7 ms·

Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye op

Anyone interested in electronic voting, I would suggest reading the article: Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream in the last issue of Phrack. It was eye opening for me. http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/69/11.html#article Conclusion: 1. Internet voting is not compatible with democracy 2. No amount of technology can change this 3. Whom you voted for ought to be secret 4. Who voted should not be secret -- it should be known as widely as possible 5. And who counts the votes, and how, certainly ought not be secret

GrumpyNl 9y ago
Here the etherum approach with transactions would solve that. All votes would be public but still anonymous.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Look, I'm not going to say you are wrong, but... not every conversation needs to descend into ham-fisting bitcoins into it. Nowadays, it's like a Godwins' Law type thing, but instead of everything devolving into Nazis, now everything devolves into 'the blockchain will fix it'. I miss Dogecoin, at least they were in on the joke.
  - artofcode 9y ago
    Such elections, much votes, wow.
  - tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
    I get the crypto fatigue because I feel it as well, but it really does apply here. Trustless voting is one of the more interesting possible applications of blockchain tech, and if properly implemented it could very well do away with voter fraud.
    - jsymolon 9y ago
      > voter fraud. Red Herring. Not counting voter registration fraud, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.b50b8cb8b06b" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... Washington Post only found 4 cases in the 2016 election.
      - tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
        Ha, yeah I was going back and forth between adding "to the extent that it exists". Nonetheless, we can't predict whether fraud/hacking is something we'll need to really worry about in the future. If a good solution exists, we should strive for it I think.
      - andrepd 9y ago
        In case you haven't noticed, there are some other countries in this planet beside the United States :P. Voter fraud is a major problem in many developing countries, and electronic voting (if properly implemented) could help tremendously in making elections a great deal more transparent.
        jsymolon 9y ago
        That's the point. it can't be properly implemented.
        andrepd 9y ago
        Why do you say that? Is there a proof of non satisfiability for a set of criteria? Or you just decided it can't be done?
    - Balgair 9y ago
      Like I said, it isn't wrong, and I kinda agree. Democracy is awesome but slow, we know that. It's also old, and we may have better versions out there now, maybe a Git-Democracy thingy, where it's mostly automated and we have 'code comments' in the laws to help with the judges. I dunno. That said, bit-coins and their ilk are obvious tulip bubbles now, their hope is gone under the greed. Yes, the ideas are interesting and may have applications that are unseen. But as communism was great in theory and genocides in practice (mostly), I think the relentless blockchain spam is missing the point as well: Theory ain't shit because humans are assholes. And no, the blockchain is not going to solve that too.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    But... if he's not wrong and it is actually relevant to the discussion why are you upset about it? Is he supposed to refrain from mentioning it because... it's been popular for the past few weeks and so you're tired of hearing about it?
    - Balgair 9y ago
      I dunno. The constant barrage of: "BlockChains, but for Cancer!" just seems ... derivative now. Like the 'Uber, but for dogs' was this time last year. Everyone knows these hacker-coins are a scam, the last one with them looses their shirt. Yeah, the ideas are kinda cool, but, nah man. Like, from Mean Girls: "Gretchen, stop trying to make 'Fetch' happen, it's not gonna happen" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0
- e12e 9y ago
  Wouldn't most current block-chains tie a rather fine (say 5-minute, accounting for drift) timestamp to each vote? So in small voting districts, if you had a way to know approximately when people voted, you could go a long way towards de-anonymizing votes (say, you managed to track someone's device, that they used for voting, or track their location, if using dedicated voting machines)? I don't know if it would be inherit to making a secure voting system on a block-chain that you had such (unnecessary for voting) fine-grained timestamps, but just a thought.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 9y ago
Electronic voting != internet voting. Remote voting has irresolvable problems in regards to voter secrecy: you can't preserve that with remote voting, and it's indispensable to ensure you don't sell your vote. But that is not synonym with electronic voting. You can go into a polling station and vote on machines; a well designed system shares all vital properties of paper systems while adding many useful features, including ways to reliably count votes algorithmically in an independently verifiable way (any citizen can do the math and check the results, and check that each person only voted once, even though they can't tell who voted for whom). Don't say it's impossible, with a bit of ingenuity and a bit of mathematics it can be done. :P EDIT: For more info read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.... It's fascinating.
- specialist 9y ago
  It's impossible to have an electronically mediated voting system that both protects the secret ballot and ensures the public count. Because there is no digital equivalent to the one-way hash of dropping a ballot into a ballot box. Chaum, Rivest, Pret a Whatever... Fine. Prove it. With a real world election (simulated). Burden of proof lies with the technophiles, not with the proud defenders of Democracy.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    People used to say the same thing about digital currencies (think: Beenz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com ) - because digital information can be copied freely, therefore a digital currency would need a central arbiter and a distributed digital currency would be impossible. And then BitCoin and the blockchain happened. To say Internet voting is impossible is to admit a failure of imagination and ingenuity - I'm confident that some novel application of cryptographic and distributed-computing techniques could come up with a secure system. But I'm wary of how complicated it would necessarily be to the average voter, or even someone with an advanced knowledge of computing - concepts like hashing and the blockchain are almost impossible to correctly explain to a layperson, let alone do they have the way to be confident of the results themselves - it would immediately cast doubt on the system because you cannot trust something that you cannot understand.
simpss 9y ago
Estonian reporting in. Our internet voting system has solved this problem. The votes secrecy is guaranteed by allowing citizens to vote multiple times and only the last vote is counted. No-one is obligated to vote on the internet and a paper system works in parallel. If you cast your vote on the internet AND with a paper ballot as well, the paper ballot is counted. This guarantees no-one can be forced to vote, as they can simply vote again in the 7 day e-voting period. Each vote is encrypted and signed, but in two different containers. The goverment public key is used to encrypt the vote. That container is then wrapped into another that is signed with the citizens private key. Before counting, the double-casts are filtered out and the votes are anonymized by removing the signed wrapper. And, it's open source: https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  If you can vote online, and on paper, and the paper one always trumps the electronic one, then a fraudulent party would just fake the paper ballots and send them in for everyone in the country. Everyone who depended on the electronic vote would then no longer control their vote.
  - simpss 9y ago
    the same can be said for the paper ballots that are never used. Voter turnout is never 100%. As an example faking even 10% of the abstained votes would have swayed the brexit results. I don't see how this makes online voting insecure, fake paper ballot risk has always been there and has been deemed to be a mitigated risk.

