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No. To protect voting, don't use software. Everyone needs to be able to _understand_ as well as be able to verify that they successfully voted. Besides the i

No. To protect voting, don't use software. Everyone needs to be able to _understand_ as well as be able to verify that they successfully voted. Besides the issues with what software the machine is actually running, most people cannot comprehend or understand that software - even if it is open source. That is not acceptable for an open democratic society, or to sustaining it. In this particular situation it should not be necessary to rely on an expert to explain whether the vote counting mechanism is reliable. This only adds to the problem of unreliable or scheming officials - it doesn't improve anything in terms of transparency.

eksemplar 9y ago
I think you could do some secure voting software if all your citizens had a secure two factor signature and you used block chain. I'm not sure why you would do it in a non-corrupt country though.
- beat 9y ago
  Why do something simple, when we can do something complicated instead?
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    Well if your country is doing digital elections without citizen signatures and block chain, then chances are you live in a corrupt country. :p
    - pgeorgi 9y ago
      The point is to do pen&paper elections instead. It's the ultimate "open source" solution since everybody who can hold a crayon in the right direction can participate in the verification of the process.
      - eksemplar 9y ago
        The problem with pen and paper elections is that they rely on honest counting. It's true that it's easier to manipulate a terrible digital system but that doesn't mean pen and paper is safe. Block chain technology would offer an open record that couldn't be manipulated, something paper does not. I mean, I live in Denmark, one of the least corrupt countries in the world and we've had politicians caught changing votes with a pencil and an eraser during the count.
        beat 9y ago
        In Minnesota, honest counting is enforced by process. Any ballot handling, whether marked or unmarked, requires the presence of members of at least two different parties. At no point is a single person (or group from just one party) ever left alone with ballots. We've had two full-on hand recounts at the state level in the past decade or so, and the final results where within a few hundred from the original count in each case, with three million votes cast. Good process solves a lot of problems.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  No, you can't. Elections as completely unlike any other scenario that you might be trying to secure. Two-factor auth is of no use for elections.
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    I live in Denmark where we have a digital identity called "nenId". It's the safest form of citizen identification we've ever had and it would be immensely more safe for elections than our current system of sending out paper cards to be traded in for a vote. On top of that the block chain could offer us a record that couldn't be manipulated. Sure we don't have a lot of problems with voter fraud in our current system, but that doesn't mean it's not extremely vulnerable because it relies on honest counting.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      There is no such thing as "safest form" of anything. You have to consider what threats you are trying to defend against. The threats that you have to defend elections against are completely different than anything else. In particular, elections have to defend against a government that tries to stay in power. A centralized form of identification can be the most dangerous thing for an election ever.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  And how do you prove that all of those citizens exist? We have a secure, provable, relatively cheap method right now: Paper ballots and public observers at elections. Compared to the stakes the cost is peanuts.
  - blackkettle 9y ago
    Exactly, and the simple, physically decentralized, distributed, and somewhat resource/time intensive aspects of paper-based balloting are all great checks against easy attacks. The fact that virtually anyone both capable and eligible to vote is also capable of understanding the voting process, as well as what kinds of physical acts are signs of fraud means that many more people can evaluate the process, and determine - even just by looking - whether something fishy is going on at their voting station. Your average voter will be easily convinced that he "doesn't know enough to judge" whether something is fishy with his voting machine, even if something seems to be clearly malfunctioning; "oh don't worry sir, the print out might be wrong, but your vote was definitely counted correctly internally". The rise of any form of electronic voting is really troubling - and don't even get started on anonymity concerns...
