4 ms·

I disagree strongly. There are cryptographically secure algorithms for voting, that allow you to ensure that your vote has been counted in the final tally (and

by darawk 8y ago

I disagree strongly. There are cryptographically secure algorithms for voting, that allow you to ensure that your vote has been counted in the final tally (and counted correctly), by returning to you a token that will be incorporated into the final count. You can also securely determine the precise number of votes cast. All of this without sacrificing anonymity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy... For more. We absolutely should be using these systems and the fact that we have allowed electronic voting machines to be used that do not conform to these protocols is an absolute travesty of democracy, considering how easy it would be.

MichaelApproved 8y ago
Even if the concept is secure, implementation of any electronic voting system will never be secure. All voting is vulnerable to hacks, even paper and pen. The key is to make it as expense as possible to hack a vote. In-person paper voting is pretty much as expensive as it gets. Never mind that the general public will never understand what you said or ever implement anything like it.
- darawk 8y ago
  No...it's much more expensive to hack an E2E auditable cryptographic voting scheme. Infinitely expensive. > Never mind that the general public will never understand what you said or ever implement anything like it. They don't need to understand it. It just needs to be in place, so that we can audit votes properly.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    But the payoff is so much higher. And I never believe someone who says something is unhackable... social engineering is a non-removable threat vector.
    - darawk 8y ago
      This isn't software security it's cryptography. The guarantees are much stronger here.
      - XorNot 8y ago
        And yet cryptocurrency theft, scams and bugs are rampant.
        darawk 8y ago
        This is different. If you'd bothered to understand how the system works, you would understand why that is so.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    It's not "infinitely" expensive to find an exploit and one person having discovered such a flaw can compromise the election. In reality land what we actually build IT wise is normally hot garbage. We know how to hold honest paper elections. Let's do that instead of hoping that 10 years from now and 10 billion later we can have a secure election.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Sigh, listen man. Just learn about how it works or stop commenting. You're wrong.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        Feel free to educate me regarding how "it" works if you feel my opinion is in error. It seems unlikely that any system will constructed any time soon which doesn't involve onerous secret key distribution, is provably correct, doesn't allow someone to prove after the fact to a third party that they voted a certain way, is secure against insider and outside manipulation, can be verified in a way that an average person could understand. All properties of presently available paper voting solutions.
        darawk 8y ago
        > Feel free to educate me regarding how "it" works if you feel my opinion is in error. https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf > It seems unlikely that any system will constructed any time soon which doesn't involve onerous secret key distribution, is provably correct, doesn't allow someone to prove after the fact to a third party that they voted a certain way, is secure against insider and outside manipulation, Paper ballots aren't secure against insider or outsider manipulation and they definitely aren't provably correct. I don't see any reason why it should be necessary for the average person to understand how the system works. It should be sufficient that they can verify it, given sufficient knowledge.
        grzm 8y ago
  - myrion 8y ago
    No, people do need to understand it or they won't believe it's too be trusted. Hacking an election is not even necessary if your can make a large segment of the population believe that it was done. Eroding all trust in the democratic system is just as bad as actually changing the results.
vorpalhex 8y ago
The current voting systems basically increment a number in a crappy unsecured database. These systems cost tens of thousands each, are the standard, and probably still too complicated for anybody in your local elections office to actually inspect. If you think switching this to a cryptographic proof of vote is somehow easy, or easier then moving to slices of dead trees and a pen, then it's time to put down the keyboard and go outside.
- darawk 8y ago
  Maybe you should like, learn about it first, or something? It's really pretty easy to implement, and it's a LOT more secure than paper ballots ever could be.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    What we actually build isn't secure and it isn't going to be.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Yes it is. Learn about how the system works, and you will understand why.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        Have you actually read about any real voting machines presently in use? I find it extremely hard to believe you have done so and come to this conclusion.
        darawk 8y ago
        The systems in use are shit. That isn't what i'm talking about. People have, however, designed secure e-voting protocols, such as: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf It's just that nobody uses them.
brownbat 8y ago
I'll join you and take some of the downvotes you got, because I have a pet peeve on this topic to complain about. Too often this fallacy is used to criticize e-voting: 1) find a flaw with electronic voting, 2) support paper ballots. Opportunity costs are completely missing. If paper offered perfect security, that would make sense, but it doesn't. I would have enormous respect for anyone willing to build an honest list of pros and cons on both sides. Let me take a first naive stab: - Electronic voting complicates auditing (in the worst cases making it all but impossible). - Machine manufacturers have a poor record of discovering and correcting vulnerabilities. - Mechanisms to force corrections of vulnerabilities are weak or unenforceable, or raise impossible policy dilemmas if vulnerabilities are discovered near an election. But... - Paper ballots are sometimes ambiguous in ways that skew results.[0][1] - Paper ballots have no mechanism to guarantee "availability." ie, ballot boxes have gone missing, switching recount totals, or sometimes aren't counted at all in close races.[1] - Tabulation is more costly, and often involves separate systems or equipment than recording and storage. "Introduce more unique systems and complexity!" is not usually a good way to guarantee security. On the pro side for both too: + Paper trails improve auditing (but what do you do if there are discrepancies, given the history of both lost paper and flaws in electronics?) + Estonia has had some flaws in their system, but also has tried some innovative solutions to guarantee identity (private keys for all citizens) and prevent coercion/vote buying (votes are revocable up to election day) Everything has flaws, risk mitigation is about shifting those flaws around. Pointing out a flaw in one system isn't a security analysis. Too often that's how people treat it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)#History [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/virginia-election-recount.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/virginia-election-reco... [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/10/florida-countys/ https://www.wired.com/2008/10/florida-countys/
- abdullahkhalids 8y ago
  Single-point of failure. The biggest con of electronic voting that you forgot. Its a single-piece of software that can be manipulated or hacked to change the outcome of the entire election by a small group of people. Pretty much every month for the past few years there has been a major security hack that affects millions of people. The same will inevitably happen with an electronic voting system and may go undetected for months/years. Second, usually in a paper voting system, the ballot box and the counting of the votes is always done in the presence of the election officer, and the representatives of at least two major political parties. All have conflicting aims, and to manipulate an election, you have to corrupt all three of them at many many polling stations.

by darawk 8y ago

MichaelApproved 8y ago

Even if the concept is secure, implementation of any electronic voting system will never be secure. All voting is vulnerable to hacks, even paper and pen. The key is to make it as expense as possible to hack a vote. In-person paper voting is pretty much as expensive as it gets. Never mind that the general public will never understand what you said or ever implement anything like it.

darawk 8y ago
No...it's much more expensive to hack an E2E auditable cryptographic voting scheme. Infinitely expensive. > Never mind that the general public will never understand what you said or ever implement anything like it. They don't need to understand it. It just needs to be in place, so that we can audit votes properly.
- r00fus 8y ago
  But the payoff is so much higher. And I never believe someone who says something is unhackable... social engineering is a non-removable threat vector.
  - darawk 8y ago
    This isn't software security it's cryptography. The guarantees are much stronger here.
    - XorNot 8y ago
      And yet cryptocurrency theft, scams and bugs are rampant.
      - darawk 8y ago
        This is different. If you'd bothered to understand how the system works, you would understand why that is so.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  It's not "infinitely" expensive to find an exploit and one person having discovered such a flaw can compromise the election. In reality land what we actually build IT wise is normally hot garbage. We know how to hold honest paper elections. Let's do that instead of hoping that 10 years from now and 10 billion later we can have a secure election.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Sigh, listen man. Just learn about how it works or stop commenting. You're wrong.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Feel free to educate me regarding how "it" works if you feel my opinion is in error. It seems unlikely that any system will constructed any time soon which doesn't involve onerous secret key distribution, is provably correct, doesn't allow someone to prove after the fact to a third party that they voted a certain way, is secure against insider and outside manipulation, can be verified in a way that an average person could understand. All properties of presently available paper voting solutions.
      - darawk 8y ago
        > Feel free to educate me regarding how "it" works if you feel my opinion is in error. https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf > It seems unlikely that any system will constructed any time soon which doesn't involve onerous secret key distribution, is provably correct, doesn't allow someone to prove after the fact to a third party that they voted a certain way, is secure against insider and outside manipulation, Paper ballots aren't secure against insider or outsider manipulation and they definitely aren't provably correct. I don't see any reason why it should be necessary for the average person to understand how the system works. It should be sufficient that they can verify it, given sufficient knowledge.
        grzm 8y ago
- myrion 8y ago
  No, people do need to understand it or they won't believe it's too be trusted. Hacking an election is not even necessary if your can make a large segment of the population believe that it was done. Eroding all trust in the democratic system is just as bad as actually changing the results.

