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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

#471
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have e-voting systems that protect ballot secrecy and are verifiable. In these systems the voter cannot verify that their vote was secret as they cannot understand, and much less verify the voting machine. > And you can do that without providing proof of who any particular voter voted for. Which is good for preventing the sale of votes, but keeps things obscure in a magical and correct box. How can I tell t…

you don’t need to be an aviation expert to trust the plane will fly. likewise e-voting systems pass through cryptography experts auditing to verify it does what it says it does. said that the voting solution can also provide cryptographic proof that your vote was unaltered, and accounted for, without need to expose your actual vote. the claims about database altering, are also false as the vote is cryptographically s…

>you don’t need to be an aviation expert to trust the plane will fly.

...because when I get on the plane, I can look out the window and see that it's in the air.

With paper ballots, the systems are very interpretable - you can sign up to audit the ballot counting process and watch it happen, etc.

But you can't do that with electrons in a computer - it's really just pure trust. That's what you lose.

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

#472
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what qualifies as an ID and how hard it is to get one. But unless you're actively providing them to people that need them with no extra work or travel on their part then you're going to be discriminating against people with less money or time. In the case where disproportionately more poor people are of a certain race then it can be seen as racist (as it affects the population of that race differently). If…

Americans who make this link to racism are welcome to explain why the same argument gets zero traction in Canadian politics, even among the most left-wing parties.

Canadian legislators don't have a history of setting arbitrary restrictions on what counts as voter ID, whereas American politicians seem absurdly fixated on it for ~some reason~.

You can look up the Canadian list of accepted identification documents if you want the full thing, but it includes library cards, public transit cards, correspondence from educational institutions, student IDs, blood donor cards, letters of confirmation of residence from shelters and soup kitchens, residential leases or utility bills, and personal cheques.

You can also vote without ID in Canada by having a guarantor with ID vouch for you.

Contrast the proposed SAVE act, which accepts... passports, birth certificates, naturalization documents, and "REAL ID-compliant documents that also indicate citizenship", which is a fun one.

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

#473
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that prove that you only voted once? If I know someone's name and address (and by extension their electorate) I can rock up and vote as as many as I want.

Then you go to jail (penalty is 6 months for impersonating a person and voting on their behalf.) It's not like polling locations don't have cameras. (A few people voting more than once is unlikely to change the results of an election. If enough fraud is detected to impact the results, they'll run a new election.)

> It's not like polling locations don't have cameras.

Given they are usually random primary schools and churches... do they have cameras?

I think the bigger deterrent is just the risk of claiming to be someone who already got ticked off at the same booth, which would immediately raise suspicions.

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

#474
post #269

I don't understand the need for e-voting. Germany's entirely paper-based system works fine! After voting closes, volunteers count the votes for a few hours and we get a result.

The pilot is for people unable to get to a polling booth. Traditionally, we use postal votes for this. But postal votes enable voter fraud (primarily selling your vote), so we can only use it for a small portion of votes or results become too suspect. So paper systems require ballot boxes and polling stations for the vast majority, which makes elections expensive, complicated, and generally problematic. And unpopular…

Switzerland is fully postal voting and has been for ages; it's fine and there is no social distrust despite the theoretical risk of vote selling.

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

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We vote 4 times a year and it's not always easy for Swiss citizens abroad to receive and mail ballots back in time.

I feel like building for edge cases is the cause of many of our countries' problems.

It's 10% of the electorate - seems more than just an edge case.

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

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil's e-voting does not allow voters to vote online from home on a personal computer (like in Switzerland). It has very different requirements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Brazil

This is not a problem. The government _must_ come to every city to collect votes.

This trial is mostly for voters outside Switzerland. It would be prohibitive for each municipal government to go to every city that an expat from there now lives...

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

#477
post #373

> By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes I have a hard time believing that it collected exactly 2,048 votes by coincidence

Hopefully everyone on this site notices the significance of that number.

I definitely assumed they were encrypted separately in 2048 vote chunks and that one such chunk failed to decrypt.

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

#478
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence "stuffing" in more ballots cannot be detected. The whole envelope opening and ballot counting process is recorded and streamed live from multiple angles. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/elections/about-us/security-a...

That sounds good. But it doesn't account for the ballot from your mail box to the processing center. Nor does it check citizenship & residency status. Ballot harvesting is also legal and takes place in Washington state.

The Turkish citizen who did a mass shooting in a mall voted in Washington.

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

#479
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a trivial solution to this: IDs should be provided by the government for free.

Last time I had to get the ID (sea floor countries in Europe), it was something like a hundred eurobucks, about 20 minutes of my time and two trips to the place during kinda sorta business hours. But then again, I have to use my 3 hour lunch breaks for something besides drinking beer.

So how would you have gotten it if you were homeless with no income?

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

#480
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is a civil right. We need to have a system that allows everyone who is allowed to vote, to vote. Many people don't have IDs and it is an onerous process to get one. Any system that requires IDs for voting suppresses these people's civil rights.

> Many people don't have IDs and it is an onerous process to get one. I have seen this constantly claimed, and never reasonably evidenced. It's also hard to believe the kind of American exceptionalism that supposedly causes these problems that everyone else can easily solve, despite an environment that is clearly heavily politically invested in solving it (because that also avoids the appearance of racism). Meanwhile…

IDs cost money. How do people with no income get one if they don't have one? How do they get access to the necessary documents?

In any case, it's not on me to show that they shouldn't need ID. It's on the proponents of ID laws to do so, and they have utterly failed.

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