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Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by immersing

Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by immersing yourself in the process and the people who do it. For example, one often-overlooked advantage of traditional in-person paper voting is that you're entitled to spoil your ballot and request a fresh one. This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof, as there's no guarantee that the ballot in the photo is the same as what was submitted.

paulgb 8y ago
> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- amenghra 8y ago
  Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your credentials to vote.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?
    - Tyrek 8y ago
      that's entirely a question of scale - I can imagine that it'll be trivial to scale 'online' voting fraud if you have credential access, whereas doing it in person naturally limits the total number of times you can do it.
      - colmmacc 8y ago
        Committing identity fraud in person, in locations likely to have an elevated police presence, is extremely risky and getting caught carries severe consequences.
        tptacek 8y ago
        More fun Cook County details: not only is there not an elevated police presence at our polling places, but the election judges are charged with making sure the local police are not hanging around within like a quarter city block, since the local police don't have any authority with respect to voting. We got to chase a cop away at our place. (The Cook County Sheriffs police our vote, but there aren't that many of them, so if they're going to show up, it's because a judge called them out.)
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      To do that with in person voting you have to physically move around enough people with enough fake IDs to actually swing the election. The difficulty of doing that silently without anyone saying anything is a protection in and of itself. On top of that you have to get that many people on the voter rolls to start with.
    - specialist 8y ago
      Every poll site has a poll book of eligible voters (for that location). Voters present their ID, sign next to their name, are issued a ballot. In order for mass fraudulent voting, impersonators would have to choose IDs (of persons) they were very confident were not going to vote.
  - dogcomplex 8y ago
    Not if you can re-establish credentials after selling them and cast a second vote that silently spoils whatever the buyer sends. Though that might count as electronic-in-person, as you'd need some unsellable credential (e.g. live video of you showing your ID and the date-time, sending a fingerprint, etc) which can take precedence over the one you sold (a username/password, an earlier-dated video/fingerprint/whatever, etc). But then I guess the buyer just waits til the deadline, and buys the live video of you establishing credentials and casting your vote for them, so you can't fraud them... seems a lot more convoluted though.
  - colmmacc 8y ago
    This is true of all remote voting. The all-postal ballots in Washington and Oregon are certainly subject to this, and there is a certain rate of voter coercion that goes undetected, particularly within households. For the proponents of all-postal voting, this trade-off is worth it for the sake of the increased participation rates. Democratic legitimacy can be very nuanced and delicate. A well-publicized example of voter coercion could destroy trust in the existing system, but then the well-publicized problems of lines and poor voting hours eroded trust in the previous system too.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      > For the proponents of all-postal voting, this trade-off is worth it for the sake of the increased participation rates. It occurs to me that there's a fairly obvious way to get the benefits of both: require voting in person, but make voting mandatory.
      - colmmacc 8y ago
        Australia has this and it gets turnout rates in the 90%+ range. In 2015, Obama threw out that maybe it was time for mandatory voting in the US: https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voting/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voti... But the idea has never gotten very far. In general, the idea of a collectivist state that is underpinned by citizen responsibilities has been subsumed by the idea of the state as service supplier, and the citizen consumer.
        Teever 8y ago
        I'm only for mandatory voting if there is a 'none of the above' option and if the majority votes for that then the election is a do-over and the candidates on that ballot are forbidden from running in the next election and possibly more.
        Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        > I'm only for mandatory voting if there is a 'none of the above' option You could write in a name, or hand in an empty ballot. Mind, nothing will come of this even if it's the majority pick, but you're never actually forced to choose a candidate.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Nope, at least, this won't work in Cook County: even if you've mailed in a ballot, you can vote provisionally, and if you have your mail-in ballot in hand, you can spoil it on-site and vote normally. You could therefore "sell" your vote and still override it to vote differently on election day.
    - colmmacc 8y ago
      Of course it would work. A real world "attack" is more like a regressively patriarchal household where everyone "votes" at the dinner table. Yes, an 18 year old around that table could later make their way to a ballot station, but they'll run into their neighbors along the way, and if their swamp-creature of a father finds out, it won't go well for them.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        I should be more precise. The voting system we have in Cook County accounts for the possibility that someone observed your vote, and that you might later want to rescind that vote. It does so imperfectly, as you note. I will say that the system we have goes to some annoying lengths to try to maintain this particular kind of integrity. For instance, if you have vision problems and want your husband to help you read the ballot, we need triplicate signatures confirming that the assistance wasn't coercive. We had to stop people from helping family members, as if they were doing something wrong, which felt weird.
        colmmacc 8y ago
        I've monitored elections in Ireland and the Netherlands which both have an interesting problem. They each use Proportional Representation and ranked voting. Voters filling in their ballots mark each candidate with a number indicating their preference. There are routinely 10+ candidates in each constituency. That makes it easy to encode a highly-likely to be unique voter signature in the lower order numbers, which would make it possible to sell your vote. To combat this, when the votes are unfurled from the ballot boxes in public, tallymen (independent checkers of the vote) are expected to record only the first preferences, and if you start marking any more, you can expect a conversation with the returning officer. They are keeping an eye out. If you are a scrutinizer of potentially invalid ballots, which I've done a few times, you're also not allowed to bring or take any notes.
- the_snooze 8y ago
  It absolutely is undermined by any sort of voting outside a polling station. If we’re being intellectually honest, all election systems present trade-offs. Polling stations have nice security benefits, but remote voting increase accessibility. That’s basically what you come to appreciate if you immerse yourself in these systems (and build a healthy skepticism for anyone who proposes seemingly simple solutions).
- organsnyder 8y ago
  In some jurisdictions, it's possible to vote in person after voting absentee (the absentee ballot is then destroyed without being counted). Any system will have trade-offs, though—since ballot access (getting time off from work, childcare, transportation) appears to be a much more pervasive problem than coercion, it seems like the sacrifice would be worth it.
  - clarkevans 8y ago
    I believe it is that you could replace the sealed envelope that your ballot comes in. Once the envelopes are opened, they are separated from the ballots inside them.
- amalcon 8y ago
  The best mechanism for that is old fashioned investigative work, e.g. in the North Carolina 9th district election. The worry is that, if everything works this way, some of the indicators used to discover this sort of thing are diluted. E.g. the first indicators in the NC 9th case were that one county in this district had a lot more absentee ballots than elsewhere, and the absentee ballots favored one candidate by an implausible margin. If all ballots are absentee, the former measure becomes useless and the latter becomes a much weaker signal.
- specialist 8y ago
  Tabulating ballots as they are received eliminates the secret ballot. Ballots should be sorted into precincts beforehand. Many larger jurisdictions use high speed image scanners for their postal ballots and adjudicate voter intent electronically (no paper record). Election integrity types consider postal balloting and touchscreens roughly equivalent. The gold standard is poll sites where the ballots are tabulated onsite immediately after the polls close. Anything else compromises public voting, private counting, or both, in some way. Though sometimes the tradeoff is worthwhile, eg enfranchising voters.
ska 8y ago
Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping,... I don't think it is gatekeeping to suggest people learn something about a subject before developing & propogating strong opinions on it. Obviously this is one of the best ways to learn some of the ins and outs.

