8 ms·

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communi

Not convinced that in an age where I can buy a plane ticket for thousands of dollars, where we are thinking of sending people to Mars and I can securely communicate with people, in age where Edward Snowden is able to send private documents or whatev, and I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick, I have to go to a physical place, stand in a queue and draw on a piece of paper to cast a ballot. I've been hearing these complaints for years now, I don't buy it. It's a problem, solve it. Start from here - everyone has a digital signature or certificate or another mumbo-math-jumbo, the system for collecting votes is open source. You have an account at the web service and you can see that your vote has been cast for that candidate that you wished, so who watches the watchers - everybody. Pick two authorities - one counts votes, other distribute keys. One gets a summary of votes only, the other has the mapping of key-person. Sure there are problems. But it sounds to me like laziness and lame excuses.

tomtomtom777 10y ago
> It's a problem, solve it. Why exactly is it a problem? Why not just vote by red-pencil? Obviously there is a small drawback of it taking a bit more time. Then again, one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote. This is important because it prevents selling votes or blackmail, and seems impossible with any online voting system.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  "one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote" Why so? You can take a photo of your ballot after filling it.
tremon 10y ago
buy a plane ticket Not anonymous. sending people to Mars Not online. I can securely communicate with people Either not anonymous, or not verifiable. Edward Snowden is able to send private documents Not available to the general population. I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick Eeuw. Online voting is a complex problem, and goes counter to all other online systems we have. No other system guarantees strong anonymity, strong verification and strong access control at the same time.
lb1lf 10y ago
With all due respect, buying plane tickets and voting are quite different processes; when buying a ticket, everybody has an interest in knowing WHO you are, being able to connect your ticket with your credit card and whatnot. When you vote, we're very interested in NOT being able to connect you with your vote - heck, in some countries it can even be dangerous if the powers that be find out what you voted. (The results being rigged to ensure they remain in power does not mean there's no interest in finding out who the opposition are!) Also, we would like to be reasonably sure that you voted as you wished and that you were not under pressure to vote one way or the other; this, too, is much easier to keep under control if you have to go to a dedicated location to vote, rather than just clicking a few buttons on a computer in your home. And, obviously, we'd like to be reasonably certain that the votes have not been tampered with after they were cast; one of the major benefits of paper ballots is that they do require quite some effort to manipulate after the fact - ballot stuffing is a lot easier if all you have to do is add entries to a database. My preferred voting mechanism would be a hybrid - you go to a designated voting station, where you find a machine in the booth. The machine lets you choose whatever list or candidate you wish to support, then after you've confirmed your selection, it adds your vote to a tally AND prints a paper receipt, which is then deposited in a ballot box. This receipt shows your choice in plain text. Now, you have the best of both worlds - the machines can give a (preliminary) result the second the ballot stations close; if anyone wants to contest the vote, there's no need to resort to computer forensics to decide whether the data may have been tampered with - simply count the ballots like we've done for the past few hundred years.
- andrewwhartion 10y ago
  > My preferred voting mechanism would be a hybrid This is the system advocated by Bruce Schneier[1], I wish it would get more traction. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me... [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/07/voting_security.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/07/voting_secu...
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    Wow. The bitter part is that I googled and found that I first suggested something like this in 2007, three years after Schneier. (It would have felt great to claim that 'Bruce Schneier later formed a similar opinion.') Heck, it is even possible that I merely parroted Schneier's idea; I do read him on occasion, but not as often as I should!
michalskop 10y ago
There are many problems. Is the hardware open-sourced, too? It should, there are known back-doors in many hardware nowadays (not talking about the unknown). Plane ticket, electronic banking, etc. - they have an immediate feedback that corrects mistakes (or worse, attacks), elections should not have such feedback, because one should not be able to prove how they voted afterwards (because of buying votes or coercion to vote in family, workplace, church, etc.) How do you "see" that you have voted for your choice? Because you monitor tells you so? Maybe let you start with your queuing problem (I have never waited in one to vote and do not even know personally anyone to do so).
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  "How do you "see" that you have voted for your choice? Because you monitor tells you so?" Blockchain-like technology can do that for you. (Not evertbody will have enough determination to actually do the checking, but some people will, and they'll alert general populace if something goes weird)
PinguTS 10y ago
If you do not have the time to go to a physical place and stand in line, then you are lazy. If you are lazy in the first place, then I doubt that you have real political interest in the second place, which means you will do uniformed decisions anyhow. Political decision making needs some burden. You need to take your time. It not a decision do you want a Burrito or a Pizza for tonight.
rlpb 10y ago
Give me a way to permit online voting but also be sure that the person who is voting was not coerced. I think you'll find that this is impossible. At least with a polling booth, even if the voter is being coerced, it is difficult for the coercer to verify which way the voter voted. One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources. I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only time I voted, I did so fraudulently. (The lack of voter ID laws in NJ made it very easy. To prove a point to a friend that voter ID laws allowed fraud, I voted as my friend. Then he voted as me. I won the bet.)
  - batbomb 10y ago
    "In order to retrieve your votelocker key, you must publish your completed ballot and voting receipt to candidate.onion"
  - rlpb 10y ago
    Did you not read my post? "One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this."
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      We have a chance at detecting purely electronic hackers also. For example, hackers made 574 attempts to connect to one of my servers as root since the logfiles were rotated. This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.
Eridrus 10y ago
> and I can securely communicate with people At best, we have achieved this with major caveats such as: a) Only if your device is not compromised b) You trust a CA to verify the identity of the remote host c) You trust whatever cert/key you see the first time for a given entity Even in your proposed solution you have replaced one hard problem (voting) with another (key distribution & mgmt) and completely ignored people's desire for elections to have certain other properties (anonymous, uncoerced).
whoopdedo 10y ago
Any solution that begins with "Everyone has..." is going to raise the question of cost. What's that rule that some systems which attempt to achieve 100% coverage will approach infinite cost? Travelers pay a high price for the complex air travel reservation system we have now. Poor people don't fly on airplanes, but poor people will have to vote.
soundwave106 10y ago
I kind of agree. Some of the technical issues do seem like good points to think about, but a lot of the issues raised here (eg, coercion and the lack of anonymity) would also be applicable to ballot by mail / absentee ballots. Many nations have had ballot by mail for a while. Although there's been some fraud issues, I'm not aware of extensive fraud / anonymity problems. Certainly not to the point where the phrase "danger to democracy" is applicable. Actually I would think electronic voting could be made more secure and less fraud-prone than ballot by mail, to be honest.