GrumpyNl 9y ago

Here the etherum approach with transactions would solve that. All votes would be public but still anonymous.

Balgair 9y ago
Look, I'm not going to say you are wrong, but... not every conversation needs to descend into ham-fisting bitcoins into it. Nowadays, it's like a Godwins' Law type thing, but instead of everything devolving into Nazis, now everything devolves into 'the blockchain will fix it'. I miss Dogecoin, at least they were in on the joke.
- artofcode 9y ago
  Such elections, much votes, wow.
- tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
  I get the crypto fatigue because I feel it as well, but it really does apply here. Trustless voting is one of the more interesting possible applications of blockchain tech, and if properly implemented it could very well do away with voter fraud.
  - jsymolon 9y ago
    > voter fraud. Red Herring. Not counting voter registration fraud, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.b50b8cb8b06b" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... Washington Post only found 4 cases in the 2016 election.
    - tenaciousDaniel 9y ago
      Ha, yeah I was going back and forth between adding "to the extent that it exists". Nonetheless, we can't predict whether fraud/hacking is something we'll need to really worry about in the future. If a good solution exists, we should strive for it I think.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      In case you haven't noticed, there are some other countries in this planet beside the United States :P. Voter fraud is a major problem in many developing countries, and electronic voting (if properly implemented) could help tremendously in making elections a great deal more transparent.
      - jsymolon 9y ago
        That's the point. it can't be properly implemented.
        andrepd 9y ago
        Why do you say that? Is there a proof of non satisfiability for a set of criteria? Or you just decided it can't be done?
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Like I said, it isn't wrong, and I kinda agree. Democracy is awesome but slow, we know that. It's also old, and we may have better versions out there now, maybe a Git-Democracy thingy, where it's mostly automated and we have 'code comments' in the laws to help with the judges. I dunno. That said, bit-coins and their ilk are obvious tulip bubbles now, their hope is gone under the greed. Yes, the ideas are interesting and may have applications that are unseen. But as communism was great in theory and genocides in practice (mostly), I think the relentless blockchain spam is missing the point as well: Theory ain't shit because humans are assholes. And no, the blockchain is not going to solve that too.
- andrepd 9y ago
  But... if he's not wrong and it is actually relevant to the discussion why are you upset about it? Is he supposed to refrain from mentioning it because... it's been popular for the past few weeks and so you're tired of hearing about it?
  - Balgair 9y ago
    I dunno. The constant barrage of: "BlockChains, but for Cancer!" just seems ... derivative now. Like the 'Uber, but for dogs' was this time last year. Everyone knows these hacker-coins are a scam, the last one with them looses their shirt. Yeah, the ideas are kinda cool, but, nah man. Like, from Mean Girls: "Gretchen, stop trying to make 'Fetch' happen, it's not gonna happen" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0
e12e 9y ago
Wouldn't most current block-chains tie a rather fine (say 5-minute, accounting for drift) timestamp to each vote? So in small voting districts, if you had a way to know approximately when people voted, you could go a long way towards de-anonymizing votes (say, you managed to track someone's device, that they used for voting, or track their location, if using dedicated voting machines)? I don't know if it would be inherit to making a secure voting system on a block-chain that you had such (unnecessary for voting) fine-grained timestamps, but just a thought.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

