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In Estonian parliamentary election, 44% of the votes were cast online

ajvs 8y ago
I like this trend towards e-voting since it seems to be influenced by trends in cutting edge blockchain technology like decentralised autonomous organisations. It means that novel types of national governance may follow from blockchain governance models, such as liquid democracy. This would be a vast improvement over our current representative democracy model since we'd be able to hold politicians accountable more easily, lobbyists would be less influential and we could put our voting power behind domain experts for issues of importance.
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  > such as liquid democracy The German Pirate Party tried liquid democracy, and the result was similar to what's going in Wikipedia: There's a small set of people with more time on their hands than it good for them or others, and it doesn't take long for them to take over.
  - Zooper 8y ago
    I'm confused, why would a small set of people with time on their hands be able to compromise a liquid democracy? Are there not workarounds to the problems encountered? Interesting how we iterate so often, yet are so concrete in our conclusions about improvements to our own governance.
    - mola 8y ago
      I think because we can't afford to 'break things' with governance so we prefer not to 'move fast'. Seems like good thinking...
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    As one of my friends (and no a local councillor) who was involved in Conservative politics at uni in the UK said it gets taken over by "a bunch of drunken yahoos". She was taking about the FCS and People like Guido Fawkes. Oh "Yahoos" refers to Jonathon Swifts Yahoos not any one employed by Yahoo
- kbody 8y ago
  A lot of these proposed solutions in first sight look like solutions, but I've yet to find a "blockchain" (or any other buzzword) system that offers clear advantages. In practice most of the times it's plain old ploutocracy or founderocracy disguised under the veil of a new tech (with the help of an "innocent non-profit foundation")
- ilaksh 8y ago
  As is often the case, by far the best comment is the least popular. It's amazing how short-sighted people are.
  - magnamerc 8y ago
    Mention blockchain around here and everyone loses their minds.
DocG 8y ago
Although not witout issues, the overall trust seems to be pretty high for e-voting(and voting numbers confirm it). And when voting, papervote always triumps digital one as last resort. I also think this is one thing that also gets more young people to vote. They are familiar with technology and so used to doing everything online. For example I would have not voted for the last couple of elections if digital voting would not have been available.
devit 8y ago
Any more in-depth treatment on the properties of the system and how it resists various attacks?
- bwblabs 8y ago
  "Security Analysis of Estonia's Internet Voting System" @31C3 (December 2014) https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281400_-_security_analysis_of_estonia_s_internet_voting_system_-_j_alex_halderman#t=1227 https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281... (starts at 20:26) They failed on quite some points, I cannot believe they fixed all issues.
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    Any analysis written not this year is out-of-date.
- selune 8y ago
  https://estoniaevoting.org/findings/paper/ https://estoniaevoting.org/findings/paper/ TL;DR: It's not that good.
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    As I replied to the another guy under this parent, any analysis done on previous years it absolutely out-of-date by now. We'd need new reviews to make a proper assessment how (in)secure it is.
selune 8y ago
Wasn't it compromised a few years ago? [1] https://edri.org/estonian-eid-cryptography-mess-750000-cards-compromised/ https://edri.org/estonian-eid-cryptography-mess-750000-cards...
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  Those certificates were replaced and/or revoked.
  - patall 8y ago
    They have also changed the wifi password that they had made public in one of their youtube videos via a note on the wall. (Sure, it was the guest-wifi but still)
acheron 8y ago
Congratulations to President McPresidentface.
HarryHirsch 8y ago
That is worrying. How do you know that the voter could vote freely and didn't sell their vote? Corruption around vote-selling is a concern in certain ethnic enclaves in Britain, and there were even elections annulled over that. The foremost concern shouldn't be convenience, it should be that the vote is safe and secret.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  You don't. Which is why this should definitely not be used for important votes like these. It may work fine at first but the attack surface on your election (and thus on your democracy) has just increased massively.
- PrimeDirective 8y ago
  How do you know they don't change your physical ballots?
  - lolc 8y ago
    You can inspect and watch the ballots.
    - drdeadringer 8y ago
      What is stopping The Public from watching electronic ballots just as equally as electronic ballots? If I wanted to see paper ballots, how is that different from wanting to see electronic ballots? I'm not confident that I could successfully petition Government for paper ballots just as much as I could sue a given contractor for same electronic records.
