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Tom Scott videos which cover why electronic voting is a bad idea: https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQaZ3u https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQ

Tom Scott videos which cover why electronic voting is a bad idea: https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQaZ3u https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=kGDOYOb_RiiQaZ3u https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=YdQgNC4uUZDUDbab https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=YdQgNC4uUZDUDbab

mariusor 2y ago
Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. There are methods for preventing all the issues Tom Scott raises.
- sanbor 2y ago
  Voting with pencil and paper is easy, everybody can participate in the voting process and understand it. Also, paper and pencil are more sustainable (can be made from recycled paper and trees, which you can plant, as opposed of mining minerals, shipping, and maintaining thoudsands of computers, with batteries in case there is a power outage).
  - yoavm 2y ago
    everyone _that can make it to the ballot_ can participate. also most people have computers already, so you don't need to ship anything. from a sustainable perspective, I'm assuming it's better to have everyone stay home instead of travel to the nearest ballot, and just use their anyway-always-on device.
    - mariusor 2y ago
      Also "everyone that can be arsed" to make it to the ballot. Which is a notorious problem that democracies are faced with today. Younger demographics don't get involved considering the election process too much of a chore in comparison with the outcomes.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Especially with something like voting, it is worth considering those who actually can't use paper and pencil. In college I worked in a research lab building accessible voting systems. We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Its both amazing to see how adapted a person can become to living in a world that assumes a certain level of physical ability. Its also amazing to see how horribly inaccessible most voting systems are. With paper ballots, for example, you are usually limited to sitting in a booth with a poll worker and telling them how to fill in your ballot. That does technically work, but breaks voter privacy and you have no way of knowing if they filled it in right because, well, you can't see the ballot.
    - throw0101d 2y ago
      > We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Already a solved problem, e.g.: > On election day and at advance polls, your polling station will have tactile and braille voting templates that you can use to mark your ballot. Simply fit your ballot into the template and use the braille and embossed numbers to find the space next to your chosen candidate's name. * https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=spe/tools&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=spe/to...
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Sure. I don't know if those specific devices were around 20 years ago, but there are various options. Another part of our goal was to build a voting system that was accessible by default, meaning everyone was able to use the same device regardless of any disabilities they may have.
- somerandomqaguy 2y ago
  Not really, one of the goals in contradictory to the stated goal of an electronic voting system of voter verifiability. The problem is that when you can verify that your own vote has been counted a certain way, that can be used to influence the vote. $100 Amazon gift card if you verify that you have voted Purple. Lack of verifiability has been a feature to prevent a voter from willingly participating in manipulation.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    I have a different comment where I'm stating that one way to counter the influencing of votes is through allowing the voter to cast their ballot any number of times until it ends. I can think of a method that allows a voter to decrypt the ballot payload only coupled with one or more keys from the parties that organized it. Ie, if I as an individual want to see the vote, I can't. But if I suspect my vote has been tampered with I can ask the organizers to audit it, and with both our keys, I can see the payload. (This is just back of the napkin theorizing, it might have other issues)
    - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
      I'm not sure how the solves the issue of a voter that wants to reveal their vote.
      - mariusor 2y ago
        I'm looking at the problem through the lens of "why does a voter want to see their ballot". The answer which prevents the issue of vote buying is "to audit the validity of the vote", which then is ensured through putting some stop-gaps in front of viewing the vote in the form of requiring intervention from the entities organizing the ballot. Ie, if a malicious entity wants to make sure that the votes they have bought are corresponding with what they asked, they need to go through a more difficult process than just asking the people they bought from to reveal their vote.
        JanisErdmanis 2y ago
- nihzm 2y ago
  Suppose for the sake of the argument we implement such methods that bring the level of security of the digital vote to be mostly equivalent to paper voting (though I do not think this is possible). Then why do you think it would be better to use a harder method of counting votes? I do not see a strong argument to justify the change. The burden of proof is on the new technology, not on the old one that has been working so far.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    Why do you think it's harder to count votes? I'm not sure what belenios uses, but in the process I envision a ballot is a publicly accessible encrypted ledger, where the votes exist publicly.
