3 ms·

Actually, this sound like a perfect job for open source to me.

by thomk 7y ago

gbear605 7y ago
Open source would be better than proprietary, but the best code ever written is the code never written.
- thomk 7y ago
  I agree with that to a degree. The problem is we are trading off technical problems for corruption. For counting things, it seems like computers would be a good fit.
  - rwbhn 7y ago
    Lots of good posts out there about why electronic voting (w/out a paper trail) is a bad idea. Here's one: https://www.markpack.org.uk/160622/why-electronic-voting-is-still-a-bad-idea-tom-scott/ https://www.markpack.org.uk/160622/why-electronic-voting-is-...
  - simion314 7y ago
    >For counting things, it seems like computers would be a good fit. You could keep the computers but you also have the papers sealed in boxes. Then you can manually check 1-5% of the votes and make sure the machines are correct. Or if someone contests the count and a judge decides the reasons are fair you can count again all the votes in that polling station.
    - thomk 7y ago
      I like that, agreed.
  - ken 7y ago
    For counting pieces of paper, machines sound like a good fit. Any capabilities beyond the literal needs (i.e., counting) sound like an invitation for mistakes and corruption. Your phone has 100,000 times as much memory as the Apollo Guidance Computer, but nobody would ever use a smartphone for actual spacecraft guidance. UNIVAC famously analyzed the 1952 presidential election. Today we've got about twice as many voters, so maybe get a computer twice as powerful as a UNIVAC.
    - thomk 7y ago
      Upvote for mentioning the Apollo Guidance Computer!
xkemp 7y ago
It's not enough for the vote to be secure. It's not even enough for it to be provable. It needs to be understandably secure. As in: every moderately intelligent person must be able to understand how the process works, end-to-end. While it's enough for cars, for example, to get approval from some trusted authority, we can see in this thread how that's not enough for elections: recent US elections are somewhat trustworthy, from what I can tell[0]. Yet a significant number of people don't trust them. While scepticism can be useful to keep the process honest, it comes with a price: lack of trust gives license, for example, for people to ignore election results by questioning their legitimacy. People drop out of the democratic process, feel less bound by law, and start skirting civil responsibilities, from paying taxes to jury duty. Lacking trust in the potential for "peaceful revolution" at the next election, they seek other means of representation, up to and including extremism and violence. To add another European example: Germany has a polling place just about every block, at least in cities. In 10+ elections, I have never waited in line more than five minutes. After polling closes at 6pm, you can stick around/come back and observe the counting. The times where I did so, there were maybe ten other people also observing, and we were free to walk around and get as close as we wanted. With a polling place serving just a few hundred people, you can watch and independently count the votes of at least one party. Later that night, you can compare your count with the number on the published spreadsheet. That's only one party's votes, in one of tens of thousands of polling places. But get a few trusted friends, or do it repeatedly over the years, and you rather rapidly get statistically significant evidence. The only difficulty for the US would be the insane amount of individual votes, from ballot initiatives to dog catcher (not any longer, I know; but similar). [0]: Apart from the well-known and completely legal top-down methods of election tampering, such as holding it on a workday, cutting down on polling places in specific locations to increase commute and waiting times etc.
- thomk 7y ago
  Your last point about the 'insane amount of individual votes' is really the whole problem. In Europe, as I understand it, you vote for a single person and that person does the rest of the voting for your area. I'm sorry if I am wrong about that or oversimplified it; that's the current state of my knowledge on the subject. Just so you know: America started out that way too, which is why we have the 'house of representatives'. The framers of the constitution intended that congressional districts never exceed 50K to 60K thousand. Unfortunately the average congressional district in America is currently about 700K. Voting for someone to represent me and my closest 699,999 friends is barely a vote at all. With congressional districts that large (not to mention fcking gerrymandering) you are not really voting along with your peers. People are grouped together in strange ways. https://thirty-thousand.org/ https://thirty-thousand.org/ Also, Germany is 1/4th the size of the US and the UK is 1/5th the size of the US. The net result is; Americans are not accurately represented at a national level. When you combine that with the fact that we pride ourselves on our independence and individuality; taking away our ability* to cast votes on local issues is probably not going to fly. If anything I'm guessing we'd want more power to vote individually. Two of the last five presidents who were elected were not chosen by the majority of the population. I think a simpler solution like paper ballots and many polling places might help, but, the sheer manpower to make sure that goes well would be a massive undertaking. As I said, many multiples larger than in some European countries. Having an explainable (to your point) system that is open and exhaustively tested is one path to avoid the current mess we find ourselves in.

