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How about this: A voter takes a paper ballot. The voter marks the ballot with a felt pen a deposits it in a bin. Polling place staff mark the voter's thumb with

by bhickey 11y ago

How about this: A voter takes a paper ballot. The voter marks the ballot with a felt pen a deposits it in a bin. Polling place staff mark the voter's thumb with indelible ink. Electronic voting is a problem looking for a problem. You need voter verifiable ballots with a high degree of tamper resistance. As far as trustworthiness goes it's hard to complete with ballot boxes and adversarial observers.

jaredklewis 11y ago
I don't see how your proposal can prevent double voting. Voting happens over a period of several days not to mention absentee voting. Plus, it seems to me the process is not particularly tamper resistant during the ballot tallying phase, when compared with what is possible using cryptographic techniques.
- pjmorris 11y ago
  How would one go about tampering when, as is traditional, representatives from all parties are in the room when the votes are counted?
- NeutronBoy 11y ago
  Paper voting works in Australia. You don't even need your ID (edit: and by "don't need", I mean "they aren't allowed to ask for it") - you rock up at a polling station in your electorate, give your name, they mark it off on a sheet. You give verbal confirmation that you haven't already voted. They give you a voting paper, you fill it in at a booth, then drop it in the box on the way out. (If you're so inclined, you can also just get your name marked off and walk out if you want to donkey vote, which is the equivalent to a protest/blank vote. Or draw penises on the voting paper). If you don't vote, you get a nice letter in a few months from the Australian Electoral Commission with a fine of about $100 or so for not voting. Voting is also on a Saturday so most have the day off, and there are early polling stations open for a while prior to the day so if you can't make it on the day you can do it then.
  - bigger_cheese 11y ago
    There is also online voting. At least in the most recent NSW state election there was. I was overseas during the election and attempted to vote via this method. Unfortunately my hotel's WIFI kept timing out and I gave up in frustration. I returned to Australia and there was a $57 fine waiting for me for failing to vote. I think our voting system is good but it has flaws. I recall reading an article a few years ago about somebody who showed up to vote (i.e. Got his name marked off) at multiple polling stations on election day just because he could. He received a fine for doing it but all of his votes were counted. Edit - googled it apparently you can be charged with fraud for multiple voting or for voting under a false name (up to six months prison - so slightly more than a slap on the wrist and a fine).
    - NeutronBoy 11y ago
      Hmm I wasn't aware that anywhere in Aus was doing online voting! My only experiences have been either Federal elections or Victoria State Elections, which both follow pretty much the same process.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Yes Australia has quite a good system - we just need to get preferential voting above the line for the upper houses. At the last state election I had to number all the candidates from 1 to 410 if I didn't want to give my vote to the faceless back room political operators. I should mention that a donkey vote is not a equivalent to a blank vote. A donkey vote is when you number the candidates from 1 to x from top to bottom. You actually give your vote to whoever happens to be at the top.
  - brc 11y ago
    Qld state election required Id. Each voter was sent a registration slip and they had to provide it at the ballot box. The loss of the senate ballots and subsequent post-election re-run of the entire state - which had a different outcome - was a massive failure of Australian electoral process.
kristopolous 11y ago
I appreciate the consumer advocacy, but if the machines are going to exist (and they are), they should be done well.
agarden 11y ago
The attack on paper voting is not flipping votes, it is invalidating votes. In Chicago, election officers counting the votes used to hide a small piece of pencil lead under their finger nail. If there were too many Republic votes, they would start putting an extra mark on some of them, thus invalidating the vote because of stray marks. I think the solution is to crowd-source verifying the vote. If every ballot were given a unique number or code, and when the ballot was counted each ballot with who it was counted for as available for download on the web, third parties could verify that the numbers were counted correctly. And each voter now has an anonymous number that he can use to look at how the vote was counted and verify that it was counted correctly. If it wasn't, he complains. The political parties would be happy to urge their loyal constituents to check that their vote was correctly counted and to sue should they have a sufficient number of members claim theirs was wrong.
- xnxn 11y ago
  Wouldn't this allow a bad actor to coerce a voter into disclosing their anonymous number and revealing how they voted?
  - agarden 11y ago
    That is the weakness. It wouldn't just be that their vote would be revealed, though, it would be that then the bad actor could contest the vote, claiming that they were the voter and their vote was counted wrong. But if people were in the habit of destroying their unique code immediately after the results are posted, then they at least have plausible deniability. "No, I burned that piece of paper yesterday. Can't remember what the numbers were."
    - kibibu 11y ago
      If you can trace a vote to a person, through force or otherwise, then you can coerce said person to vote however you like. "Vote for this guy or you're fired" type stuff
      - 11y ago
maxerickson 11y ago
In the couple jurisdictions where I've done most of my voting, the ballot box for the paper ballots has been an electronic tabulator. I don't see much downside to this sort of system, there is a paper ballot for any checks that are needed or desired, and the vote tally is readily available when the election ends.

