8 ms·

New Jersey To Allow Voting By Email

96 points by sethbannon 14y ago

jre 14y ago
In Switzerland, some states have ran internet voting trials. Recently, the state of Geneva ran one and a citizen was able to vote twice[1]. The administration then fixed the problem by removing the duplicate vote and then told everybody how e-voting was a success. Of course, some people complained because a system that allow someone to vote twice doesn't work. The biggest problem though was that they were able to fix it by removing a vote, meaning they could identify the votes and remove it without problems. The bottom line is : from a technical/cryptographical perspective, the system is a joke (and they don't want to give access to the code). And that's my fear with e-voting : it seems like governments agencies (and their contractors) have a tendency to screw up very badly when it comes to new technology, at least in Switzerland. And I don't want to vote through an half-assed online system using MD5 and a 64 bits RSA key. [1] http://www.tdg.ch/high-tech/web/Un-citoyen-a-pu-voter-deux-fois/story/18941094 http://www.tdg.ch/high-tech/web/Un-citoyen-a-pu-voter-deux-f... (in French)
- 0x0 14y ago
  Interesting. With the going rate of botnets ($0.02 per computer from some quick googling?) and everyone would be voting online.... How much do you want to pay to be the president? As if nobody would develop rootkits to fiddle with the HTTPS post (or whatever) going to the voting server...
- bluelu 14y ago
  You are making a wrong assumption here. It's no problem that you can identify that someone has voted twice. It would be a problem if that person could prove that he voted for a certain person. Have a look at the papers of http://www.infsecmaster.ethz.ch/people/maurer http://www.infsecmaster.ethz.ch/people/maurer He also has a very good lecture on information hiding/binding principles where these principles are explained.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    If my vote is encrypted and put in an envelope that has my name on it, then it very very much matters. If you cam find two envelopes with my name, you can find out what my vote is ( I mean somewhere there is a decryption key) Physical voting strips most links out from who voted and what they voted (you prove who you are at the desk then walk in and vote on a piece of paper in no way related to your name. That is either impossible electronically or relies on unverifiable trust in the code. I know if someone looks over my shoulder. I cannot look at the code running - even if it is open source I cannot see what is really running.
    - ramchip 14y ago
      Not necessarily, it's possible to find two envelopes with e.g. a hash of your name, without knowing your name.
      - barrkel 14y ago
        So you hash everyones' name, then you have a reverse mapping.
        lifeisstillgood 14y ago
        Plus once you have my envelope you have my vote - we don't trust you or the code btw
mdonahoe 14y ago
Hopefully it has good security. Any chance this will become the norm for all states?
- activepeanut 14y ago
  I'd love to be able to vote thru the internet, with a state-issued certificate to authenticate me. It'll be a while before society's tech savvy enough for this tho so I won't hold my breath.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Certs would be fantastic; in my view, they could actually improve the system, because ballots would become read-only, and with the right system in place it would be impossible to "lose" them.
  - 0x0 14y ago
    That sounds like fun, until the old man in the house makes everyone sit down in front of the computer and submit their votes for the "correct" party...
    - mjn 14y ago
      Isn't that already a concern with voting by mail?
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    I would never trust the reaults of such an election and honestly I can't see how anybody else could either.
- brown9-2 14y ago
  This is a reaction to the storm, so I don't think they have all of the long term concerns thought out.
raldi 14y ago
Is it a plain text email? A special PDF? A Windows executable?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pudquick 14y ago
  From what I can tell about this, it seems to work like: 1.) Overseas / abroad resident has to apply for the email ballot. This should go through some sort of human approval process, making sure that the names for those particular voters voting in this method are recorded - to compare against in-person voting locations and ensure no double-voting. Hopefully should any double+ voting occur, this ballot will be invalidated. 2.) They are either faxed or sent, via email, an electronic PDF form based ballot. These PDF forms are true forms in that they allow for the voter to type in entries and save the new version (complete with entered information). 3.) The faxed form would be faxed back, with entries. The PDF version would be sent back, with entries, via email. Unless Adobe has (once again) extended the PDF format to include encryption of PDF form entries, then yes, the emailed returned ballot will expose the voter's preferences via plaintext transmission. The only way they'd be able to avoid that would be to have, for instance, an https accessible website that allows for PDF ballot upload. Somehow I doubt this is what they're doing.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    That sounds problematic, but it’s probably also important to note that absentee ballots always have prioritized the ability to vote over secrecy and being tamper proof. When it comes to absentee ballots I think that’s acceptable as long as they do not become the default of common way to vote. Whether that, however, should also apply to electronic means of voting is questionable. Everyone understands papers and pencils. Computers are too much of a black box for me to ever feel comfortable with voting mediated by them.
  - mjn 14y ago