    - nihzm 2y ago
      > Why do you think it's harder to count votes? I assumed this from the parent post >> Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. As opposed to paper voting, which does not have the issues raised by Tom Scott. If that is not what you meant, don't you agree that a more high-tech solution, complete with unspecified but granted methods that mitigate the security problems, requires more expertise and makes the process of voting as a whole more difficult than the low tech one? (eg infra / software maintenance, robustness to outage, educating people on how to use it, ... everything discussed by other threads) > ballot is a publicly accessible encrypted ledger, where the votes exist publicly It is cool, but I do not see how this improves upon voting on paper by mail.
      - mariusor 2y ago
        > don't you agree that a more high-tech solution, ... requires more expertise and makes the process of voting as a whole more difficult than the low tech one Sure, it takes more expertise to run a ballot, but not more expertise to cast a ballot. And that's where the democratic process fails in most of the western world at the moment. Entire demographics are not interested in voting due to the higher bar of going through the motions of going to a ballot booth and casting a paper ballot. In a world where it's possible to vote from your personal mobile device there doesn't need to be a whole circus and the entire country needs to stop in its tracks for the election day. It can be just another day, another weekend, or another week. You can vote for the smallest things that are interesting for you. Local issues need not to be left to the latitude of mayors or councils, but you could now vote on them from the comfort of your own home.
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  It's not hard to make electronic voting as tamperproof and reliable as paper ballots, it's impossible.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    What kind of evidence or personal experience gives you that strong of a certainty?
thinkloop 2y ago
The criticisms in the videos do not appropriately counter the solution in the linked article. Scott's superficial discussion of blockchain at the end misses the entire ethos of blockchain. We agree that servers, devices, software and networks cannot be trusted, and possibly never will be. So we ignore them and instead rely solely on the output. Every stakeholder audits the final official "blockchain" (for lack of a better term) using their own tools, engineers, and techniques to verify its credibility. I'm not claiming that this has been solved, although Belenios seems damn close. But it definitely seems conceivable that we can one day come up with a functional scheme that distrusts the machines as a first principle. What specific problems do you see with the Belenios attempt?
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  Blockchains are only verifiable and reliable in so far as everything that exists exits in the blockchain. As soon as it interfaces with the real world you start hitting the Oracle problem [1]. That you are not aware of this and still push for even considering it as an alternative to paper ballots is part of the problem. We need constitutional amendments that ban all forms of electronic voting in every democracy. [1]: https://chain.link/education-hub/oracle-problem https://chain.link/education-hub/oracle-problem
  - thinkloop 2y ago
    The main issue is that centralized electronic systems can be hacked at scale. That's what the paper solves, it slows everything down making it difficult compromise results en-masse. Verification is much simpler and cheaper than voting itself, and can be distributed. A distrusting community, for example, can build their own easily auditable tools, running on their own random machines, to verify the integrity of their community's votes. Thousands of communities around the country can do the same - again each using completely independent hardware, software and networks, all of which would have to be hacked. You may also be overlooking that we have the benefit of a reliable root of trust in the form of manually provided government documents and IDs that are carefully provisioned. You think in 10,000 years it will still be impossible to run a vote electronically?
fny 2y ago
What if you want your citizens to be able to vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic? It would be too burdensome with pencil and paper. Alternatives are useful.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nihzm 2y ago
  > vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic Discussion, debades and more generally exchanging opinions with others and pondering the options before committing to a decision are important if not essential for proper functioning of democracy. This necessarily takes time. How would real-time voting make things more democratic? I see no advantage in making the process hasty. If anything, it would trivialize the process, like voting for a game show on television, which would definitely be bad.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  efficiency != democracy
- Gud 2y ago
  We can get to that when we pick the low hanging fruit first. In Switzerland, they hold votes 4 times per year, in municipal, cantonal and federal referendums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Arguably there should be a non binding online based real time opinion voting to increase democratic input.
- V__ 2y ago
  Talk about any issue you know a lot about to someone who knows nothing about it, and you will quickly understand why more direct democracy is an horrible idea.