      - lolc 8y ago
        If I want, I can go down to my polling place before it opens, inspect all the boxes to be empty, watch as people put their ballots in, then watch as the boxes are emptied and the ballots counted. If I'm not allowed to do all this, I can't trust the vote unless I trust the people that administered it. Electronic voting always requires trust in the administrators.
sib 8y ago
That's nothing, once e-voting is legal in Chicago, it will be 144% of the vote.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  The title is incorrect, it's i-voting, not e-voting, there's a difference.
  - lolc 8y ago
    i-voting is e-voting too.
    - dcbadacd 8y ago
      All i-voting is e-voting but not all e-voting is i-voting.
dcbadacd 8y ago
@Moderators Just to avoid people collating together all e-voting (voting machines and similar) with the tech that Estonia uses (they call it i-voting for that reason), could the title be changed from "e-voting" to "i-voting"?
- dang 8y ago
  Ok, we'll do that. Edit: actually, just using the word 'online' seems to make the distinction more clearly.
deogeo 8y ago
"The system has been designed to ensure that voters' computers are not infected by any kind of malware that could change or block their vote." I'm sure this cannot be subverted by an attacker with the resources of USA/China/India/.., or with access to the supply chain from the chip fab onward (don't forget about malware hidden in USB cables!), or or,... And you'd have to be dead sure, because, unlike with physical votes, there will be few-to-none signs of subversion. You can vote physically, but what do a few physical votes matter when the attacker can change the vote of 30, 50, 70% of the population. And how do you change the system, when all parties promising to do so can't get enough votes? Edit: Example of what a voting system must be resistant against: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/adding_backdoor.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/adding_backdo...
- tim333 8y ago
  >few-to-none signs of subversion You could make it so you can view your vote and check it was registered the way intended. If you voted A and it came out B that would be a sign.
  - pedrocr 8y ago
    Now you can demonstrate to anyone what you voted. That's how you get people selling votes. In any reasonable election system you need to be able to be sure your vote is being counted without at the same time being able to prove who you voted for. The demands of voting are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online voting. For every layer of extra complexity you add there's either a way to subvert it to break another of the essential guarantees of voting or to use it to DoS your election.
    - xorcist 8y ago
      > That's how you get people selling votes. It's also important to realize that the mere suspicion of other people selling their votes is enough to undermine confidence in the system. And confidence in the system is pretty much the only thing you have to optimize for.
    - 8y ago
markus_v 8y ago
It is a pretty smooth system. Voting in the last elections took me about 60 seconds. Also, no method of voting is ever going to be 100% safe. It's not like there haven't been any unfair elections using paper ballots.
- sccxy 8y ago
  Same here. Last time I went to regular voting was ~10 years ago. Once tried online voting I will never go back to regular one.
- muthdra 8y ago
  It's not about being safe, it's about being provably shareable. When the option of privately sharing your vote is there, it doesn't take long before a malicious candidate forces you to do it or face consequences. See Halter Vote: https://books.google.com.br/books?id=7gPvCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&lpg=PT144&dq="halter+vote"&source=bl&ots=O9UgXdXDQ2&sig=ACfU3U0p9AJLdrZvNb6uA8UKRj4XPKXIvw&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjAntHUu_jgAhWrK7kGHWs1CEAQ6AEwB3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q="halter%20vote"&f=false https://books.google.com.br/books?id=7gPvCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&l... https://translate.google.com/translate?source=osdd&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todamateria.com.br%2Fvoto-de-cabresto%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?source=osdd&sl=auto&t...
  - markus_v 8y ago
    But couldn't you just take a photo of the ballot? Considering that not submitting the ballot after taking it is not allowed here.
    - muthdra 8y ago
      I think you have to reliably prove that it's your ballot and that it wasn't tampered with after the photo. Halter Voters would sometimes include a specific marking on the ballot that confirmed it was a succesfully bought vote so people could be personally rewarded accordingly.
rcdmd 8y ago
Think of what this means for voter representation. You just made it much easier for people with computer access to vote, compared to those without who still must trek to the polling place. I doubt the demographics represented in this vote were the same as the last comparable one.
- Etheryte 8y ago
  I think you have it the wrong way around. This actually improves voter representation. It's now a lot easier for people with disabilities, the elderly, etc to cast a vote — they don't have to organize transport, they can just vote from home. Getting people to actually go to the polling stations and cast a vote is something that all democracies struggle with to a certain extent, this helps alleviate that issue.