    That doesn't sound much less secure than how I voted, as an expat. I did the following: 1) Applied for a ballot by email, using a scanned Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) sent to the county clerk of the county I last resided in. 2) A ballot was sent to me by post. This is just a big piece of paper with some stuff printed on it. 3) I check the boxes I want to vote for. 4) I mail back my ballot. Overall it doesn't seem much harder to spoof the existing process, since there's no verification of who sent back the ballot. The only security is that there might be various codes (or bar-codes) on that paper ballot which you'd have to know something about to fake.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Erm, doesn't this end up potentially exposing everyone's voting choices? I guess anonymous voting isn't important right?
- antidoh 14y ago
  Voting is important. (Taking that as a given, I'm not actually sure anymore.) For a one-off like this, unplanned, I think it's fine to risk a reduction in anonymity, compared to not being able to vote at all. They are where they are, and they have to deal with it today.
- maratd 14y ago
  What makes you think you have anonymous voting now? You must identify yourself when entering a polling station and each vote is tracked, in the event of a recount. The same type of anonymity can be provided by an automated program parsing emails that I can write in about an hour. I'm proud that my state will be among the first to move in this obvious direction. Unfortunate that it had to be under such circumstances.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    The difference is that with the current system it takes a significant amount of extra effort (and avoiding monitoring and oversight) to track someone's voting preferences. Whereas with email based voting it takes a significant amount of extra effort and a lot more oversight to create systems which ensure that voting preferences aren't tracked.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Total anonymity is one of those things a perfect voting system would provide, but in reality you have to pick a balance. In the real world, total anonymity is at odds with preventing fraud. I believe our current system is somewhere in the middle, with moderate anonymity and moderate fraud protection.
    - mseebach 14y ago
danso 14y ago
Good thing NJ isn't a swing state or the lawsuits would already have been filed by now. * First thing that comes to mind: how ready is NJ.gov for a denial of service attack?
- phlyingpenguin 14y ago
  To be fair, voters have more to vote on than the presidential election. Maybe that still means lawsuits should be flowing, but I don't thing it being a swing state or not is really the issue here.
ghayes 14y ago
I love the idea and how this moves us forward. Instead of mailing an absentee ballot, you have identical authentication of e-mailing that ballot instead of placing it in the mail. Despite the complications for privacy, tracking and disenfranchisement, an ID system similar to Estonia's[1] with private-key cryptography would make online voting much more authentic than we currently use (most US districts do not require photo identification at the voting booth). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card
- zorlem 14y ago
  It certainly moves us forward, but I'm not sure I like the direction. With the traditional (paper ballot) voting there are several principles that are key to the legitimacy of the election process: 1) The paper ballot could be verified by any citizen and doesn't require any specific knowledge. Any voter could be sure that his vote is accounted for correctly. The ballots could be counted and re-counted without any technical obstacles and alterations. Various NGOs, organizations and individuals could act as guardians of the fair and independent process. This is very important as it provides trust in the process by making it more open. It's technically impossible to make the electronic process easily verifiable and tamper-proof. Any verification will require specialized knowledge, automatically barring a majority of the citizens from any verification. In most democratic elections the process is open to participation by the members of the general public as either observers (controllers) or counters. And I'm not even talking about gaping security problems that have been discovered in the past with eg. Diebold's e-voting machines [1][2][3] - I never quite understood how the citizens of USA and the government could accept such a thing in the first place as this undermines the whole election process. 2) The paper ballot leaves a trail that is easy to verify and rather difficult to falsify on a large scale without leaving a ton of traces. This process has been refined and improved for a long time and is quite durable if followed properly. Electronic voting (either remote or using e-voting machines) on the other hand provides lots of opportunities for errors and fraud - software bugs, accidental or deliberate software modifications, poor UX choices, etc. The incentives and the payout of fraud are simply too big. 3) It provides decent protection against double-voting. Double voting with paper ballot is still possible, but is so hard to implement on a scale of any significance, that it's almost pointless. 4) Paper ballot guarantees the secrecy of the voting. This might not seem very important for countries like USA where oppressive regimes are not the norm, but is crucial for other places where vote bullying or outright buying are rampant. Even if I was in USA I'd prefer to keep my political preferences and whom I vote for to myself. I wouldn't want elected officials to use my competitor's services only because the CEO enticed his employees to vote for a particular candidate (yes, I do realize that lobbying and political campaign financing are closely tied in USA, but that's tangential). The Germans have considered electronic voting in 2009 and their Constitutional Court has declared electronic voting as non-constitutional. The motives, in English, could be found on the court's press pages [4]. The technical details of the Estonian system in English could be found on their site [5]. [1] http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/ [2] http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11391 http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11391 [3] http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html#hack http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html#hack (terrible design, but has a lot of info) [4] http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/en/press/bvg09-019en.html# http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/en/press/bvg09-019en.... [5] http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf
vegardx 14y ago
My problem with "e-voting" has never been the security aspect, but how easy it would be to manipulate. Given how even some elections can be, just getting that last 1% of votes (I know the American system is somewhat different, as you need mandates, not votes, but I'm talking generally) could tip it in your direction. With traditional voting, a person usually has to meet, in person, to vote. With "e-voting" you could easily forge tons of votes, even with actual people, just by social engineering and forging of documents.
- interg12 14y ago
  how is that not a security aspect?
  - vegardx 14y ago
    I'm thinking more about the vote being "personal and nobody should be able to know what I voted"-security.
    - nonaanon 14y ago
      That is called privacy.
- colmmacc 14y ago
  Arguably having a "correct" winner matters the least in tight elections. If the margin of victory is as-low as 1% then it hardly matters which candidate wins - that election is already subject to the influence of weather, chance, accident and human counting error. There really is no supernatural magic to democracy that invests within the winner a moral or judgemental superiority. The ceremony and culture we surround democracy with can create that illusion. In an almost holy way, we anoint the winner and assign to them a minor god-like status. Their choice is said to reflect the will of the people, to be the personification of a mandate. But rationally, we should realise that a candidate who wins by 1% is about as likely to lose if the election was run the next day. What's scary about e-voting is that democracy is really only very good at preventing complete tyranny. Potential tyrants are unlikely to gain enough votes. But with e-voting, errors of 50% are as easy and as likely as errors of 1%.
sageikosa 14y ago
Not sure how it will apply, but in the US, by Federal law, the process for voting in any state cannot be changed any closer than 30 days before the election. The voter ID law in PA was in limbo a month before the election, and had to be deferred because the challenges couldn't be resolved by the early October deadline. Regardless of how this is couched, I can see the potential for challenges.
- kmontrose 14y ago
  I was under the impression that was because the PA law was challenged on discrimination/disenfranchisement grounds which falls under the Voting Rights Act. I want to say certain states do have to get pre-approval before any voting changes under the VRA due to a history of voter discrimination, but I'm pretty sure PA isn't one of them. Not aware of any blanket deadline on changing voting processes, do you know which law that's in?
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    There is some stuff in Title 42 Chapter 20 Subchapter I-A section 1973c about alterations that might restrict, but these changes in NJ probably would be construed as extending or preserving the franchise. My knowledge on the matter is a bit fuzzy and goes back to 2000 with Florida's electors. Title 3 Section 5 seems to cover this, but only lists 6 days before appointment of electors, and 6 days before meeting of electors; and only when controversy arises. A bit too dense with commas, prepositional phrases and conjunctions for me to decipher. I find D&D easier to understand than US election law.
EGreg 14y ago
First thing that came to mind for me was ... what about email spoofing or just a lot of unverified emails?
mikesun 14y ago
somebody tell the governor to read this: "Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting". Aviel Rubin. http://amzn.com/0767922107 http://amzn.com/0767922107
- specialist 14y ago
  It's a good book. I love the quote about "electronic voting being crack for conspiracy theorists". But the conclusion is correct: Electronic voting cannot preserve voter privacy or ensure the public vote count. So it shouldn't be used. Note that Rubin also worked on the SERVE project for the DoD, reaching the same conclusion. But the money people keep the dream alive.
dotcoma 14y ago
You're going to have a Nigerian President next time, America...
rsheridan6 14y ago
Ultimately this will end up benefiting the Democrats, since they tend to have a harder time turning out voters, and anything that makes voting easier tends to help them.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  Would you refer to some sources supporting your argument?
  - rsheridan6 14y ago
    Well, it's conventional wisdom. Here's a source that says bad weather suppresses turnout to the benefit of Republicans. http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/weather-affects-elections-so-how-does-election-day-look/ http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/weather-affects-electio... The principle is the same. We also have Republicans favoring and Democrats opposing laws requiring voters to show ID, because they both know which side benefits in relative terms from making voting more difficult.
pjbrunet 14y ago
This is not secure. At the very least, you're trusting Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to not alter or drop votes. This is a terrible idea.
rat87 14y ago
I read this as vote by mail and was excited, voting by email is damn stupid.
patrickgzill 14y ago
headline should read: New Jersey to Allow New Form of Election Fraud