vorpalhex 8y ago

The current voting systems basically increment a number in a crappy unsecured database. These systems cost tens of thousands each, are the standard, and probably still too complicated for anybody in your local elections office to actually inspect. If you think switching this to a cryptographic proof of vote is somehow easy, or easier then moving to slices of dead trees and a pen, then it's time to put down the keyboard and go outside.

darawk 8y ago
Maybe you should like, learn about it first, or something? It's really pretty easy to implement, and it's a LOT more secure than paper ballots ever could be.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  What we actually build isn't secure and it isn't going to be.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Yes it is. Learn about how the system works, and you will understand why.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Have you actually read about any real voting machines presently in use? I find it extremely hard to believe you have done so and come to this conclusion.
      - darawk 8y ago
        The systems in use are shit. That isn't what i'm talking about. People have, however, designed secure e-voting protocols, such as: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/670.pdf It's just that nobody uses them.

brownbat 8y ago

I'll join you and take some of the downvotes you got, because I have a pet peeve on this topic to complain about. Too often this fallacy is used to criticize e-voting: 1) find a flaw with electronic voting, 2) support paper ballots. Opportunity costs are completely missing. If paper offered perfect security, that would make sense, but it doesn't. I would have enormous respect for anyone willing to build an honest list of pros and cons on both sides. Let me take a first naive stab: - Electronic voting complicates auditing (in the worst cases making it all but impossible). - Machine manufacturers have a poor record of discovering and correcting vulnerabilities. - Mechanisms to force corrections of vulnerabilities are weak or unenforceable, or raise impossible policy dilemmas if vulnerabilities are discovered near an election. But... - Paper ballots are sometimes ambiguous in ways that skew results.[0][1] - Paper ballots have no mechanism to guarantee "availability." ie, ballot boxes have gone missing, switching recount totals, or sometimes aren't counted at all in close races.[1] - Tabulation is more costly, and often involves separate systems or equipment than recording and storage. "Introduce more unique systems and complexity!" is not usually a good way to guarantee security. On the pro side for both too: + Paper trails improve auditing (but what do you do if there are discrepancies, given the history of both lost paper and flaws in electronics?) + Estonia has had some flaws in their system, but also has tried some innovative solutions to guarantee identity (private keys for all citizens) and prevent coercion/vote buying (votes are revocable up to election day) Everything has flaws, risk mitigation is about shifting those flaws around. Pointing out a flaw in one system isn't a security analysis. Too often that's how people treat it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(paper)#History [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/virginia-election-recount.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/virginia-election-reco... [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/10/florida-countys/ https://www.wired.com/2008/10/florida-countys/

abdullahkhalids 8y ago
Single-point of failure. The biggest con of electronic voting that you forgot. Its a single-piece of software that can be manipulated or hacked to change the outcome of the entire election by a small group of people. Pretty much every month for the past few years there has been a major security hack that affects millions of people. The same will inevitably happen with an electronic voting system and may go undetected for months/years. Second, usually in a paper voting system, the ballot box and the counting of the votes is always done in the presence of the election officer, and the representatives of at least two major political parties. All have conflicting aims, and to manipulate an election, you have to corrupt all three of them at many many polling stations.