- Strom 8y ago
  90% of Estonian households have access to the internet. [1] The percent is still increasing. On top of that, it's possible to request the government to send an official to your home if you wish to cast a paper vote from home. -- [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tin00134 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&...
xorcist 8y ago
Here's a video on an interesting talk about Estonia's e-voting system: https://youtu.be/PT0e9yTD2M8 https://youtu.be/PT0e9yTD2M8 (Spoiler: Opsec fails begins at 42 min. But watch the whole thing, it's interesting.) It might be prudent to point out that Estonia is one of the better e-voting systems. Voters can override their e-vote with a regular one on election day. However that just means that other systems are mostly even worse.
- nelsonic 8y ago
  "Video unavailable This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated." :-(
  - xorcist 8y ago
    Thanks, link fixed.
- aboutruby 8y ago
  Seems like e-voting is used as a way to transition between a democracy to an hidden totalitarianism. Citizens are lead to believe the voting system still works as usual but in the fact the results are manipulated to keep the same person or group of people in power. Which can probably last for a while. Meanwhile the person/group in power can take control of all parts of the state until it slowly fades into an obvious dictature. This works because most people don't understand technology well enough to understand that electronic voting is very far from secure.
KorematsuFred 8y ago
Newver understood the fascination with e-votes. E-votes are great when you vote for reality shows but for a normal election I think walking to the local booth and vote is a much better idea because it is hackers proof and also only citizens with enough motivation will vote.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  > and also only citizens with enough motivation will vote. Why are physical barriers restricting public engagement a desirable trait in a democracy?
- zanny 8y ago
  > Newver understood the fascination with e-votes. People want convenience. Citizens would like to vote online, and are largely ignorant of the technical challenges that make it impossible to secure, at least on your average everyday Internet connected consumer device. Its the job of us techies to keep shouting from the rooftops how all these implementations of online voting are deeply flawed and exploitable the same way climatologists have to keep screaming from the rooftops about the damage rising co2 is causing to our biosphere.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Don't vote = don't get any benefits. You would have to have an allowance for certain Disabled and Housebound voters and maybe be allowed to miss one election.
    - KorematsuFred 8y ago
      That is worse. It means people on welfare might be willing to vote more and hence peters would vote to steal from paul. Probably an argument that only those who pay certain amount of tax alone should be able to vote.
      - C1sc0cat 8y ago
        Lovely so who gets to decide who the "active citizens" are. I think we have moved beyond that sort of limited franchise. Btw "active citizens" is a reference to the French revolution
wizzairflyer 8y ago
Online voting seems like such a bad idea to me. If people want convenience couldn't voting by post be a good compromise? Sure you still have to bring your letter to the post office but that's a more mild inconvenience and it seems more secure than e or i voting.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  You get problems like "granny farming"
positivejam 8y ago
Relevant Computerphile episode (w/ Tom Scott): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
DonRico 8y ago
Oh well as an Estonian that topic is staring to become really tiring especially because we just passed to voting season. Bottom line is: Conservatives / nationalists are preferred by older folks and these parties lobby against anything that can give votes to liberals. They also know that youngster might skip the voting after all if we would go back to paper voting all together. Also there will be major reputation loss. But since conservatives are against EU, open-trading and anything outside our teeny-tiny pond they don't give a flying fuck about that.
gardaani 8y ago
Usually online voting supporters say that it would increase voter turnout. It seems that it hasn't happen in Estonia: 64.2% in 2015 and 63.7% in 2019 [1][2]. Also, I am a bit worried that online voting might give young tech-savvy people an advantage over old and poor people who don't have access to computers or mobile phones. Has there been studies about demographies in these elections? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Estonian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Estonian_parliamentary_el... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Estonian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Estonian_parliamentary_el...
- sccxy 8y ago
