5 ms·

When a website is insecure or abuses your trust, you can sue them, or they lose money. They have every incentive to make the web site honest and secure. If a we

by Peaker 13y ago

When a website is insecure or abuses your trust, you can sue them, or they lose money. They have every incentive to make the web site honest and secure. If a website steals, someone who's lost money generally knows. When a voting system is insecure and abuses your trust, someone makes tremendous gains, and nobody may even know. The incentives to rig an election are huge, and the verifiability of an online election is very low. How do you think paper ballots, for example, hinder progress?

cinquemb 13y ago
>When a voting system is insecure and abuses your trust, someone makes tremendous gains, and nobody may even know. The incentives to rig an election are huge, and the verifiability of an online election is very low. Because the electronic machines in use now aren't vulnerable? >How do you think paper ballots, for example, hinder progress? Not easily accessible to all people (like those with disabilities, and those without sufficient access to public transportation, those having to work without having the flexibility to show up to vote) and it's disconnected from the way more and more people are engaging about ideas and exchanging information that could influence how they vote. Same is true of electronic voting machines in use during elections… And it's not like people haven't documented themselves on youtube committing voting fraud in person or the news stories that pop up about it…
- Peaker 13y ago
  The electronic machines in use now are terrible, and should be abolished. I think these drawbacks of paper ballots are minor compared to "black box voting" where there's absolutely no way to prevent or even know about massive scale frauds.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    >I think these drawbacks of paper ballots are minor compared to "black box voting" where there's absolutely no way to prevent or even know about massive scale frauds. Way to minimize the disenfranchisement millions of people from the voting process. Besides, do you really think people are going to recount millions of ballots, when the last attempt to do so was waived away by appointed judges in 2000? Even if massive scale fraud were going on, most people would stick their heads in the sand (at least in the United States), like we have seen with other issues…
    - Peaker 13y ago
      There are paper ballots' solutions to most people with disabilities. Free public transportation to the ballots and a mandatory day off work also help. These problems are surmountable. The problems of "black box voting" are not. Massive scale fraud with paper ballots is harder given relatively simple means of oversight.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        >The problems of "black box voting" are not. Really? Man made problems surrounding "black box voting" and voting online aren't surmountable, but only proposed solutions to the archaic nature of the status quo that aren't being implemented (or not effectively in the case part of what you listed is being used), suffice as such? That's laughable.
        Peaker 13y ago
        These solutions are being implemented (in other democratic countries) successfully. The problems of "black box voting" are insurmountable. They cannot be solved.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        >* These solutions are being implemented (in other democratic countries) successfully.* Just like the internet voting in Estonia… >The problems of "black box voting" are insurmountable. They cannot be solved. Because you say they are? Plenty examples of groups of people overcoming the perceived impossibility of "complex" systems throughout history contrary to popular beliefs during those occasions…
        josephlord 13y ago
        For a gold standard election you should: 1) Be able to identify the correct people and allow them to vote. 2) Give them certainty that their vote is recorded correctly. 3) Give them privacy while voting so that they cannot be coerced or bribed (postal voting fails this one too). 4) Allow volunteers to audit the process. e.g. Observe polling stations, sealed ballot boxes, numbered, signed, counts open to observers, tallies checkable, votes recountable etc. 5) Allow wide access to the vote, short queues, local polling stations, physical access etc. Postal voting helps this but at a cost to points 3 and 4. This is manageable when postal voting is a small proportion of the total but gets riskier if it rises. Online voting fails to allow for most of these requirements in ways that are not just hard they are impossible to fix. You can trade some for others like the ability to confirm your vote was correctly recorded but that gives a receipt and the possibility for coercion or bribery. Now the US voting system also fails many of these at least in some locations but giving the power to run the elections to controllers of the computers is too dangerous. There are just too many opportunities to tamper with votes that way with almost no risk of detection. I had not looked into the Estonian experience until now but this is one perspective on it: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/report-on-the-estonian-internet-voting-system-2/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/report-on-the-estonian-intern... The verifiedvoting.org website also has lots of other information about internet voting and voting machines generally. I did not look at it before compiling my list above.
- philwelch 13y ago
  Fortunately, it's possible to combine paper ballots with another brilliant 19th century invention, the postal service, to make voting accessible to virtually everyone.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Just like the internet voting in Estonia since 2005, and its substantially cheaper for them in practice.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      And no one would be the wiser if an Estonian election was rigged by the sysadmin.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        Like no one would be wiser if the American electoral process was rigged by a couple extremely wealthy people.
        Peaker 13y ago
        A couple of wealthy people will find it very hard to tamper with thousands of paper ballots supervised by multiple volunteers of various political leanings, each. Tampering with some computer systems? Not so hard.

