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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 enc

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.
      - anticensor 8y ago
        > watch as people put their ballots in This is not allowed in many jurisdictions. You can watch the before and after part easily, though.
    - contravariant 8y ago
      When someone writes something on a piece of paper, puts that piece of paper in a box, and later I see someone reopens that piece of paper then I can be reasonably confident I see whatever the original person wrote on the piece of paper. I have no such confidence in electronic messages. Unless they're plaintext.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  Because the count is done by representatives of each party together and each of them won't let the others steal for their side. The characteristics of paper elections are well understood and can be shown to be sound very easily to any common citizen. The massive attack surface of electronic elections is poorly understood even by technical people. It's a massive amount of complexity and expense for exactly zero gain.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    I the UK system each party has monitors who observe the count and also get involved in any disputes.
pytester 8y ago
>That is worrying. How do you know that the voter could vote freely and didn't sell their vote? Historically, vote buying in the UK and the US used to be rife until it was cracked down upon (which came after it was made illegal). Once that happened it completely disappeared. For voters to sell their votes, somebody needs to advertise that they are willing to buy their votes. That advertisement makes them easy to detect, track down and prosecute. Vote buying doesn't worry me in this system but hacks certainly do. It gives the impression of being a very insecure system.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  yeah but part of cracking down on vote buying has to do with making it difficult to track if you actually did vote for who you said you would, with online voting it becomes totally possible to track you did the vote, give it to the guy who has promised to pay you, forgive your debts, the debts of your son, not beat you up, allow you to keep your job etc. etc.
  - pytester 8y ago
    >yeah but part of cracking down on vote buying has to do with making it difficult to track if you actually did vote for who you said you would That isn't necessary to prevent vote buying. Vote buying is easy to detect because advertising in secret is impossible. All that's required is the political will to look for people wanting to buy votes and come down hard on them when they're detected. Moreover, if you do do away with the ability to track then you open up the electoral system to other forms of abuse that can't be trivially eliminated with police and stiff sentences. >it becomes totally possible to track you did the vote, give it to the guy who has promised to pay you, forgive your debts, the debts of your son, not beat you up If I were to define "secretive electoral fraud that could never possibly scale" I would define it as "I promise not to beat you up if you vote for me".
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      how far did Tammany Hall have to scale? How big is Estonia? Do you think every election ever held that can be worth money and power is the size of the U.S National Election? As far as the political will to come down on people for vote buying or intimidation etc. I'm sure that making things illegal when there is a profit to be made at doing it has always succeeded in driving that illegal thing out of existence without any untoward effect on society whatsoever. I mean definitely making it not worthwhile to buy votes because you will not be able to tell if you got what you paid for seems a more foolproof strategy than make it possible for people to determine what they paid for but threaten to throw them in prison if they do. on edit: corrected second use of word money to power.
rjf72 8y ago
How exactly do you propose vote buying would work? Somebody has to advertise it, somehow validate results, and then engage in widescale monetary transactions in a method that would appeal to a significant number of voters. All while also somehow avoiding all legal issues in the process. And this all needs to somehow be more effective than the typical pattern of just dumping millions/billions into half truths, mudslinging, and the other noble arts of modern politicking. By contrast, I do think high level integrity of a vote is something we should be constantly vigilant towards. Was your vote counted? Was it for whom you wanted it to be? Integrity and validation are areas where e-voting could pull far ahead of traditional paper voting. As a nice thing you'd also have instantaneous and 100% accurate results instead of this silly 'Let's have the supreme court decide who won.' type affair.
- ufo 8y ago
  Are you implying that vote buying and voter coercion are theoretical threats? They are real and very common problems even in old fashioned paper ballot elections.
Freak_NL 8y ago
The article answers that. You can cast your vote as often as you want; only the last vote cast counts. So someone could coerce you to vote A (often a spouse), but afterwards you just go and vote again for B. Of course that requires having the opportunity to vote again, so the solution won't deter anyone determined enough. With paper ballots that problem exists too when you can authorize another citizen to vote on your behalf (this tends to be limited to one or two extra votes per person).
- patall 8y ago
  > You can cast your vote as often as you want; only the last vote cast counts. So someone could coerce you to vote A (often a spouse), but afterwards you just go and vote again for B. How does this help you? If some one can coerce you once, they can coerce you again (and coerce you in showing when you voted last). Your assumption seems to be that the person forcing one does not understand the system.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    Not my understanding; just how the system is explained there. I would guess that after casting the vote you can only see that you voted, not when. The only way to ensure someone votes the way you want them to is to wait until the very last moment (or just take away their identifiers). Again, this is no different from using another citizen's mandate to vote for them, and it doesn't scale. Of course there are plenty of other problems with e-voting that remain unaddressed.
orthoxerox 8y ago
How do you avoid it with paper ballots? When your union boss tells you, "send me a picture of your ballot and ID from the booth, if I don't see a mark next to the Foo party, you'll have a problem", you either can spoil your ballot or vote for the Foo party.
- lkramer 8y ago
  In Denmark at least you can get a new ballot by returning the unused one.
- xorcist 8y ago
  There's no way to prove that the photographed ballot is the one cast. The voter could have thrown that one away and cast another. To further inculcate the importance of the matter, taking pictures is usually prohibited inside the polling station.