mariusor 2y ago

Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. There are methods for preventing all the issues Tom Scott raises.

sanbor 2y ago
Voting with pencil and paper is easy, everybody can participate in the voting process and understand it. Also, paper and pencil are more sustainable (can be made from recycled paper and trees, which you can plant, as opposed of mining minerals, shipping, and maintaining thoudsands of computers, with batteries in case there is a power outage).
- yoavm 2y ago
  everyone _that can make it to the ballot_ can participate. also most people have computers already, so you don't need to ship anything. from a sustainable perspective, I'm assuming it's better to have everyone stay home instead of travel to the nearest ballot, and just use their anyway-always-on device.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    Also "everyone that can be arsed" to make it to the ballot. Which is a notorious problem that democracies are faced with today. Younger demographics don't get involved considering the election process too much of a chore in comparison with the outcomes.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Especially with something like voting, it is worth considering those who actually can't use paper and pencil. In college I worked in a research lab building accessible voting systems. We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Its both amazing to see how adapted a person can become to living in a world that assumes a certain level of physical ability. Its also amazing to see how horribly inaccessible most voting systems are. With paper ballots, for example, you are usually limited to sitting in a booth with a poll worker and telling them how to fill in your ballot. That does technically work, but breaks voter privacy and you have no way of knowing if they filled it in right because, well, you can't see the ballot.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > We regularly ran test elections with the deaf and blind community. Already a solved problem, e.g.: > On election day and at advance polls, your polling station will have tactile and braille voting templates that you can use to mark your ballot. Simply fit your ballot into the template and use the braille and embossed numbers to find the space next to your chosen candidate's name. * https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=spe/tools&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=spe/to...
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Sure. I don't know if those specific devices were around 20 years ago, but there are various options. Another part of our goal was to build a voting system that was accessible by default, meaning everyone was able to use the same device regardless of any disabilities they may have.
somerandomqaguy 2y ago
Not really, one of the goals in contradictory to the stated goal of an electronic voting system of voter verifiability. The problem is that when you can verify that your own vote has been counted a certain way, that can be used to influence the vote. $100 Amazon gift card if you verify that you have voted Purple. Lack of verifiability has been a feature to prevent a voter from willingly participating in manipulation.
- mariusor 2y ago
  I have a different comment where I'm stating that one way to counter the influencing of votes is through allowing the voter to cast their ballot any number of times until it ends. I can think of a method that allows a voter to decrypt the ballot payload only coupled with one or more keys from the parties that organized it. Ie, if I as an individual want to see the vote, I can't. But if I suspect my vote has been tampered with I can ask the organizers to audit it, and with both our keys, I can see the payload. (This is just back of the napkin theorizing, it might have other issues)
  - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
    I'm not sure how the solves the issue of a voter that wants to reveal their vote.
    - mariusor 2y ago
      I'm looking at the problem through the lens of "why does a voter want to see their ballot". The answer which prevents the issue of vote buying is "to audit the validity of the vote", which then is ensured through putting some stop-gaps in front of viewing the vote in the form of requiring intervention from the entities organizing the ballot. Ie, if a malicious entity wants to make sure that the votes they have bought are corresponding with what they asked, they need to go through a more difficult process than just asking the people they bought from to reveal their vote.
      - JanisErdmanis 2y ago
nihzm 2y ago
Suppose for the sake of the argument we implement such methods that bring the level of security of the digital vote to be mostly equivalent to paper voting (though I do not think this is possible). Then why do you think it would be better to use a harder method of counting votes? I do not see a strong argument to justify the change. The burden of proof is on the new technology, not on the old one that has been working so far.
- mariusor 2y ago
  Why do you think it's harder to count votes? I'm not sure what belenios uses, but in the process I envision a ballot is a publicly accessible encrypted ledger, where the votes exist publicly.
  - nihzm 2y ago
    > Why do you think it's harder to count votes? I assumed this from the parent post >> Something being hard does not mean that it should not be tried. As opposed to paper voting, which does not have the issues raised by Tom Scott. If that is not what you meant, don't you agree that a more high-tech solution, complete with unspecified but granted methods that mitigate the security problems, requires more expertise and makes the process of voting as a whole more difficult than the low tech one? (eg infra / software maintenance, robustness to outage, educating people on how to use it, ... everything discussed by other threads) > ballot is a publicly accessible encrypted ledger, where the votes exist publicly It is cool, but I do not see how this improves upon voting on paper by mail.
    - mariusor 2y ago
      > don't you agree that a more high-tech solution, ... requires more expertise and makes the process of voting as a whole more difficult than the low tech one Sure, it takes more expertise to run a ballot, but not more expertise to cast a ballot. And that's where the democratic process fails in most of the western world at the moment. Entire demographics are not interested in voting due to the higher bar of going through the motions of going to a ballot booth and casting a paper ballot. In a world where it's possible to vote from your personal mobile device there doesn't need to be a whole circus and the entire country needs to stop in its tracks for the election day. It can be just another day, another weekend, or another week. You can vote for the smallest things that are interesting for you. Local issues need not to be left to the latitude of mayors or councils, but you could now vote on them from the comfort of your own home.
flanked-evergl 2y ago
It's not hard to make electronic voting as tamperproof and reliable as paper ballots, it's impossible.
- mariusor 2y ago
  What kind of evidence or personal experience gives you that strong of a certainty?

