10 ms·

So there is a receipt but, in the interests of preventing tampering (?), the voter won't be able to understand it. It still requires a complex software system

So there is a receipt but, in the interests of preventing tampering (?), the voter won't be able to understand it. It still requires a complex software system that no lay person (and no expert in short order) can verify. That problem remains and it isn't really a technical one. Any voting machine has to be able to be verified using simple visual, mechanical inspection for the people to trust it. More technology will only undermine trust further.

rspeer 11y ago
My understanding is that this system is trying to solve one particular problem: how can you be sure your vote was counted? A simple visual inspection probably isn't enough to convince me that my ballot box won't be dropped off the back of a truck later. That said, I do have some question about how thoroughly it addresses that problem. A lot of the presentation is about difficult edge cases, such as how a voter can falsely verify their vote to someone who's coercing them to vote a certain way. This part seems quite complicated, but it kind of has to be. Maybe an interest group could make step-by-step instructions available to groups of voters who they think are likely to be coerced. What I don't know from the presentation is, is the simple case understandable? If I am a reasonably normal person who has never been to a key-signing party and does not code El Gamal for fun, will I be able to verify my vote? Do I need to personally do the math and computation that would verify my vote, or would there be a usable, trustworthy app of some sort that does it? Here's another threat model that they don't discuss: what if I don't like this system and I want to undermine it, and I use a false verification code to say "look, you counted my vote for the wrong candidate, this system is corrupt"? Presumably nobody would be able to say I was wrong, and nobody would be able to distinguish a real election flaw from my fictitious one.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  A ballot box falling off the back of a truck is a voting system problem that us utterly unrelated to the "verifiable voting mechanism" problem. Talking about them in the same sentence this way obscures both problems.
  - rspeer 11y ago
    I mentioned it hyperbolically, as a way of saying a voting system being simple and inspectable is not sufficient to make your vote verifiable.

rspeer 11y ago

My understanding is that this system is trying to solve one particular problem: how can you be sure your vote was counted? A simple visual inspection probably isn't enough to convince me that my ballot box won't be dropped off the back of a truck later. That said, I do have some question about how thoroughly it addresses that problem. A lot of the presentation is about difficult edge cases, such as how a voter can falsely verify their vote to someone who's coercing them to vote a certain way. This part seems quite complicated, but it kind of has to be. Maybe an interest group could make step-by-step instructions available to groups of voters who they think are likely to be coerced. What I don't know from the presentation is, is the simple case understandable? If I am a reasonably normal person who has never been to a key-signing party and does not code El Gamal for fun, will I be able to verify my vote? Do I need to personally do the math and computation that would verify my vote, or would there be a usable, trustworthy app of some sort that does it? Here's another threat model that they don't discuss: what if I don't like this system and I want to undermine it, and I use a false verification code to say "look, you counted my vote for the wrong candidate, this system is corrupt"? Presumably nobody would be able to say I was wrong, and nobody would be able to distinguish a real election flaw from my fictitious one.

nickbauman 11y ago
A ballot box falling off the back of a truck is a voting system problem that us utterly unrelated to the "verifiable voting mechanism" problem. Talking about them in the same sentence this way obscures both problems.
- rspeer 11y ago
  I mentioned it hyperbolically, as a way of saying a voting system being simple and inspectable is not sufficient to make your vote verifiable.