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    I live in Denmark, every citizen has a social security number and we all have access to a digital identification method called "nemID". It's basically a login that's tied to a piece of paper containing a hash table of numbers you use for two factoring. It's the safest citizen verification system we've ever had and it's basically used for any for of identification in the digital world from banking to using our public sector. Our government as an example used it to send digital mail to everyone in a secure mailbox called "eBoks" saving us billions in not sending paper (and bankrupting our postal service as a side effect). We still use paper ballots for elections but it's frankly easier to fake an identity using those than if you were to sign in with "nemId". Today all you need to be allowed to vote is the paper you received and the right sex/age range. So basically I could vote for my brother if I obtained his ballot. With NemId I'd need his username/password as well as his keycard. Obviously you'd have to anonymize it, but some digital systems being broken doesn't mean they all are or that our current system is that great. I've observed elections in the balkans, and they sure aren't safe or democratic despite being done they way you prefer, because it's so easy to exploit if you manipulate the paper trail.
- 5trokerac3 9y ago
  There is no such thing as a non-corrupt country.
3131s 9y ago
Just have the electronic system return a clearly labeled ballot to the voter, which would be verified and turned in before leaving. A physical count can be used to confirm the electronic count or vice-versa (physical counting has vulnerabilities too).
- JshWright 9y ago
  New York uses the reverse of that. You fill out a paper ballot, which then gets fed into a machine for counting. A random sample (of sufficient size) of the paper ballots are then counted to verify the electronic results.
slim 9y ago
Voting with paper does not scale. You can't make people vote everyday for example, which is required if you'd like to implement direct democracy. On the other hand, with direct democracy, the stakes are lower for each vote. So there is less incentive to manipulate the vote. So it makes sense to use e-voting for direct democracy. In the end the voting mechanism in democracy is not really about precision, it's more about getting an acceptable outcome for all the parties
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  The fact that it doesn't scale is exactly why we should stick with it. We want voting to be hard, distributed, and diverse. That prevents a single county or state from destabilizing the rest of the country. It should prioritize accuracy over speed and all else. It's like an ecosystem. The more homogeneous the system then the more vulnerable we are to a single virus (or hacker) we become.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    Wait, why do we want voting to be hard? If voting is hard, that means it takes more time to vote, and not everyone is equally able to take extra time to vote. A disproportionate percentage of the voters will end up being people with more time and/or more flexible schedules.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      They mean vote counting should be hard.
- EugeneAZ 9y ago
  Public - i.e. everyone knows how others have voted - voting can be both precise and secure. Public voting can be done electronically, say, via encrypted SMS. So why to bother with secrecy in the first place?
  - makeee 9y ago
EGreg 9y ago
That's silly. Do you need to use paper and pencil to do banking? If we as a society and individually can trust our money to technology then why not voting? Having a merkle tree and voting from your device instead of a polling station is not just more convenient - it's more secure too. Everyone can verify their vote was counted!! And right now? Right now we have a government database of who voted for what. That's crazy.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  With electronic banking I can verify that my money are where they should be. With electronic voting, I can't be sure my vote got counted, and even less sure others weren't tampered with.
  - EugeneAZ 9y ago
    That's right. And now do both things _publicly_! For money (or others things you own) you will need a Torrens-like title system with a replicated database among your fellow-citizens. For voting - it will be a database replicated on DVDs (or something that can be read, say, by a microscope:) You may be astonished how secure that will be.
    - _joel 9y ago
      How do you verify the entities that are registered on the chain are who they are supposed to be? It may show a commit log of Citizen X voted in a certain way, but how do you verify it was Citizen X that actually voted or that they even exist?
      - EugeneAZ 9y ago
        The same way as you supposed (not:) to check it under a paper-ballots voting system. By the Citizens Database - when every citizen's biometric data (photos, eye or ear scans, body measurements, etc.) and contact data is published on holographic discs, magnetic tapes (IBM has one with 330 TB storage). It will allow anyone to verify there are no fake identities there. One may store just a hash table for all entries, if he can't afford those storage mediums. Have they told you about it?
amluto 9y ago
I like the model where you vote electronically and you can see (through a clear material) that the machine prints out a copy of your votes and drops them into a bin. You can throw cryptographic verification on top of that if you like.
- foepys 9y ago
  That's one very expensive pen. Paper doesn't matter if it isn't being counted. Spotting irregularity in voting results might be possible with statistical methods but how often were votes really recounted?
- Arkanosis 9y ago
  How do you check that your votes were actually taken into account? Even if you can do that, how do you check that no votes were added on top of legit votes? If the actual votes are printed, how do you make sure no one can prove their vote to third parties and so be paid for it?