  Online voting statistics are available here: https://www.valimised.ee/en/archive/statistics-about-internet-voting-estonia https://www.valimised.ee/en/archive/statistics-about-interne... Same smart card is used every online service in Estonia. 96% taxes are done online. So online voting is not something new for older people. It is just like every other online service.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Currently older people vote in much larger numbers than younger people, so I don't see how that's a major concern. Clearly the current setup advantages the elderly in practice.
JDiculous 8y ago
All these "e-voting can never work" comments just scream ludditism. Estonia has already demonstrated that it works, we have online banking and cryptocurrencies worth billions of dollars in market cap, and people want to say it's not possible. Yeah, ok. Feel free to express your views, but don't pretend to represent the software engineering community.
- foepys 8y ago
  Nobody said it's impossible. It's just insecure, unverifiable, and non-anonymous. Unless you inspect every voting machine, smart-card reader, internet connection, encryption algorithm, etc. for every election completely, you can potentially manipule millions of votes from your home from the other side of the planet. Or on a smaller scale, change all votes of one or multiple voting machines.
  - JDiculous 8y ago
    Paper ballots aren't secure either, who's to guarantee that your paper ballot was recorded correctly? In many countries paper ballots have been tampered with, altering elections (Venezuela, South Korea). Remember Bush vs. Gore in 2000? I don't understand why people are so trusting of paper ballots, I would much prefer an e-voting system where my vote can be verified afterwards. You don't need to inspect every internet connection, there's HTTPS. The key is that one should be able to verify one's vote to ensure that it was properly recorded. If everyone can verify their own vote, then they can verify that the voting wasn't hacked. With paper voting, it is impossible to verify your own vote - it is equivalent to tossing it into a black box. One might say "then people can sell votes!", but as Estonia has done, you can have it so that one can vote multiple times. And of course there should be extraordinarily stiff penalties on anyone buying/selling votes (I'd say minimum $30k or 20% of one's total wealth fine + prison time). Needing paper ballots is holding back democracy. E-voting would revolutionize democracy and for the first time in history allow a true direct democracy at scale. Of course e-voting cannot be conducted by emailing votes or some other insecure nonsense like that, but it is ludditism to suggest that it cannot be achieved, which many seem to suggest. This kind of thinking is literally holding society back.
dalbasal 8y ago
I'm curious about what we can do with digital voting, in terms of evolving democracy. If, hypothetically, all mechanical issues are solved... We could have more direct democracy, with high-frequency referendums, reversible proxies, publicly submitted or endorsed bills. The democracies we have were designed around mechanical limitations, so it stands to reason that (at least some) democracies would change when those limits go away. That said... there seems to be a dearth of ideas, at least few seemingly useful ones that I ever hear. If you were making a new constitution for a village or city, what could be done with electronic voting and how does it make it better? BRTW, links welcome.
antris 8y ago
Essentially, Estonia gives 44% influence of their country to a system that cannot be verified to have almost any relation to what people actually have voted for. The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on. Rest in peace, democracy in Estonia.
- dekrg 8y ago
  >The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on. Well, no they the main proponents of e-voting figured a long time ago that it's easier to eliminate those concerns using propaganda. For example if you are against e-voting media will brand you as a backwards russkie who hates Estonia.
  - jyriand 8y ago
    That's not true. Estonian Conservative National Party is against e-voting also and nobody is calling them "russkies".
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    I'm not a supporter of i-voting, but it is true that most of the "concerns" given are pure FUD/bullshit. Studies that consider guest WiFi password being vital information, studies that collate e-voting and i-voting and a lot of other shit I can't recall at the moment. But the very basic problems are not talked about, namely: * Votes should be counted by independent parties while preserving anonymity * Certificate issuance should be actually monitored by CT logs, every vote that is not in a CT log is dismissed and logged * Voting code should be actually readable and audited (only opsec has been audited so far) There are a few other problems but I've forgotten them for the time being. These are the problems we should be talking about, not some bogus like, "Omg how can ten grannies vote quickly online".
- Mirioron 8y ago
  Online voting in elections has been around since 2005 in Estonia. I think you're making it seem worse than it is. On the other hand, I wish Estonia did not have online voting as well. There are some attack vectors you can't defend against.
TheOperator 8y ago
I understand the cost appeal of such a voting system but it's pretty low security for an election. I wouldn't even worry about foreign actors as much as I would worry about domestic actors controlling the digital ballot box by fucking with the online voting system.