96 points by sethbannon 14y ago

jre 14y ago

In Switzerland, some states have ran internet voting trials. Recently, the state of Geneva ran one and a citizen was able to vote twice[1]. The administration then fixed the problem by removing the duplicate vote and then told everybody how e-voting was a success. Of course, some people complained because a system that allow someone to vote twice doesn't work. The biggest problem though was that they were able to fix it by removing a vote, meaning they could identify the votes and remove it without problems. The bottom line is : from a technical/cryptographical perspective, the system is a joke (and they don't want to give access to the code). And that's my fear with e-voting : it seems like governments agencies (and their contractors) have a tendency to screw up very badly when it comes to new technology, at least in Switzerland. And I don't want to vote through an half-assed online system using MD5 and a 64 bits RSA key. [1] http://www.tdg.ch/high-tech/web/Un-citoyen-a-pu-voter-deux-fois/story/18941094 http://www.tdg.ch/high-tech/web/Un-citoyen-a-pu-voter-deux-f... (in French)

0x0 14y ago
Interesting. With the going rate of botnets ($0.02 per computer from some quick googling?) and everyone would be voting online.... How much do you want to pay to be the president? As if nobody would develop rootkits to fiddle with the HTTPS post (or whatever) going to the voting server...
bluelu 14y ago
You are making a wrong assumption here. It's no problem that you can identify that someone has voted twice. It would be a problem if that person could prove that he voted for a certain person. Have a look at the papers of http://www.infsecmaster.ethz.ch/people/maurer http://www.infsecmaster.ethz.ch/people/maurer He also has a very good lecture on information hiding/binding principles where these principles are explained.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  If my vote is encrypted and put in an envelope that has my name on it, then it very very much matters. If you cam find two envelopes with my name, you can find out what my vote is ( I mean somewhere there is a decryption key) Physical voting strips most links out from who voted and what they voted (you prove who you are at the desk then walk in and vote on a piece of paper in no way related to your name. That is either impossible electronically or relies on unverifiable trust in the code. I know if someone looks over my shoulder. I cannot look at the code running - even if it is open source I cannot see what is really running.
  - ramchip 14y ago
    Not necessarily, it's possible to find two envelopes with e.g. a hash of your name, without knowing your name.
    - barrkel 14y ago
      So you hash everyones' name, then you have a reverse mapping.
      - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
        Plus once you have my envelope you have my vote - we don't trust you or the code btw

mdonahoe 14y ago

Hopefully it has good security. Any chance this will become the norm for all states?

