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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

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.
oarabbus_ 8y ago
Can't you hash a signature of some manner to your vote in a manner only the individual can know how they voted? After all this is exactly how login/passwords work.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Then you can extract that information from the voter in the same way you can extract a password; with a blunt object and enough force.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
riffraff 8y ago
You can avoid that, by having your vote correspond to multiple potential entries. But that is still pointless cause the person you sold your vote can be physically next to you, or you can film yourself voting. Online voting is unsafe, and should only be used if any other option is unfeasible.
- jakeogh 8y ago
  Unfeasible? Simple, just call it unfeasible. It's a undefined word, perfect for manipulation. There are no circumstances where online political voting should be used. Ever.
- darawk 8y ago
  You can film yourself voting now. Vote buying is not a serious problem, and can be readily solved by stiff jail time for attempting it, and large monetary rewards for reporting on people doing it. If you get 10 years in prison for trying to buy votes, and the government offers a standing reward of say, $100,000 for evidence that leads to a conviction, all of the sudden you have to pay substantially more than $100k/vote, which means that it's completely impractical to engage in.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    Those kinds of penalties and worse don't stop organized crime, for instance. Politicians also tend to do all sorts of crazy, risky and/or illegal things to get elected or for personal profit. Nixon and Trump spring readily to mind. If the reward is large enough, someone will risk it. Sometimes the reward doesn't even have to be large at all -- witness rich celebrities shoplifting, for instance. People can also be compromised and blackmailed in to committing crimes, or otherwise feel desperate and at the end of their ropes, so they'll try anything. That's to say that such laws shouldn't be made, but I am skeptical that they'll be enough.
    - darawk 8y ago
      None of that makes any kind of sense. You can't risk it when the equilibrium is that bad for you. Remember, to make any appreciable dent in an election outcome, you need to convince thousands of people to vote for you, and not turn you in, despite the 100k reward. There is zero chance of that ever succeeding.
      - hopler 8y ago
        If there is a $100k incentive for framing someone for vote buying, people will do it.
tim333 8y ago
You could select voters at random, say one in a hundred gets and email saying would you like to check your vote?
- Mirioron 8y ago
  They can already check their online vote, but some restrictions apply: https://www.valimised.ee/en/internet-voting/checking-i-vote https://www.valimised.ee/en/internet-voting/checking-i-vote Keep in mind that you need to check the vote on a different device than what you voted on.
antidesitter 8y ago
> Now you can demonstrate to anyone what you voted. Not necessarily. It is possible to have verifiability and receipt freeness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy... > The demands of voting are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online voting. Clearly you need to do more research before making such sweeping claims.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  > Not necessarily. It is possible to have verifiability and receipt freeness I know these methods, but they were not used in OPs suggestion. They fix this issue and introduce others. > Clearly you need to do more research before making such sweeping claims. On the contrary, I'm willing to double down on my claim. I'm willing to provide either a breach or a denial of service for any digital or online voting system you care to describe. Electronic/Online voting is like catnip for programmers. We can consistently overcomplicate things and create these horribly complex constructs because we're sure there must be a solution. After all software is eating the world. Voting is however one of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    > I know these methods, but they were not used in OPs suggestion. You knew it but didn’t mention it as an obvious neutralizer of your objection, in the context of a discussion about possibility (“you could”)? I doubt that. > I'm willing to provide either a breach or a denial of service for any digital or online voting system you care to describe. There are many systems in the literature. What are your credentials in this field? Are you a cryptanalyst? > Voting is however one of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly. This is as myopic as saying “E-commerce and e-banking are some of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly. The demands of e-commerce and e-banking are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online systems.”
runarberg 8y ago
Say I sell my vote. The person picks a party I don’t agree with. I will simply vote for them anyway in the prelimenaries, screengrap my proof, and send to my customer. I can do this multiple times. Each time I void my previous ballot, betraying my previous customer. Then comes election day, then I show up in person and cast a physical ballot for the party that I favor. As a buyer, my customers have no way of knowing I didn’t void the preliminary ballot by showing up on election day. Note that frauding vote buyers this way is also possible in most election systems that have non-digital preliminaries.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  This is exactly how the Estonian voting system works.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  I can't see a way of that working without breaking down somehow: - If every time you vote you get a receipt for that vote that can be checked if it's still valid then you can send that receipt to the buyer and he can then check that your vote is still according to his purchase - If you can only check that the receipt was registered but not if it's still valid you can't check that your vote was correctly counted because you don't know if the vote has been changed after in multiple possible ways - If you can check that the vote actually is for candidate A at any time you can sell that access to the buyer for him to confirm - If the only way to avoid all this is to also cast an actually secret vote on election day the buyer now just needs to make sure you don't go to the polling place. Posting spotters at the door is not too hard. I don't see a way for you to actually be able to confirm your vote was counted and not having at the same time the ability to sell your vote in a verifiable way. Perfect verification isn't needed either. If you're selling your vote to the mob you'll have second thoughts about failing to deliver. If you make the process easier "honest" sellers will create the market. > Note that frauding vote buyers this way is also possible in most election systems that have non-digital preliminaries. Most I know are actually harder because you only get the single mail-in ballot so you can't do the double or triple voting. If you can show up on the day and invalidate your mail-in then part of same can be done. Depending on how the invalidation of the mail-in is done it can be even sketchier. But I don't consider mail-in and absentee paper votes to have enough security guarantees either way. Paper ballots, in a box, counted by adversaries is the gold standard. Everything else has a high burden of proof.