andrepd 9y ago

Electronic voting != internet voting. Remote voting has irresolvable problems in regards to voter secrecy: you can't preserve that with remote voting, and it's indispensable to ensure you don't sell your vote. But that is not synonym with electronic voting. You can go into a polling station and vote on machines; a well designed system shares all vital properties of paper systems while adding many useful features, including ways to reliably count votes algorithmically in an independently verifiable way (any citizen can do the math and check the results, and check that each person only voted once, even though they can't tell who voted for whom). Don't say it's impossible, with a bit of ingenuity and a bit of mathematics it can be done. :P EDIT: For more info read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.... It's fascinating.

specialist 9y ago
It's impossible to have an electronically mediated voting system that both protects the secret ballot and ensures the public count. Because there is no digital equivalent to the one-way hash of dropping a ballot into a ballot box. Chaum, Rivest, Pret a Whatever... Fine. Prove it. With a real world election (simulated). Burden of proof lies with the technophiles, not with the proud defenders of Democracy.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  People used to say the same thing about digital currencies (think: Beenz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com ) - because digital information can be copied freely, therefore a digital currency would need a central arbiter and a distributed digital currency would be impossible. And then BitCoin and the blockchain happened. To say Internet voting is impossible is to admit a failure of imagination and ingenuity - I'm confident that some novel application of cryptographic and distributed-computing techniques could come up with a secure system. But I'm wary of how complicated it would necessarily be to the average voter, or even someone with an advanced knowledge of computing - concepts like hashing and the blockchain are almost impossible to correctly explain to a layperson, let alone do they have the way to be confident of the results themselves - it would immediately cast doubt on the system because you cannot trust something that you cannot understand.

simpss 9y ago

Estonian reporting in. Our internet voting system has solved this problem. The votes secrecy is guaranteed by allowing citizens to vote multiple times and only the last vote is counted. No-one is obligated to vote on the internet and a paper system works in parallel. If you cast your vote on the internet AND with a paper ballot as well, the paper ballot is counted. This guarantees no-one can be forced to vote, as they can simply vote again in the 7 day e-voting period. Each vote is encrypted and signed, but in two different containers. The goverment public key is used to encrypt the vote. That container is then wrapped into another that is signed with the citizens private key. Before counting, the double-casts are filtered out and the votes are anonymized by removing the signed wrapper. And, it's open source: https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine

peterwwillis 9y ago
If you can vote online, and on paper, and the paper one always trumps the electronic one, then a fraudulent party would just fake the paper ballots and send them in for everyone in the country. Everyone who depended on the electronic vote would then no longer control their vote.
- simpss 9y ago
  the same can be said for the paper ballots that are never used. Voter turnout is never 100%. As an example faking even 10% of the abstained votes would have swayed the brexit results. I don't see how this makes online voting insecure, fake paper ballot risk has always been there and has been deemed to be a mitigated risk.