activepeanut 14y ago
I'd love to be able to vote thru the internet, with a state-issued certificate to authenticate me. It'll be a while before society's tech savvy enough for this tho so I won't hold my breath.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Certs would be fantastic; in my view, they could actually improve the system, because ballots would become read-only, and with the right system in place it would be impossible to "lose" them.
- 0x0 14y ago
  That sounds like fun, until the old man in the house makes everyone sit down in front of the computer and submit their votes for the "correct" party...
  - mjn 14y ago
    Isn't that already a concern with voting by mail?
- tomjen3 14y ago
  I would never trust the reaults of such an election and honestly I can't see how anybody else could either.
brown9-2 14y ago
This is a reaction to the storm, so I don't think they have all of the long term concerns thought out.

raldi 14y ago

Is it a plain text email? A special PDF? A Windows executable?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pudquick 14y ago
From what I can tell about this, it seems to work like: 1.) Overseas / abroad resident has to apply for the email ballot. This should go through some sort of human approval process, making sure that the names for those particular voters voting in this method are recorded - to compare against in-person voting locations and ensure no double-voting. Hopefully should any double+ voting occur, this ballot will be invalidated. 2.) They are either faxed or sent, via email, an electronic PDF form based ballot. These PDF forms are true forms in that they allow for the voter to type in entries and save the new version (complete with entered information). 3.) The faxed form would be faxed back, with entries. The PDF version would be sent back, with entries, via email. Unless Adobe has (once again) extended the PDF format to include encryption of PDF form entries, then yes, the emailed returned ballot will expose the voter's preferences via plaintext transmission. The only way they'd be able to avoid that would be to have, for instance, an https accessible website that allows for PDF ballot upload. Somehow I doubt this is what they're doing.
- arrrg 14y ago
  That sounds problematic, but it’s probably also important to note that absentee ballots always have prioritized the ability to vote over secrecy and being tamper proof. When it comes to absentee ballots I think that’s acceptable as long as they do not become the default of common way to vote. Whether that, however, should also apply to electronic means of voting is questionable. Everyone understands papers and pencils. Computers are too much of a black box for me to ever feel comfortable with voting mediated by them.
- mjn 14y ago
  That doesn't sound much less secure than how I voted, as an expat. I did the following: 1) Applied for a ballot by email, using a scanned Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) sent to the county clerk of the county I last resided in. 2) A ballot was sent to me by post. This is just a big piece of paper with some stuff printed on it. 3) I check the boxes I want to vote for. 4) I mail back my ballot. Overall it doesn't seem much harder to spoof the existing process, since there's no verification of who sent back the ballot. The only security is that there might be various codes (or bar-codes) on that paper ballot which you'd have to know something about to fake.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Erm, doesn't this end up potentially exposing everyone's voting choices? I guess anonymous voting isn't important right?

