Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting • Hacker News Board

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#71

Post by codedokode » Wed, May 08, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

dao- wrote: post #22

codedokode wrote: post #19

I thought about some advantages of paper voting compared to electronic: you can spoil the ballot, for example, if you don't like any of candidates and there is no option titled "Against all". In electronic elections, you cannot do that.

You can just not vote. It has the same impact on the results of the election.

There is slight difference. First, the number of spoilt ballots is published. Second, sometimes in two-round elections, they can affect whether the candidate wins in the first round or not if it requires to get 50% of all votes including spoilt ballots.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#72

Post by ghego1 » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:01 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #48

devsec0 wrote: post #47

that's all good in theory, but italian 5 star movement showed how bad actually the reality can hit you

Are you saying that M5S was the result of widespread vote fraud?

The comment probably refers to the issues their e-voting platform had

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#73

Post by nkkollaw » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:02 AM UTC

I don't get what's wrong with paper voting.

If it takes 3 days instead of 1h to get the votes, I think it's worth the wait since elections are pretty important and with paper you can do a recount, find physical paper that's been thrown in the trash (happens every time in Italy), etc.

Also, these corporations seem to have a strong political bias, and how do we know they're not injecting their software with backdoors that would allow to manipulate results..?

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#74

Post by codedokode » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #49

mehrdadn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If John Doe is listed as having voted, but is fake, how would you know he's fake?

There are also lists of who lives in a county/state/country. If you suspect foul play you can further look up if John Doe is a person that lives in the 'right' place. Of course this doesn't solve the case where John Doe is a real person that is allowed to vote, but actually stayed home.

With paper voting, an observer can manually count the number of people coming to the polling station. With electronic voting, this becomes impossible, because you either only see the final list or (sometimes) you see the hashes of votes being cast in real time, but you don't know whether it is a real person or just sysadmin voting under name of a random person.

So with electronic voting, it becomes necessary to verify lists of voters.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#75

Post by openfuture » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #35

I shall repeat it like a mantra: voting beeing slow inefficient is a side effect of it’s transparency. You want a voting system were a average voting helper can look at it and say: “There was nothing fishy there, I saw it”. This is because it is about trust and not only about secrecy and security. Your electronic voting system can be mathematically perfect, but if nobody average can say from the outside that everythi…

This is why reproducible (even better; deterministic) builds matter.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#76

Post by codedokode » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

dunkelheit wrote: post #70

atoav wrote: post #35

I shall repeat it like a mantra: voting beeing slow inefficient is a side effect of it’s transparency. You want a voting system were a average voting helper can look at it and say: “There was nothing fishy there, I saw it”. This is because it is about trust and not only about secrecy and security. Your electronic voting system can be mathematically perfect, but if nobody average can say from the outside that everythi…

Right, but I don't think we should glamorize old-style paper voting either. Yes, it is easier for an observer to spot that something fishy is going on, but it is also easy for authorities to dismiss it as insubstantial. Someone obstructed your view of the ballot box for a few seconds? Sorry, that was an accident. Police evicted you from the poll station? Better behave yourself next time. You saw a blatant incident of…

> most fraud occured at the local level

If it was something that was done at local level, not in conspiracy with central government, then why the investigations in cases of election fraud are so ineffective, and even if the case gets to the court, it typically ends with just a fine? If the central government didn't have relation to the fraud, they would prefer to punish local officials, yet they try to avoid doing it.

Instead, they warn heads of regions that the results of election in their region might affect their evaluation.

Regarding things you have described, they are possible with electronic voting as well. Hashes not matching? You probably made a mistake, verify again, our experts say that everything is correct.

Also, for an average person, seeing a video recording with officials throwing a pack of ballots into the box is easier to understand than some difficult calculations with hashes.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#77

Post by DSingularity » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #35

I shall repeat it like a mantra: voting beeing slow inefficient is a side effect of it’s transparency. You want a voting system were a average voting helper can look at it and say: “There was nothing fishy there, I saw it”. This is because it is about trust and not only about secrecy and security. Your electronic voting system can be mathematically perfect, but if nobody average can say from the outside that everythi…

Paper ballots are vulnerable to systemic voter suppression of the kind that’s hard to eliminate. Voter ID laws. Complicated ballots. Overloaded polling stations. Worst, all these weaknesses are difficult to eliminate because they are both difficult to sincerely debate and difficult to generate the public interest necessary to generate enough activism.

Electronic voting can reduce the friction enough to where we can address these issues with common-sense approaches.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#78

Post by codedokode » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

Strilanc wrote: post #45

sideshowb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a mathematically perfect voting system could be substituted in entirety. Replace the whole damn thing with your own one in an identical case running system.out.println("my favourite candidate wins! ");

The correctness of cryptographic voting systems is determined by their publicly observable behavior, not by their internal implementation. It's the protocol that's secure, not the specific hardware or software implementation. So the attack you're describing doesn't really apply.

But you cannot observe it. You see that someone with a hash X has voted. How do you know whether it was a real person, a real person voting under boss supervision, a real person who actually didn't take part in elections, or just sysadmin inserting records into the database?

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#79

Post by gfiorav » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #35

I shall repeat it like a mantra: voting beeing slow inefficient is a side effect of it’s transparency. You want a voting system were a average voting helper can look at it and say: “There was nothing fishy there, I saw it”. This is because it is about trust and not only about secrecy and security. Your electronic voting system can be mathematically perfect, but if nobody average can say from the outside that everythi…

Also prevent uninterested, lazy, people from voting out of spite.

I know it's unpopular to say, but I don't think it's a bad thing that voting requires personal (strictly personal; no corporation should get in your way) effort.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#80

Post by sytelus » Wed, May 08, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #41

Mindless2112 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who voted is public record (depending on your state [1]), so the numbers should add up. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-public-v...

If John Doe is listed as having voted, but is fake, how would you know he's fake?

You will typically get voter registration ID, just like in paper votes so you should be able to trace. The only thing different in electronic voting is that you sign vote with your private key which becomes your signature. So in theory, whatever can you do by receiving signed paper from someone, you can also do by encrypted content from someone.