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Computer voting was a mistake. It has been shown over and over that voting machine security is abysmal. Voting is one of the few things that shouldn't be compu

Computer voting was a mistake. It has been shown over and over that voting machine security is abysmal. Voting is one of the few things that shouldn't be computerized. It's far easier to swing an election by hacking a few voting machines than to forge thousands of ballots. No matter where you live, do yourself a favor and vote only on paper.

spaceseaman 9y ago
I think it's a great example of our governments' misunderstanding of modern technology and security. Our current governmental computer systems appear extremely fragile[1] and prone to tampering. If governments were actually serious about electronic voting, they need dedicated committees and bureaucratic entities whose sole responsibility is the maintenance and security of these systems. I expect the United State to be absolutely crippled by cyber-warfare in the coming decades. On a state level, our government is simply incapable of recognizing the many vulnerabilities their systems have and compensating for them. While personally I think electronic voting is a trash idea (couldn't we instead still vote via paper, and then read the results via ML? This would give us a "margin of error" of votes, but we would always have the paper ballots to fall back on), I think that tightening IT security is a good thing for governments to do. Especially considering just how poor computer security is for government entities. [1]. Just want to mention I'm not a security guru. This is just my interpretation after visiting many government websites, reading stories, etc
- QAPereo 9y ago
  There is always major opposition to anything which would cause many more people to vote, because that would utterly change the current political landscape. The turkeys won't be voting for Thanksgiving.
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  > couldn't we instead still vote via paper, and then read the results via ML? You just move the single point of failure to an even more difficult-to-prove location.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  I am struggling to see how machine learning has any role in this.
erokar 9y ago
Voting is still done on paper in Norway. The votes are often counted automatically by scanning the ballot papers. In addition they will now be counted manually at least once as a security measure.
- amptorn 9y ago
  Hand-counting only. Hand-count twice for security. To hell with the scanners. Don't introduce fallible, hackable image recognition nonsense to a process which can be entirely paper-based.
  - Iv 9y ago
    I have participated several times to the counting operations in elections in France. Here is how you set it up: - Open the ballot box. - Separate the ballots in packs of 100. - Make tables of 4 volunteers. Each gets a pack. - One person opens the envelop - One person reads the ballot - Two persons tally the score on a sheet - Compare both tallies at the end. If they are not in sync, do over. - Compare the sums to the envelopes in the pack. If it is not 100, do over. All of these tasks are really easy, so you don't have to be smart of even literate to participate. Also, everybody can check what everybody is doing. The person reading the ballot shows it, so they can't change the name. The person opening the envelope sees the names and you can easily follow the counting too. If people come as a group to volunteer they are typically spread around several tables. That way, you have triple check of the count, and actually in the end I think the people responsible for the voting station also compare the voting registers (you sign next to your name after voting) to the tallied total of envelopes and votes. So that would be quadrupled checked in the end. We typically get official results the evening of the day the voting stations closed. To this day I don't see any practical reason to switch to electronic voting unless someone wants to fraud.
blitmap 9y ago
Computerized/electronic voting is extremely dangerous to attempt. That said, I feel like I am not well represented with paper ballots behind an electoral college. I feel that we MUST attempt designing and securing this in the open to move forward as a society in the interest of someday having a direct democracy. (sidenote: direct democracies aren't always pleasant..)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
hengheng 9y ago
I keep hearing this, but I can't quite bring myself to agree. Let's stay tech-positive and use this problem to advance our industry. The problem is this: we don't have any machine that simplifies vote counting while being as trustworthy as having many people count marks on many sheets of paper. And since that is prone to errors and manipulation as well, so the bar is actually much lower than "perfection". Can we really not do trustworthy vote counting better than humans? Can we not make a computer that defeats a human at reliable counting? If we cannot do that, we should reconsider our craft and wonder why. I am not enough of a computer scientist to come up with a good verification plan, but I'd be very surprised if we couldn't do it. Gullible or corrupt government officials, sneaky sales people and shady politicians are a very different problem. Our job should be to make the machine so good and reliable that these people are driven out of the game.
- empath75 9y ago
  Even if we could, politicians don't want it. The voting systems put in place post 2000 were broken by design.
- klondike_ 9y ago
  The problem is that using a computer reduces this to a single point of failure. It only takes one hack of the vote counting machine to compromise the whole election. Even if you use multiple machines, they're probably running the same software and could all be compromised simultaneously. Computers have no morals and blindly do what they're told to. When the votes are counted by a group of humans, one person making a mistake (maliciously or not) isn't a big deal because nobody expects humans to be perfect. There are checks in place to catch those mistakes. It would take a huge conspiracy to compromise the entire system. I suppose there could be a solution in the future, maybe with blockchains or something. Until then, manual counting is the best option.
  - sgc 9y ago
    Anything networked is a fail. If machines were offline and had an extremely simple, embedded code base, and all they did was to mark (highly visible, perhaps square) marks on a paper, 100 to a line, of vote tallies to be humanly summed, it seems like it would reduce error. There could still be punch card ballots that each person verified were entered correctly (ie directly read) to have a better trail as well. But there isn't really a need for a computer for that. It could all be analog/mechanical.
jfoutz 9y ago
I have no problem with a computer printing out a paper ballot, that the voter can inspect. I have no problem with automated counting of paper ballots. Totally auditable system. All digital makes me nervous.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  What if what it prints out isn’t what it submits?
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    Plus: what if it does, and someone wants me to prove how I voted? Ballots are deniably secret to prevent vote buying and menacing for votes.
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    Two phases. One system to print, a separate system to submit. A manual recount looks at the printed ballots which are inspected by the voter for correctness.
jacques_chester 9y ago
> It's far easier to swing an election by hacking a few voting machines than to forge thousands of ballots. Millions of ballots. You can go further. Australia has independent electoral commissions which run the elections. Voting is compulsory and preferential. The entire process is overseen by scrutineers -- individuals appointed by candidates -- so there are always multiple mutually-suspicious observers in the room. Many of the most subversible steps in the voting process, for example replacing a ballot box that is full, have to be cross-signed by an electoral official and at least two scrutineers appointed by different candidates. A hand count is performed three times, again under the supervision of scrutineers. If there is a arithmetical doubt about the outcome of the election, it can be voided and is re-run from scratch. This has actually happened once when several ballot boxes for the Western Australian senators were lost during a federal election. It was very unlikely, but possible, that those votes could have changed the outcome of the final senate position. The High Court voided the entire Senate election and it was redone. Elections must be trustworthy. Cumbersome, people-intensive systems are paradoxically better at this. The odds that a malicious attacker could replace millions of hand-written ballots, subvert hundreds of independent professionals, subvert thousands of independent volunteers, subvert thousands of mutually-hostile scrutineers and also fool thousands of journalists is low. I would say substantially lower than the odds for being able to subvert a single programmer or sysadmin.