by Peaker 13y ago

cinquemb 13y ago

>When a voting system is insecure and abuses your trust, someone makes tremendous gains, and nobody may even know. The incentives to rig an election are huge, and the verifiability of an online election is very low. Because the electronic machines in use now aren't vulnerable? >How do you think paper ballots, for example, hinder progress? Not easily accessible to all people (like those with disabilities, and those without sufficient access to public transportation, those having to work without having the flexibility to show up to vote) and it's disconnected from the way more and more people are engaging about ideas and exchanging information that could influence how they vote. Same is true of electronic voting machines in use during elections… And it's not like people haven't documented themselves on youtube committing voting fraud in person or the news stories that pop up about it…

Peaker 13y ago
The electronic machines in use now are terrible, and should be abolished. I think these drawbacks of paper ballots are minor compared to "black box voting" where there's absolutely no way to prevent or even know about massive scale frauds.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  >I think these drawbacks of paper ballots are minor compared to "black box voting" where there's absolutely no way to prevent or even know about massive scale frauds. Way to minimize the disenfranchisement millions of people from the voting process. Besides, do you really think people are going to recount millions of ballots, when the last attempt to do so was waived away by appointed judges in 2000? Even if massive scale fraud were going on, most people would stick their heads in the sand (at least in the United States), like we have seen with other issues…
  - Peaker 13y ago
    There are paper ballots' solutions to most people with disabilities. Free public transportation to the ballots and a mandatory day off work also help. These problems are surmountable. The problems of "black box voting" are not. Massive scale fraud with paper ballots is harder given relatively simple means of oversight.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      >The problems of "black box voting" are not. Really? Man made problems surrounding "black box voting" and voting online aren't surmountable, but only proposed solutions to the archaic nature of the status quo that aren't being implemented (or not effectively in the case part of what you listed is being used), suffice as such? That's laughable.
      - Peaker 13y ago
        These solutions are being implemented (in other democratic countries) successfully. The problems of "black box voting" are insurmountable. They cannot be solved.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        >* These solutions are being implemented (in other democratic countries) successfully.* Just like the internet voting in Estonia… >The problems of "black box voting" are insurmountable. They cannot be solved. Because you say they are? Plenty examples of groups of people overcoming the perceived impossibility of "complex" systems throughout history contrary to popular beliefs during those occasions…
        josephlord 13y ago
        For a gold standard election you should: 1) Be able to identify the correct people and allow them to vote. 2) Give them certainty that their vote is recorded correctly. 3) Give them privacy while voting so that they cannot be coerced or bribed (postal voting fails this one too). 4) Allow volunteers to audit the process. e.g. Observe polling stations, sealed ballot boxes, numbered, signed, counts open to observers, tallies checkable, votes recountable etc. 5) Allow wide access to the vote, short queues, local polling stations, physical access etc. Postal voting helps this but at a cost to points 3 and 4. This is manageable when postal voting is a small proportion of the total but gets riskier if it rises. Online voting fails to allow for most of these requirements in ways that are not just hard they are impossible to fix. You can trade some for others like the ability to confirm your vote was correctly recorded but that gives a receipt and the possibility for coercion or bribery. Now the US voting system also fails many of these at least in some locations but giving the power to run the elections to controllers of the computers is too dangerous. There are just too many opportunities to tamper with votes that way with almost no risk of detection. I had not looked into the Estonian experience until now but this is one perspective on it: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/report-on-the-estonian-internet-voting-system-2/ https://www.verifiedvoting.org/report-on-the-estonian-intern... The verifiedvoting.org website also has lots of other information about internet voting and voting machines generally. I did not look at it before compiling my list above.
philwelch 13y ago
Fortunately, it's possible to combine paper ballots with another brilliant 19th century invention, the postal service, to make voting accessible to virtually everyone.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Just like the internet voting in Estonia since 2005, and its substantially cheaper for them in practice.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    And no one would be the wiser if an Estonian election was rigged by the sysadmin.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Like no one would be wiser if the American electoral process was rigged by a couple extremely wealthy people.
      - Peaker 13y ago
        A couple of wealthy people will find it very hard to tamper with thousands of paper ballots supervised by multiple volunteers of various political leanings, each. Tampering with some computer systems? Not so hard.