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Because voting is way more important than home banking. And voting through a web app is wrong on so many levels: - "Electronic voting": Electronic voting mach

Because voting is way more important than home banking. And voting through a web app is wrong on so many levels: - "Electronic voting": Electronic voting machines already have a bad enough track record. If nothing else, it makes large-scale attacks easier. Voters have to trust the ballot operators (different from home banking, where (a) you can choose your bank and (b) manual banking wouldn't be better either). - "Electronic voting, at home": Assuming [1], it wouldn't be coercion resistant, wouldn't be independently verifiable, couldn't guarantee vote secrecy to voters and be susceptible to ballot stuffing, open against technical attacks (eg. as simple as DDOS, or malware). - "Electronic voting, at home, in a web app": No local (non-attacker-controlled) code means you must trust server completely. And its basically impossible to really isolate the voting from everything else. All these problems for what? Paper ballots really aren't so bad. Especially if you eliminate two of the obvious problems US elections have: get rid of voter registration, and move votes to sundays. [1] Assuming you don't use a cryptographic voting scheme; these have their own problems. It's an entire field of research that just can't be summarized in an HN post, but key problems are: a) impossible to understand by voters, b) some desirable properties are mutually exclusive, c) computationally prohibitively expensive (even with state level resources), d) some problems aren't technical in nature and can't be solved technically (think coercion).

paulddraper 10y ago
> Because voting is way more important than home banking. Most banking -- "home" or multi-millions -- is done electronically. It's safer.
- Ao7bei3s 10y ago
  You missed the point. I'm arguing for voting - not banking - to be kept on paper. Banking is a completely different problem. The secrecy requirements are different - in fact, audit trails of all individual transactions are expected. Big transactions are typically individually reviewed by humans. People/organizations can choose their bank. There are multiple banks -> no single target. Transactions can be traced and rolled back, so coercion is less of a problem. Risk is mostly financial.
  - rubberstamp 10y ago
    Coercion won't be a problem at all if voting places are just like in secret ballot voting. Online connection to a central server isn't even required. Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically secured system.
    - nfoz 10y ago
      > Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically secured system. Do any of those exist? Is this possible in practice, in this decade?
      - rubberstamp 10y ago
        If the runtime code is audited and compiled in a secure compiler then the executable is good and secure. Run it on a clean system(embedded system) which is also physically secure. Its not only possible it already exists. Many countries do have tried and tested such systems (am not sure if compiler is audited by them) used in production.
anigbrowl 10y ago
Only in the aggregate. If I could vote and lost the ability, of course I'd be upset but the actual impact on me as an individual of not being able to cast my vote would be tiny. On the other hand if someone cleans out my bank account it's trivial compared to the overall financial system but it's a disaster for me personally. I'm neutral on web voting, because I basically agree with all the observations you make. But I think it's important to look at things from the individual perspective as well. Voting by mail seems like the best option to me at present. As an aside, all these discussions miss something significant: even if you can vote with ease, it's too damn complicated. Most people just don't have the time or knowledge to properly evaluate all the various ballot initiatives at the local and state level in many jurisdictions, nor are most people able to properly evaluate candidates for all the various offices in local elections. Frankly I don't think people should even be allowed to vote for offices like judgeships and public prosecutors, since almost nobody has the education required to assess any of the candidates properly and almost invariably end up choosing whoever happens to be the most photogenic candidate instead.

paulddraper 10y ago

> Because voting is way more important than home banking. Most banking -- "home" or multi-millions -- is done electronically. It's safer.

Ao7bei3s 10y ago
You missed the point. I'm arguing for voting - not banking - to be kept on paper. Banking is a completely different problem. The secrecy requirements are different - in fact, audit trails of all individual transactions are expected. Big transactions are typically individually reviewed by humans. People/organizations can choose their bank. There are multiple banks -> no single target. Transactions can be traced and rolled back, so coercion is less of a problem. Risk is mostly financial.
- rubberstamp 10y ago
  Coercion won't be a problem at all if voting places are just like in secret ballot voting. Online connection to a central server isn't even required. Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically secured system.
  - nfoz 10y ago
    > Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically secured system. Do any of those exist? Is this possible in practice, in this decade?
    - rubberstamp 10y ago
      If the runtime code is audited and compiled in a secure compiler then the executable is good and secure. Run it on a clean system(embedded system) which is also physically secure. Its not only possible it already exists. Many countries do have tried and tested such systems (am not sure if compiler is audited by them) used in production.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Only in the aggregate. If I could vote and lost the ability, of course I'd be upset but the actual impact on me as an individual of not being able to cast my vote would be tiny. On the other hand if someone cleans out my bank account it's trivial compared to the overall financial system but it's a disaster for me personally. I'm neutral on web voting, because I basically agree with all the observations you make. But I think it's important to look at things from the individual perspective as well. Voting by mail seems like the best option to me at present. As an aside, all these discussions miss something significant: even if you can vote with ease, it's too damn complicated. Most people just don't have the time or knowledge to properly evaluate all the various ballot initiatives at the local and state level in many jurisdictions, nor are most people able to properly evaluate candidates for all the various offices in local elections. Frankly I don't think people should even be allowed to vote for offices like judgeships and public prosecutors, since almost nobody has the education required to assess any of the candidates properly and almost invariably end up choosing whoever happens to be the most photogenic candidate instead.