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Why is electronic voting accepted? Proprietary software means the election results can never truly be trusted. Richard Stallman has written about this [1]. [1]

Why is electronic voting accepted? Proprietary software means the election results can never truly be trusted. Richard Stallman has written about this [1]. [1] https://stallman.org/evoting.html https://stallman.org/evoting.html

kordless 10y ago
Primarily education and making people understand all software currently has vulnerabilities.
ajdlinux 10y ago
It's not just proprietary software that's problematic - until we have practical solutions for end-to-end verifiable voting, you can't guarantee that the software and hardware that has been audited and certified isn't being tampered with.
pdkl95 10y ago
Andrew Appel (CS Prof. at Princeton) also gave a very good talk earlier this year about the problems of electronic voting systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQCqIbBBeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQCqIbBBeM edit: Also, Ron Rivest was recently on Numberphile, where he talked about using homomorphic encryption to enable end-to-end verifiable voting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho
- vidarh 10y ago
  Voting is explicitly designed not to be end to end verifiable, because if the voter can verify that their vote was recorded correctly, so can someone who wants to buy it or coerce the voter. We instead take extensive precautions with paper votes to physically protect the integrity of ballot boxes and the counting process explicitly to avoid having to have a system where votes can be verified, because there's been plenty of experience with what can happen if they can be. The problem with most electronic voting is that it throws away this verification of integrity of the voting record.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    In the video, Ron Rivest specifically addresses how to allow both an anonymous vote with (some) mutually exclusive end-to-end verification. I completely agree that electronic voting is currently a terrible idea. The other talk I linked to by Andrew Appel strongly encourages using only paper votes and statistically verifying them by manually recounting a random sample of voting locations. However, I'm willing to listen to Ron (the "R" in "RSA") Rivest's ideas about using encryption in voting. I think the idea needs more work, but it's interesting approach that does attempt to address both anonymity and verifiability.
    - marten-de-vries 10y ago
      It's worth noting that using encryption techniques makes the functioning of a voting system opaque to 99% of the population. In contrast, everyone can understand how voting using paper works. It's no doubt possible to make digital voting systems with some awesome properties, but in the end, are the improvements they give worth this loss of understanding (which might come with a decreased trust in the system)?
  - sparky_z 10y ago
    > because there's been plenty of experience with what can happen if they can be. Such as? Was there ever a time in the history of modern democracies where "vote receipts" were actually used and caused problems? I was under the impression that they've never been used out of preemptive fear.
    - dmurray 10y ago
      Voting in the United Kingdom was public until 1872[0]. After the change to secret ballots, a lot more worker- and tenant- friendly representatives were elected in Britain and Ireland, and it is generally credited with enfranchising the Irish people. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872
  - heinrich5991 10y ago
    Suppose you were told a random number between 1 and (number of vote options) when you are in the booth. Later, your choice plus that random number is published, then you (but no one else) can verify the result, because you can trivially tell them any other number that modifies the result to something you want.
nopassrecover 10y ago
I'm sure I'm missing something simple here, but couldn't we combine electronic voting with a physical print-out that the voter receives immediately, including their vote and a unique (but anonymous) identifier. The voter checks this print-out is correct and submits it to an audit box as they leave the voting booth. If it is incorrect, they file an immediate complaint, and the data is later corrected based on their unique vote identifier (this could be recorded in the audit box with a vote correction audit form for that identifier). The physical audit counts can then be retained, and spot-verified against the electronic counts if/as needed. This assumes (as I think we must) integrity of the voting officers and of chain of custody of the physical audit voting boxes.
- marvy 10y ago
  As far as I know, there are people that have been advocating something very similar to this. It's not quite true that these people are being ignored completely, but on the other hand, this hasn't been done. I've never heard an actual objection to the idea. I think there's just a lack of enough people screaming loud enough. (Or maybe I'm the one who's missing something.)
- pdkl95 10y ago
  The problem is that the computer becomes effectively an expensive pencil. You haven't gained a lot, but the cost increases a lot. Worse, there is a huge increase in complexity which means more opportunity for bugs and a larger attack surface. > unique vote identifier This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes. edit: Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the detail of how mail-in ballots are handled. I should research that.
  - patrickk 10y ago
    > This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes. How is this issue currently dealt with in places that allow mail in ballots?
dimino 10y ago
None of those problems are exclusive to electronic voting. Stallman is, as per usual, completely wrong about the power of free software.