thinkloop 2y ago

The criticisms in the videos do not appropriately counter the solution in the linked article. Scott's superficial discussion of blockchain at the end misses the entire ethos of blockchain. We agree that servers, devices, software and networks cannot be trusted, and possibly never will be. So we ignore them and instead rely solely on the output. Every stakeholder audits the final official "blockchain" (for lack of a better term) using their own tools, engineers, and techniques to verify its credibility. I'm not claiming that this has been solved, although Belenios seems damn close. But it definitely seems conceivable that we can one day come up with a functional scheme that distrusts the machines as a first principle. What specific problems do you see with the Belenios attempt?

flanked-evergl 2y ago
Blockchains are only verifiable and reliable in so far as everything that exists exits in the blockchain. As soon as it interfaces with the real world you start hitting the Oracle problem [1]. That you are not aware of this and still push for even considering it as an alternative to paper ballots is part of the problem. We need constitutional amendments that ban all forms of electronic voting in every democracy. [1]: https://chain.link/education-hub/oracle-problem https://chain.link/education-hub/oracle-problem
- thinkloop 2y ago
  The main issue is that centralized electronic systems can be hacked at scale. That's what the paper solves, it slows everything down making it difficult compromise results en-masse. Verification is much simpler and cheaper than voting itself, and can be distributed. A distrusting community, for example, can build their own easily auditable tools, running on their own random machines, to verify the integrity of their community's votes. Thousands of communities around the country can do the same - again each using completely independent hardware, software and networks, all of which would have to be hacked. You may also be overlooking that we have the benefit of a reliable root of trust in the form of manually provided government documents and IDs that are carefully provisioned. You think in 10,000 years it will still be impossible to run a vote electronically?

fny 2y ago

What if you want your citizens to be able to vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic? It would be too burdensome with pencil and paper. Alternatives are useful.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nihzm 2y ago
> vote on policy matters in real time to make things more democratic Discussion, debades and more generally exchanging opinions with others and pondering the options before committing to a decision are important if not essential for proper functioning of democracy. This necessarily takes time. How would real-time voting make things more democratic? I see no advantage in making the process hasty. If anything, it would trivialize the process, like voting for a game show on television, which would definitely be bad.
DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
efficiency != democracy
Gud 2y ago
We can get to that when we pick the low hanging fruit first. In Switzerland, they hold votes 4 times per year, in municipal, cantonal and federal referendums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland
throwaway48476 2y ago
Arguably there should be a non binding online based real time opinion voting to increase democratic input.
V__ 2y ago
Talk about any issue you know a lot about to someone who knows nothing about it, and you will quickly understand why more direct democracy is an horrible idea.