eksemplar 9y ago

I think you could do some secure voting software if all your citizens had a secure two factor signature and you used block chain. I'm not sure why you would do it in a non-corrupt country though.

beat 9y ago
Why do something simple, when we can do something complicated instead?
- eksemplar 9y ago
  Well if your country is doing digital elections without citizen signatures and block chain, then chances are you live in a corrupt country. :p
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    The point is to do pen&paper elections instead. It's the ultimate "open source" solution since everybody who can hold a crayon in the right direction can participate in the verification of the process.
    - eksemplar 9y ago
      The problem with pen and paper elections is that they rely on honest counting. It's true that it's easier to manipulate a terrible digital system but that doesn't mean pen and paper is safe. Block chain technology would offer an open record that couldn't be manipulated, something paper does not. I mean, I live in Denmark, one of the least corrupt countries in the world and we've had politicians caught changing votes with a pencil and an eraser during the count.
      - beat 9y ago
        In Minnesota, honest counting is enforced by process. Any ballot handling, whether marked or unmarked, requires the presence of members of at least two different parties. At no point is a single person (or group from just one party) ever left alone with ballots. We've had two full-on hand recounts at the state level in the past decade or so, and the final results where within a few hundred from the original count in each case, with three million votes cast. Good process solves a lot of problems.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
No, you can't. Elections as completely unlike any other scenario that you might be trying to secure. Two-factor auth is of no use for elections.
- eksemplar 9y ago
  I live in Denmark where we have a digital identity called "nenId". It's the safest form of citizen identification we've ever had and it would be immensely more safe for elections than our current system of sending out paper cards to be traded in for a vote. On top of that the block chain could offer us a record that couldn't be manipulated. Sure we don't have a lot of problems with voter fraud in our current system, but that doesn't mean it's not extremely vulnerable because it relies on honest counting.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    There is no such thing as "safest form" of anything. You have to consider what threats you are trying to defend against. The threats that you have to defend elections against are completely different than anything else. In particular, elections have to defend against a government that tries to stay in power. A centralized form of identification can be the most dangerous thing for an election ever.
3pt14159 9y ago
And how do you prove that all of those citizens exist? We have a secure, provable, relatively cheap method right now: Paper ballots and public observers at elections. Compared to the stakes the cost is peanuts.
- blackkettle 9y ago
  Exactly, and the simple, physically decentralized, distributed, and somewhat resource/time intensive aspects of paper-based balloting are all great checks against easy attacks. The fact that virtually anyone both capable and eligible to vote is also capable of understanding the voting process, as well as what kinds of physical acts are signs of fraud means that many more people can evaluate the process, and determine - even just by looking - whether something fishy is going on at their voting station. Your average voter will be easily convinced that he "doesn't know enough to judge" whether something is fishy with his voting machine, even if something seems to be clearly malfunctioning; "oh don't worry sir, the print out might be wrong, but your vote was definitely counted correctly internally". The rise of any form of electronic voting is really troubling - and don't even get started on anonymity concerns...
- eksemplar 9y ago
  I live in Denmark, every citizen has a social security number and we all have access to a digital identification method called "nemID". It's basically a login that's tied to a piece of paper containing a hash table of numbers you use for two factoring. It's the safest citizen verification system we've ever had and it's basically used for any for of identification in the digital world from banking to using our public sector. Our government as an example used it to send digital mail to everyone in a secure mailbox called "eBoks" saving us billions in not sending paper (and bankrupting our postal service as a side effect). We still use paper ballots for elections but it's frankly easier to fake an identity using those than if you were to sign in with "nemId". Today all you need to be allowed to vote is the paper you received and the right sex/age range. So basically I could vote for my brother if I obtained his ballot. With NemId I'd need his username/password as well as his keycard. Obviously you'd have to anonymize it, but some digital systems being broken doesn't mean they all are or that our current system is that great. I've observed elections in the balkans, and they sure aren't safe or democratic despite being done they way you prefer, because it's so easy to exploit if you manipulate the paper trail.
5trokerac3 9y ago
There is no such thing as a non-corrupt country.