kordless 10y ago

Primarily education and making people understand all software currently has vulnerabilities.

ajdlinux 10y ago

It's not just proprietary software that's problematic - until we have practical solutions for end-to-end verifiable voting, you can't guarantee that the software and hardware that has been audited and certified isn't being tampered with.

pdkl95 10y ago

Andrew Appel (CS Prof. at Princeton) also gave a very good talk earlier this year about the problems of electronic voting systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQCqIbBBeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQCqIbBBeM edit: Also, Ron Rivest was recently on Numberphile, where he talked about using homomorphic encryption to enable end-to-end verifiable voting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho

vidarh 10y ago
Voting is explicitly designed not to be end to end verifiable, because if the voter can verify that their vote was recorded correctly, so can someone who wants to buy it or coerce the voter. We instead take extensive precautions with paper votes to physically protect the integrity of ballot boxes and the counting process explicitly to avoid having to have a system where votes can be verified, because there's been plenty of experience with what can happen if they can be. The problem with most electronic voting is that it throws away this verification of integrity of the voting record.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  In the video, Ron Rivest specifically addresses how to allow both an anonymous vote with (some) mutually exclusive end-to-end verification. I completely agree that electronic voting is currently a terrible idea. The other talk I linked to by Andrew Appel strongly encourages using only paper votes and statistically verifying them by manually recounting a random sample of voting locations. However, I'm willing to listen to Ron (the "R" in "RSA") Rivest's ideas about using encryption in voting. I think the idea needs more work, but it's interesting approach that does attempt to address both anonymity and verifiability.
  - marten-de-vries 10y ago
    It's worth noting that using encryption techniques makes the functioning of a voting system opaque to 99% of the population. In contrast, everyone can understand how voting using paper works. It's no doubt possible to make digital voting systems with some awesome properties, but in the end, are the improvements they give worth this loss of understanding (which might come with a decreased trust in the system)?
- sparky_z 10y ago
  > because there's been plenty of experience with what can happen if they can be. Such as? Was there ever a time in the history of modern democracies where "vote receipts" were actually used and caused problems? I was under the impression that they've never been used out of preemptive fear.
  - dmurray 10y ago
    Voting in the United Kingdom was public until 1872[0]. After the change to secret ballots, a lot more worker- and tenant- friendly representatives were elected in Britain and Ireland, and it is generally credited with enfranchising the Irish people. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872
- heinrich5991 10y ago
  Suppose you were told a random number between 1 and (number of vote options) when you are in the booth. Later, your choice plus that random number is published, then you (but no one else) can verify the result, because you can trivially tell them any other number that modifies the result to something you want.

nopassrecover 10y ago

I'm sure I'm missing something simple here, but couldn't we combine electronic voting with a physical print-out that the voter receives immediately, including their vote and a unique (but anonymous) identifier. The voter checks this print-out is correct and submits it to an audit box as they leave the voting booth. If it is incorrect, they file an immediate complaint, and the data is later corrected based on their unique vote identifier (this could be recorded in the audit box with a vote correction audit form for that identifier). The physical audit counts can then be retained, and spot-verified against the electronic counts if/as needed. This assumes (as I think we must) integrity of the voting officers and of chain of custody of the physical audit voting boxes.

marvy 10y ago
As far as I know, there are people that have been advocating something very similar to this. It's not quite true that these people are being ignored completely, but on the other hand, this hasn't been done. I've never heard an actual objection to the idea. I think there's just a lack of enough people screaming loud enough. (Or maybe I'm the one who's missing something.)
pdkl95 10y ago
The problem is that the computer becomes effectively an expensive pencil. You haven't gained a lot, but the cost increases a lot. Worse, there is a huge increase in complexity which means more opportunity for bugs and a larger attack surface. > unique vote identifier This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes. edit: Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the detail of how mail-in ballots are handled. I should research that.
- patrickk 10y ago
  > This is also a serious problem if it is possible for the voter's copy of the identifier to recover their vote after they have left the voting booth. That would enable vote buying or coercing votes. How is this issue currently dealt with in places that allow mail in ballots?

dimino 10y ago

None of those problems are exclusive to electronic voting. Stallman is, as per usual, completely wrong about the power of free software.