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Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

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Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#71

Post by endgame »

dilippkumar wrote: post #63

Slightly related question: Why are voting machines soo complicated that there’s scope for any bugs in the first place? A vote counting software based on dedicated buttons- one for each option to vote on - should be something that is simple enough to be assigned as an CS undergraduate course project. We have built very sophisticated banking software that handles several orders of magnitude more computations and has be…

1. The banking sector hasn't been ticking away bug-free.

2. Electronic elections are a thorny mix of privacy and transparency requirements. Example: Electors need to be able to confirm their own vote was counted but not be able to prove who they voted for (this is to prevent vote-selling and voter intimidation).

3. Even if you get everything right in #2, you need to prove that the software running on the machines is in fact the software with the correct properties, and doesn't break privacy through a side-channel.

4. There are UI concerns that aren't immediately obvious. Example: the list of candidates should be randomised so that donkey votes don't skew the result to one candidate.

5. This is software that potentially every citizen needs to interact with, which means accessibility is important. You need to cater for blindness, people with limited motor control, i18n and l10n for all the languages in the voting cohort, etc.

6. Related to #3, you need to secure your voting machines and both the hardware and software supply chains between elections.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#73

Post by chrisseaton »

creato wrote: post #69
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK does not start counting until polls are closed. They count all ballots - both in-person and mail-in - within a few hours. They have a lot of people in gyms and just go through them quickly.

The states that had long delayed results were due to being close, and accepting mail in ballots long after polls closed. It's not a matter of counting speed.

The UK does recounts in hours, not weeks.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#74

Post by whimsicalism »

nokcha wrote: post #50
sova wrote: post #29

I want to be able to make sure my ballot was counted. Give me a public/private key pair when you mail me my ballot or when I leave the polls, and encrypt it in such a way that I can confirm the authenticity myself. As a software developer, I will not be convinced that this is not possible.

An important property of our voting system is that it is impossible for a voter to prove (to a third party) how he/she voted. This property is important because it guards against bribing/coercing/pressuring voters to vote for particular candidates. I don't know of any practical way of enabling a voter to check that his/her vote was correctly counted without also compromising the anti-bribery property, especially with…

Only mildly related, but an interesting suggestion I've seen involved the use of intentionally "poisoned" ballots that people could request/would be sent along with your mail in ballot.

These ballots would be verified in the same way as normal ballots, but wouldn't count. Then, you could show a prospective vote buyer a poisoned ballot verified vote which they wouldn't be able to distinguish from a counted vote, rendering vote buying unprofitable.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#75

Post by yongjik »

aazaa wrote: post #31

> Why doesn't the United States (and other democracies) require open source voting software for all elections? One thing that's different about the US is that each state is responsible for carrying out its own elections. There is some federal involvement, but it's mostly up to the states to implement. One often-cited advantage of this approach is that it makes it difficult to attack a presidential election because yo…

I've said it before, but that's like arguing against company-wide approved security policy, because if every department implements security in their own way it would be harder for an outside attacker to hack them at the same time.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#76

Post by takeda »

dudus wrote: post #33
chrisseaton wrote: post #13

> Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated? ... Why don't people demand it? Because paper is simpler and better. It works just fine in other countries. > All software has bugs. So why do you want software? What do you think the advantages are?

Are you kidding? We just had an election amid a pandemic where electronic voting could have literally saved lives. Then we have a president who refuses to concede and states that are still counting and recounting votes in a tight election weeks after it took place, people don't expect a final tally until December.

> people don't expect a final tally until December.

It's always been this way, even before the pandemic. States have 30 days to certify their results. It always been this way. Many trump supporters believe that results will magically change in December. The reason it took longer this time is because:

1. Majority of people voted by mail

2. Many states were not allowed to count as the votes were arriving

3. Many states weren't even allowed to check signature and remove voted from envelopes in advance

4. Dismantling sorting machines in USPS before election causing delays (it took 10 days for my friend's ballot to be delivered within the same county) because of that many states extended wait time for incoming ballots.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#77

Post by treis »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
takeda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about UK, but I suspect it is because they start counting as soon as they receive them. In US there were some laws that counting couldn't start before polls are closed. Despite mail in ballots arriving a month earlier. In some places they weren't even allowed to prepare them for counting (like verifying signatures and removing ballots from envelopes).

The UK does not start counting until polls are closed. They count all ballots - both in-person and mail-in - within a few hours. They have a lot of people in gyms and just go through them quickly.

Aren't UK elections generally just for your individual MPs? That's different than the US where you will have numerous races and ballot issues during the same election. For example, I voted for President, 2 senators, a congressman, probably a dozen state & local officials, and three state constitutional amendments.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#78

Post by chrisseaton »

treis wrote: post #77
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK does not start counting until polls are closed. They count all ballots - both in-person and mail-in - within a few hours. They have a lot of people in gyms and just go through them quickly.

Aren't UK elections generally just for your individual MPs? That's different than the US where you will have numerous races and ballot issues during the same election. For example, I voted for President, 2 senators, a congressman, probably a dozen state & local officials, and three state constitutional amendments.

Usually for MPs and councillors, but yes probably less than what you vote for. But couldn't you count at least president within hours? And then go back on a priority schedule? Doesn't seem to need computers.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#79

Post by jcranmer »

chrisseaton wrote: post #26
sova wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went from abacus to digital circuit painstakingly over thousands of years and you're using a compute-er with a screen to post this comment. There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. We could have audit-able ballots and public/private keys to check that our ballots have been counted and tabulated correctly. Is it the case, perhaps, that ballots are supposed to be "private"…

> There's nothing wrong with paper except its extreme inefficiency in the human realm. They aren't inefficient. In the UK (paper ballots) an accurate estimate is available when the polls close, and a certain result is available within a few hours before next morning. This is much faster than US voting machines.

Honest question here: how many races and questions do you vote on at once in the UK?

This year, my ballot had about a dozen individual races (including two state referendums and an advisory question) to vote on, and this is probably about or below the US median ballot complexity each presidential election.

Re: Ask HN: Why Isn't Open Source Voting Software Mandated?

#80

Post by Closi »

dariusj18 wrote: post #56
chrisseaton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to OP's question is... why have software at all? Why not just paper? Why do you want a 'voting machine' at all? What's wrong with paper? The solution to a problem that should not be solved with software is not to have different software.

At some point in the process, vote information will be stored digitally. Whether it's posted to the SoE's website or during transmittal to the Federal or state governments. I'm also trying to imagine elections with the number of people we have and number of races being counted by hand from the beginning, with no digital storage or tabulation, and it is rife with errors and even harder to validate in a reasonable way.

Hand counting is how we do it in the U.K.

It’s not actually that hard at all, including validation, through simple physical processes (that are incredibly tried and tested!). Write the contents of the vote totals on the outside of the box containing the ballots (total must reconcile to number of ballots placed in), then total all the box totals at the end for a single constituency. Constituencies then report back.

We get results back within a day and the validity has never been seriously questioned. The process can easily scale linearly too.

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