Actually, this sound like a perfect job for open source to me.

by thomk 7y ago

Actually, this sound like a perfect job for open source to me.

gbear605 7y ago

Open source would be better than proprietary, but the best code ever written is the code never written.

thomk 7y ago
I agree with that to a degree. The problem is we are trading off technical problems for corruption. For counting things, it seems like computers would be a good fit.
- rwbhn 7y ago
  Lots of good posts out there about why electronic voting (w/out a paper trail) is a bad idea. Here's one: https://www.markpack.org.uk/160622/why-electronic-voting-is-still-a-bad-idea-tom-scott/ https://www.markpack.org.uk/160622/why-electronic-voting-is-...
- simion314 7y ago
  >For counting things, it seems like computers would be a good fit. You could keep the computers but you also have the papers sealed in boxes. Then you can manually check 1-5% of the votes and make sure the machines are correct. Or if someone contests the count and a judge decides the reasons are fair you can count again all the votes in that polling station.
  - thomk 7y ago
    I like that, agreed.
- ken 7y ago
  For counting pieces of paper, machines sound like a good fit. Any capabilities beyond the literal needs (i.e., counting) sound like an invitation for mistakes and corruption. Your phone has 100,000 times as much memory as the Apollo Guidance Computer, but nobody would ever use a smartphone for actual spacecraft guidance. UNIVAC famously analyzed the 1952 presidential election. Today we've got about twice as many voters, so maybe get a computer twice as powerful as a UNIVAC.
  - thomk 7y ago
    Upvote for mentioning the Apollo Guidance Computer!

xkemp 7y ago

It's not enough for the vote to be secure. It's not even enough for it to be provable. It needs to be understandably secure. As in: every moderately intelligent person must be able to understand how the process works, end-to-end. While it's enough for cars, for example, to get approval from some trusted authority, we can see in this thread how that's not enough for elections: recent US elections are somewhat trustworthy, from what I can tell[0]. Yet a significant number of people don't trust them. While scepticism can be useful to keep the process honest, it comes with a price: lack of trust gives license, for example, for people to ignore election results by questioning their legitimacy. People drop out of the democratic process, feel less bound by law, and start skirting civil responsibilities, from paying taxes to jury duty. Lacking trust in the potential for "peaceful revolution" at the next election, they seek other means of representation, up to and including extremism and violence. To add another European example: Germany has a polling place just about every block, at least in cities. In 10+ elections, I have never waited in line more than five minutes. After polling closes at 6pm, you can stick around/come back and observe the counting. The times where I did so, there were maybe ten other people also observing, and we were free to walk around and get as close as we wanted. With a polling place serving just a few hundred people, you can watch and independently count the votes of at least one party. Later that night, you can compare your count with the number on the published spreadsheet. That's only one party's votes, in one of tens of thousands of polling places. But get a few trusted friends, or do it repeatedly over the years, and you rather rapidly get statistically significant evidence. The only difficulty for the US would be the insane amount of individual votes, from ballot initiatives to dog catcher (not any longer, I know; but similar). [0]: Apart from the well-known and completely legal top-down methods of election tampering, such as holding it on a workday, cutting down on polling places in specific locations to increase commute and waiting times etc.

thomk 7y ago
Your last point about the 'insane amount of individual votes' is really the whole problem. In Europe, as I understand it, you vote for a single person and that person does the rest of the voting for your area. I'm sorry if I am wrong about that or oversimplified it; that's the current state of my knowledge on the subject. Just so you know: America started out that way too, which is why we have the 'house of representatives'. The framers of the constitution intended that congressional districts never exceed 50K to 60K thousand. Unfortunately the average congressional district in America is currently about 700K. Voting for someone to represent me and my closest 699,999 friends is barely a vote at all. With congressional districts that large (not to mention fcking gerrymandering) you are not really voting along with your peers. People are grouped together in strange ways. https://thirty-thousand.org/ https://thirty-thousand.org/ Also, Germany is 1/4th the size of the US and the UK is 1/5th the size of the US. The net result is; Americans are not accurately represented at a national level. When you combine that with the fact that we pride ourselves on our independence and individuality; taking away our ability* to cast votes on local issues is probably not going to fly. If anything I'm guessing we'd want more power to vote individually. Two of the last five presidents who were elected were not chosen by the majority of the population. I think a simpler solution like paper ballots and many polling places might help, but, the sheer manpower to make sure that goes well would be a massive undertaking. As I said, many multiples larger than in some European countries. Having an explainable (to your point) system that is open and exhaustively tested is one path to avoid the current mess we find ourselves in.