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I think these are technically interesting systems, but "trust" really is the goal. "Verifiability" doesn't necessarily imply "trust," especially if it's shrowde

I think these are technically interesting systems, but "trust" really is the goal. "Verifiability" doesn't necessarily imply "trust," especially if it's shrowded behind inscruable crypto mumbo-jumbo. A voting system should be something voters and poll workers (i.e., local volunteers) can understand.

throwaway48476 2y ago
A better heuristic is 'can you explain the system to a five year old'.
ratorx 2y ago
Ideally you want both. “Trust” is a bit qualitative and includes a lot of factors outside the voting system itself. Just because a voting system is “simple” doesn’t mean people trust it (e.g. Trump voting shenanigans). Obviously just because there are bad actors which can make trust impossible, doesn’t mean you should give up but it is a separate axis to the voting system itself. On the other hand, “verifiability” is a more useful property on a larger scale. You may trust your local government but do you trust local government in all other districts? What if, with sufficient knowledge you could prove that their voting was right or wrong? I think that also seems like a useful property.
rayiner 2y ago
Correct. The system must be something a bottom 15 percentile person can understand and doesn’t think is magic. https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG
- mightyham 2y ago
  Or universal suffrage is fundamentally flawed. If people can't understand mildly complex voting systems then why should they be contributing to making political decisions that are significantly more complex.
  - pcl 2y ago
    Because systems that try to impose qualifications on voter characteristics historically end up being abused.
  - debugnik 2y ago
    But we don't vote on complex political decisions; we vote on our representatives, people whose interests allegedly align with ours, which is much simpler to understand, and delegate the complex decisions to them according to their qualifications. Whether the candidates themselves, all of them, can be trusted is a much more serious problem with democracy, I think, than "dumb" people affecting the vote.
    - nhod 2y ago
      this depends on where you live. there are many places in which people directly vote on complex issues. people in California voted to ban gay marriage. people in the UK voted on the incredibly complex topic of Brexit. dumb people vote for dumb things, whether issues or candidates.
      - debugnik 2y ago
        Well, referendums are kind of direct democracy, so yes, I agree those are at increased risk of dumb voting. But the actual problem there, to me, is such complex decisions being put to referendum in the first place; specially to a simple majority vote. Also, gay marriage isn't really a complex issue: Even the dumbest person understood the consequences of banning it, they just were that sadistic. Agreed on Brexit though.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Do you think any sitting politician, your physician, or your accountant really understands cryptography? Do you think studying cryptography needs to be a prerequisite to voting? I swear, sometimes nerds are insufferable snobs. As for the implications of your premise: Do you feel comfortable in not having a say whether you are taxed more, have your hobbies criminalized, or get sent off to die in some awful war somewhere so that some jerk can get rich? Because that's what you ask for when you say some obnoxious technocrat is fine running the country with no input. And before you mention passing an exam or something to vote, that's just a direct path to corruption and disenfranchisement.
- mariusor 2y ago
  My opinion is that IT literacy is increasing fast enough that in the near future a significant percentage would understand enough about electronic ballots as people understand now about the paper ballots. And I think you're over estimating how many people "understand" paper ballots. Yes, they know the basics, but the details on how votes are counted, validated and secured might be a bit too much for a random Joe.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    IT literacy is not increasing; if anything it's going down. My wife's Gen Z siblings grew up with iPads and think computers are magic.
    - mariusor 2y ago
      OK, fair. I meant it in the sense of the younger generation has more exposure to concepts like encrypted communication and peer to peer communication and encrypted ledgers, etc. They might not know how exactly they work, but they know they exist and have an inkling of their attributes as they pertain to data secrecy, auditability, etc...
      - throwaway48476 2y ago
        I'm far more familiar with cryptography concepts than the average person but I wouldn't trust myself to audit a crypto system or implementation.
        dmurray 2y ago
        You might trust yourself to read a bunch of blog posts on technical deep dives into the system and make up your mind based on that, though. (Whether that's a good thing or not I don't know - perhaps you'd end up agreeing with whichever side has the most believable technological shibboleths, which isn't that much different from the current best practice of listening to the side with the better attack ads).
crazygringo 2y ago
> especially if it's shrowded behind inscruable crypto mumbo-jumbo HTTPS is shrouded behind inscrutable crypto, but nearly everyone trusts it with their credit card details. Voting doesn't have to be any different. The implementation details don't matter, as long as there are easy-to-understand verification concepts such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted. And then journalists and other private election integrity observers who do random sampling from voter rolls and follow up on complaints. (This is not a complete list, just examples.) And remember, physical voting is actually tremendously complicated as well -- inscrutable optical scanners detecting which bubbles you filled in, and then... what? Who's actually adding the numbers, and where, and how? The point is, the details aren't really important as long as we're vaguely aware that there are election observers and journalists trying to catch any irregularities, and we all know it will be major news whenever they're found.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  The difference between trusting HTTPS with credit card details and trusting crypto BS for voting is that you can easily tell if your credit card ends up abused. You can't easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted. You're generally right about each point in the process being a potential point of corruption. That's why voting systems need to be very simple and involve lots of people, even if it costs more. Ideally multiple independent parties would count the votes and compare results for discrepancies, until they reached an agreement.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > You can't easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted. That's why I said: > such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted There absolutely has to be a way to easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted, and that it's part of the sum total. I don't know if Belenios specifically does this in a way that is easy to see, but there's nothing inherently difficult or impossible about it.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago

throwaway48476 2y ago

A better heuristic is 'can you explain the system to a five year old'.

ratorx 2y ago

Ideally you want both. “Trust” is a bit qualitative and includes a lot of factors outside the voting system itself. Just because a voting system is “simple” doesn’t mean people trust it (e.g. Trump voting shenanigans). Obviously just because there are bad actors which can make trust impossible, doesn’t mean you should give up but it is a separate axis to the voting system itself. On the other hand, “verifiability” is a more useful property on a larger scale. You may trust your local government but do you trust local government in all other districts? What if, with sufficient knowledge you could prove that their voting was right or wrong? I think that also seems like a useful property.

rayiner 2y ago

Correct. The system must be something a bottom 15 percentile person can understand and doesn’t think is magic. https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo?si=RDsgH2uIKb8k7ueG

mightyham 2y ago
Or universal suffrage is fundamentally flawed. If people can't understand mildly complex voting systems then why should they be contributing to making political decisions that are significantly more complex.
- pcl 2y ago
  Because systems that try to impose qualifications on voter characteristics historically end up being abused.
- debugnik 2y ago
  But we don't vote on complex political decisions; we vote on our representatives, people whose interests allegedly align with ours, which is much simpler to understand, and delegate the complex decisions to them according to their qualifications. Whether the candidates themselves, all of them, can be trusted is a much more serious problem with democracy, I think, than "dumb" people affecting the vote.
  - nhod 2y ago
    this depends on where you live. there are many places in which people directly vote on complex issues. people in California voted to ban gay marriage. people in the UK voted on the incredibly complex topic of Brexit. dumb people vote for dumb things, whether issues or candidates.
    - debugnik 2y ago
      Well, referendums are kind of direct democracy, so yes, I agree those are at increased risk of dumb voting. But the actual problem there, to me, is such complex decisions being put to referendum in the first place; specially to a simple majority vote. Also, gay marriage isn't really a complex issue: Even the dumbest person understood the consequences of banning it, they just were that sadistic. Agreed on Brexit though.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Do you think any sitting politician, your physician, or your accountant really understands cryptography? Do you think studying cryptography needs to be a prerequisite to voting? I swear, sometimes nerds are insufferable snobs. As for the implications of your premise: Do you feel comfortable in not having a say whether you are taxed more, have your hobbies criminalized, or get sent off to die in some awful war somewhere so that some jerk can get rich? Because that's what you ask for when you say some obnoxious technocrat is fine running the country with no input. And before you mention passing an exam or something to vote, that's just a direct path to corruption and disenfranchisement.
mariusor 2y ago
My opinion is that IT literacy is increasing fast enough that in the near future a significant percentage would understand enough about electronic ballots as people understand now about the paper ballots. And I think you're over estimating how many people "understand" paper ballots. Yes, they know the basics, but the details on how votes are counted, validated and secured might be a bit too much for a random Joe.
- rayiner 2y ago
  IT literacy is not increasing; if anything it's going down. My wife's Gen Z siblings grew up with iPads and think computers are magic.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    OK, fair. I meant it in the sense of the younger generation has more exposure to concepts like encrypted communication and peer to peer communication and encrypted ledgers, etc. They might not know how exactly they work, but they know they exist and have an inkling of their attributes as they pertain to data secrecy, auditability, etc...
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      I'm far more familiar with cryptography concepts than the average person but I wouldn't trust myself to audit a crypto system or implementation.
      - dmurray 2y ago
        You might trust yourself to read a bunch of blog posts on technical deep dives into the system and make up your mind based on that, though. (Whether that's a good thing or not I don't know - perhaps you'd end up agreeing with whichever side has the most believable technological shibboleths, which isn't that much different from the current best practice of listening to the side with the better attack ads).

crazygringo 2y ago

> especially if it's shrowded behind inscruable crypto mumbo-jumbo HTTPS is shrouded behind inscrutable crypto, but nearly everyone trusts it with their credit card details. Voting doesn't have to be any different. The implementation details don't matter, as long as there are easy-to-understand verification concepts such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted. And then journalists and other private election integrity observers who do random sampling from voter rolls and follow up on complaints. (This is not a complete list, just examples.) And remember, physical voting is actually tremendously complicated as well -- inscrutable optical scanners detecting which bubbles you filled in, and then... what? Who's actually adding the numbers, and where, and how? The point is, the details aren't really important as long as we're vaguely aware that there are election observers and journalists trying to catch any irregularities, and we all know it will be major news whenever they're found.

wakawaka28 2y ago
The difference between trusting HTTPS with credit card details and trusting crypto BS for voting is that you can easily tell if your credit card ends up abused. You can't easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted. You're generally right about each point in the process being a potential point of corruption. That's why voting systems need to be very simple and involve lots of people, even if it costs more. Ideally multiple independent parties would count the votes and compare results for discrepancies, until they reached an agreement.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > You can't easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted. That's why I said: > such as receiving a "tracking number" for your vote that is then easy to see it was counted There absolutely has to be a way to easily tell if your vote is or isn't counted, and that it's part of the sum total. I don't know if Belenios specifically does this in a way that is easy to see, but there's nothing inherently difficult or impossible about it.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago