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You’ve clearly never heard of homomorphic encryption. There exists a way to cryptographically secure a vote while also preserving privacy. It’s even individuall

You’ve clearly never heard of homomorphic encryption. There exists a way to cryptographically secure a vote while also preserving privacy. It’s even individually verifiable. And as a bonus, you can’t sell it even though you can verify it. Do some research, there even exists a youtube video putting it in simple terms. The answer is homomorphoc encryption.

pessimizer 6y ago
> And as a bonus, you can’t sell it even though you can verify it. How does homomorphic encryption keep me from selling my id and password to someone who will vote for me, or keep someone from standing over my shoulder and watching me vote?
henrikschroder 6y ago
> There exists a way to cryptographically secure Fantastic, can you explain that to my 95 year old grandmother? > there even exists a youtube video She doesn't know what YouTube is. You're showing the third weakness of online voting, and that is that because we have to trust whatever result the system produces, everyone in society also has to be able to understand the system. I'm sure I could understand your solution, but I'm a nerd, and you shouldn't have to be a nerd to understand it. It's hard enough to convince people that experts are right about trivial bullshit, why should anyone trust the experts about online voting? The simplicity of voting through papers and envelopes and urns is its greatest strength. Everyone can look at the process, everyone is even invited to observe the process, and you can easily detect cheating or other irregularities. Everyone can be a poll worker, and that's a fundamental pillar of democracy, that we all build the voting machine together, so that we together can trust the result, even though we may have completely opposite political opinions.
- Gunax 6y ago
  But the voter does not need to understand encryption... just the designer of the system.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Are you suggesting they just trust the designer? Most ordinary people aren't going to do that. They'll just say 'no thanks'. A once-in-a-lifetime referendum in the UK in 2011 about a change to voting systems was solidly defeated because most people said 'I don't understand this it's too complicated' - and that was just AV. Most ordinary people don't want or trust any kind of fancy voting idea at all. I don't see that changing either.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      > Are you suggesting they just trust the designer? Most ordinary people aren't going to do that That's quite literally what people do when buying stuff from amazon. People are just afraid of change. In places where e-voting has been implemented people generally trust that the system works, just like they trust a lock symbol in their amazon shopping cart page.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        When people buy stuff on Amazon they can verify that they received the goods. They can't verify their vote was counted correctly.
        lhorie 6y ago
        Receiving your goods doesn't guarantee you weren't a victim of a scam or id theft. Package theft is also a thing, etc. Similarly, You can't verify a paper ballot was counted correctly (see recounts and how the numbers don't match). Yet we're ok with these systems. Clearly infallibility isn't a prerequisite for trust. Besides, as I mentioned elsewhere, auditable e-voting systems do exist and have been used in various parts of the world.
        pessimizer 6y ago
        > Receiving your goods doesn't guarantee you weren't a victim of a scam or id theft. No it doesn't. People are frequently victims of scams and id theft because of the trust necessary to use online systems. This is something that is important to avoid in voting, or else your country collapses.
- lhorie 6y ago
  By that logic, everyone must also understand how CDMA/GSM works or we can't trust that that 911 call will go through correctly. The reality is that americans have collectively decided that e-voting cannot possibly work, perhaps due to some irrational fear that their bipartisan side will be cheated out of a rightful win in some sinister movie plot. Never mind that e-voting has been around and working just fine in other parts of the world.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > By that logic, everyone must also understand how CDMA/GSM works or we can't trust that that 911 call will go through correctly. No, they don't, because they can call 911 and have actual police and EMTs show up, so they know the system works even if they can't understand the technical details. There is no similar way to check a computerized voting process.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      Of course there is. If the green party gets elected all of a sudden, everyone will smell a rat. On a more serious and technical level, auditable voting systems have both been developed already, and deployed/used. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist.
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        That you cite their existence without giving an actual example is a strong indication that if they do exist, you aren't aware of them either.
        lhorie 6y ago
        ...or maybe I foolishly assumed in good faith that people are smart enough to google for things that challenge their preconceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_...
      - 6y ago
- mNovak 6y ago
  >> we all build the voting machine together, so that we together can trust the result Seems like this logic could apply to any other digital or cryptographic solution as well? On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting machines, or even what happens behind the scenes after you mail a ballot. As in many things, I suspect all that matters is a general consensus that it's secure. For some that means experts agree it's safe, for others it means their friends, children, sheriff whatever sign off on it.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    > On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting machines, That is an argument against voting machines.
    - mNovak 6y ago
      I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process, so we're right back to trusting our officials.
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
        > I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. Absolutely, yes! That's basically how voting works in several countries. Observers can see votes being cast, vote counters can see that number of votes in the urn correspond to the number of voters who voted, you get a paper trail because you always have all the physical votes, and the process scales horizontally super easy. > "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process No, anyone can come look at the voting or vote counting, why would you prohibit that? The whole point of having a simple and open voting process is because people should be able to observe the whole system.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        > I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. I am. Why is that hard to believe? > "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process, so we're right back to trusting our officials. Where is that the case?
tsimionescu 6y ago
How would you know that the servers are implementing the scheme that they claim they are implementing? How would you verify that they are not counting extra votes from people who don't exist? How would you verify that a cosmic ray didn't flip a bit in a count somewhere? And the other side: if you claimed that your vote was improperly counted, how could I (as a law-enforcement officer) verify that claim? How could the election body trigger a re-count? Of course, these fundamental issues are all moot anyway, because of the even more fundamental issue of intelligibility. I understand exactly how the voting system works today, how the integrity of the vote is assured, how fraud is prevented. So do my grandmother and my 16 year old niece. With a system relying on homomorphic encryption and resilient, secured hardware and software, do you think that there realistically exist 1000 people in the entire world who could be personally convinced that the system is secure end-to-end, from the mathematical models to the systems running the software that is claimed?

