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Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

easycount.mjec.net

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Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#81

Post by Maxious »

michaelhoney wrote: post #72
retroencabulato wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defence, in Section 15 of the FOI rejection letter, they mention the software is used for several fee-for-service industrial elections.

They still have copyright on the software: copying it and, say undercutting the AEC on the fee-for-service would be illegal. Far more likely that the AEC don't want to have their software open to scrutiny by politically-motivated geeks.

"Under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 (the Act), the AEC must conduct all elections for office in registered organisations unless an exemption has been granted by the Fair Work Australia." http://election.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/AEC_Services/Industrial...

So they have a protected monopoly for that too?

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#82

Post by harkyns_castle »

XaspR8d wrote: post #20
harkyns_castle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am advised that publication of the software could leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation". Well, if the problems are there, opening up the source to more eyes strikes me as the obvious thing to do; or should those with the knowledge of how to manipulate it as it stands be kept to the bare minimum? :) But in any case, at least the meat of the implementation of the algorithm should be OK to release…

> "I am advised that publication of the software could leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation". Certainly reminds me of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/463/ It sounds like security...

I hadn't seen that one :) Someone above mentions its VB6 with embedded SQL Server upgraded from COBOL [1]. Can sort of see how they don't want anyone looking at it now.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8039958

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#83

Post by harkyns_castle »

pan69 wrote: post #48
retroencabulato wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defence, in Section 15 of the FOI rejection letter, they mention the software is used for several fee-for-service industrial elections.

Isn't that a conflict of interest? I mean, who or what pays for the development of the implementation?

I'm uneasy about that... presumably they get funded from our taxes. I'd have to guess any profit they make is put back into the pockets^w system, but not responding to FOI's on the basis of a commercial interest strikes me as weird.

Must be some impressive VB coding in any case.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#84

Post by Tloewald »

jlangenauer wrote: post #59
Tloewald wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the system. Surplus votes are distributed based on preferences, so order does matter because preferences will be different from one ballot to the next. Which ballots fill a candidate's quota determines which preferences don't get assigned.

The preferences on quota surplus votes are transferred at a fractional value, so every ballot is counted. It didn't always used to be though - prior to computers, to establish the fractional vote transfers, a "sample" of surplus votes to a quote used to be randomly selected.

Ok, thanks for the correction then. My knowledge of the system was out of date (as is the article I checked it against).

But the fact almost no voter understands it remains an undemocratic feature.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#85

Post by esquivalience »

gipp wrote: post #38
colmmacc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean any offense - but your position is not self-consistent. "Showing us the code" does not invalidate "could change it every day to match their whims". For example the entire source code to Linux is public, but looking from the outside, you as an observer have no way to know that a particular copy of the Linux code is what is running on my laptop. Which is why I say it's a side-show. If the source code is sh…

The point, though, is that releasing the source code under the pretense that it is the running code can create a legal obligation that what's released is what's run. No, it doesn't prevent them from running something else, but it at least creates the possibility of audits and consequences if they do so.

They already have a legal obligation to count appropriately. The publicity of the source code is irrelevant to that.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#86

Post by walshemj »

colmmacc wrote: post #13
mlandauer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Australian software is not used for recording votes. It's used to assist the counting of physical ballot papers because the Senate vote counting system is extremely complicated. In this environment it's more straightforward to ensure the integrity of the software (as long as it's open and verifiable of course)

In that case a simpler fix would be to allow any independent party (within reason) to supply and use their own software and render their own tally. If the parties are mutually distrusting, and their tallies still agree, that can be enough to trust the outcome. Auditing the source code has no real utility; it's worthless because you can't be sure that the code you've audited is the code actually running. "Open and ver…

the simpler fix would be have a simpler voting system that can be done by hand.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#87

Post by zo1 »

Maxious wrote: post #81
michaelhoney wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have copyright on the software: copying it and, say undercutting the AEC on the fee-for-service would be illegal. Far more likely that the AEC don't want to have their software open to scrutiny by politically-motivated geeks.

"Under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 (the Act), the AEC must conduct all elections for office in registered organisations unless an exemption has been granted by the Fair Work Australia." http://election.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/AEC_Services/Industrial... So they have a protected monopoly for that too?

Yes, it's a government... it grants and enforces monopolies.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#88

Post by jacques_chester »

raving-richard wrote: post #27
harkyns_castle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am advised that publication of the software could leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation". Well, if the problems are there, opening up the source to more eyes strikes me as the obvious thing to do; or should those with the knowledge of how to manipulate it as it stands be kept to the bare minimum? :) But in any case, at least the meat of the implementation of the algorithm should be OK to release…

A smart cookie could vote in such a manner as that when the information is entered into the system, it crashes it? Maybe that's what they mean by manipulation... Or, is it available online without any authentication other than knowing where it is? So if you know where it is, you could enter votes and then manipulate the election with those fake votes...

> A smart cookie could vote in such a manner as that when the information is entered into the system, it crashes it?

"Informal" votes -- ballots where the voter does not correctly fill out the ballot paper -- are rejected from the tally by the counters under supervision from scrutineers.

If you use hexadecimal, it will be rejected. If you use a very large number, it will be rejected. If you use weird unicode characters, it will be rejected. If it's anything other than a) a single [1] "above the line" or a fully filled-out ballot "below the line" comprised of numbers from 1-n where n is the number of candidates-1, it will be rejected.

If it's crashing on properly filled-out votes, there's a bigger problem.

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#89

Post by EGreg »

I propose someone sponsors a bill whereby any voting software used to count votes by the public must be open sourced and have several signatures (md5, sha1, etc.) which each voting center must verify before deploying it.

The voting centers would just have generic computers (perhaps with special peripherals for voting) which would load the software from a file and they could verify the signature of the file. There could be software that does this automatically. Such as the Apple app store.

That way, if any data centers detect an anomalous signature, they'd report it and it would raise a stink.

This is similar to the Apple App store except instead of Apple owning the ecosystem it would be their government. There are even better ways without all this crap -- either use an existing App Store from Google or Apple (or all) or have a browser extension and distributed app store from a distributed social app platform ;-)

Re: Software used to count Australian Senate votes is a “trade secret”

#90

Post by dobbsbob »

aianus wrote: post #68
colmmacc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can talk about Ireland, as I've been an election observer there. The way we do it is that ballot boxes are locked and sealed with tamper-evident seals after a polling station has closed. Elections observers; including representatives from the political parties may request to add their own seals. In some particularly contentious districts this is done, but for the most part people are happy with the official seals.…

I appreciate the thorough response and it does sound better than what I had envisaged. However, there is still no way for me as an individual to know for certain that my vote has been counted. The best I can do is trust in the physical security practices surrounding the ballot box and the honesty of the volunteers involved. And even with a margin of error of I encourage you to watch the tech talk when you have a spar…

We don't. I remind every group that tries to automate voting in my province that on election day somebody is going to denial of service the system to use it as an attention seeking platform which will just force a physical vote anyways. Other ideas floated like blockchain decentralized voting are also impossible since none of us can run a trusted personal device to vote with, and plenty of voters have no access or don't want access to phones or any other devices. Worse, every couple of elections there's some sort of scandal where a foreign "politically exposed person" has been caught propping up local candidates or outright fielding their own puppet to seemingly unimportant elections like the parks board so they can reap real estate or resource mining benefits. Imagine what kind of havoc a foreign state could wreak on an electronic voting scheme.

It's much more transparent to just do it by hand count though they tried to sabotage that too http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/11/dont-undermin...

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