argument to the idea that if you can only prove that you voted (and not couple each vote to a voter), how can you prove that innumerable votes were added to the record, or that your vote is correct? You can either couple every vote to a voter and risk oppressive monitoring of votes at scale or coercion at m…

You could try reading the Wikipedia article on the end to end voter veritable system called Prêt à Voter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt_%C3%A0_Voter It's not that hard to grok how it works because there is no complicated math involved. It allows any voter to verify their vote was accurately recorded in the reported total. The usual argument against is you need a lot of people to verify, and most won't. That…

> You could try reading the Wikipedia article on the end to end voter veritable system called Prêt à Voter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt_%C3%A0_Voter It's not that hard to grok how it works because there is no complicated math involved.

> It allows any voter to verify their vote was accurately recorded in the reported total. The usual argument against is you need a lot of people to verify, and most won't. That's probably true when everyone is confident in the outcome, but I'm not so sure it works be true if there was a wiff of fraud in the air.

There are a number of application details which wildly alters whether it's workable or not, where workable leans fairly close to current scalable cost, in which case the added benefit is minimal.

> In Australia it's easy to prove no votes to the record because everyone on the rolls must vote, or they get fined. Ergo total votes must equal the number of people on the roll minus the number fined. As for "your vote was counted" - read the Wikipedia article. These systems do prove that, while keeping your ballot secret.

Yes, but only by using as much verification as paper ballot casting, which is already provably robust and even more verifiable due to decentralization.

Skimmed these:

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec05/tech/full_papers/k...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277296393_Pret_a_vo...

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

#444

Post by touwer » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 12:51 PM UTC

You need a private, secure booth, as you cannot guarantee really free (of mind, body) voting via internet, because of coersion, threats. Women threatened by their men to vote-anti women. Religious coercion. Internet voting will always be anti-democratic.

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

#445

Post by ajam1507 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #370

mullingitover wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This argument would apply to any voting method regardless of how secure it was. If the "threat actors" are the only important factor then the voting method is irrelevant.

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

#446

Post by M95D » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

sirdvd wrote: post #425

GJim wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where I live we vote by mail The problem with this, like internet voting, is that you can be coerced. e.g. a family member or your boss can tell you who to vote for and force you to submit that vote. Whereas a polling both is utterly private; you are alone and free from coercion. Nobody else knows who you voted for and they have no way of telling. In the UK, our voting is also done by paper and pencil. The votes ar…

>The problem with this, like internet voting, is that you can be coerced. As an example against coercion, on belenios faq they say that they let voter vote several times (and they count just the last vote).

How do you authenticate yourself for voting? Is it possible for the "boss" to prevent you from voting again for example by changing the password?

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

#447

Post by EGreg » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

shushpanchik wrote: post #315

EGreg wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you actually back this up? I have seen this argument before thrown around like dogma, even though I have NEVER seen it in the modern world. The closest I can think of is rare cases like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case

There are lots of reported cases in Russia, when your manager requires you to take photo of your paper ballot and show it to them, otherwise you have problems. You can try to google-translate [this, for example]( https://holod.media/2024/03/08/soprotivlenie-putinu/#h-3-%D0... )

Reported as in an advice article that claims it’s happening? This same article gives advice for what to do if it happens with paper ballots in real life! So clearly, paper ballots aren’t a panacea. And there is a far larger problem with paper ballots: you cannot check whether your vote was even counted correctly. With properly designed crypto electronic voting systems using eg Merkle trees that doesn’t happen. There are ways to make sure your vote was correctly counted while at the same time not being to prove to anyone how you voted.

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

#448

Post by iamnothere » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #283

iamnothere wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errors in these other areas are typically reversible without undermining trust in electoral processes, leading to (in the worst case) wide scale violence and death. We use the internet for too much, more systems should be airgapped. It’s a miracle that there hasn’t been a tragedy yet from a hack of critical infrastructure. Even things like water treatment and energy systems can be vulnerable: https://www.cnbc.com/202…

Elections are reversible too. A recount can reverse an election.

As long as the chain of custody is maintained, a recount of a paper election is repeatable and can be verified with physical artifacts (ballots). Unlike a paper election, there is no tangible evidence that records have been maintained securely. Additionally, even if a box of ballots is stored insecurely or somehow goes missing, in most cases it isn’t a showstopper as the margin of votes is still comfortable enough to have a clear winner.

Except in very close elections, traditional paper elections are almost impossible to manipulate successfully if the custody and counting process includes representatives from opposing political parties. (Week long counting periods that accept a million delayed votes are another story, but that is a process issue and a deliberate decision to weaken electoral integrity.)

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

#449

Post by wesgarrison » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

zugi wrote: post #305

nonethewiser wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Minnesota has a better system. You fill in a paper ballot using a pen, and the paper ballot gets optically scanned. >Besides avoiding any issues (real or imagined) with touchscreens, Wait... I don't think these are the complaints being made against internet voting at all. The problem is with a computer counting and reporting it, right? Centralized, less transparent, etc. I dont view writing my vote on paper and scan…

> I dont view writing my vote on paper and scanning it to be paper voting if it's just immediately fed into a computer. The paper ballots are retained for recounts, and most places with this system automatically recount a random subset of the paper ballots to ensure it matches the computer totals. This guards against both shenanigans and mistakes. For security the scanning machines are not networked ! A person carrie…

They are USB on the machines we use. That said, that’s not a concern to me.

The machine also prints a paper tally that goes with it to verify. We used sealed bags so they can’t be messed with in transit. They tabulate the results and compare it to the total from the tape. Personally, I wish there was a hash of the results that would make it simple to say “yep, that’s the same” but practically that’s not necessary.

A second copy of the receipt goes back separately with the paper ballots. Same sealing and chain of custody handoffs.

I like the electronic ballot marking device. I can understand the argument that they’re not worth the cost, though.

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

#450

Post by degamad » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #384

degamad wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution in Australia is simpler - you don't submit the vote that you took a photo of. You can get a ballot, fill it out the "right" way, take a photo, erase the markings, write on your preferred vote, and submit that. Even if you ignore the pencil they give you and use a pen, you can simply tear or damage the paper, take it back to the elections officer, ask for a new ballot, and fill that out instead. We make i…

Are there no polling stations where you can submit the ballot in a private location, like a drop box inside a booth or whatever? In the US I've only voted electronically, and it's done in a private booth with a curtain preventing external visibility, so somebody can easily video record the entire process with no realistic way of altering their vote.

No, the booths where you fill out your ballot are on one side of the room, and the ballot boxes are on the other, supervised by an election officer, and near the exit. You:

- collect blank ballots (usually 2 pieces of paper, one for the House, one for the Senate) at the entry,

- walk over to the booth,

- fill out your ballot in secret at the booth (taking as long as you like),

- fold the ballots,

- walk over to the ballot boxes,

- drop the folded ballots into the corresponding box (House ballot in the House box and Senate ballot in the Senate box),

- then leave.

As no-one sees what you write at the booth, you can vote legally, draw pictures on your ballot, write obscenities, write nothing, or a combination.