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.

oarabbus_ 8y ago

Can't you hash a signature of some manner to your vote in a manner only the individual can know how they voted? After all this is exactly how login/passwords work.

bobthepanda 8y ago
Then you can extract that information from the voter in the same way you can extract a password; with a blunt object and enough force.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

riffraff 8y ago

You can avoid that, by having your vote correspond to multiple potential entries. But that is still pointless cause the person you sold your vote can be physically next to you, or you can film yourself voting. Online voting is unsafe, and should only be used if any other option is unfeasible.

jakeogh 8y ago
Unfeasible? Simple, just call it unfeasible. It's a undefined word, perfect for manipulation. There are no circumstances where online political voting should be used. Ever.
darawk 8y ago
You can film yourself voting now. Vote buying is not a serious problem, and can be readily solved by stiff jail time for attempting it, and large monetary rewards for reporting on people doing it. If you get 10 years in prison for trying to buy votes, and the government offers a standing reward of say, $100,000 for evidence that leads to a conviction, all of the sudden you have to pay substantially more than $100k/vote, which means that it's completely impractical to engage in.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  Those kinds of penalties and worse don't stop organized crime, for instance. Politicians also tend to do all sorts of crazy, risky and/or illegal things to get elected or for personal profit. Nixon and Trump spring readily to mind. If the reward is large enough, someone will risk it. Sometimes the reward doesn't even have to be large at all -- witness rich celebrities shoplifting, for instance. People can also be compromised and blackmailed in to committing crimes, or otherwise feel desperate and at the end of their ropes, so they'll try anything. That's to say that such laws shouldn't be made, but I am skeptical that they'll be enough.
  - darawk 8y ago
    None of that makes any kind of sense. You can't risk it when the equilibrium is that bad for you. Remember, to make any appreciable dent in an election outcome, you need to convince thousands of people to vote for you, and not turn you in, despite the 100k reward. There is zero chance of that ever succeeding.
    - hopler 8y ago
      If there is a $100k incentive for framing someone for vote buying, people will do it.

tim333 8y ago

You could select voters at random, say one in a hundred gets and email saying would you like to check your vote?

Mirioron 8y ago
They can already check their online vote, but some restrictions apply: https://www.valimised.ee/en/internet-voting/checking-i-vote https://www.valimised.ee/en/internet-voting/checking-i-vote Keep in mind that you need to check the vote on a different device than what you voted on.

antidesitter 8y ago

> Now you can demonstrate to anyone what you voted. Not necessarily. It is possible to have verifiability and receipt freeness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy... > The demands of voting are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online voting. Clearly you need to do more research before making such sweeping claims.

pedrocr 8y ago
> Not necessarily. It is possible to have verifiability and receipt freeness I know these methods, but they were not used in OPs suggestion. They fix this issue and introduce others. > Clearly you need to do more research before making such sweeping claims. On the contrary, I'm willing to double down on my claim. I'm willing to provide either a breach or a denial of service for any digital or online voting system you care to describe. Electronic/Online voting is like catnip for programmers. We can consistently overcomplicate things and create these horribly complex constructs because we're sure there must be a solution. After all software is eating the world. Voting is however one of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > I know these methods, but they were not used in OPs suggestion. You knew it but didn’t mention it as an obvious neutralizer of your objection, in the context of a discussion about possibility (“you could”)? I doubt that. > I'm willing to provide either a breach or a denial of service for any digital or online voting system you care to describe. There are many systems in the literature. What are your credentials in this field? Are you a cryptanalyst? > Voting is however one of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly. This is as myopic as saying “E-commerce and e-banking are some of the few situations where the lack of sophistication of pen and paper works in your favor significantly. The demands of e-commerce and e-banking are incredibly unsuited to digital systems and definitely to any online systems.”

runarberg 8y ago

Say I sell my vote. The person picks a party I don’t agree with. I will simply vote for them anyway in the prelimenaries, screengrap my proof, and send to my customer. I can do this multiple times. Each time I void my previous ballot, betraying my previous customer. Then comes election day, then I show up in person and cast a physical ballot for the party that I favor. As a buyer, my customers have no way of knowing I didn’t void the preliminary ballot by showing up on election day. Note that frauding vote buyers this way is also possible in most election systems that have non-digital preliminaries.

Mirioron 8y ago
This is exactly how the Estonian voting system works.
pedrocr 8y ago
I can't see a way of that working without breaking down somehow: - If every time you vote you get a receipt for that vote that can be checked if it's still valid then you can send that receipt to the buyer and he can then check that your vote is still according to his purchase - If you can only check that the receipt was registered but not if it's still valid you can't check that your vote was correctly counted because you don't know if the vote has been changed after in multiple possible ways - If you can check that the vote actually is for candidate A at any time you can sell that access to the buyer for him to confirm - If the only way to avoid all this is to also cast an actually secret vote on election day the buyer now just needs to make sure you don't go to the polling place. Posting spotters at the door is not too hard. I don't see a way for you to actually be able to confirm your vote was counted and not having at the same time the ability to sell your vote in a verifiable way. Perfect verification isn't needed either. If you're selling your vote to the mob you'll have second thoughts about failing to deliver. If you make the process easier "honest" sellers will create the market. > Note that frauding vote buyers this way is also possible in most election systems that have non-digital preliminaries. Most I know are actually harder because you only get the single mail-in ballot so you can't do the double or triple voting. If you can show up on the day and invalidate your mail-in then part of same can be done. Depending on how the invalidation of the mail-in is done it can be even sketchier. But I don't consider mail-in and absentee paper votes to have enough security guarantees either way. Paper ballots, in a box, counted by adversaries is the gold standard. Everything else has a high burden of proof.