tomtomtom777 10y ago

> It's a problem, solve it. Why exactly is it a problem? Why not just vote by red-pencil? Obviously there is a small drawback of it taking a bit more time. Then again, one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote. This is important because it prevents selling votes or blackmail, and seems impossible with any online voting system.

guard-of-terra 10y ago
"one important feature of a voting booth is that you cannot proof your own vote" Why so? You can take a photo of your ballot after filling it.

tremon 10y ago

buy a plane ticket Not anonymous. sending people to Mars Not online. I can securely communicate with people Either not anonymous, or not verifiable. Edward Snowden is able to send private documents Not available to the general population. I have computers on my wrist, pocket and dick Eeuw. Online voting is a complex problem, and goes counter to all other online systems we have. No other system guarantees strong anonymity, strong verification and strong access control at the same time.

lb1lf 10y ago

With all due respect, buying plane tickets and voting are quite different processes; when buying a ticket, everybody has an interest in knowing WHO you are, being able to connect your ticket with your credit card and whatnot. When you vote, we're very interested in NOT being able to connect you with your vote - heck, in some countries it can even be dangerous if the powers that be find out what you voted. (The results being rigged to ensure they remain in power does not mean there's no interest in finding out who the opposition are!) Also, we would like to be reasonably sure that you voted as you wished and that you were not under pressure to vote one way or the other; this, too, is much easier to keep under control if you have to go to a dedicated location to vote, rather than just clicking a few buttons on a computer in your home. And, obviously, we'd like to be reasonably certain that the votes have not been tampered with after they were cast; one of the major benefits of paper ballots is that they do require quite some effort to manipulate after the fact - ballot stuffing is a lot easier if all you have to do is add entries to a database. My preferred voting mechanism would be a hybrid - you go to a designated voting station, where you find a machine in the booth. The machine lets you choose whatever list or candidate you wish to support, then after you've confirmed your selection, it adds your vote to a tally AND prints a paper receipt, which is then deposited in a ballot box. This receipt shows your choice in plain text. Now, you have the best of both worlds - the machines can give a (preliminary) result the second the ballot stations close; if anyone wants to contest the vote, there's no need to resort to computer forensics to decide whether the data may have been tampered with - simply count the ballots like we've done for the past few hundred years.

