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The issue I have with pure electronic voting machines are numerous: it's hard to audit them and it's been shown many times in the past how easy it is to comprom

by mshook 6y ago

The issue I have with pure electronic voting machines are numerous: it's hard to audit them and it's been shown many times in the past how easy it is to compromise them. But if you put aside the security or the bug free status of the whole thing, a true democratic vote has at least 2 properties: 1. it's anonymous 2. it can be audited by a layman Because of the complexity or bugs or whatever, #1 cannot really be guaranteed. Voting machine vendors will say they have no way to track voters until someone finds a flow or figure it out. Or machines could be altered or hacked or... But really the biggest problem is #2: because if there's a problem, you need a paper trail. Because in the event of a recount, you want your average joe or jane to be able to recount ballots. You could bring all the blockchain stuff (because I often hear that) or what not into the argument, you still wouldn't be able to do both #1 and #2. So to me, voting must remain a paper thing.

tcbawo 6y ago
A voting machine can produce a printed ballot which is scanned by a separate counting machine. This can be checked for consistency by the voter. Also, you can have more than one scanning machine to verify the ballots are counted properly. And you have a paper trail if a recount is necessary.
- mshook 6y ago
  So the voter would not only "print" his own ballot but check the consistency? That's not what I call audit. Audit is supposed to be multiple pair of eyes during counting. Plus you'd possibly lose the anonymity of the vote if the voter did both (timestamping transactions and so on). If all counting machines are the same, how do you know they're not all wrong? Or not all tampered with? And even if they all give you the same results, how do you know it's actually correct or how do you decide to recount? You have no real way to: you have to count. So at that point you might as well have counted in the first place. Ideally you should have multiple vendors and make sure they all give the same results. But who's going to do that?
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> You could bring all the blockchain stuff (because I often hear that) or what not into the argument, you still wouldn't be able to do both #1 and #2. You can't do both #1 and #2 now. An anonymous ballot can't be audited, because it has no provenance -- if somebody slips an extra ballot in, how would you tell?
- silvestrov 6y ago
  It is very hard to split in more than a few ballots, i.e. an amount that will change the result. In Denmark you don't know what the ballots look like before election day, so you can't produce them in advance, and they aren't printed on printerpaper but is larger and the paper has a distinct texture/feeling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mshook 6y ago
  Here it's almost impossible to slip an anonymous ballot. The ballot box is made of transparent plastic (something like [1]), and you don't slide the envelope in it yourself. The slot is blocked until an official pulls a lever to let it go through. So you put the envelope by the slot, if you keep holding it you will be asked you to let it go (so you can't cleverly hold multiple of them while it looks like one). They'll check again who you are and if you can actually vote and so on. If all is good, an official will pull the lever. [1] https://www.jpg.fr/content/images/product/09812-00J_1_xnl.jpg https://www.jpg.fr/content/images/product/09812-00J_1_xnl.jp...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    That's not the end of the process. At some point, the ballots are coming out of the box. Slip your extras in after that.
    - mshook 6y ago
      You can't do that either because the way it works here is you're being given a sealed bag with all envelopes coming straight for the ballot boxes and that process was supervised by multiple persons. And then you have: - one person who opens the envelope containing the ballot and unfolds it - one who reads out loud the ballot - at least two who write down what the person above said And all that is supervised by the same people who were manning the polling station (at least 4 them). So if you have multiple ballots in the same envelope, they will call it. The only way it'd work is if they all worked together. And you'd have to do that for a couple counting stations in many given polling stations... That sounds like an inside job you couldn't keep secret for long. Because one thing I forgot to mention: counting is done at the polling station, it's not centralized, only results are.

by mshook 6y ago

tcbawo 6y ago

A voting machine can produce a printed ballot which is scanned by a separate counting machine. This can be checked for consistency by the voter. Also, you can have more than one scanning machine to verify the ballots are counted properly. And you have a paper trail if a recount is necessary.

mshook 6y ago
So the voter would not only "print" his own ballot but check the consistency? That's not what I call audit. Audit is supposed to be multiple pair of eyes during counting. Plus you'd possibly lose the anonymity of the vote if the voter did both (timestamping transactions and so on). If all counting machines are the same, how do you know they're not all wrong? Or not all tampered with? And even if they all give you the same results, how do you know it's actually correct or how do you decide to recount? You have no real way to: you have to count. So at that point you might as well have counted in the first place. Ideally you should have multiple vendors and make sure they all give the same results. But who's going to do that?

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> You could bring all the blockchain stuff (because I often hear that) or what not into the argument, you still wouldn't be able to do both #1 and #2. You can't do both #1 and #2 now. An anonymous ballot can't be audited, because it has no provenance -- if somebody slips an extra ballot in, how would you tell?

silvestrov 6y ago
It is very hard to split in more than a few ballots, i.e. an amount that will change the result. In Denmark you don't know what the ballots look like before election day, so you can't produce them in advance, and they aren't printed on printerpaper but is larger and the paper has a distinct texture/feeling.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mshook 6y ago
Here it's almost impossible to slip an anonymous ballot. The ballot box is made of transparent plastic (something like [1]), and you don't slide the envelope in it yourself. The slot is blocked until an official pulls a lever to let it go through. So you put the envelope by the slot, if you keep holding it you will be asked you to let it go (so you can't cleverly hold multiple of them while it looks like one). They'll check again who you are and if you can actually vote and so on. If all is good, an official will pull the lever. [1] https://www.jpg.fr/content/images/product/09812-00J_1_xnl.jpg https://www.jpg.fr/content/images/product/09812-00J_1_xnl.jp...
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  That's not the end of the process. At some point, the ballots are coming out of the box. Slip your extras in after that.
  - mshook 6y ago
    You can't do that either because the way it works here is you're being given a sealed bag with all envelopes coming straight for the ballot boxes and that process was supervised by multiple persons. And then you have: - one person who opens the envelope containing the ballot and unfolds it - one who reads out loud the ballot - at least two who write down what the person above said And all that is supervised by the same people who were manning the polling station (at least 4 them). So if you have multiple ballots in the same envelope, they will call it. The only way it'd work is if they all worked together. And you'd have to do that for a couple counting stations in many given polling stations... That sounds like an inside job you couldn't keep secret for long. Because one thing I forgot to mention: counting is done at the polling station, it's not centralized, only results are.