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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

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.

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.