Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 303 posts

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#71

Post by jedberg »

swalsh wrote: post #4

My ideal voting system would allow me to have a real time feed of votes as they come in, so that at the end of the night I can check my records vs the "official" records. Names can be detached, all I need is a Ballot id. BallotId can be something as simple as the hash of RegisteredVoterId + password + Salt + ElectionId. As long as the voter remembers their password, they can look up their record, and the record can b…

The problem with any voting system that allows you to verify the vote after the fact is that it makes it too easy to coerce someone to vote a certain way.

I can promise you money (or threaten you with violence) to vote a certain way, but you can't follow me into the booth, and no matter how you make me "verify" I can always change the vote between verification and depositing it in the box.

If there is a way to verify after, then I can withhold payment until you verify your vote, or hurt you after I've seen your vote isn't what I wanted. By not allowing after the fact verification, it means that can't happen, and greatly reduces coerced votes.

So as cool as it would be to verify my vote after the fact, it has too many unintended consequences.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#73

Post by fixermark »

bdamm wrote: post #33
nathan_long wrote: post #8

> Kiniy said Galois will design two basic voting machine types. The first will be a ballot-marking device that uses a touch-screen for voters to make their selections. That system won’t tabulate votes. Instead it will print out a paper ballot marked with the voter’s choices, so voters can review them before depositing them into an optical-scan machine that tabulates the votes. Galois will bring this system to Def Con…

The paper trail is not so wonderful. What we saw in 2016 was that even if a candidate were to contest a result, none of the election committees were willing to commit to a full hand recount; instead, the only options were to retabulate through the very same tabulation processes and machines that had produced the questionable results in the first place. Without low barrier to recount by hand, the electronic systems pr…

With too low a barrier to recount-by-hand, every election becomes contested because the cost to demand a recount is minimal and the losing candidate might win.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#74

Post by dragontamer »

on_and_off wrote: post #62
dragontamer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. And I like it. The simpler the design, the better. Sometimes it takes a billion dollars and a couple of smart researchers to invent the "obvious" solution to a problem. We've got butterfly ballots, confusing electronics-only machines, and a variety of bad standards as the basis of our current voting infrastructur…

or just use paper ballots like other countries do ..

The Butterfly ballots WERE paper ballots.

Give America an idea, and SOMEONE in America will royally screw it up. Its a big country filled with lots of smart people, but also filled with lots of dumb people.

DARPA is working to come up with the standard that the whole country should follow. That's good and useful research. Even if it comes out to be the obvious solution (a paper ballot off of a damn printer), there's benefit to one of the major research institutions of this country telling the rest of the country how things should be done.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#75

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

nathan_long wrote: post #45
simongr3dal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I do agree that the paper trail is a great thing. I'm not fundamentally against electronic voting, but I haven't heard of a system that can really compete with the simplicity and verifiability of the immutablility you get from paper ballots inside ballot boxes being watched over by interested parties on all sides.

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think that's dismissive at all. That's what it is, and it sounds good to me. Basically the computer is a scribe with perfect handwriting that fills out the paper ballot for the voter while the voter watches. Absolutely any voter is qualified to assert whether the ballot contains the votes they intended to…

This is missing two completely unnecessary failure modes that pen and paper don't have:

1. You cannot know whether the device leaks your vote, i.e., whether your vote is secret. Mind you that in addition to an attack inside the device, this can also happen via simple electromagnetic side channels inherent in the device--as has been demonstrated quite a while ago for Nedap voting computers by the dutch campaign against voting computers, where you could distinguish selected candicates by tuning an AM radio to the right frequency.

2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for.

Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#76

Post by rabi_penguin »

Galois has a reputation for being one of the most visible and well-known shops associated with Haskell. I'm curious to see what they can accomplish. A little bit of poking showed this[0] coming up -- I definitely wonder if that's around the same direction they'll be taking.

[0]https://galois.com/project/csfv-crowd-sourced-formal-verific...

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#77

Post by hansjorg »

sverige wrote: post #60

Why does this keep coming up? What is the compelling argument against paper ballots? There is no need for results to be known immediately, so how does making voting an exercise done by computers make anything better, particularly when computers are much more vulnerable to remote interference?

Because paper ballots increase the cost of manipulating elections.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#78

Post by dragontamer »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #75
nathan_long wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think that's dismissive at all. That's what it is, and it sounds good to me. Basically the computer is a scribe with perfect handwriting that fills out the paper ballot for the voter while the voter watches. Absolutely any voter is qualified to assert whether the ballot contains the votes they intended to…

This is missing two completely unnecessary failure modes that pen and paper don't have: 1. You cannot know whether the device leaks your vote, i.e., whether your vote is secret. Mind you that in addition to an attack inside the device, this can also happen via simple electromagnetic side channels inherent in the device--as has been demonstrated quite a while ago for Nedap voting computers by the dutch campaign agains…

> Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots.

Paper ballots stop secret cameras in the ballot room? I mean, they really don't. It depends on your threat-model. A lot of things will come down to trust.

> 2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for.

See Butterfly ballots. Paper ballots in USA (Florida specifically) which basically had this flaw. It was confusing to know which circles and lines were going to the correct candidate you wished to vote for. Asking for help on the ballot would leak information on who you wanted to vote for.

A poorly done paper-ballot has its own set of issues.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#79

Post by pmoriarty »

jonahhorowitz wrote: post #51
pmoriarty wrote: post #41

Say goodbye to democracy wherever electronic voting is rolled out.

You still have paper ballots - with audits.

Those audits are only triggered when the vote counts are close enough, within a certain margin.

Since whoever controls or hacks the machines gets to set the vote counts, the audit only happens if they want it to.

Re: DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

#80

Post by mike741 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #9
swalsh wrote: post #4

My ideal voting system would allow me to have a real time feed of votes as they come in, so that at the end of the night I can check my records vs the "official" records. Names can be detached, all I need is a Ballot id. BallotId can be something as simple as the hash of RegisteredVoterId + password + Salt + ElectionId. As long as the voter remembers their password, they can look up their record, and the record can b…

Your ideal voting system is vulnerable to coercion ("log in and show me who you voted for or else") and phishing. Voting systems should provide confidence to voters that votes are counted correctly, but not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted after the ballot is cast.

how does the current system, or any voting system, prevent coercion? If there's a gun to your head, or some other ultimatum, it seems far too late to be worrying about your vote being shared. Even if votes aren't all logged, you can still be tortured for the answer. I would much rather the country have an individual coercion problem than a mass voting fraud problem.

"Voting systems should [...] not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted" What could possibly be the benefit of that?

Post reply on HN