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.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      > watch as people put their ballots in This is not allowed in many jurisdictions. You can watch the before and after part easily, though.
  - contravariant 8y ago
    When someone writes something on a piece of paper, puts that piece of paper in a box, and later I see someone reopens that piece of paper then I can be reasonably confident I see whatever the original person wrote on the piece of paper. I have no such confidence in electronic messages. Unless they're plaintext.
pedrocr 8y ago
Because the count is done by representatives of each party together and each of them won't let the others steal for their side. The characteristics of paper elections are well understood and can be shown to be sound very easily to any common citizen. The massive attack surface of electronic elections is poorly understood even by technical people. It's a massive amount of complexity and expense for exactly zero gain.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  I the UK system each party has monitors who observe the count and also get involved in any disputes.

pytester 8y ago

>That is worrying. How do you know that the voter could vote freely and didn't sell their vote? Historically, vote buying in the UK and the US used to be rife until it was cracked down upon (which came after it was made illegal). Once that happened it completely disappeared. For voters to sell their votes, somebody needs to advertise that they are willing to buy their votes. That advertisement makes them easy to detect, track down and prosecute. Vote buying doesn't worry me in this system but hacks certainly do. It gives the impression of being a very insecure system.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
yeah but part of cracking down on vote buying has to do with making it difficult to track if you actually did vote for who you said you would, with online voting it becomes totally possible to track you did the vote, give it to the guy who has promised to pay you, forgive your debts, the debts of your son, not beat you up, allow you to keep your job etc. etc.
- pytester 8y ago
  >yeah but part of cracking down on vote buying has to do with making it difficult to track if you actually did vote for who you said you would That isn't necessary to prevent vote buying. Vote buying is easy to detect because advertising in secret is impossible. All that's required is the political will to look for people wanting to buy votes and come down hard on them when they're detected. Moreover, if you do do away with the ability to track then you open up the electoral system to other forms of abuse that can't be trivially eliminated with police and stiff sentences. >it becomes totally possible to track you did the vote, give it to the guy who has promised to pay you, forgive your debts, the debts of your son, not beat you up If I were to define "secretive electoral fraud that could never possibly scale" I would define it as "I promise not to beat you up if you vote for me".
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    how far did Tammany Hall have to scale? How big is Estonia? Do you think every election ever held that can be worth money and power is the size of the U.S National Election? As far as the political will to come down on people for vote buying or intimidation etc. I'm sure that making things illegal when there is a profit to be made at doing it has always succeeded in driving that illegal thing out of existence without any untoward effect on society whatsoever. I mean definitely making it not worthwhile to buy votes because you will not be able to tell if you got what you paid for seems a more foolproof strategy than make it possible for people to determine what they paid for but threaten to throw them in prison if they do. on edit: corrected second use of word money to power.

rjf72 8y ago

How exactly do you propose vote buying would work? Somebody has to advertise it, somehow validate results, and then engage in widescale monetary transactions in a method that would appeal to a significant number of voters. All while also somehow avoiding all legal issues in the process. And this all needs to somehow be more effective than the typical pattern of just dumping millions/billions into half truths, mudslinging, and the other noble arts of modern politicking. By contrast, I do think high level integrity of a vote is something we should be constantly vigilant towards. Was your vote counted? Was it for whom you wanted it to be? Integrity and validation are areas where e-voting could pull far ahead of traditional paper voting. As a nice thing you'd also have instantaneous and 100% accurate results instead of this silly 'Let's have the supreme court decide who won.' type affair.

ufo 8y ago
Are you implying that vote buying and voter coercion are theoretical threats? They are real and very common problems even in old fashioned paper ballot elections.

Freak_NL 8y ago

The article answers that. You can cast your vote as often as you want; only the last vote cast counts. So someone could coerce you to vote A (often a spouse), but afterwards you just go and vote again for B. Of course that requires having the opportunity to vote again, so the solution won't deter anyone determined enough. With paper ballots that problem exists too when you can authorize another citizen to vote on your behalf (this tends to be limited to one or two extra votes per person).

patall 8y ago
> You can cast your vote as often as you want; only the last vote cast counts. So someone could coerce you to vote A (often a spouse), but afterwards you just go and vote again for B. How does this help you? If some one can coerce you once, they can coerce you again (and coerce you in showing when you voted last). Your assumption seems to be that the person forcing one does not understand the system.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  Not my understanding; just how the system is explained there. I would guess that after casting the vote you can only see that you voted, not when. The only way to ensure someone votes the way you want them to is to wait until the very last moment (or just take away their identifiers). Again, this is no different from using another citizen's mandate to vote for them, and it doesn't scale. Of course there are plenty of other problems with e-voting that remain unaddressed.

orthoxerox 8y ago

How do you avoid it with paper ballots? When your union boss tells you, "send me a picture of your ballot and ID from the booth, if I don't see a mark next to the Foo party, you'll have a problem", you either can spoil your ballot or vote for the Foo party.

lkramer 8y ago
In Denmark at least you can get a new ballot by returning the unused one.
xorcist 8y ago
There's no way to prove that the photographed ballot is the one cast. The voter could have thrown that one away and cast another. To further inculcate the importance of the matter, taking pictures is usually prohibited inside the polling station.