andrewwhartion 10y ago
> My preferred voting mechanism would be a hybrid This is the system advocated by Bruce Schneier[1], I wish it would get more traction. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me... [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/07/voting_security.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/07/voting_secu...
- lb1lf 10y ago
  Wow. The bitter part is that I googled and found that I first suggested something like this in 2007, three years after Schneier. (It would have felt great to claim that 'Bruce Schneier later formed a similar opinion.') Heck, it is even possible that I merely parroted Schneier's idea; I do read him on occasion, but not as often as I should!

michalskop 10y ago

There are many problems. Is the hardware open-sourced, too? It should, there are known back-doors in many hardware nowadays (not talking about the unknown). Plane ticket, electronic banking, etc. - they have an immediate feedback that corrects mistakes (or worse, attacks), elections should not have such feedback, because one should not be able to prove how they voted afterwards (because of buying votes or coercion to vote in family, workplace, church, etc.) How do you "see" that you have voted for your choice? Because you monitor tells you so? Maybe let you start with your queuing problem (I have never waited in one to vote and do not even know personally anyone to do so).

guard-of-terra 10y ago
"How do you "see" that you have voted for your choice? Because you monitor tells you so?" Blockchain-like technology can do that for you. (Not evertbody will have enough determination to actually do the checking, but some people will, and they'll alert general populace if something goes weird)

PinguTS 10y ago

If you do not have the time to go to a physical place and stand in line, then you are lazy. If you are lazy in the first place, then I doubt that you have real political interest in the second place, which means you will do uniformed decisions anyhow. Political decision making needs some burden. You need to take your time. It not a decision do you want a Burrito or a Pizza for tonight.

rlpb 10y ago

Give me a way to permit online voting but also be sure that the person who is voting was not coerced. I think you'll find that this is impossible. At least with a polling booth, even if the voter is being coerced, it is difficult for the coercer to verify which way the voter voted. One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
It's not difficult at all to verify - just insist that the person being coerced take a selfie with the ballot. I'm told this has already been implemented by communist terrorists in India, though I can't find any English language sources. I think a big chunk of the opposition to electronic voting by techies is simply a failure to recognize that physical systems can also be hacked. Which is of course silly - the only time I voted, I did so fraudulently. (The lack of voter ID laws in NJ made it very easy. To prove a point to a friend that voter ID laws allowed fraud, I voted as my friend. Then he voted as me. I won the bet.)
- batbomb 10y ago
  "In order to retrieve your votelocker key, you must publish your completed ballot and voting receipt to candidate.onion"
- rlpb 10y ago
  Did you not read my post? "One might come up with ways to surveil the booth (whether in general or through the coerced voter), but at least we have a chance at detecting this."
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    We have a chance at detecting purely electronic hackers also. For example, hackers made 574 attempts to connect to one of my servers as root since the logfiles were rotated. This idea that physical is somehow categorically better than electronic is just magical thinking.

Eridrus 10y ago

> and I can securely communicate with people At best, we have achieved this with major caveats such as: a) Only if your device is not compromised b) You trust a CA to verify the identity of the remote host c) You trust whatever cert/key you see the first time for a given entity Even in your proposed solution you have replaced one hard problem (voting) with another (key distribution & mgmt) and completely ignored people's desire for elections to have certain other properties (anonymous, uncoerced).

whoopdedo 10y ago

Any solution that begins with "Everyone has..." is going to raise the question of cost. What's that rule that some systems which attempt to achieve 100% coverage will approach infinite cost? Travelers pay a high price for the complex air travel reservation system we have now. Poor people don't fly on airplanes, but poor people will have to vote.

soundwave106 10y ago

I kind of agree. Some of the technical issues do seem like good points to think about, but a lot of the issues raised here (eg, coercion and the lack of anonymity) would also be applicable to ballot by mail / absentee ballots. Many nations have had ballot by mail for a while. Although there's been some fraud issues, I'm not aware of extensive fraud / anonymity problems. Certainly not to the point where the phrase "danger to democracy" is applicable. Actually I would think electronic voting could be made more secure and less fraud-prone than ballot by mail, to be honest.