7 ms·

I think it's nuts for a modern democracy to allow for anything but open source software being used to count paper ballots with chain-of-custody records, voter I

I think it's nuts for a modern democracy to allow for anything but open source software being used to count paper ballots with chain-of-custody records, voter ID validation, biometric markings, and redacted ballots being published on the web for all to view and count independently. Software systems can easily be hacked, and it isn't easy to inspect and tell. A vote is a one time, one sided transaction. It's not as easy to detect fraud in an election as it is with say, a double entry banking record.

mmazing 6y ago
It's terrible to see some of the disinformation that is out there regarding open source software. Time and time again open source is shown to be the way to go, and you still hear lies about how it's not safe. I can already hear the politicians going on about how "being open source" lets "anyone put their own back door in! BE AFRAID!"
- luxuryballs 6y ago
  Open source is good but there would need to also be some way to confirm that the last deployed binary was actually that source code, which with physical access to the machine you could always change. I don’t think computers should be used for this at all.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I think it would be acceptable to use digital scanners (themselves running open source code on open source hardware) to count physical ballots, with the caveat that the redacted ballots (personal info removed) are published the day after the election for anyone to count.
- hota_mazi 6y ago
  They are not lies. Open source is not safer than closed source, unless you can verify with 100% certainty that the code you saw is the code that's running. And that's impossible. People who think open source is the solution to the voting challenge haven't given this problem much thought.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    That's like saying a car is only safer if you can be 100% certain it won't crash.
  - mmazing 6y ago
    I think the main difference is that software being open source (and maintained by a larger community!) provides wider accountability and visibility to code changes, thus reducing potential security flaws. You claim that open source is NOT safer than closed source, what is your reasoning there? Security through obscurity?
jpxw 6y ago
Yes, it’s either that or just use paper ballots, hand counted. When I learned that the US actually uses software in its elections, I was shocked. It’s unthinkable here in the UK.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > It’s unthinkable here in the UK. Not just in the UK. Most Western democracies consider the idea completely crazy because nothing can be properly audited once papers are removed.
- flerchin 6y ago
  They have paper trails for every vote.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Not in every jurisdiction, no.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I believe you are both mistaken. From what I've read, there are some states/localities that have paper ballots they can check, including swing states like Georgia, where they did audit that exact thing. But then there are other states that do not keep the paper trail, most of which went "red" according to an article I read but did not verify.
    - matthewbauer 6y ago
      A few states are using direct recording systems, without a paper trail: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... "Currently only one state — Louisiana — keeps no paper trail of votes at all. Counties in eight states — Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas — use a hybrid system" where some, but not all votes will have a paper trail. (from https://madison.com/on-paper-ballots-for-the-2020-election/article_76cdf4a5-6ede-5c09-bf20-46e0082c5262.html https://madison.com/on-paper-ballots-for-the-2020-election/a...)
voxl 6y ago
There is little if any actual evidence of voter fraud, but plenty of evidence that making voting harder (via voter ID validation, biometric markings, etc) simply disenfranchises voters. It's easy to say that software can just be hacked, but just because its a possibility doesn't give you the right to invalidate an election.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  This is a cop-out. Other countries seem to be able to have voter identification, the US should be capable of it, too. Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer, bonus points for not requiring a permanent address.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    "Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer..." The people putting forward voter ID laws usually do the opposite. They want to make obtaining an ID more difficult and make that ID a requirement to vote. If we just say "getting and ID should be easy" but don't actually make it easy, and then we increase voter ID requirements, we are disenfranchising voters.
    - luxuryballs 6y ago
      Yeah but those people existing doesn’t change the actual merits of the idea itself.
      - standardUser 6y ago
        If the end result is that someone who could vote in the last election cannot vote in the next election, we need a better idea.
        andrewflnr 6y ago
        That's a good heuristic. I would only counterbalance it with the possibility of enabling people to vote who could not in the last election (thinking again of people with no fixed address).
ahupp 6y ago
Open source doesn't really help here, because even if I can see the source I don't have a way to verify what was running. It's more important to just not rely on software for the critical path, and make sure there's an auditable paper trail.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  What if you used the combination of FOSS and a blockchain ledger?
  - TheDong 6y ago
    Say more about how a blockchain ledger could allow verifying what software is running on a device? The only way I can think of to actually do this is to have some trusted party go out and randomly sample voting machines (i.e. check the software on the disk matches the reproducible builds of the open source software, and decap the machine's CPU and other hardware to verify there's no bugs). Anything else can be foiled by malicious software or hardware.
    - jb775 6y ago
      If there was a whole new voting system built from scratch, couldn't it be designed to use some sort of integrity key in combination with each voter's personal key? Kind of like how some CDNs have an integrity attribute to ensure the CDN's source code hasn't been manipulated.
      - ahupp 6y ago
        One of the tricky things with voting is that a provably trustworthy system that voters don't understand is worse than an imperfect system that is totally transparent. Voting is only useful to the extent there's trust in the system.
      - TheDong 6y ago
        I don't think that ends up working for voting machines because those are two different problems. With the CDN, the user receives source code and they want to verify the source code is unchanged. Checking a hash of the data they received is sufficient. For a voting machine, what's the analogue? If I walk up to a voting machine with an integrity key, how do I check that the source code it's running has a given hash or is signed with a given key? If the voting machine itself shows the code or does the check, obviously a person who compromised the machine can fake that bit. If I have to remove the hdd and verify the data on it, and take apart the voting machine to verify there's no second hard drive... well, that seems like it's well out of reach of any voter verifying it. Integrity keys, hashes, signatures, blockchains, etc can verify digital data, can verify the contents of data that servers serve... But they don't seem to solve the problem of "what code is this machine running", and that seems to be the important problem for voting machine code.
dangoor 6y ago
They need only do [risk-limiting audits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit) (which some states did do!) to verify the results.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Whose risk are they trying to limit by not doing a full audit?
MuseHorizon 6y ago
This. > I think it's nuts for a modern democracy to allow for anything but open source software being used to count paper ballots.. I cannot agree more.

