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Electronic voting seems like one of those ideas that seem great when you start programming in your teens, but you eventually grow out of it when you start to se

Electronic voting seems like one of those ideas that seem great when you start programming in your teens, but you eventually grow out of it when you start to see all the security considerations, costs and possible problems. With some experience in the field, it just starts to seem cheaper and easier to stick to the paper. I'm always stunned when I'm reminded that there are places in the world that not only went electronic, but absolutely fail at its basic security as opposed to getting burned with some elaborate and/or clever attack.

tmpz22 8y ago
And when you learn about the government contracting and procurement process it gets even worse.
DesiLurker 8y ago
eVoting needs strong encryption and trust-chain setup. we have done these things for content protection and payments with hardware level security. this is a solvable problem, especially with emergence of block-chain it can be made much more secure. the problem is, as you've pointed out, cost. my somewhat cynical conclusion is that its being left weak intentionally either to save money or plain old incompetence as there is not much openness/competition in govt contracting process. if we ever are to wholeheartedly accept this there has to be complete transparency in the process. at a policy level this is absolute must is we want to converge to a stable long-term solution.
DonHopkins 8y ago
That naive Mom's Basement idealism coincides with the Atlas Shrugged years. Voters should just buy their own voting machines, and let the market decide!
- IGI-111 8y ago
  So I suppose my stance that the benefits of online voting for direct democracy largely outweight the complexity cost of a sufficiently secure solution are equivalent to the older type of objectivists who realize that free market isn't perfect but that it does lead to better outcomes in most cases. That we can't produce secure voting software is just a testament to how much we suck at software engineering and making safe computers in general, because cryptographically this is a solved problem. Hell I'd argue that modern implementations like Estonia's are pretty close to an acceptable standard of trustlessness. But that's thanks to open standards and public ledgers. The closed source voting machine was never a good idea, and never will be. Given the ancap vibe of blockchain in general this is all a bit ironic isn't it?
  - notfromhere 8y ago
    online voting is a solution in search of a problem. Digital voting just makes it vulnerable to hacking and the general public barely understands how computer works. Paper ballots are cheap and auditable, and can be understood by anyone that knows how to count.

tmpz22 8y ago

And when you learn about the government contracting and procurement process it gets even worse.

DesiLurker 8y ago

eVoting needs strong encryption and trust-chain setup. we have done these things for content protection and payments with hardware level security. this is a solvable problem, especially with emergence of block-chain it can be made much more secure. the problem is, as you've pointed out, cost. my somewhat cynical conclusion is that its being left weak intentionally either to save money or plain old incompetence as there is not much openness/competition in govt contracting process. if we ever are to wholeheartedly accept this there has to be complete transparency in the process. at a policy level this is absolute must is we want to converge to a stable long-term solution.

DonHopkins 8y ago

That naive Mom's Basement idealism coincides with the Atlas Shrugged years. Voters should just buy their own voting machines, and let the market decide!

IGI-111 8y ago
So I suppose my stance that the benefits of online voting for direct democracy largely outweight the complexity cost of a sufficiently secure solution are equivalent to the older type of objectivists who realize that free market isn't perfect but that it does lead to better outcomes in most cases. That we can't produce secure voting software is just a testament to how much we suck at software engineering and making safe computers in general, because cryptographically this is a solved problem. Hell I'd argue that modern implementations like Estonia's are pretty close to an acceptable standard of trustlessness. But that's thanks to open standards and public ledgers. The closed source voting machine was never a good idea, and never will be. Given the ancap vibe of blockchain in general this is all a bit ironic isn't it?
- notfromhere 8y ago
  online voting is a solution in search of a problem. Digital voting just makes it vulnerable to hacking and the general public barely understands how computer works. Paper ballots are cheap and auditable, and can be understood by anyone that knows how to count.