antidoh 14y ago
Voting is important. (Taking that as a given, I'm not actually sure anymore.) For a one-off like this, unplanned, I think it's fine to risk a reduction in anonymity, compared to not being able to vote at all. They are where they are, and they have to deal with it today.
maratd 14y ago
What makes you think you have anonymous voting now? You must identify yourself when entering a polling station and each vote is tracked, in the event of a recount. The same type of anonymity can be provided by an automated program parsing emails that I can write in about an hour. I'm proud that my state will be among the first to move in this obvious direction. Unfortunate that it had to be under such circumstances.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  The difference is that with the current system it takes a significant amount of extra effort (and avoiding monitoring and oversight) to track someone's voting preferences. Whereas with email based voting it takes a significant amount of extra effort and a lot more oversight to create systems which ensure that voting preferences aren't tracked.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Total anonymity is one of those things a perfect voting system would provide, but in reality you have to pick a balance. In the real world, total anonymity is at odds with preventing fraud. I believe our current system is somewhere in the middle, with moderate anonymity and moderate fraud protection.
  - mseebach 14y ago

danso 14y ago

Good thing NJ isn't a swing state or the lawsuits would already have been filed by now. * First thing that comes to mind: how ready is NJ.gov for a denial of service attack?

phlyingpenguin 14y ago
To be fair, voters have more to vote on than the presidential election. Maybe that still means lawsuits should be flowing, but I don't thing it being a swing state or not is really the issue here.

ghayes 14y ago

I love the idea and how this moves us forward. Instead of mailing an absentee ballot, you have identical authentication of e-mailing that ballot instead of placing it in the mail. Despite the complications for privacy, tracking and disenfranchisement, an ID system similar to Estonia's[1] with private-key cryptography would make online voting much more authentic than we currently use (most US districts do not require photo identification at the voting booth). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_ID_card

zorlem 14y ago
It certainly moves us forward, but I'm not sure I like the direction. With the traditional (paper ballot) voting there are several principles that are key to the legitimacy of the election process: 1) The paper ballot could be verified by any citizen and doesn't require any specific knowledge. Any voter could be sure that his vote is accounted for correctly. The ballots could be counted and re-counted without any technical obstacles and alterations. Various NGOs, organizations and individuals could act as guardians of the fair and independent process. This is very important as it provides trust in the process by making it more open. It's technically impossible to make the electronic process easily verifiable and tamper-proof. Any verification will require specialized knowledge, automatically barring a majority of the citizens from any verification. In most democratic elections the process is open to participation by the members of the general public as either observers (controllers) or counters. And I'm not even talking about gaping security problems that have been discovered in the past with eg. Diebold's e-voting machines [1][2][3] - I never quite understood how the citizens of USA and the government could accept such a thing in the first place as this undermines the whole election process. 2) The paper ballot leaves a trail that is easy to verify and rather difficult to falsify on a large scale without leaving a ton of traces. This process has been refined and improved for a long time and is quite durable if followed properly. Electronic voting (either remote or using e-voting machines) on the other hand provides lots of opportunities for errors and fraud - software bugs, accidental or deliberate software modifications, poor UX choices, etc. The incentives and the payout of fraud are simply too big. 3) It provides decent protection against double-voting. Double voting with paper ballot is still possible, but is so hard to implement on a scale of any significance, that it's almost pointless. 4) Paper ballot guarantees the secrecy of the voting. This might not seem very important for countries like USA where oppressive regimes are not the norm, but is crucial for other places where vote bullying or outright buying are rampant. Even if I was in USA I'd prefer to keep my political preferences and whom I vote for to myself. I wouldn't want elected officials to use my competitor's services only because the CEO enticed his employees to vote for a particular candidate (yes, I do realize that lobbying and political campaign financing are closely tied in USA, but that's tangential). The Germans have considered electronic voting in 2009 and their Constitutional Court has declared electronic voting as non-constitutional. The motives, in English, could be found on the court's press pages [4]. The technical details of the Estonian system in English could be found on their site [5]. [1] http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/ [2] http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11391 http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11391 [3] http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html#hack http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html#hack (terrible design, but has a lot of info) [4] http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/en/press/bvg09-019en.html# http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/en/press/bvg09-019en.... [5] http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf

vegardx 14y ago

My problem with "e-voting" has never been the security aspect, but how easy it would be to manipulate. Given how even some elections can be, just getting that last 1% of votes (I know the American system is somewhat different, as you need mandates, not votes, but I'm talking generally) could tip it in your direction. With traditional voting, a person usually has to meet, in person, to vote. With "e-voting" you could easily forge tons of votes, even with actual people, just by social engineering and forging of documents.