mmazing 6y ago

It's terrible to see some of the disinformation that is out there regarding open source software. Time and time again open source is shown to be the way to go, and you still hear lies about how it's not safe. I can already hear the politicians going on about how "being open source" lets "anyone put their own back door in! BE AFRAID!"

luxuryballs 6y ago
Open source is good but there would need to also be some way to confirm that the last deployed binary was actually that source code, which with physical access to the machine you could always change. I don’t think computers should be used for this at all.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I think it would be acceptable to use digital scanners (themselves running open source code on open source hardware) to count physical ballots, with the caveat that the redacted ballots (personal info removed) are published the day after the election for anyone to count.
hota_mazi 6y ago
They are not lies. Open source is not safer than closed source, unless you can verify with 100% certainty that the code you saw is the code that's running. And that's impossible. People who think open source is the solution to the voting challenge haven't given this problem much thought.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  That's like saying a car is only safer if you can be 100% certain it won't crash.
- mmazing 6y ago
  I think the main difference is that software being open source (and maintained by a larger community!) provides wider accountability and visibility to code changes, thus reducing potential security flaws. You claim that open source is NOT safer than closed source, what is your reasoning there? Security through obscurity?

jpxw 6y ago

Yes, it’s either that or just use paper ballots, hand counted. When I learned that the US actually uses software in its elections, I was shocked. It’s unthinkable here in the UK.

