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> By definition insecure... I take "secure voting" to mean a process where every participant can later individually audit that their vote was counted without b

> By definition insecure... I take "secure voting" to mean a process where every participant can later individually audit that their vote was counted without betraying the confidentiality of any other voter. For that, what would you think about a system where the election board published all the votes after the fact without any names, but placing each vote alongside a secret, a key, shared with that voter? So, as a voter, I could perform a few operations on this published list of results. (1) I could search for my row indicated by my shared secret key to confirm my vote was recorded correctly. (2) I could add all the votes to confirm election officials added all recorded votes. (3) I could confirm that the number of rows is equal to the turnout reported on the day, possibly by district, so no ballot boxes could suddenly be lost or added after the fact. > If the software is malicious, it can receive one input and produce a different result. Sure, but all of cryptography is about solving for bad middlemen. The trick to secure multiparty computation is forcing the system to show enough of its work to verify, like above. Just publish the votes with the individual voters strongly masked. Part of me worries that any voting system without public key cryptography is insecure, but our standards are so low we're just settling for paper, assuming that's the best we can do. But I'm not sure what attacks paper advocates are trying to prevent, so I'm probably missing something. If I think my local election officials threw out my vote, how do I use my receipt to detect that from home? But I agree with you if your main points are: 1) Current electronic implementations are terrible. 2) Paper never hurts. N.b. - Vote selling could be an issue with either paper receipts or my protocol above. The best solution for either is probably outside the system (criminal penalties and significant whistle-blower rewards). You might be able to add deniability to the toy protocol above, but things would get complicated.

deleted 7y ago
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dwheeler 7y ago
My point is not that paper never hurts. My point is that paper is the absolute minimum. The security requirements of a voting system are radically different than most systems. A good summary of the problems and how to solve them is here: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/
- brownbat 7y ago
  My absolutely minimum is that every citizen should be able to confirm how their vote was recorded after the fact. If we can't do that, then no system can guarantee us anything. If we can do that, then the system doesn't matter. I'm familiar with VV. I completely agree with their position that post-election audits are critical to ensuring trust in the system. (That's a weaker version of my own requirement above.) However, their latest policy recommendation was that we must keep hand-marked ballots, which is just bizarre to me. That's the sort of policy you endorse if you want elections to be decided by teams of lawyers debating stray marks and creative misspellings to deduce voter intent. It's a good way to let money break ties in elections, and makes me question VV's impartiality or judgment on these issues. They have repeatedly linked to outside teams of researchers covering end-to-end verifiable systems though. A thorough read of the research notes that while there are a number of challenges to overcome, end-to-end verifiable could provide a path to secure elections.
  - dwheeler 7y ago
    > My absolutely minimum is that every citizen should be able to confirm how their vote was recorded after the fact. The downside of that is that such systems generally enable bought votes and extorted votes.
    - brownbat 7y ago
      This takes us back to my first comment. > Vote selling could be an issue with either paper receipts or my protocol above. The best solution for either is probably outside the system (criminal penalties and significant whistle-blower rewards). You might be able to add deniability to the toy protocol above, but things would get complicated. Extortion and bribery work against individuals some of the time, but using it against large groups of people hoping not even one of them will alert reporters or police? Not to mention, this is a flaw in the current voting system, because people can easily sneak phones into booths to take video of their votes. Being able to confirm that your specific vote was counted should be considered a basic human right. If you look at it that way, it feels strange to deny people a basic right to protect against some harm we don't currently address now, but could easily address in other ways.

deleted 7y ago

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dwheeler 7y ago

My point is not that paper never hurts. My point is that paper is the absolute minimum. The security requirements of a voting system are radically different than most systems. A good summary of the problems and how to solve them is here: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/

brownbat 7y ago
My absolutely minimum is that every citizen should be able to confirm how their vote was recorded after the fact. If we can't do that, then no system can guarantee us anything. If we can do that, then the system doesn't matter. I'm familiar with VV. I completely agree with their position that post-election audits are critical to ensuring trust in the system. (That's a weaker version of my own requirement above.) However, their latest policy recommendation was that we must keep hand-marked ballots, which is just bizarre to me. That's the sort of policy you endorse if you want elections to be decided by teams of lawyers debating stray marks and creative misspellings to deduce voter intent. It's a good way to let money break ties in elections, and makes me question VV's impartiality or judgment on these issues. They have repeatedly linked to outside teams of researchers covering end-to-end verifiable systems though. A thorough read of the research notes that while there are a number of challenges to overcome, end-to-end verifiable could provide a path to secure elections.
- dwheeler 7y ago
  > My absolutely minimum is that every citizen should be able to confirm how their vote was recorded after the fact. The downside of that is that such systems generally enable bought votes and extorted votes.
  - brownbat 7y ago
    This takes us back to my first comment. > Vote selling could be an issue with either paper receipts or my protocol above. The best solution for either is probably outside the system (criminal penalties and significant whistle-blower rewards). You might be able to add deniability to the toy protocol above, but things would get complicated. Extortion and bribery work against individuals some of the time, but using it against large groups of people hoping not even one of them will alert reporters or police? Not to mention, this is a flaw in the current voting system, because people can easily sneak phones into booths to take video of their votes. Being able to confirm that your specific vote was counted should be considered a basic human right. If you look at it that way, it feels strange to deny people a basic right to protect against some harm we don't currently address now, but could easily address in other ways.