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> How would you design an secure online voting system? You don't. Anything done "online" simply verifies that "some human at a keyboard" has the requisite "se
by pwg 6y ago
> How would you design an secure online voting system?
You don't. Anything done "online" simply verifies that "some human at a keyboard" has the requisite "secret" -- but cannot verify that the correct human who should legally have the secret is indeed the one entering the secret.
I.e. Bob gives Joe his "voting secret" and now Joe can log in as "Joe" and vote his legal vote, and also log in as "Bob" and cast a second vote, all while the online system believes "Bob" is casting that second vote.
Also, if you want to maintain the secrecy of the ballot then you simply can not perform online voting, because with the machines there can always be some trail to trace between "ballot X" and "Fred" to show who cast that ballot.
- BjoernKW 6y agoThose statements apply to in-person voting, too, don't they? How do you verify the identity of a person at the polling station? I'm not sure how it's done in the US specifically but in general it boils down to the voter handing over a piece of paper that's been mailed to them by some government agency and optionally, in places where such provisions exist, producing an ID card or social security ID. That's nothing more than the real-world equivalent of "but cannot verify that the correct human who should legally have the secret is indeed the one entering the secret." It's admittedly much more difficult to pull off at scale in an in-person setting, though.
- lasereyes136 6y agoWhere I live in the USA, you verify the voter to get a ballot, go to a private area to fill out the ballot, go to a new area to scan the ballot, and leave the paper ballot that is filled out in the scanning machine to have a paper trail of votes. Unless you are the only person voting in a long stretch of time it would be hard to determine which vote was your vote. That doesn't mean it is impossible just highly unlikely.
- BjoernKW 6y agoPossibly being able to identify a voter and their vote after the fact certainly is another issue, one that admittedly is more pronounced with a digital system (albeit still solvable). However, verifying that a voter is the person they claim to be is a problem that equally exists in both online and offline settings.
- imheretolearn 6y agoIt is exponentially more difficult to pull off in person identity theft on scale whereas getting secrets online on scale is a lot more feasible.