ekianjo 6y ago
> It’s unthinkable here in the UK. Not just in the UK. Most Western democracies consider the idea completely crazy because nothing can be properly audited once papers are removed.
flerchin 6y ago
They have paper trails for every vote.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Not in every jurisdiction, no.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I believe you are both mistaken. From what I've read, there are some states/localities that have paper ballots they can check, including swing states like Georgia, where they did audit that exact thing. But then there are other states that do not keep the paper trail, most of which went "red" according to an article I read but did not verify.
  - matthewbauer 6y ago
    A few states are using direct recording systems, without a paper trail: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... "Currently only one state — Louisiana — keeps no paper trail of votes at all. Counties in eight states — Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas — use a hybrid system" where some, but not all votes will have a paper trail. (from https://madison.com/on-paper-ballots-for-the-2020-election/article_76cdf4a5-6ede-5c09-bf20-46e0082c5262.html https://madison.com/on-paper-ballots-for-the-2020-election/a...)

voxl 6y ago

There is little if any actual evidence of voter fraud, but plenty of evidence that making voting harder (via voter ID validation, biometric markings, etc) simply disenfranchises voters. It's easy to say that software can just be hacked, but just because its a possibility doesn't give you the right to invalidate an election.

andrewflnr 6y ago
This is a cop-out. Other countries seem to be able to have voter identification, the US should be capable of it, too. Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer, bonus points for not requiring a permanent address.
- standardUser 6y ago
  "Start by making the identity card free-as-in-beer..." The people putting forward voter ID laws usually do the opposite. They want to make obtaining an ID more difficult and make that ID a requirement to vote. If we just say "getting and ID should be easy" but don't actually make it easy, and then we increase voter ID requirements, we are disenfranchising voters.
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    Yeah but those people existing doesn’t change the actual merits of the idea itself.
    - standardUser 6y ago
      If the end result is that someone who could vote in the last election cannot vote in the next election, we need a better idea.
      - andrewflnr 6y ago
        That's a good heuristic. I would only counterbalance it with the possibility of enabling people to vote who could not in the last election (thinking again of people with no fixed address).

ahupp 6y ago

Open source doesn't really help here, because even if I can see the source I don't have a way to verify what was running. It's more important to just not rely on software for the critical path, and make sure there's an auditable paper trail.

ekianjo 6y ago
What if you used the combination of FOSS and a blockchain ledger?
- TheDong 6y ago
  Say more about how a blockchain ledger could allow verifying what software is running on a device? The only way I can think of to actually do this is to have some trusted party go out and randomly sample voting machines (i.e. check the software on the disk matches the reproducible builds of the open source software, and decap the machine's CPU and other hardware to verify there's no bugs). Anything else can be foiled by malicious software or hardware.
  - jb775 6y ago
    If there was a whole new voting system built from scratch, couldn't it be designed to use some sort of integrity key in combination with each voter's personal key? Kind of like how some CDNs have an integrity attribute to ensure the CDN's source code hasn't been manipulated.
    - ahupp 6y ago
      One of the tricky things with voting is that a provably trustworthy system that voters don't understand is worse than an imperfect system that is totally transparent. Voting is only useful to the extent there's trust in the system.
    - TheDong 6y ago
      I don't think that ends up working for voting machines because those are two different problems. With the CDN, the user receives source code and they want to verify the source code is unchanged. Checking a hash of the data they received is sufficient. For a voting machine, what's the analogue? If I walk up to a voting machine with an integrity key, how do I check that the source code it's running has a given hash or is signed with a given key? If the voting machine itself shows the code or does the check, obviously a person who compromised the machine can fake that bit. If I have to remove the hdd and verify the data on it, and take apart the voting machine to verify there's no second hard drive... well, that seems like it's well out of reach of any voter verifying it. Integrity keys, hashes, signatures, blockchains, etc can verify digital data, can verify the contents of data that servers serve... But they don't seem to solve the problem of "what code is this machine running", and that seems to be the important problem for voting machine code.

dangoor 6y ago

They need only do [risk-limiting audits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit) (which some states did do!) to verify the results.

chrisco255 6y ago
Whose risk are they trying to limit by not doing a full audit?

MuseHorizon 6y ago

This. > I think it's nuts for a modern democracy to allow for anything but open source software being used to count paper ballots.. I cannot agree more.