7 ms·

There is plenty of research and sample implementations of electronic voting schemes in which the final outcome is verifiable without anyone being able to see an

There is plenty of research and sample implementations of electronic voting schemes in which the final outcome is verifiable without anyone being able to see anyone else's vote. As an example, I worked with Michael Clarkson on an implementation of Civitas: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/papers/civitas-tr.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/papers/civitas-tr.pdf

eli 14y ago
Agreed. There are a couple of other papers as well. The problem is they are far too complicated to explain to voters which makes them unlikely to be adopted and unlikely to be trusted. Having a secure vote is obviously the primary goal, but having a vote that people trust is pretty important too.
- sinnerswing 14y ago
  Here's one FROM Romney to Obama 'DOZENS' OF COLORADO ROMNEY VOTERS CLAIM MACHINES CHANGED VOTES TO OBAMA http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of-Romney-Voters-In-Colorado-Complain-Machines-Changed-Votes-To-Obama http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of...
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    Do you have anything more than that? I can't accept an unsourced story from that site at face value given its past editorial failures.
    - sinnerswing 14y ago
      it's from krdo. and there is also a video. http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney-votes-to-Obama/-/417220/17252566/-/qpcqxr/-/index.html http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney...
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - bricestacey 14y ago
        There is a video, but it doesn't demonstrate anything. Did you even watch it??
        sinnerswing 14y ago
        Yeah but now you can't use this reddit video as proof of voter fraud when Romney wins.
        bricestacey 14y ago
        The original video isn't proof of anything but that a machine didn't work. Surprise! Not. Your video didn't prove anything. It's noise.
  - thanithani 14y ago
    I'd argue that people from Pueblo don't know how use a touch interface
  - jbooth 14y ago
    Breitbart is much less credible than a reddit poster with video. Actually, he'd be much less credible than an anonymous 4chan poster without video.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- DennisP 14y ago
  They're not necessarily so complicated. For example: you get a receipt, check it, and put it in a box. Another voter takes it home and can validate it against the official count. This system was designed by a couple cryptographers, one of them Ron Rivest of RSA fame. For details on this and a couple other simple voting systems, see here: http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html
specialist 14y ago
I haven't looked at Civitas. The other crypto based voting systems I did study don't actually hide voter's identity in real world elections. The trick to these systems is there's some one-way hash done. This requires a lot of ballots, with enough hash collisions to ensure one's ballot gets lost within the herd. Alas, elections in the USA are precinct-based, typically 1 to 1,000 voters in size. And our ballots are complicated. My ballot this election had 20 issues. So combinatorially, it's very likely my ballot will be utterly unique within my precinct. Meaning my ballot is not secret. Edit: Clarification at end.
- gordonguthrie 14y ago
  This is all totally irrelevant - I speak as a former candidate for both the UK and Scottish Parliaments. The count needs to be verifiable, and needs to be simply comprehensible. The paper process has the following check points: * the ballot box is seen to be empty at the beginning of the process * the turnout can be collected and collated by the candidates nominees during the day * the first count is the ballot count which the candidate's nominees can check against the recorded turnout * the papers are sorted for the second count, publically - and the candidates nominees do what is called 'a box count' from which we can predict the final result * the ballots are bundled and tallied in public * disputed papers are agreed by the candidates and the candidates representatives * the candidates have an automatic right of recount if the margin is below a certain amount, and at the returning officers discretion otherwise On top of that we have collected voter id information and Reading cards so we can estimate the result based on the marked register after the event. What this means is that not only is the result verifiable, it is publicly verifiable by almost anyone with basic high school maths. The reason this is important because I have worked elections with Nazi candidates - and I worked in Belfast when the civil war was on and the degree of trust across the political communities was very low. The critical purpose of the public count is not to establish who has won the election, but to bind the losers, and their voters into the result. If I had to stand up on a platform and the Nazi said "they used these machines to take away our vote" and my only response is to start talking about how there are some papers that show if you have hard to factor prime numbers you can generate some low-collision hash or some other random klingon space talk, then it is game over. The proportion of the UK who withdrew their consent to be governed during the 30 years of the war in Ireland was less than 1% - rising to 10% of Northern Ireland. Making it easy for a tiny number of people to be pulled out of consent by political extremists is crazy, crazy, crazy. The 2007 Scottish Parliament election in the UK had a crappy ballot (edited originally said 9% which was wrong an error rate 4 times higher than expected - think of Florida's hanging chads across the whole country). If 26 votes had gone another way in one constituency we would have had a Labour Government not a Scottish National Party one. This ballot paper was combined with electronic counting and it was a total shambles. As a tallyman on the night I could not endorse or verify the result at all - we had no idea what the result was - except what the machine said it was. Everyone was all geared up for legal challenges - but the leadership of the two parties got together and agreed that everyone should walk away and we would let the chips fall as they did. I never want to see that again - and we don't hate each other in Scotland like you American's do. Paper ballots, paper counting is the way to go. (Don't get me started on how your electoral boundaries operate - or the fact that you don't have an independent electoral commission).