pessimizer 6y ago

> And as a bonus, you can’t sell it even though you can verify it. How does homomorphic encryption keep me from selling my id and password to someone who will vote for me, or keep someone from standing over my shoulder and watching me vote?

henrikschroder 6y ago

> There exists a way to cryptographically secure Fantastic, can you explain that to my 95 year old grandmother? > there even exists a youtube video She doesn't know what YouTube is. You're showing the third weakness of online voting, and that is that because we have to trust whatever result the system produces, everyone in society also has to be able to understand the system. I'm sure I could understand your solution, but I'm a nerd, and you shouldn't have to be a nerd to understand it. It's hard enough to convince people that experts are right about trivial bullshit, why should anyone trust the experts about online voting? The simplicity of voting through papers and envelopes and urns is its greatest strength. Everyone can look at the process, everyone is even invited to observe the process, and you can easily detect cheating or other irregularities. Everyone can be a poll worker, and that's a fundamental pillar of democracy, that we all build the voting machine together, so that we together can trust the result, even though we may have completely opposite political opinions.

Gunax 6y ago
But the voter does not need to understand encryption... just the designer of the system.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Are you suggesting they just trust the designer? Most ordinary people aren't going to do that. They'll just say 'no thanks'. A once-in-a-lifetime referendum in the UK in 2011 about a change to voting systems was solidly defeated because most people said 'I don't understand this it's too complicated' - and that was just AV. Most ordinary people don't want or trust any kind of fancy voting idea at all. I don't see that changing either.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    > Are you suggesting they just trust the designer? Most ordinary people aren't going to do that That's quite literally what people do when buying stuff from amazon. People are just afraid of change. In places where e-voting has been implemented people generally trust that the system works, just like they trust a lock symbol in their amazon shopping cart page.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      When people buy stuff on Amazon they can verify that they received the goods. They can't verify their vote was counted correctly.
      - lhorie 6y ago
        Receiving your goods doesn't guarantee you weren't a victim of a scam or id theft. Package theft is also a thing, etc. Similarly, You can't verify a paper ballot was counted correctly (see recounts and how the numbers don't match). Yet we're ok with these systems. Clearly infallibility isn't a prerequisite for trust. Besides, as I mentioned elsewhere, auditable e-voting systems do exist and have been used in various parts of the world.
        pessimizer 6y ago
        > Receiving your goods doesn't guarantee you weren't a victim of a scam or id theft. No it doesn't. People are frequently victims of scams and id theft because of the trust necessary to use online systems. This is something that is important to avoid in voting, or else your country collapses.
lhorie 6y ago
By that logic, everyone must also understand how CDMA/GSM works or we can't trust that that 911 call will go through correctly. The reality is that americans have collectively decided that e-voting cannot possibly work, perhaps due to some irrational fear that their bipartisan side will be cheated out of a rightful win in some sinister movie plot. Never mind that e-voting has been around and working just fine in other parts of the world.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > By that logic, everyone must also understand how CDMA/GSM works or we can't trust that that 911 call will go through correctly. No, they don't, because they can call 911 and have actual police and EMTs show up, so they know the system works even if they can't understand the technical details. There is no similar way to check a computerized voting process.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    Of course there is. If the green party gets elected all of a sudden, everyone will smell a rat. On a more serious and technical level, auditable voting systems have both been developed already, and deployed/used. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      That you cite their existence without giving an actual example is a strong indication that if they do exist, you aren't aware of them either.
      - lhorie 6y ago
        ...or maybe I foolishly assumed in good faith that people are smart enough to google for things that challenge their preconceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_...
    - 6y ago
mNovak 6y ago
>> we all build the voting machine together, so that we together can trust the result Seems like this logic could apply to any other digital or cryptographic solution as well? On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting machines, or even what happens behind the scenes after you mail a ballot. As in many things, I suspect all that matters is a general consensus that it's secure. For some that means experts agree it's safe, for others it means their friends, children, sheriff whatever sign off on it.
- anoncake 6y ago
  > On that note, I doubt your grandma understands voting machines, That is an argument against voting machines.
  - mNovak 6y ago
    I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process, so we're right back to trusting our officials.
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
      > I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. Absolutely, yes! That's basically how voting works in several countries. Observers can see votes being cast, vote counters can see that number of votes in the urn correspond to the number of voters who voted, you get a paper trail because you always have all the physical votes, and the process scales horizontally super easy. > "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process No, anyone can come look at the voting or vote counting, why would you prohibit that? The whole point of having a simple and open voting process is because people should be able to observe the whole system.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      > I can't tell if you and OP are seriously suggesting we write our votes on a slip of paper and drop it in the slot. I am. Why is that hard to believe? > "Public process" ultimately means a small handful of people can actually observe the process, so we're right back to trusting our officials. Where is that the case?

tsimionescu 6y ago

How would you know that the servers are implementing the scheme that they claim they are implementing? How would you verify that they are not counting extra votes from people who don't exist? How would you verify that a cosmic ray didn't flip a bit in a count somewhere? And the other side: if you claimed that your vote was improperly counted, how could I (as a law-enforcement officer) verify that claim? How could the election body trigger a re-count? Of course, these fundamental issues are all moot anyway, because of the even more fundamental issue of intelligibility. I understand exactly how the voting system works today, how the integrity of the vote is assured, how fraud is prevented. So do my grandmother and my 16 year old niece. With a system relying on homomorphic encryption and resilient, secured hardware and software, do you think that there realistically exist 1000 people in the entire world who could be personally convinced that the system is secure end-to-end, from the mathematical models to the systems running the software that is claimed?