ajvs 8y ago

I like this trend towards e-voting since it seems to be influenced by trends in cutting edge blockchain technology like decentralised autonomous organisations. It means that novel types of national governance may follow from blockchain governance models, such as liquid democracy. This would be a vast improvement over our current representative democracy model since we'd be able to hold politicians accountable more easily, lobbyists would be less influential and we could put our voting power behind domain experts for issues of importance.

pgeorgi 8y ago
> such as liquid democracy The German Pirate Party tried liquid democracy, and the result was similar to what's going in Wikipedia: There's a small set of people with more time on their hands than it good for them or others, and it doesn't take long for them to take over.
- Zooper 8y ago
  I'm confused, why would a small set of people with time on their hands be able to compromise a liquid democracy? Are there not workarounds to the problems encountered? Interesting how we iterate so often, yet are so concrete in our conclusions about improvements to our own governance.
  - mola 8y ago
    I think because we can't afford to 'break things' with governance so we prefer not to 'move fast'. Seems like good thinking...
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  As one of my friends (and no a local councillor) who was involved in Conservative politics at uni in the UK said it gets taken over by "a bunch of drunken yahoos". She was taking about the FCS and People like Guido Fawkes. Oh "Yahoos" refers to Jonathon Swifts Yahoos not any one employed by Yahoo
kbody 8y ago
A lot of these proposed solutions in first sight look like solutions, but I've yet to find a "blockchain" (or any other buzzword) system that offers clear advantages. In practice most of the times it's plain old ploutocracy or founderocracy disguised under the veil of a new tech (with the help of an "innocent non-profit foundation")
ilaksh 8y ago
As is often the case, by far the best comment is the least popular. It's amazing how short-sighted people are.
- magnamerc 8y ago
  Mention blockchain around here and everyone loses their minds.

DocG 8y ago

Although not witout issues, the overall trust seems to be pretty high for e-voting(and voting numbers confirm it). And when voting, papervote always triumps digital one as last resort. I also think this is one thing that also gets more young people to vote. They are familiar with technology and so used to doing everything online. For example I would have not voted for the last couple of elections if digital voting would not have been available.

devit 8y ago

Any more in-depth treatment on the properties of the system and how it resists various attacks?

bwblabs 8y ago
"Security Analysis of Estonia's Internet Voting System" @31C3 (December 2014) https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281400_-_security_analysis_of_estonia_s_internet_voting_system_-_j_alex_halderman#t=1227 https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281... (starts at 20:26) They failed on quite some points, I cannot believe they fixed all issues.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  Any analysis written not this year is out-of-date.
selune 8y ago
https://estoniaevoting.org/findings/paper/ https://estoniaevoting.org/findings/paper/ TL;DR: It's not that good.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  As I replied to the another guy under this parent, any analysis done on previous years it absolutely out-of-date by now. We'd need new reviews to make a proper assessment how (in)secure it is.

selune 8y ago

Wasn't it compromised a few years ago? [1] https://edri.org/estonian-eid-cryptography-mess-750000-cards-compromised/ https://edri.org/estonian-eid-cryptography-mess-750000-cards...

dcbadacd 8y ago
Those certificates were replaced and/or revoked.
- patall 8y ago
  They have also changed the wifi password that they had made public in one of their youtube videos via a note on the wall. (Sure, it was the guest-wifi but still)

acheron 8y ago

Congratulations to President McPresidentface.

HarryHirsch 8y ago

That is worrying. How do you know that the voter could vote freely and didn't sell their vote? Corruption around vote-selling is a concern in certain ethnic enclaves in Britain, and there were even elections annulled over that. The foremost concern shouldn't be convenience, it should be that the vote is safe and secret.

pedrocr 8y ago
You don't. Which is why this should definitely not be used for important votes like these. It may work fine at first but the attack surface on your election (and thus on your democracy) has just increased massively.
PrimeDirective 8y ago
How do you know they don't change your physical ballots?
- lolc 8y ago
  You can inspect and watch the ballots.
  - drdeadringer 8y ago
    What is stopping The Public from watching electronic ballots just as equally as electronic ballots? If I wanted to see paper ballots, how is that different from wanting to see electronic ballots? I'm not confident that I could successfully petition Government for paper ballots just as much as I could sue a given contractor for same electronic records.
    - lolc 8y ago
      If I want, I can go down to my polling place before it opens, inspect all the boxes to be empty, watch as people put their ballots in, then watch as the boxes are emptied and the ballots counted. If I'm not allowed to do all this, I can't trust the vote unless I trust the people that administered it. Electronic voting always requires trust in the administrators.

