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Can someone confirm to me why we need voting "apps" or why voting needs to be electronic at all? Vote in person by pen & paper or vote via mail remotely. Tabu

by r00fus 7y ago

Can someone confirm to me why we need voting "apps" or why voting needs to be electronic at all? Vote in person by pen & paper or vote via mail remotely. Tabulation also should be done locally and in-person with representatives of all parties present. Anything else seems ... like a way to more easily steal elections.

jonwachob91 7y ago
Page 1 of the report: >>> "While the introduction of Internet voting in the U.S. is relatively new, the history surrounding electronic only voting is not. In the wake of counting errors, recount discrepancies, and uninterpretable ballots wreaking havoc during the 2000 U.S. Presidential race, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) [49], a bill targeted toward helping states move away from outdated and problematic punchard-based systems."
- r00fus 7y ago
  HAVA was a disaster and resulted in all sorts of problems with what should be a basic printout + pen solution. Other countries do that, and all attempts to "automate" or improve the UI of voting introduce all sorts of problems.
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
>> The promises of mobile voting are attractive—better accessibility for differently abled people, streamlined absentee voting, and speed and convenience for all voters. If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting, it would revolutionize the process. It’s a fantastic goal—but there’s still work to do.
- r00fus 7y ago
  This is still relevant: https://xkcd.com/2030 https://xkcd.com/2030
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  > If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting First, that's a mighty big if, and second, it's not enough! Voting is a process where unlike online banking or online shopping there is no way for a human to go in and fix errors, there's no way to audit a vote and go "Oh, Bob meant to vote for A and Cindy meant to vote for B, so the machine did it wrong". It's not enough that an electronic voting system is correct, every single voter has to be able to trust the system, and for that it needs to be simple to understand. You can't look at the electrons inside a silicon chip to determine they're doing the right thing. But with pen and paper and envelopes and urns and observers and counters, you can determine that the system is doing the right thing. Involving lots and lots of citizens in the voting system is not a bad thing, quite the opposite! You want as many eyes as possible on the entire process to ensure there's nothing shady going on, that there's no mistakes. But if all the votes go into a black box that spits out the results, all of that goes away, all of that trust, all of that ability to verify that the results are correct.
  - baobabKoodaa 7y ago
    Well, they use a lot of pen & paper in Russia, but somehow Putin can get 107% of votes in some areas. So perhaps your confidence in paper voting is a bit too high.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      They never said you can't design a paper ballot system that can be corrupted... they just said that you CAN design one (fairly easily) that can't be corrupted and can be verified by most people (no special technical knowledge required)
      - baobabKoodaa 7y ago
        Well, a completely uncorruptable, perfectly verifiable paper voting system does not currently exist and we haven't come even close to designing one. You're saying that we can design one fairly easily, so why is it that no-one has done so? If it's so easy to do, surely someone at some point would have done it.
- sandov 7y ago
  > If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting, it would revolutionize the process. They'd have to give each voter some sort of voting device with a screen, buttons and wireless connectivity, and make sure that the voter doesn't lose it so that it can be reused for the next election, or buy these devices each election. Too much trouble.
crooked-v 7y ago
I live in Oregon where everything is vote-by-mail, and on the whole it works great. Each ballot is basically a generic survey-style scantron form and dead simple to fill out (fill in the circle next to your choice, or next to the blank line and write in a candidate), as of this year no postage is required so the only cost to the voter is a pen or pencil, and voters without a mailing address can register to pick up a ballot at the county elections office and can then drop off that ballot at any post office or in one of the drop boxes at libraries and public squares. It also has overwhelming bipartisan support (>75% among both Democrats and Republicans) and results in turnout well above most of the country (63% in 2018 midterms compared to 49% for the US as a whole).
- baobabKoodaa 7y ago
  And how do you know it "works great"?
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
It would be great, IMO, if electronic voting was cracked so that voting could be made cheaper and thus be used for more direct democracy.
- charonn0 7y ago
  Cheaper for us means cheaper for attackers too. Sometimes inconvenience and inefficiency are features.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Well, consider how many people just aren't going to be bothered to ever register and vote which is the majority of my friends. The amount of effort plays directly into the "meh, not like my vote matters anyways" mindset. "Oh well, they don't deserve to vote then" might sound good to you, but only if you tend to agree with what people currently vote for.
fsh 7y ago
Voting by mail shares many systemic issues with online voting, such as lack of anonymity (an attacker could open your letter or you could show the ballot to someone) and verifiability (you have no idea if your letter made it to the count).
- cortesoft 7y ago
  In California, you have a code on your mail in ballet you can use to check if your vote has been counted.

