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> say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. That creates the problem of implementing a truly democratic voting system. You have to ensure tha

> say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. That creates the problem of implementing a truly democratic voting system. You have to ensure that: - voting is secret (i.e. you can't map votes to individuals using just the information available to the public or the vote management) - voting is free (i.e. you can not influence the votes of individuals by coercion, which is easiest implemented by ensuring that voting is secret) - voting is equal, i.e. every voter has the same number of votes and votes can be entered only for entitled voters and each voter gets to vote only once per election - every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made - the counting process is open and accessible to everyone and does not require any a-priori knowledge about the finer details of the voting process in place Now try to implement THAT electronicsally. Even if the solve the first 4 clauses using the right kind of electronics and/or cryptography, the 5th clause is what puts the nail in the coffin for any electronic or computerized voting system: It excludes everybody from participating in the whole process of the election, who lacks deep knowledge about secure electronics design, cryptography and the implemented voting protocoll. In short, your idea of a "smartphone voting app" is stillborn, if you aim for a truly democratic election system.

ajuc 11y ago
> every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made This isn't currently implemented in paper voting systems, why should it count against electronic voting systems? Also 5 isn't implemented too well at the moment either. I think if you got printout with your vote identifier after voting, and then printouts with all the votes (secret identifier->vote) were available - peple could check if their vote was counted. In which way paper voting is more open or more secret than that?
- majewsky 11y ago
  Of course this is implemented in a paper voting system, if done right. When there are elections over here (in Germany), I can sit in the room all day and observe that the ballot box is empty at the beginning, every voter only votes once, and that votes are counted correctly at the end. When I did that last year, I also wrote down the totals and compared these to the published results for my electoral district.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    OK, you are right that you can check more without trusting others with that system (with public votes/secret vote identifiers you can only check that your vote was counted). But you still have to trust other people because you can't be everywhere.
    - datenwolf 11y ago
      Well, assuming that observers attend the counts at all locations each observer can compare his local results with the officially published results for each location. If one mistrusting observer did this for each location, each and every single miscount would be immediately detected.
- datenwolf 11y ago
  Of course it is. In a paper vote you can mark your vote in a unique, distinguishable style; as long as it clearly shows your intention unambiguously and meets the elections constraints it must be counted. So after the vote closes you stay for the count, wait for the ballot with your particularly marked vote to be counted and assert that it gets counted the way you intended it.
andy_ppp 11y ago
I think all of the things you said I can disagree with on some level: - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing? - voting is free - the media spend a lot of money cajoling voters down certain paths. Voting isn't free - I mean look at all those poor republicans voting against their own self interest. - voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy. - voters can't currently tell if their vote was counted and in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless even without direct cheating. - the counting process is open and accessible - this is making the software open and the votes tied to real people. That would completely solve this, especially if it was on some kind of public ledger.
- cgriswald 11y ago
  > - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing? Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced. > - voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy. Old people choose to vote. Young people do not. Disenfranchising those voters with the most experience (and one would hope, the most wisdom, but that is not always the case) in favor of those who currently cannot be bothered to vote is absurd. > votes are worthless even without direct cheating. Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox. But in reference to the above, an individual old person's vote is meaningless, yet somehow they are disproportionately affecting policy...
  - andy_ppp 11y ago
    > Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced. Already happens indirectly now right? Or are you saying the person with the most money hasn't always won the US presidential election? > Old people choose to vote. That's fine but I'm suggesting a way to make the young more engaged. I vote but my vote is usually wasted as we don't have proportional representation in the UK. Why should voting power not be held by those with most to loose? The current system is an arbitrary 1 person is worth one vote, why it shouldn't be done on years of remaining life is arbitrary as well. > Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox... Let's look at what I actually said: in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless This is actually just a fact. If you move boundaries to make safe majorities in areas that were close now my vote that might have changed something is worthless. In first past the post rather than proportional representation your vote is wasted if there is a big majority.
Synaesthesia 11y ago
It's really not outside the realm of possibility. We manage to have free and fair elections, with a voters roll. We manage to have pretty well-run surveys of public opinion, which are quite reliable. Every citizen could have a unique code or login which allows them to vote. Security would be important and require some of some 3rd party who designed the system. That will take trust. However we trust our government to make all the decisions for us daily, and we trust 3rd parties to our security and privacy all the time. Look at the blockchain as an example of an open, secure, trustless, permanent ledger. It or a similar technology could be utilized if no 3rd party is desired. What's lacking is the will to implement such a system, not the technical feasibility.
- datenwolf 11y ago
  The problem is: Average Joe or my mother are not going to understand it. And a democratic process that is not transparent to everyone is not democratic. Also voting by paper ballot is not less efficient or slower than voting with voting machines. I used to live in a rather large district and observed the counts of several elections (communal and federal). Communal elections are a major clusterfuck of parties, lists, individual candidates; every voter has 3 votes that may be distributed according to certain rules, etc., etc. And even with that mess counting all the votes the mandatory two passes took less than 3 hours. Yet it took another 5 hours for the official result to be announced. That 5 hour overhead would have still been there if electronic voting machines would have been used. Also a lot of people forget that it's not a democracy's goal to be efficient, but to be just and, well democratic. If you want efficiency you want some form of dictatorship, technocracy or other top-down heavy from of government. Personally I don't care if I get the result of the election the same day, or a week later. Usually the actual administration will not form for another few weeks or so, due to playing their cards with all the other parties, forming coalitions and such.
  - Synaesthesia 11y ago
    Well you don't have to have electronic voting either, the population can regularly elect local collectives or councils which can make decisions. OK not too different from our model of government. The important thing is popular control over all institutions, mutual aid, co-operation, including corporations, not rule by elites. Look at the Spanish revolution, it was a great success, and mostly achieved by illiterate peasants, everybody understood it very easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE

ajuc 11y ago

> every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made This isn't currently implemented in paper voting systems, why should it count against electronic voting systems? Also 5 isn't implemented too well at the moment either. I think if you got printout with your vote identifier after voting, and then printouts with all the votes (secret identifier->vote) were available - peple could check if their vote was counted. In which way paper voting is more open or more secret than that?

majewsky 11y ago
Of course this is implemented in a paper voting system, if done right. When there are elections over here (in Germany), I can sit in the room all day and observe that the ballot box is empty at the beginning, every voter only votes once, and that votes are counted correctly at the end. When I did that last year, I also wrote down the totals and compared these to the published results for my electoral district.
- ajuc 11y ago
  OK, you are right that you can check more without trusting others with that system (with public votes/secret vote identifiers you can only check that your vote was counted). But you still have to trust other people because you can't be everywhere.
  - datenwolf 11y ago
    Well, assuming that observers attend the counts at all locations each observer can compare his local results with the officially published results for each location. If one mistrusting observer did this for each location, each and every single miscount would be immediately detected.
datenwolf 11y ago
Of course it is. In a paper vote you can mark your vote in a unique, distinguishable style; as long as it clearly shows your intention unambiguously and meets the elections constraints it must be counted. So after the vote closes you stay for the count, wait for the ballot with your particularly marked vote to be counted and assert that it gets counted the way you intended it.

andy_ppp 11y ago

I think all of the things you said I can disagree with on some level: - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing? - voting is free - the media spend a lot of money cajoling voters down certain paths. Voting isn't free - I mean look at all those poor republicans voting against their own self interest. - voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy. - voters can't currently tell if their vote was counted and in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless even without direct cheating. - the counting process is open and accessible - this is making the software open and the votes tied to real people. That would completely solve this, especially if it was on some kind of public ledger.

cgriswald 11y ago
> - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing? Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced. > - voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy. Old people choose to vote. Young people do not. Disenfranchising those voters with the most experience (and one would hope, the most wisdom, but that is not always the case) in favor of those who currently cannot be bothered to vote is absurd. > votes are worthless even without direct cheating. Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox. But in reference to the above, an individual old person's vote is meaningless, yet somehow they are disproportionately affecting policy...
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  > Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced. Already happens indirectly now right? Or are you saying the person with the most money hasn't always won the US presidential election? > Old people choose to vote. That's fine but I'm suggesting a way to make the young more engaged. I vote but my vote is usually wasted as we don't have proportional representation in the UK. Why should voting power not be held by those with most to loose? The current system is an arbitrary 1 person is worth one vote, why it shouldn't be done on years of remaining life is arbitrary as well. > Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox... Let's look at what I actually said: in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless This is actually just a fact. If you move boundaries to make safe majorities in areas that were close now my vote that might have changed something is worthless. In first past the post rather than proportional representation your vote is wasted if there is a big majority.

Synaesthesia 11y ago

It's really not outside the realm of possibility. We manage to have free and fair elections, with a voters roll. We manage to have pretty well-run surveys of public opinion, which are quite reliable. Every citizen could have a unique code or login which allows them to vote. Security would be important and require some of some 3rd party who designed the system. That will take trust. However we trust our government to make all the decisions for us daily, and we trust 3rd parties to our security and privacy all the time. Look at the blockchain as an example of an open, secure, trustless, permanent ledger. It or a similar technology could be utilized if no 3rd party is desired. What's lacking is the will to implement such a system, not the technical feasibility.

datenwolf 11y ago
The problem is: Average Joe or my mother are not going to understand it. And a democratic process that is not transparent to everyone is not democratic. Also voting by paper ballot is not less efficient or slower than voting with voting machines. I used to live in a rather large district and observed the counts of several elections (communal and federal). Communal elections are a major clusterfuck of parties, lists, individual candidates; every voter has 3 votes that may be distributed according to certain rules, etc., etc. And even with that mess counting all the votes the mandatory two passes took less than 3 hours. Yet it took another 5 hours for the official result to be announced. That 5 hour overhead would have still been there if electronic voting machines would have been used. Also a lot of people forget that it's not a democracy's goal to be efficient, but to be just and, well democratic. If you want efficiency you want some form of dictatorship, technocracy or other top-down heavy from of government. Personally I don't care if I get the result of the election the same day, or a week later. Usually the actual administration will not form for another few weeks or so, due to playing their cards with all the other parties, forming coalitions and such.
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  Well you don't have to have electronic voting either, the population can regularly elect local collectives or councils which can make decisions. OK not too different from our model of government. The important thing is popular control over all institutions, mutual aid, co-operation, including corporations, not rule by elites. Look at the Spanish revolution, it was a great success, and mostly achieved by illiterate peasants, everybody understood it very easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE