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There is a fundamental difference between space shuttle and voting software: it is very rare for people directly involved in developing the first to have incent

There is a fundamental difference between space shuttle and voting software: it is very rare for people directly involved in developing the first to have incentive to make a shuttle crash; it is not so clear that people involved in voting systems can't have a incentive to make elections rigged. The possibility of malicious code is much more of a problem when people stand to profit from a bug.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
People involved in voting systems still have an incentive to make it impossible for their opponents to rig an election. So get both sides involved...
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  Get both sides involved could just mean having an auction... I'm not saying it's impossible to make a publicly verifyable, tamper proof system, but it's definitely harder than flying a shuttle.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > Get both sides involved could just mean having an auction... No, because the loser of the auction would have every incentive to cry foul.
    - lultimouomo 6y ago
      They wouldn't know they lost the auction until the result have come out; at that point crying foul would mean admitting they were involved in trying to steal an election; and since verifying the correctness of the voting system would be extremely hard they might not even be able to dispute the result.
  - tzs 6y ago
    It's actually quite a bit easier than flying a space shuttle. See [1], or for a less technical description [2]. [1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/chaum/chaum_html/index.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
tzs 6y ago
> it is not so clear that people involved in voting systems can't have a incentive to make elections rigged It is not so clear that there is a reasonable mechanism by which they could rig elections. When they make the hardware and software they have no idea what candidates will actually be on the ballots when the machines are used.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

People involved in voting systems still have an incentive to make it impossible for their opponents to rig an election. So get both sides involved...

lultimouomo 6y ago
Get both sides involved could just mean having an auction... I'm not saying it's impossible to make a publicly verifyable, tamper proof system, but it's definitely harder than flying a shuttle.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > Get both sides involved could just mean having an auction... No, because the loser of the auction would have every incentive to cry foul.
  - lultimouomo 6y ago
    They wouldn't know they lost the auction until the result have come out; at that point crying foul would mean admitting they were involved in trying to steal an election; and since verifying the correctness of the voting system would be extremely hard they might not even be able to dispute the result.
- tzs 6y ago
  It's actually quite a bit easier than flying a space shuttle. See [1], or for a less technical description [2]. [1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/chaum/chaum_html/index.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity

tzs 6y ago

> it is not so clear that people involved in voting systems can't have a incentive to make elections rigged It is not so clear that there is a reasonable mechanism by which they could rig elections. When they make the hardware and software they have no idea what candidates will actually be on the ballots when the machines are used.