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You underestimate how large a manipulation could go undetected. [1] shows an election with a 28-41 win for Patrick, while the poll showed a 37-31 win for Dewhur

You underestimate how large a manipulation could go undetected. [1] shows an election with a 28-41 win for Patrick, while the poll showed a 37-31 win for Dewhurst. That's a 10% absolute swing, and 25% relative. And the less attention an election gets from pollsters, the bigger the margin for error and manipulation. Changing too many votes, to make people doubt the legitimacy of the election, is itself a powerful attack to sow division in a country. I'm sure I don't need to cite examples... And then what is even the point of formal voting, if, when done online, it's a centralized way for an adversary to change results, and is only legitimized by reproducing results of informal polls (conducted by public research firms we trust, of course...) We may as well skip elections and use the polls directly. I agree there are many other ways to manipulate voters, so let's not expand that list further. [1] https://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/06/polling-center-poll-findings-vs-election-results/ https://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/06/polling-center-poll-...

necovek 4y ago
We seem to be discussing different scenarios. In my example, a formal vote is partially done electronically, and partially through paper votes: large discrepancies in results between those two groups could be indicative of interference (small variation is to be expected). I am not talking of unofficial polls which can never produce a representative sample of people. Point of formal voting is to elect a government that the majority of voters prefer. Many countries have a problem with voter turnout, so you rarely get any one party or coalition winning more than 20-30% of the eligible votes, yet they get majority control of the government. Point of electronic voting should be to increase the turnout without decreasing the trustiness. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it's not insurmountable. Electronic votes can be decentralized as well: final tallying is centralized with any approach, but it can similarly remain open to questioning.

necovek 4y ago

We seem to be discussing different scenarios. In my example, a formal vote is partially done electronically, and partially through paper votes: large discrepancies in results between those two groups could be indicative of interference (small variation is to be expected). I am not talking of unofficial polls which can never produce a representative sample of people. Point of formal voting is to elect a government that the majority of voters prefer. Many countries have a problem with voter turnout, so you rarely get any one party or coalition winning more than 20-30% of the eligible votes, yet they get majority control of the government. Point of electronic voting should be to increase the turnout without decreasing the trustiness. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it's not insurmountable. Electronic votes can be decentralized as well: final tallying is centralized with any approach, but it can similarly remain open to questioning.