by bhickey 11y ago

jaredklewis 11y ago

I don't see how your proposal can prevent double voting. Voting happens over a period of several days not to mention absentee voting. Plus, it seems to me the process is not particularly tamper resistant during the ballot tallying phase, when compared with what is possible using cryptographic techniques.

pjmorris 11y ago
How would one go about tampering when, as is traditional, representatives from all parties are in the room when the votes are counted?
NeutronBoy 11y ago
Paper voting works in Australia. You don't even need your ID (edit: and by "don't need", I mean "they aren't allowed to ask for it") - you rock up at a polling station in your electorate, give your name, they mark it off on a sheet. You give verbal confirmation that you haven't already voted. They give you a voting paper, you fill it in at a booth, then drop it in the box on the way out. (If you're so inclined, you can also just get your name marked off and walk out if you want to donkey vote, which is the equivalent to a protest/blank vote. Or draw penises on the voting paper). If you don't vote, you get a nice letter in a few months from the Australian Electoral Commission with a fine of about $100 or so for not voting. Voting is also on a Saturday so most have the day off, and there are early polling stations open for a while prior to the day so if you can't make it on the day you can do it then.
- bigger_cheese 11y ago
  There is also online voting. At least in the most recent NSW state election there was. I was overseas during the election and attempted to vote via this method. Unfortunately my hotel's WIFI kept timing out and I gave up in frustration. I returned to Australia and there was a $57 fine waiting for me for failing to vote. I think our voting system is good but it has flaws. I recall reading an article a few years ago about somebody who showed up to vote (i.e. Got his name marked off) at multiple polling stations on election day just because he could. He received a fine for doing it but all of his votes were counted. Edit - googled it apparently you can be charged with fraud for multiple voting or for voting under a false name (up to six months prison - so slightly more than a slap on the wrist and a fine).
  - NeutronBoy 11y ago
    Hmm I wasn't aware that anywhere in Aus was doing online voting! My only experiences have been either Federal elections or Victoria State Elections, which both follow pretty much the same process.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Yes Australia has quite a good system - we just need to get preferential voting above the line for the upper houses. At the last state election I had to number all the candidates from 1 to 410 if I didn't want to give my vote to the faceless back room political operators. I should mention that a donkey vote is not a equivalent to a blank vote. A donkey vote is when you number the candidates from 1 to x from top to bottom. You actually give your vote to whoever happens to be at the top.
- brc 11y ago
  Qld state election required Id. Each voter was sent a registration slip and they had to provide it at the ballot box. The loss of the senate ballots and subsequent post-election re-run of the entire state - which had a different outcome - was a massive failure of Australian electoral process.

kristopolous 11y ago

I appreciate the consumer advocacy, but if the machines are going to exist (and they are), they should be done well.

agarden 11y ago

The attack on paper voting is not flipping votes, it is invalidating votes. In Chicago, election officers counting the votes used to hide a small piece of pencil lead under their finger nail. If there were too many Republic votes, they would start putting an extra mark on some of them, thus invalidating the vote because of stray marks. I think the solution is to crowd-source verifying the vote. If every ballot were given a unique number or code, and when the ballot was counted each ballot with who it was counted for as available for download on the web, third parties could verify that the numbers were counted correctly. And each voter now has an anonymous number that he can use to look at how the vote was counted and verify that it was counted correctly. If it wasn't, he complains. The political parties would be happy to urge their loyal constituents to check that their vote was correctly counted and to sue should they have a sufficient number of members claim theirs was wrong.

xnxn 11y ago
Wouldn't this allow a bad actor to coerce a voter into disclosing their anonymous number and revealing how they voted?
- agarden 11y ago
  That is the weakness. It wouldn't just be that their vote would be revealed, though, it would be that then the bad actor could contest the vote, claiming that they were the voter and their vote was counted wrong. But if people were in the habit of destroying their unique code immediately after the results are posted, then they at least have plausible deniability. "No, I burned that piece of paper yesterday. Can't remember what the numbers were."
  - kibibu 11y ago
    If you can trace a vote to a person, through force or otherwise, then you can coerce said person to vote however you like. "Vote for this guy or you're fired" type stuff
    - 11y ago

maxerickson 11y ago

In the couple jurisdictions where I've done most of my voting, the ballot box for the paper ballots has been an electronic tabulator. I don't see much downside to this sort of system, there is a paper ballot for any checks that are needed or desired, and the vote tally is readily available when the election ends.