paulgb 8y ago

> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amenghra 8y ago
Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your credentials to vote.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?
  - Tyrek 8y ago
    that's entirely a question of scale - I can imagine that it'll be trivial to scale 'online' voting fraud if you have credential access, whereas doing it in person naturally limits the total number of times you can do it.
    - colmmacc 8y ago
      Committing identity fraud in person, in locations likely to have an elevated police presence, is extremely risky and getting caught carries severe consequences.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        More fun Cook County details: not only is there not an elevated police presence at our polling places, but the election judges are charged with making sure the local police are not hanging around within like a quarter city block, since the local police don't have any authority with respect to voting. We got to chase a cop away at our place. (The Cook County Sheriffs police our vote, but there aren't that many of them, so if they're going to show up, it's because a judge called them out.)
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    To do that with in person voting you have to physically move around enough people with enough fake IDs to actually swing the election. The difficulty of doing that silently without anyone saying anything is a protection in and of itself. On top of that you have to get that many people on the voter rolls to start with.
  - specialist 8y ago
    Every poll site has a poll book of eligible voters (for that location). Voters present their ID, sign next to their name, are issued a ballot. In order for mass fraudulent voting, impersonators would have to choose IDs (of persons) they were very confident were not going to vote.
- dogcomplex 8y ago
  Not if you can re-establish credentials after selling them and cast a second vote that silently spoils whatever the buyer sends. Though that might count as electronic-in-person, as you'd need some unsellable credential (e.g. live video of you showing your ID and the date-time, sending a fingerprint, etc) which can take precedence over the one you sold (a username/password, an earlier-dated video/fingerprint/whatever, etc). But then I guess the buyer just waits til the deadline, and buys the live video of you establishing credentials and casting your vote for them, so you can't fraud them... seems a lot more convoluted though.
- colmmacc 8y ago
  This is true of all remote voting. The all-postal ballots in Washington and Oregon are certainly subject to this, and there is a certain rate of voter coercion that goes undetected, particularly within households. For the proponents of all-postal voting, this trade-off is worth it for the sake of the increased participation rates. Democratic legitimacy can be very nuanced and delicate. A well-publicized example of voter coercion could destroy trust in the existing system, but then the well-publicized problems of lines and poor voting hours eroded trust in the previous system too.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    > For the proponents of all-postal voting, this trade-off is worth it for the sake of the increased participation rates. It occurs to me that there's a fairly obvious way to get the benefits of both: require voting in person, but make voting mandatory.
    - colmmacc 8y ago
      Australia has this and it gets turnout rates in the 90%+ range. In 2015, Obama threw out that maybe it was time for mandatory voting in the US: https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voting/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voti... But the idea has never gotten very far. In general, the idea of a collectivist state that is underpinned by citizen responsibilities has been subsumed by the idea of the state as service supplier, and the citizen consumer.
      - Teever 8y ago
        I'm only for mandatory voting if there is a 'none of the above' option and if the majority votes for that then the election is a do-over and the candidates on that ballot are forbidden from running in the next election and possibly more.
        Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        > I'm only for mandatory voting if there is a 'none of the above' option You could write in a name, or hand in an empty ballot. Mind, nothing will come of this even if it's the majority pick, but you're never actually forced to choose a candidate.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Nope, at least, this won't work in Cook County: even if you've mailed in a ballot, you can vote provisionally, and if you have your mail-in ballot in hand, you can spoil it on-site and vote normally. You could therefore "sell" your vote and still override it to vote differently on election day.
  - colmmacc 8y ago
    Of course it would work. A real world "attack" is more like a regressively patriarchal household where everyone "votes" at the dinner table. Yes, an 18 year old around that table could later make their way to a ballot station, but they'll run into their neighbors along the way, and if their swamp-creature of a father finds out, it won't go well for them.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I should be more precise. The voting system we have in Cook County accounts for the possibility that someone observed your vote, and that you might later want to rescind that vote. It does so imperfectly, as you note. I will say that the system we have goes to some annoying lengths to try to maintain this particular kind of integrity. For instance, if you have vision problems and want your husband to help you read the ballot, we need triplicate signatures confirming that the assistance wasn't coercive. We had to stop people from helping family members, as if they were doing something wrong, which felt weird.
      - colmmacc 8y ago
        I've monitored elections in Ireland and the Netherlands which both have an interesting problem. They each use Proportional Representation and ranked voting. Voters filling in their ballots mark each candidate with a number indicating their preference. There are routinely 10+ candidates in each constituency. That makes it easy to encode a highly-likely to be unique voter signature in the lower order numbers, which would make it possible to sell your vote. To combat this, when the votes are unfurled from the ballot boxes in public, tallymen (independent checkers of the vote) are expected to record only the first preferences, and if you start marking any more, you can expect a conversation with the returning officer. They are keeping an eye out. If you are a scrutinizer of potentially invalid ballots, which I've done a few times, you're also not allowed to bring or take any notes.
the_snooze 8y ago
It absolutely is undermined by any sort of voting outside a polling station. If we’re being intellectually honest, all election systems present trade-offs. Polling stations have nice security benefits, but remote voting increase accessibility. That’s basically what you come to appreciate if you immerse yourself in these systems (and build a healthy skepticism for anyone who proposes seemingly simple solutions).
organsnyder 8y ago
In some jurisdictions, it's possible to vote in person after voting absentee (the absentee ballot is then destroyed without being counted). Any system will have trade-offs, though—since ballot access (getting time off from work, childcare, transportation) appears to be a much more pervasive problem than coercion, it seems like the sacrifice would be worth it.
- clarkevans 8y ago
  I believe it is that you could replace the sealed envelope that your ballot comes in. Once the envelopes are opened, they are separated from the ballots inside them.
amalcon 8y ago
The best mechanism for that is old fashioned investigative work, e.g. in the North Carolina 9th district election. The worry is that, if everything works this way, some of the indicators used to discover this sort of thing are diluted. E.g. the first indicators in the NC 9th case were that one county in this district had a lot more absentee ballots than elsewhere, and the absentee ballots favored one candidate by an implausible margin. If all ballots are absentee, the former measure becomes useless and the latter becomes a much weaker signal.
specialist 8y ago
Tabulating ballots as they are received eliminates the secret ballot. Ballots should be sorted into precincts beforehand. Many larger jurisdictions use high speed image scanners for their postal ballots and adjudicate voter intent electronically (no paper record). Election integrity types consider postal balloting and touchscreens roughly equivalent. The gold standard is poll sites where the ballots are tabulated onsite immediately after the polls close. Anything else compromises public voting, private counting, or both, in some way. Though sometimes the tradeoff is worthwhile, eg enfranchising voters.

ska 8y ago

Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping,... I don't think it is gatekeeping to suggest people learn something about a subject before developing & propogating strong opinions on it. Obviously this is one of the best ways to learn some of the ins and outs.