sib 8y ago

That's nothing, once e-voting is legal in Chicago, it will be 144% of the vote.

dcbadacd 8y ago
The title is incorrect, it's i-voting, not e-voting, there's a difference.
- lolc 8y ago
  i-voting is e-voting too.
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    All i-voting is e-voting but not all e-voting is i-voting.

dcbadacd 8y ago

@Moderators Just to avoid people collating together all e-voting (voting machines and similar) with the tech that Estonia uses (they call it i-voting for that reason), could the title be changed from "e-voting" to "i-voting"?

dang 8y ago
Ok, we'll do that. Edit: actually, just using the word 'online' seems to make the distinction more clearly.

deogeo 8y ago

"The system has been designed to ensure that voters' computers are not infected by any kind of malware that could change or block their vote." I'm sure this cannot be subverted by an attacker with the resources of USA/China/India/.., or with access to the supply chain from the chip fab onward (don't forget about malware hidden in USB cables!), or or,... And you'd have to be dead sure, because, unlike with physical votes, there will be few-to-none signs of subversion. You can vote physically, but what do a few physical votes matter when the attacker can change the vote of 30, 50, 70% of the population. And how do you change the system, when all parties promising to do so can't get enough votes? Edit: Example of what a voting system must be resistant against: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/adding_backdoor.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/adding_backdo...

tim333 8y ago
>few-to-none signs of subversion You could make it so you can view your vote and check it was registered the way intended. If you voted A and it came out B that would be a sign.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  Now you can demonstrate to anyone what you voted. That's how you get people selling votes. In any reasonable election system you need to be able to be sure your vote is being counted without at the same time being able to prove who you voted for. The demands of voting are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online voting. For every layer of extra complexity you add there's either a way to subvert it to break another of the essential guarantees of voting or to use it to DoS your election.
  - xorcist 8y ago
    > That's how you get people selling votes. It's also important to realize that the mere suspicion of other people selling their votes is enough to undermine confidence in the system. And confidence in the system is pretty much the only thing you have to optimize for.
  - 8y ago

markus_v 8y ago

It is a pretty smooth system. Voting in the last elections took me about 60 seconds. Also, no method of voting is ever going to be 100% safe. It's not like there haven't been any unfair elections using paper ballots.

sccxy 8y ago
Same here. Last time I went to regular voting was ~10 years ago. Once tried online voting I will never go back to regular one.
muthdra 8y ago
It's not about being safe, it's about being provably shareable. When the option of privately sharing your vote is there, it doesn't take long before a malicious candidate forces you to do it or face consequences. See Halter Vote: https://books.google.com.br/books?id=7gPvCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&lpg=PT144&dq="halter+vote"&source=bl&ots=O9UgXdXDQ2&sig=ACfU3U0p9AJLdrZvNb6uA8UKRj4XPKXIvw&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjAntHUu_jgAhWrK7kGHWs1CEAQ6AEwB3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q="halter%20vote"&f=false https://books.google.com.br/books?id=7gPvCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&l... https://translate.google.com/translate?source=osdd&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todamateria.com.br%2Fvoto-de-cabresto%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?source=osdd&sl=auto&t...
- markus_v 8y ago
  But couldn't you just take a photo of the ballot? Considering that not submitting the ballot after taking it is not allowed here.
  - muthdra 8y ago
    I think you have to reliably prove that it's your ballot and that it wasn't tampered with after the photo. Halter Voters would sometimes include a specific marking on the ballot that confirmed it was a succesfully bought vote so people could be personally rewarded accordingly.

rcdmd 8y ago

Think of what this means for voter representation. You just made it much easier for people with computer access to vote, compared to those without who still must trek to the polling place. I doubt the demographics represented in this vote were the same as the last comparable one.