spaceseaman 9y ago

I think it's a great example of our governments' misunderstanding of modern technology and security. Our current governmental computer systems appear extremely fragile[1] and prone to tampering. If governments were actually serious about electronic voting, they need dedicated committees and bureaucratic entities whose sole responsibility is the maintenance and security of these systems. I expect the United State to be absolutely crippled by cyber-warfare in the coming decades. On a state level, our government is simply incapable of recognizing the many vulnerabilities their systems have and compensating for them. While personally I think electronic voting is a trash idea (couldn't we instead still vote via paper, and then read the results via ML? This would give us a "margin of error" of votes, but we would always have the paper ballots to fall back on), I think that tightening IT security is a good thing for governments to do. Especially considering just how poor computer security is for government entities. [1]. Just want to mention I'm not a security guru. This is just my interpretation after visiting many government websites, reading stories, etc

QAPereo 9y ago
There is always major opposition to anything which would cause many more people to vote, because that would utterly change the current political landscape. The turkeys won't be voting for Thanksgiving.
jacques_chester 9y ago
> couldn't we instead still vote via paper, and then read the results via ML? You just move the single point of failure to an even more difficult-to-prove location.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
I am struggling to see how machine learning has any role in this.

erokar 9y ago

Voting is still done on paper in Norway. The votes are often counted automatically by scanning the ballot papers. In addition they will now be counted manually at least once as a security measure.

amptorn 9y ago
Hand-counting only. Hand-count twice for security. To hell with the scanners. Don't introduce fallible, hackable image recognition nonsense to a process which can be entirely paper-based.
- Iv 9y ago
  I have participated several times to the counting operations in elections in France. Here is how you set it up: - Open the ballot box. - Separate the ballots in packs of 100. - Make tables of 4 volunteers. Each gets a pack. - One person opens the envelop - One person reads the ballot - Two persons tally the score on a sheet - Compare both tallies at the end. If they are not in sync, do over. - Compare the sums to the envelopes in the pack. If it is not 100, do over. All of these tasks are really easy, so you don't have to be smart of even literate to participate. Also, everybody can check what everybody is doing. The person reading the ballot shows it, so they can't change the name. The person opening the envelope sees the names and you can easily follow the counting too. If people come as a group to volunteer they are typically spread around several tables. That way, you have triple check of the count, and actually in the end I think the people responsible for the voting station also compare the voting registers (you sign next to your name after voting) to the tallied total of envelopes and votes. So that would be quadrupled checked in the end. We typically get official results the evening of the day the voting stations closed. To this day I don't see any practical reason to switch to electronic voting unless someone wants to fraud.

blitmap 9y ago

Computerized/electronic voting is extremely dangerous to attempt. That said, I feel like I am not well represented with paper ballots behind an electoral college. I feel that we MUST attempt designing and securing this in the open to move forward as a society in the interest of someday having a direct democracy. (sidenote: direct democracies aren't always pleasant..)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

hengheng 9y ago

I keep hearing this, but I can't quite bring myself to agree. Let's stay tech-positive and use this problem to advance our industry. The problem is this: we don't have any machine that simplifies vote counting while being as trustworthy as having many people count marks on many sheets of paper. And since that is prone to errors and manipulation as well, so the bar is actually much lower than "perfection". Can we really not do trustworthy vote counting better than humans? Can we not make a computer that defeats a human at reliable counting? If we cannot do that, we should reconsider our craft and wonder why. I am not enough of a computer scientist to come up with a good verification plan, but I'd be very surprised if we couldn't do it. Gullible or corrupt government officials, sneaky sales people and shady politicians are a very different problem. Our job should be to make the machine so good and reliable that these people are driven out of the game.

empath75 9y ago
Even if we could, politicians don't want it. The voting systems put in place post 2000 were broken by design.
klondike_ 9y ago
The problem is that using a computer reduces this to a single point of failure. It only takes one hack of the vote counting machine to compromise the whole election. Even if you use multiple machines, they're probably running the same software and could all be compromised simultaneously. Computers have no morals and blindly do what they're told to. When the votes are counted by a group of humans, one person making a mistake (maliciously or not) isn't a big deal because nobody expects humans to be perfect. There are checks in place to catch those mistakes. It would take a huge conspiracy to compromise the entire system. I suppose there could be a solution in the future, maybe with blockchains or something. Until then, manual counting is the best option.
- sgc 9y ago
  Anything networked is a fail. If machines were offline and had an extremely simple, embedded code base, and all they did was to mark (highly visible, perhaps square) marks on a paper, 100 to a line, of vote tallies to be humanly summed, it seems like it would reduce error. There could still be punch card ballots that each person verified were entered correctly (ie directly read) to have a better trail as well. But there isn't really a need for a computer for that. It could all be analog/mechanical.

jfoutz 9y ago

I have no problem with a computer printing out a paper ballot, that the voter can inspect. I have no problem with automated counting of paper ballots. Totally auditable system. All digital makes me nervous.

colejohnson66 9y ago
What if what it prints out isn’t what it submits?
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  Plus: what if it does, and someone wants me to prove how I voted? Ballots are deniably secret to prevent vote buying and menacing for votes.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  Two phases. One system to print, a separate system to submit. A manual recount looks at the printed ballots which are inspected by the voter for correctness.

jacques_chester 9y ago

> It's far easier to swing an election by hacking a few voting machines than to forge thousands of ballots. Millions of ballots. You can go further. Australia has independent electoral commissions which run the elections. Voting is compulsory and preferential. The entire process is overseen by scrutineers -- individuals appointed by candidates -- so there are always multiple mutually-suspicious observers in the room. Many of the most subversible steps in the voting process, for example replacing a ballot box that is full, have to be cross-signed by an electoral official and at least two scrutineers appointed by different candidates. A hand count is performed three times, again under the supervision of scrutineers. If there is a arithmetical doubt about the outcome of the election, it can be voided and is re-run from scratch. This has actually happened once when several ballot boxes for the Western Australian senators were lost during a federal election. It was very unlikely, but possible, that those votes could have changed the outcome of the final senate position. The High Court voided the entire Senate election and it was redone. Elections must be trustworthy. Cumbersome, people-intensive systems are paradoxically better at this. The odds that a malicious attacker could replace millions of hand-written ballots, subvert hundreds of independent professionals, subvert thousands of independent volunteers, subvert thousands of mutually-hostile scrutineers and also fool thousands of journalists is low. I would say substantially lower than the odds for being able to subvert a single programmer or sysadmin.