eli 14y ago

Agreed. There are a couple of other papers as well. The problem is they are far too complicated to explain to voters which makes them unlikely to be adopted and unlikely to be trusted. Having a secure vote is obviously the primary goal, but having a vote that people trust is pretty important too.

sinnerswing 14y ago
Here's one FROM Romney to Obama 'DOZENS' OF COLORADO ROMNEY VOTERS CLAIM MACHINES CHANGED VOTES TO OBAMA http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of-Romney-Voters-In-Colorado-Complain-Machines-Changed-Votes-To-Obama http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of...
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Do you have anything more than that? I can't accept an unsourced story from that site at face value given its past editorial failures.
  - sinnerswing 14y ago
    it's from krdo. and there is also a video. http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney-votes-to-Obama/-/417220/17252566/-/qpcqxr/-/index.html http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney...
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - bricestacey 14y ago
      There is a video, but it doesn't demonstrate anything. Did you even watch it??
      - sinnerswing 14y ago
        Yeah but now you can't use this reddit video as proof of voter fraud when Romney wins.
        bricestacey 14y ago
        The original video isn't proof of anything but that a machine didn't work. Surprise! Not. Your video didn't prove anything. It's noise.
- thanithani 14y ago
  I'd argue that people from Pueblo don't know how use a touch interface
- jbooth 14y ago
  Breitbart is much less credible than a reddit poster with video. Actually, he'd be much less credible than an anonymous 4chan poster without video.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
DennisP 14y ago
They're not necessarily so complicated. For example: you get a receipt, check it, and put it in a box. Another voter takes it home and can validate it against the official count. This system was designed by a couple cryptographers, one of them Ron Rivest of RSA fame. For details on this and a couple other simple voting systems, see here: http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html

specialist 14y ago

I haven't looked at Civitas. The other crypto based voting systems I did study don't actually hide voter's identity in real world elections. The trick to these systems is there's some one-way hash done. This requires a lot of ballots, with enough hash collisions to ensure one's ballot gets lost within the herd. Alas, elections in the USA are precinct-based, typically 1 to 1,000 voters in size. And our ballots are complicated. My ballot this election had 20 issues. So combinatorially, it's very likely my ballot will be utterly unique within my precinct. Meaning my ballot is not secret. Edit: Clarification at end.

gordonguthrie 14y ago
This is all totally irrelevant - I speak as a former candidate for both the UK and Scottish Parliaments. The count needs to be verifiable, and needs to be simply comprehensible. The paper process has the following check points: * the ballot box is seen to be empty at the beginning of the process * the turnout can be collected and collated by the candidates nominees during the day * the first count is the ballot count which the candidate's nominees can check against the recorded turnout * the papers are sorted for the second count, publically - and the candidates nominees do what is called 'a box count' from which we can predict the final result * the ballots are bundled and tallied in public * disputed papers are agreed by the candidates and the candidates representatives * the candidates have an automatic right of recount if the margin is below a certain amount, and at the returning officers discretion otherwise On top of that we have collected voter id information and Reading cards so we can estimate the result based on the marked register after the event. What this means is that not only is the result verifiable, it is publicly verifiable by almost anyone with basic high school maths. The reason this is important because I have worked elections with Nazi candidates - and I worked in Belfast when the civil war was on and the degree of trust across the political communities was very low. The critical purpose of the public count is not to establish who has won the election, but to bind the losers, and their voters into the result. If I had to stand up on a platform and the Nazi said "they used these machines to take away our vote" and my only response is to start talking about how there are some papers that show if you have hard to factor prime numbers you can generate some low-collision hash or some other random klingon space talk, then it is game over. The proportion of the UK who withdrew their consent to be governed during the 30 years of the war in Ireland was less than 1% - rising to 10% of Northern Ireland. Making it easy for a tiny number of people to be pulled out of consent by political extremists is crazy, crazy, crazy. The 2007 Scottish Parliament election in the UK had a crappy ballot (edited originally said 9% which was wrong an error rate 4 times higher than expected - think of Florida's hanging chads across the whole country). If 26 votes had gone another way in one constituency we would have had a Labour Government not a Scottish National Party one. This ballot paper was combined with electronic counting and it was a total shambles. As a tallyman on the night I could not endorse or verify the result at all - we had no idea what the result was - except what the machine said it was. Everyone was all geared up for legal challenges - but the leadership of the two parties got together and agreed that everyone should walk away and we would let the chips fall as they did. I never want to see that again - and we don't hate each other in Scotland like you American's do. Paper ballots, paper counting is the way to go. (Don't get me started on how your electoral boundaries operate - or the fact that you don't have an independent electoral commission).