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Maybe it's my underlying German-ness but I don't understand why people would want an electronic voting system. Being confronted with the gazillions of possible

Maybe it's my underlying German-ness but I don't understand why people would want an electronic voting system. Being confronted with the gazillions of possible failures in hardware and software, the idea seems at least risky to me. And for what gain? Can't we simply think of election day as something to celebrate democracy by putting a mark on a physical piece of paper? Call me old-fashioned, but I really enjoy visiting the election office.

rbanffy 3y ago
In a country the physical size of Brazil, having trustworthy election results the day after an election is great. And we need to go to a voting place to cast the votes - it's electronic, but not online.
- nforgerit 3y ago
  I remember an example of some arcane software that was used "internally" by some local German office to just sum up the votes and generate some kind of result sheet for the local area. It turned out, although it was air-gapped, it was susceptible to an attack against its update mechanism. Some white-hats showed it was possible to inject malicious code and change the results. You never know. That's the essence of the problem.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    The nodes that transmit the votes back to the central office are, indeed, much higher value targets than the voting machines. In any case, the voting machine data is preserved, both digitally and in printed form (this last one generated at the end of the voting, before the ballot is locked down for transport), so any discrepancies can be flagged by individuals and parties. The printed summary is displayed publicly at the voting places and the data is encoded in an easy to copy QR code.
rodrigodlu 3y ago
From my pov I see that in Germany even if radicals try something funny, someone will be outspoken, denunciate the lame move, right? They will need to do something different, like either gaining public momentum like what's happening right now, or trying something much more dramatic. Or making the system rotten in a span of time that is measured in decades, not in days/months. Wdyt?
- nforgerit 3y ago
  Politically, I could perfectly imagine the German right to far-right to create an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and doubt to bring faked results into action. Sure, you can do that on paper as well but I think it's way harder to cover up than "something digital".
gjvnq 3y ago
In short, I think most Brazilians trust technology more than they trust their fellow Brazilians. We have a long history of lack of rule of law and of local authorities getting away with some pretty despicable shit. So, the less they can interfere with elections, the better off we are. And pulling off a major fraud scheme with our voting machines is petty damn difficult as their software is loaded and sealed months before the election and all political parties can send representatives to observe the processes and to reqd the source code. I do however wish that the source code were fully open for anyone to read. But I'm afraid of how much this transparency will be abused by disinformation campaigns.

rbanffy 3y ago

In a country the physical size of Brazil, having trustworthy election results the day after an election is great. And we need to go to a voting place to cast the votes - it's electronic, but not online.

nforgerit 3y ago
I remember an example of some arcane software that was used "internally" by some local German office to just sum up the votes and generate some kind of result sheet for the local area. It turned out, although it was air-gapped, it was susceptible to an attack against its update mechanism. Some white-hats showed it was possible to inject malicious code and change the results. You never know. That's the essence of the problem.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  The nodes that transmit the votes back to the central office are, indeed, much higher value targets than the voting machines. In any case, the voting machine data is preserved, both digitally and in printed form (this last one generated at the end of the voting, before the ballot is locked down for transport), so any discrepancies can be flagged by individuals and parties. The printed summary is displayed publicly at the voting places and the data is encoded in an easy to copy QR code.

rodrigodlu 3y ago

From my pov I see that in Germany even if radicals try something funny, someone will be outspoken, denunciate the lame move, right? They will need to do something different, like either gaining public momentum like what's happening right now, or trying something much more dramatic. Or making the system rotten in a span of time that is measured in decades, not in days/months. Wdyt?

nforgerit 3y ago
Politically, I could perfectly imagine the German right to far-right to create an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and doubt to bring faked results into action. Sure, you can do that on paper as well but I think it's way harder to cover up than "something digital".

gjvnq 3y ago

In short, I think most Brazilians trust technology more than they trust their fellow Brazilians. We have a long history of lack of rule of law and of local authorities getting away with some pretty despicable shit. So, the less they can interfere with elections, the better off we are. And pulling off a major fraud scheme with our voting machines is petty damn difficult as their software is loaded and sealed months before the election and all political parties can send representatives to observe the processes and to reqd the source code. I do however wish that the source code were fully open for anyone to read. But I'm afraid of how much this transparency will be abused by disinformation campaigns.