interg12 14y ago
how is that not a security aspect?
- vegardx 14y ago
  I'm thinking more about the vote being "personal and nobody should be able to know what I voted"-security.
  - nonaanon 14y ago
    That is called privacy.
colmmacc 14y ago
Arguably having a "correct" winner matters the least in tight elections. If the margin of victory is as-low as 1% then it hardly matters which candidate wins - that election is already subject to the influence of weather, chance, accident and human counting error. There really is no supernatural magic to democracy that invests within the winner a moral or judgemental superiority. The ceremony and culture we surround democracy with can create that illusion. In an almost holy way, we anoint the winner and assign to them a minor god-like status. Their choice is said to reflect the will of the people, to be the personification of a mandate. But rationally, we should realise that a candidate who wins by 1% is about as likely to lose if the election was run the next day. What's scary about e-voting is that democracy is really only very good at preventing complete tyranny. Potential tyrants are unlikely to gain enough votes. But with e-voting, errors of 50% are as easy and as likely as errors of 1%.

sageikosa 14y ago

Not sure how it will apply, but in the US, by Federal law, the process for voting in any state cannot be changed any closer than 30 days before the election. The voter ID law in PA was in limbo a month before the election, and had to be deferred because the challenges couldn't be resolved by the early October deadline. Regardless of how this is couched, I can see the potential for challenges.

kmontrose 14y ago
I was under the impression that was because the PA law was challenged on discrimination/disenfranchisement grounds which falls under the Voting Rights Act. I want to say certain states do have to get pre-approval before any voting changes under the VRA due to a history of voter discrimination, but I'm pretty sure PA isn't one of them. Not aware of any blanket deadline on changing voting processes, do you know which law that's in?
- sageikosa 14y ago
  There is some stuff in Title 42 Chapter 20 Subchapter I-A section 1973c about alterations that might restrict, but these changes in NJ probably would be construed as extending or preserving the franchise. My knowledge on the matter is a bit fuzzy and goes back to 2000 with Florida's electors. Title 3 Section 5 seems to cover this, but only lists 6 days before appointment of electors, and 6 days before meeting of electors; and only when controversy arises. A bit too dense with commas, prepositional phrases and conjunctions for me to decipher. I find D&D easier to understand than US election law.

EGreg 14y ago

First thing that came to mind for me was ... what about email spoofing or just a lot of unverified emails?

mikesun 14y ago

somebody tell the governor to read this: "Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting". Aviel Rubin. http://amzn.com/0767922107 http://amzn.com/0767922107

specialist 14y ago
It's a good book. I love the quote about "electronic voting being crack for conspiracy theorists". But the conclusion is correct: Electronic voting cannot preserve voter privacy or ensure the public vote count. So it shouldn't be used. Note that Rubin also worked on the SERVE project for the DoD, reaching the same conclusion. But the money people keep the dream alive.

dotcoma 14y ago

You're going to have a Nigerian President next time, America...

rsheridan6 14y ago

Ultimately this will end up benefiting the Democrats, since they tend to have a harder time turning out voters, and anything that makes voting easier tends to help them.

MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
Would you refer to some sources supporting your argument?
- rsheridan6 14y ago
  Well, it's conventional wisdom. Here's a source that says bad weather suppresses turnout to the benefit of Republicans. http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/weather-affects-elections-so-how-does-election-day-look/ http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/weather-affects-electio... The principle is the same. We also have Republicans favoring and Democrats opposing laws requiring voters to show ID, because they both know which side benefits in relative terms from making voting more difficult.

pjbrunet 14y ago

This is not secure. At the very least, you're trusting Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to not alter or drop votes. This is a terrible idea.

rat87 14y ago

I read this as vote by mail and was excited, voting by email is damn stupid.

patrickgzill 14y ago

headline should read: New Jersey to Allow New Form of Election Fraud