Etheryte 8y ago
I think you have it the wrong way around. This actually improves voter representation. It's now a lot easier for people with disabilities, the elderly, etc to cast a vote — they don't have to organize transport, they can just vote from home. Getting people to actually go to the polling stations and cast a vote is something that all democracies struggle with to a certain extent, this helps alleviate that issue.
Strom 8y ago
90% of Estonian households have access to the internet. [1] The percent is still increasing. On top of that, it's possible to request the government to send an official to your home if you wish to cast a paper vote from home. -- [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tin00134 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&...

xorcist 8y ago

Here's a video on an interesting talk about Estonia's e-voting system: https://youtu.be/PT0e9yTD2M8 https://youtu.be/PT0e9yTD2M8 (Spoiler: Opsec fails begins at 42 min. But watch the whole thing, it's interesting.) It might be prudent to point out that Estonia is one of the better e-voting systems. Voters can override their e-vote with a regular one on election day. However that just means that other systems are mostly even worse.

nelsonic 8y ago
"Video unavailable This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated." :-(
- xorcist 8y ago
  Thanks, link fixed.
aboutruby 8y ago
Seems like e-voting is used as a way to transition between a democracy to an hidden totalitarianism. Citizens are lead to believe the voting system still works as usual but in the fact the results are manipulated to keep the same person or group of people in power. Which can probably last for a while. Meanwhile the person/group in power can take control of all parts of the state until it slowly fades into an obvious dictature. This works because most people don't understand technology well enough to understand that electronic voting is very far from secure.

KorematsuFred 8y ago

Newver understood the fascination with e-votes. E-votes are great when you vote for reality shows but for a normal election I think walking to the local booth and vote is a much better idea because it is hackers proof and also only citizens with enough motivation will vote.

jniedrauer 8y ago
> and also only citizens with enough motivation will vote. Why are physical barriers restricting public engagement a desirable trait in a democracy?
zanny 8y ago
> Newver understood the fascination with e-votes. People want convenience. Citizens would like to vote online, and are largely ignorant of the technical challenges that make it impossible to secure, at least on your average everyday Internet connected consumer device. Its the job of us techies to keep shouting from the rooftops how all these implementations of online voting are deeply flawed and exploitable the same way climatologists have to keep screaming from the rooftops about the damage rising co2 is causing to our biosphere.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Don't vote = don't get any benefits. You would have to have an allowance for certain Disabled and Housebound voters and maybe be allowed to miss one election.
  - KorematsuFred 8y ago
    That is worse. It means people on welfare might be willing to vote more and hence peters would vote to steal from paul. Probably an argument that only those who pay certain amount of tax alone should be able to vote.
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      Lovely so who gets to decide who the "active citizens" are. I think we have moved beyond that sort of limited franchise. Btw "active citizens" is a reference to the French revolution

wizzairflyer 8y ago

Online voting seems like such a bad idea to me. If people want convenience couldn't voting by post be a good compromise? Sure you still have to bring your letter to the post office but that's a more mild inconvenience and it seems more secure than e or i voting.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
You get problems like "granny farming"

positivejam 8y ago

Relevant Computerphile episode (w/ Tom Scott): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

DonRico 8y ago

Oh well as an Estonian that topic is staring to become really tiring especially because we just passed to voting season. Bottom line is: Conservatives / nationalists are preferred by older folks and these parties lobby against anything that can give votes to liberals. They also know that youngster might skip the voting after all if we would go back to paper voting all together. Also there will be major reputation loss. But since conservatives are against EU, open-trading and anything outside our teeny-tiny pond they don't give a flying fuck about that.

gardaani 8y ago

Usually online voting supporters say that it would increase voter turnout. It seems that it hasn't happen in Estonia: 64.2% in 2015 and 63.7% in 2019 [1][2]. Also, I am a bit worried that online voting might give young tech-savvy people an advantage over old and poor people who don't have access to computers or mobile phones. Has there been studies about demographies in these elections? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Estonian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Estonian_parliamentary_el... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Estonian_parliamentary_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Estonian_parliamentary_el...

sccxy 8y ago
Online voting statistics are available here: https://www.valimised.ee/en/archive/statistics-about-internet-voting-estonia https://www.valimised.ee/en/archive/statistics-about-interne... Same smart card is used every online service in Estonia. 96% taxes are done online. So online voting is not something new for older people. It is just like every other online service.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
Currently older people vote in much larger numbers than younger people, so I don't see how that's a major concern. Clearly the current setup advantages the elderly in practice.

