5 ms·

We have the technology today for fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous, voting. One of these days we should adopt it.

polytely 3y ago
is it also understandable for the people voting? is it easier or harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly? I don't see any reason to have computers involved in the casting of the votes
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  I believe GP is talking about paper ballots. So the answer to your question is no, it is neither easier nor harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly.
Kalium 3y ago
A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. Electronic voting systems are generally an attempt to get something faster and cheaper.
- mc32 3y ago
  Why do vote counts take so long these last few cycles? We used to get results the same evening, maybe into the wee hours, but except for Florida one year where they had recounts, it didn't take long to tally the votes. Now, with electronic voting the results sometimes take more time, what gives?
  - knewter 3y ago
    The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans
    - BitwiseFool 3y ago
      >"The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans" What are you trying to say? I can read this as either 'humans are trustworthy', or 'humans are corrupt'.
      - knewter 3y ago
        Power corrupts
  - b0in 3y ago
    Closer elections means they can't call it quite as early, more mail-in ballots post-COVID (these cant be counted early even if they get delivered early), almost certainly some changes to how we consume the news or how the news presents the details.
    - selykg 3y ago
      The early counting of mail-in ballots, I believe, is actually up to the state. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/politics/mail-in-voting/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/politics/mail-in-voting...
      - mc32 3y ago
        Yeah I think you can count but you can’t publish and therefore “poison” the election.
  - Mordisquitos 3y ago
    Exactly. Meanwhile, Spain uses exclusively paper ballots, counted by ordinary citizens who were randomly selected for "election board duty" in their local voting sector (akin to jury duty in the US), and easily finishes counting more than 99% of the votes cast before midnight on the day of the vote. You can go to bed and expect no major upsets when counting is finished, other than the occasional swing of a single seat from one party to another when the d'Hondt assignment was very close. And this is all for a country of 48 million people (23% more than California), counting votes to fill a 350-seat Congress composed of 50 multiple-seat constituencies of varying size, from 37 to 2 (plus 2 FPTP seats), as well as 208 Senate seats which are voted by check-box selection. It is truly baffling how some US states manage to take so long to finish counting a handful of FPTP positions in federal elections: 1 president, a couple dozen representatives, and 2 senators.
    - Kalium 3y ago
      Each place has a whole series of other offices up for election as well. They're all on one ballot, and staffing is generally done by a handful of senior citizen volunteers. Futher, there are sometimes absentee ballots that can arrive up to a week or more after election day.
- tzs 3y ago
  > A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. As implemented nearly everywhere that is not fully auditable. I have no way of verifying that my particular ballot was actually included and counted correctly. We can do much better, while still staying with paper ballots, as shown by some of the proposed system in this article [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...
eli 3y ago
You talking about STAR-Vote? I think there's a really serious communications challenge to a system based on sophisticated cryptography. It's hard to explain and get people to trust it.
daveguy 3y ago
Yes. Hand marked paper ballots counted by open hardware simple scanning machines not connected to the internet. Fully auditable, transparent, anonymous.
freedude 3y ago
No, we do not have this technology (unless this is a pencil and paper ballot). And we should not be duped into believing the technology exists to be "fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous". It does not and it probably cannot exist.
- tzs 3y ago
  > And we should not be duped into believing the technology exists to be "fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous". It does not and it probably cannot exist. It has existed for several years. Paper optical scan ballots, augmented by some printing using a special ink and a special marker used to mark them when voting, with some clever cryptography going into what to print on the ballots with that special ink. See: 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... https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf
helpfulContrib 3y ago
Voting should be analog (paper), it should be open (i.e. not secret, and not anonymous), and absolutely auditable by any and sundry who consider themselves to be citizens, not just authorities. Like, totally open society, man. If you can't stand and cast your vote among your peers in a public and 100% open form/manner, you're not doing your job, citizen. Change my mind ..
- masfuerte 3y ago
  Vote for me or I'll break your legs.
  - helpfulContrib 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - masfuerte 3y ago
    This got no upvotes. Anonymous voting systems really are immune to threats!
- maleldil 3y ago
  This ignores intimidation, vote buying, and a million other ways people would find to coerce you to vote a certain way or else.
- anyonecancode 3y ago
  Boss man: I noticed you voted for X. As you might recall from the last All Hands, we're not big fans of X. Unrelatedly, I was wondering how you see your future at this company?
  - helpfulContrib 3y ago
    That would be a misdemeanor or crime, as per the doctrine of the state regulating the non-interference of a persons basic human rights. And when I step into the booth, I can say "last time I voted, I got fired for voting" and it'll be on the record, too. I mean, this is all a theoretical, but lets play it out.

polytely 3y ago

is it also understandable for the people voting? is it easier or harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly? I don't see any reason to have computers involved in the casting of the votes

onionisafruit 3y ago
I believe GP is talking about paper ballots. So the answer to your question is no, it is neither easier nor harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly.

Kalium 3y ago

A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. Electronic voting systems are generally an attempt to get something faster and cheaper.

mc32 3y ago
Why do vote counts take so long these last few cycles? We used to get results the same evening, maybe into the wee hours, but except for Florida one year where they had recounts, it didn't take long to tally the votes. Now, with electronic voting the results sometimes take more time, what gives?
- knewter 3y ago
  The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans
  - BitwiseFool 3y ago
    >"The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans" What are you trying to say? I can read this as either 'humans are trustworthy', or 'humans are corrupt'.
    - knewter 3y ago
      Power corrupts
- b0in 3y ago
  Closer elections means they can't call it quite as early, more mail-in ballots post-COVID (these cant be counted early even if they get delivered early), almost certainly some changes to how we consume the news or how the news presents the details.
  - selykg 3y ago
    The early counting of mail-in ballots, I believe, is actually up to the state. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/politics/mail-in-voting/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/politics/mail-in-voting...
    - mc32 3y ago
      Yeah I think you can count but you can’t publish and therefore “poison” the election.
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  Exactly. Meanwhile, Spain uses exclusively paper ballots, counted by ordinary citizens who were randomly selected for "election board duty" in their local voting sector (akin to jury duty in the US), and easily finishes counting more than 99% of the votes cast before midnight on the day of the vote. You can go to bed and expect no major upsets when counting is finished, other than the occasional swing of a single seat from one party to another when the d'Hondt assignment was very close. And this is all for a country of 48 million people (23% more than California), counting votes to fill a 350-seat Congress composed of 50 multiple-seat constituencies of varying size, from 37 to 2 (plus 2 FPTP seats), as well as 208 Senate seats which are voted by check-box selection. It is truly baffling how some US states manage to take so long to finish counting a handful of FPTP positions in federal elections: 1 president, a couple dozen representatives, and 2 senators.
  - Kalium 3y ago
    Each place has a whole series of other offices up for election as well. They're all on one ballot, and staffing is generally done by a handful of senior citizen volunteers. Futher, there are sometimes absentee ballots that can arrive up to a week or more after election day.
tzs 3y ago
> A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. As implemented nearly everywhere that is not fully auditable. I have no way of verifying that my particular ballot was actually included and counted correctly. We can do much better, while still staying with paper ballots, as shown by some of the proposed system in this article [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...

eli 3y ago

You talking about STAR-Vote? I think there's a really serious communications challenge to a system based on sophisticated cryptography. It's hard to explain and get people to trust it.

daveguy 3y ago

Yes. Hand marked paper ballots counted by open hardware simple scanning machines not connected to the internet. Fully auditable, transparent, anonymous.

freedude 3y ago

No, we do not have this technology (unless this is a pencil and paper ballot). And we should not be duped into believing the technology exists to be "fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous". It does not and it probably cannot exist.

tzs 3y ago
> And we should not be duped into believing the technology exists to be "fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous". It does not and it probably cannot exist. It has existed for several years. Paper optical scan ballots, augmented by some printing using a special ink and a special marker used to mark them when voting, with some clever cryptography going into what to print on the ballots with that special ink. See: 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... https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf

helpfulContrib 3y ago

Voting should be analog (paper), it should be open (i.e. not secret, and not anonymous), and absolutely auditable by any and sundry who consider themselves to be citizens, not just authorities. Like, totally open society, man. If you can't stand and cast your vote among your peers in a public and 100% open form/manner, you're not doing your job, citizen. Change my mind ..

masfuerte 3y ago
Vote for me or I'll break your legs.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  [flagged]
- masfuerte 3y ago
  This got no upvotes. Anonymous voting systems really are immune to threats!
maleldil 3y ago
This ignores intimidation, vote buying, and a million other ways people would find to coerce you to vote a certain way or else.
anyonecancode 3y ago
Boss man: I noticed you voted for X. As you might recall from the last All Hands, we're not big fans of X. Unrelatedly, I was wondering how you see your future at this company?
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  That would be a misdemeanor or crime, as per the doctrine of the state regulating the non-interference of a persons basic human rights. And when I step into the booth, I can say "last time I voted, I got fired for voting" and it'll be on the record, too. I mean, this is all a theoretical, but lets play it out.