by r00fus 7y ago

jonwachob91 7y ago

Page 1 of the report: >>> "While the introduction of Internet voting in the U.S. is relatively new, the history surrounding electronic only voting is not. In the wake of counting errors, recount discrepancies, and uninterpretable ballots wreaking havoc during the 2000 U.S. Presidential race, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) [49], a bill targeted toward helping states move away from outdated and problematic punchard-based systems."

r00fus 7y ago
HAVA was a disaster and resulted in all sorts of problems with what should be a basic printout + pen solution. Other countries do that, and all attempts to "automate" or improve the UI of voting introduce all sorts of problems.

NikolaeVarius 7y ago

>> The promises of mobile voting are attractive—better accessibility for differently abled people, streamlined absentee voting, and speed and convenience for all voters. If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting, it would revolutionize the process. It’s a fantastic goal—but there’s still work to do.

r00fus 7y ago
This is still relevant: https://xkcd.com/2030 https://xkcd.com/2030
henrikschroder 7y ago
> If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting First, that's a mighty big if, and second, it's not enough! Voting is a process where unlike online banking or online shopping there is no way for a human to go in and fix errors, there's no way to audit a vote and go "Oh, Bob meant to vote for A and Cindy meant to vote for B, so the machine did it wrong". It's not enough that an electronic voting system is correct, every single voter has to be able to trust the system, and for that it needs to be simple to understand. You can't look at the electrons inside a silicon chip to determine they're doing the right thing. But with pen and paper and envelopes and urns and observers and counters, you can determine that the system is doing the right thing. Involving lots and lots of citizens in the voting system is not a bad thing, quite the opposite! You want as many eyes as possible on the entire process to ensure there's nothing shady going on, that there's no mistakes. But if all the votes go into a black box that spits out the results, all of that goes away, all of that trust, all of that ability to verify that the results are correct.
- baobabKoodaa 7y ago
  Well, they use a lot of pen & paper in Russia, but somehow Putin can get 107% of votes in some areas. So perhaps your confidence in paper voting is a bit too high.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    They never said you can't design a paper ballot system that can be corrupted... they just said that you CAN design one (fairly easily) that can't be corrupted and can be verified by most people (no special technical knowledge required)
    - baobabKoodaa 7y ago
      Well, a completely uncorruptable, perfectly verifiable paper voting system does not currently exist and we haven't come even close to designing one. You're saying that we can design one fairly easily, so why is it that no-one has done so? If it's so easy to do, surely someone at some point would have done it.
sandov 7y ago
> If a mobile platform could guarantee secure voting, it would revolutionize the process. They'd have to give each voter some sort of voting device with a screen, buttons and wireless connectivity, and make sure that the voter doesn't lose it so that it can be reused for the next election, or buy these devices each election. Too much trouble.

crooked-v 7y ago

I live in Oregon where everything is vote-by-mail, and on the whole it works great. Each ballot is basically a generic survey-style scantron form and dead simple to fill out (fill in the circle next to your choice, or next to the blank line and write in a candidate), as of this year no postage is required so the only cost to the voter is a pen or pencil, and voters without a mailing address can register to pick up a ballot at the county elections office and can then drop off that ballot at any post office or in one of the drop boxes at libraries and public squares. It also has overwhelming bipartisan support (>75% among both Democrats and Republicans) and results in turnout well above most of the country (63% in 2018 midterms compared to 49% for the US as a whole).

baobabKoodaa 7y ago
And how do you know it "works great"?

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

It would be great, IMO, if electronic voting was cracked so that voting could be made cheaper and thus be used for more direct democracy.

charonn0 7y ago
Cheaper for us means cheaper for attackers too. Sometimes inconvenience and inefficiency are features.

hombre_fatal 7y ago

Well, consider how many people just aren't going to be bothered to ever register and vote which is the majority of my friends. The amount of effort plays directly into the "meh, not like my vote matters anyways" mindset. "Oh well, they don't deserve to vote then" might sound good to you, but only if you tend to agree with what people currently vote for.

fsh 7y ago

Voting by mail shares many systemic issues with online voting, such as lack of anonymity (an attacker could open your letter or you could show the ballot to someone) and verifiability (you have no idea if your letter made it to the count).

cortesoft 7y ago
In California, you have a code on your mail in ballet you can use to check if your vote has been counted.