JDiculous 8y ago

All these "e-voting can never work" comments just scream ludditism. Estonia has already demonstrated that it works, we have online banking and cryptocurrencies worth billions of dollars in market cap, and people want to say it's not possible. Yeah, ok. Feel free to express your views, but don't pretend to represent the software engineering community.

foepys 8y ago
Nobody said it's impossible. It's just insecure, unverifiable, and non-anonymous. Unless you inspect every voting machine, smart-card reader, internet connection, encryption algorithm, etc. for every election completely, you can potentially manipule millions of votes from your home from the other side of the planet. Or on a smaller scale, change all votes of one or multiple voting machines.
- JDiculous 8y ago
  Paper ballots aren't secure either, who's to guarantee that your paper ballot was recorded correctly? In many countries paper ballots have been tampered with, altering elections (Venezuela, South Korea). Remember Bush vs. Gore in 2000? I don't understand why people are so trusting of paper ballots, I would much prefer an e-voting system where my vote can be verified afterwards. You don't need to inspect every internet connection, there's HTTPS. The key is that one should be able to verify one's vote to ensure that it was properly recorded. If everyone can verify their own vote, then they can verify that the voting wasn't hacked. With paper voting, it is impossible to verify your own vote - it is equivalent to tossing it into a black box. One might say "then people can sell votes!", but as Estonia has done, you can have it so that one can vote multiple times. And of course there should be extraordinarily stiff penalties on anyone buying/selling votes (I'd say minimum $30k or 20% of one's total wealth fine + prison time). Needing paper ballots is holding back democracy. E-voting would revolutionize democracy and for the first time in history allow a true direct democracy at scale. Of course e-voting cannot be conducted by emailing votes or some other insecure nonsense like that, but it is ludditism to suggest that it cannot be achieved, which many seem to suggest. This kind of thinking is literally holding society back.

dalbasal 8y ago

I'm curious about what we can do with digital voting, in terms of evolving democracy. If, hypothetically, all mechanical issues are solved... We could have more direct democracy, with high-frequency referendums, reversible proxies, publicly submitted or endorsed bills. The democracies we have were designed around mechanical limitations, so it stands to reason that (at least some) democracies would change when those limits go away. That said... there seems to be a dearth of ideas, at least few seemingly useful ones that I ever hear. If you were making a new constitution for a village or city, what could be done with electronic voting and how does it make it better? BRTW, links welcome.

antris 8y ago

Essentially, Estonia gives 44% influence of their country to a system that cannot be verified to have almost any relation to what people actually have voted for. The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on. Rest in peace, democracy in Estonia.

dekrg 8y ago
>The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on. Well, no they the main proponents of e-voting figured a long time ago that it's easier to eliminate those concerns using propaganda. For example if you are against e-voting media will brand you as a backwards russkie who hates Estonia.
- jyriand 8y ago
  That's not true. Estonian Conservative National Party is against e-voting also and nobody is calling them "russkies".
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  I'm not a supporter of i-voting, but it is true that most of the "concerns" given are pure FUD/bullshit. Studies that consider guest WiFi password being vital information, studies that collate e-voting and i-voting and a lot of other shit I can't recall at the moment. But the very basic problems are not talked about, namely: * Votes should be counted by independent parties while preserving anonymity * Certificate issuance should be actually monitored by CT logs, every vote that is not in a CT log is dismissed and logged * Voting code should be actually readable and audited (only opsec has been audited so far) There are a few other problems but I've forgotten them for the time being. These are the problems we should be talking about, not some bogus like, "Omg how can ten grannies vote quickly online".
Mirioron 8y ago
Online voting in elections has been around since 2005 in Estonia. I think you're making it seem worse than it is. On the other hand, I wish Estonia did not have online voting as well. There are some attack vectors you can't defend against.

TheOperator 8y ago

I understand the cost appeal of such a voting system but it's pretty low security for an election. I wouldn't even worry about foreign actors as much as I would worry about domestic actors controlling the digital ballot box by fucking with the online voting system.