3131s 9y ago

Just have the electronic system return a clearly labeled ballot to the voter, which would be verified and turned in before leaving. A physical count can be used to confirm the electronic count or vice-versa (physical counting has vulnerabilities too).

JshWright 9y ago
New York uses the reverse of that. You fill out a paper ballot, which then gets fed into a machine for counting. A random sample (of sufficient size) of the paper ballots are then counted to verify the electronic results.

slim 9y ago

Voting with paper does not scale. You can't make people vote everyday for example, which is required if you'd like to implement direct democracy. On the other hand, with direct democracy, the stakes are lower for each vote. So there is less incentive to manipulate the vote. So it makes sense to use e-voting for direct democracy. In the end the voting mechanism in democracy is not really about precision, it's more about getting an acceptable outcome for all the parties

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
The fact that it doesn't scale is exactly why we should stick with it. We want voting to be hard, distributed, and diverse. That prevents a single county or state from destabilizing the rest of the country. It should prioritize accuracy over speed and all else. It's like an ecosystem. The more homogeneous the system then the more vulnerable we are to a single virus (or hacker) we become.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Wait, why do we want voting to be hard? If voting is hard, that means it takes more time to vote, and not everyone is equally able to take extra time to vote. A disproportionate percentage of the voters will end up being people with more time and/or more flexible schedules.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    They mean vote counting should be hard.
EugeneAZ 9y ago
Public - i.e. everyone knows how others have voted - voting can be both precise and secure. Public voting can be done electronically, say, via encrypted SMS. So why to bother with secrecy in the first place?
- makeee 9y ago

EGreg 9y ago

That's silly. Do you need to use paper and pencil to do banking? If we as a society and individually can trust our money to technology then why not voting? Having a merkle tree and voting from your device instead of a polling station is not just more convenient - it's more secure too. Everyone can verify their vote was counted!! And right now? Right now we have a government database of who voted for what. That's crazy.

BurningFrog 9y ago
With electronic banking I can verify that my money are where they should be. With electronic voting, I can't be sure my vote got counted, and even less sure others weren't tampered with.
- EugeneAZ 9y ago
  That's right. And now do both things _publicly_! For money (or others things you own) you will need a Torrens-like title system with a replicated database among your fellow-citizens. For voting - it will be a database replicated on DVDs (or something that can be read, say, by a microscope:) You may be astonished how secure that will be.
  - _joel 9y ago
    How do you verify the entities that are registered on the chain are who they are supposed to be? It may show a commit log of Citizen X voted in a certain way, but how do you verify it was Citizen X that actually voted or that they even exist?
    - EugeneAZ 9y ago
      The same way as you supposed (not:) to check it under a paper-ballots voting system. By the Citizens Database - when every citizen's biometric data (photos, eye or ear scans, body measurements, etc.) and contact data is published on holographic discs, magnetic tapes (IBM has one with 330 TB storage). It will allow anyone to verify there are no fake identities there. One may store just a hash table for all entries, if he can't afford those storage mediums. Have they told you about it?

amluto 9y ago

I like the model where you vote electronically and you can see (through a clear material) that the machine prints out a copy of your votes and drops them into a bin. You can throw cryptographic verification on top of that if you like.

foepys 9y ago
That's one very expensive pen. Paper doesn't matter if it isn't being counted. Spotting irregularity in voting results might be possible with statistical methods but how often were votes really recounted?
Arkanosis 9y ago
How do you check that your votes were actually taken into account? Even if you can do that, how do you check that no votes were added on top of legit votes? If the actual votes are printed, how do you make sure no one can prove their vote to third parties and so be paid for it?