3 ms·

Of course there needs to be some level of public trust in the elections. I think that trust could come from the E2E verifiability of the voting system, and rela

Of course there needs to be some level of public trust in the elections. I think that trust could come from the E2E verifiability of the voting system, and related to that, trust in the ability of independent experts to verify that the election was conducted fairly. (When the result of an election is verifiable by third parties, there is no longer a need to audit what software is running on the official machines, so there is no need for reproducible builds etc.)

nihzm 2y ago
It is possible, at least in principle, to have people trust that techonolgies such as E2E are secure and reliable. Indeed in some countries that is the case, but my point was slightly different. If you concede that we cannot have everyone understand (to take an example) E2E verifiability, then this technology cannot justify its own correctness to everyone. This means it is necessary to have a (possibly small) group of experts to educate / persuade the public that E2E verifiability actually works. But my point is essentially: why should they do it? There is no structural incentive for them to do so, other than the virtue of being a good citizen. There needs to be something that keeps reinforcing public trust. Self-evident systems do not require for this incentive structure to exist / be built. I fear that this could end up becoming akint to the erosion of trust in scientific evidence for political decisionmaking. Science was considered very trustworthy by most people at some point, but because there is little to no incentive for the scientists to inform the public about why what they do works (other than perhaps their personal desire to share the cool thing they are working on) and because scientific results are usually very complex there has been a pretty steady decline in trusting scientific evidence.

3 ms·

Of course there needs to be some level of public trust in the elections. I think that trust could come from the E2E verifiability of the voting system, and rela

by baobabKoodaa 2y ago

nihzm 2y ago
It is possible, at least in principle, to have people trust that techonolgies such as E2E are secure and reliable. Indeed in some countries that is the case, but my point was slightly different. If you concede that we cannot have everyone understand (to take an example) E2E verifiability, then this technology cannot justify its own correctness to everyone. This means it is necessary to have a (possibly small) group of experts to educate / persuade the public that E2E verifiability actually works. But my point is essentially: why should they do it? There is no structural incentive for them to do so, other than the virtue of being a good citizen. There needs to be something that keeps reinforcing public trust. Self-evident systems do not require for this incentive structure to exist / be built. I fear that this could end up becoming akint to the erosion of trust in scientific evidence for political decisionmaking. Science was considered very trustworthy by most people at some point, but because there is little to no incentive for the scientists to inform the public about why what they do works (other than perhaps their personal desire to share the cool thing they are working on) and because scientific results are usually very complex there has been a pretty steady decline in trusting scientific evidence.