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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.

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
  I would concede that it's possible, but if you don't trust the system overall then it is basically impossible to solve the problem. And it's not just about making sure that your own vote is counted. It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast. There are so many ways that illegitimate ballots can be cast, and I think an electronic system just makes it that much easier. At least with paper in person, someone has to show up and fool a poll worker. There's also a finite number of times that someone can commit fraud in person in one day.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast. Yup, I was clear that I wasn't giving an exhaustive list of the necessary things. But that also has solutions that can be easy. The easiest is simply to make sure that the voting rolls are accurate, and that the size of the voting results has the exact same number of entries (because it also records every instance of not-voting). So that if everyone who is an eligible voter, and therefore received a tracking number (even if they didn't vote), and they look up their tracking number and it's accurate (including "didn't vote") -- then there's no "place" to insert fake/stuffed ballots, because it would necessarily make the number of tracking numbers larger than the size of the voter roll. (And of course, voter rolls can be sampled randomly to determine they're made of actual real people as well, to whatever accuracy you desire.) The point is, there are solutions to all of these things that don't involve some kind of blind faith in crypto. But rather just common-sense solutions where it's easy to understand that any massive gaming of the system will be detected.

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
I would concede that it's possible, but if you don't trust the system overall then it is basically impossible to solve the problem. And it's not just about making sure that your own vote is counted. It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast. There are so many ways that illegitimate ballots can be cast, and I think an electronic system just makes it that much easier. At least with paper in person, someone has to show up and fool a poll worker. There's also a finite number of times that someone can commit fraud in person in one day.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > It's about making sure there are no fake ballots cast. Yup, I was clear that I wasn't giving an exhaustive list of the necessary things. But that also has solutions that can be easy. The easiest is simply to make sure that the voting rolls are accurate, and that the size of the voting results has the exact same number of entries (because it also records every instance of not-voting). So that if everyone who is an eligible voter, and therefore received a tracking number (even if they didn't vote), and they look up their tracking number and it's accurate (including "didn't vote") -- then there's no "place" to insert fake/stuffed ballots, because it would necessarily make the number of tracking numbers larger than the size of the voter roll. (And of course, voter rolls can be sampled randomly to determine they're made of actual real people as well, to whatever accuracy you desire.) The point is, there are solutions to all of these things that don't involve some kind of blind faith in crypto. But rather just common-sense solutions where it's easy to understand that any massive gaming of the system will be detected.