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This may be stating the obvious, but I can log in to my online bank and presumably transfer money without any dollars ending up unaccounted. I (hopefully) can't

by d_r 16y ago

This may be stating the obvious, but I can log in to my online bank and presumably transfer money without any dollars ending up unaccounted. I (hopefully) can't go in and tamper with my balance. Are banks that much better at software, or have their flaws just not been discovered yet? Why is it even necessary to upload a PDF file? Wouldn't an https: form be much better? Not to mention, the latter wouldn't get stored on the local filesystem or browser cache. Are e-voting systems (including Diebold terminals) flawed by nature because they are built by non-techie organizations? Major credit to the administration in this case for encouraging a public pilot/evaluation period.

JeffJenkins 16y ago
It's pretty clear that the voting machine manufacturers are doing an awful job, and not even the basic security they need, but there are some particular difficulties to voting. The major benefit of financial systems is that you can keep detailed logs and then audit them after-the-fact to figure out exactly what happened that is a problem. By the nature of secret ballots you can't have detailed logs for auditing, so the best you can hope for is printing something out on paper for the voter to verify. Even if you have a paper ballot printed out you have the issue of most people not bothering to read what's printed on it (which, given the number of people on a US election ballot, I don't blame them for). You also have the issue of how to handle the case where the voter either made a mistake or there was a computer error and they need to change their vote from what is on their paper ballot. All of these issues can be solved, but there are a lot of them and each one you have to account for makes the human and computer protocols for voting more complicated, which is a serious issue. Here's a good article on it from Bruce Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/getting_out_the.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/getting_out_th... The main thing he recommends are: - Open Source Code - Making voting rules uniform - Paper ballots printed out which are used for recounts - Simplify the interfaces, registration process, etc.
- eli 16y ago
  Notably, this DC pilot program was using open source code. It's right here http://github.com/trustthevote/DCdigitalVBM http://github.com/trustthevote/DCdigitalVBM
eli 16y ago
"...but I can log in to my online bank and presumably transfer money without any dollars ending up unaccounted..." This sort of example gets thrown around a lot and it's totally bogus. Banks are solving a much easier problem. To keep track of all the money they just need to make sure that every dollar is always tied to an account. Every transaction is logged. A key requirement of a voting system is that it must be impossible to tie a vote to a person. This complicates things by at least an order of magnitude.

by d_r 16y ago

JeffJenkins 16y ago

It's pretty clear that the voting machine manufacturers are doing an awful job, and not even the basic security they need, but there are some particular difficulties to voting. The major benefit of financial systems is that you can keep detailed logs and then audit them after-the-fact to figure out exactly what happened that is a problem. By the nature of secret ballots you can't have detailed logs for auditing, so the best you can hope for is printing something out on paper for the voter to verify. Even if you have a paper ballot printed out you have the issue of most people not bothering to read what's printed on it (which, given the number of people on a US election ballot, I don't blame them for). You also have the issue of how to handle the case where the voter either made a mistake or there was a computer error and they need to change their vote from what is on their paper ballot. All of these issues can be solved, but there are a lot of them and each one you have to account for makes the human and computer protocols for voting more complicated, which is a serious issue. Here's a good article on it from Bruce Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/getting_out_the.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/getting_out_th... The main thing he recommends are: - Open Source Code - Making voting rules uniform - Paper ballots printed out which are used for recounts - Simplify the interfaces, registration process, etc.

eli 16y ago
Notably, this DC pilot program was using open source code. It's right here http://github.com/trustthevote/DCdigitalVBM http://github.com/trustthevote/DCdigitalVBM

eli 16y ago

"...but I can log in to my online bank and presumably transfer money without any dollars ending up unaccounted..." This sort of example gets thrown around a lot and it's totally bogus. Banks are solving a much easier problem. To keep track of all the money they just need to make sure that every dollar is always tied to an account. Every transaction is logged. A key requirement of a voting system is that it must be impossible to tie a vote to a person. This complicates things by at least an order of magnitude.