Electronic voting
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dotmatrix Aug 02, 2016 6:37 PM EDT |
Electronic voting should be cryptographically sound... something like this:
The moral: If it's about politics; it's about lying, cheating, stealing, and money laundering. |
| penguinist Aug 02, 2016 6:43 PM EDT |
AND 5. The voting machine's source code is open to independent verification. Right now we have secret code running the voting machines. Does anyone think that these machines cannot be controlled by the highest bidder? |
| dotmatrix Aug 02, 2016 7:03 PM EDT |
> Does anyone think that these machines cannot be controlled by the highest bidder? They always are... the electronic part is superfluous. |
| seatex Aug 03, 2016 12:05 PM EDT |
In our corrupted system now, secure and accurate voting machines will not be allowed - I'm sure. |
| jdixon Aug 03, 2016 12:27 PM EDT |
As a couple of people in the comments pointed out, the best solution is probably the old one: Paper ballots, counted by hand. With the counting supervised by a committee consisting of representatives of all the parties and some independents. Sometimes technology just makes things more complicated than they have to be. |
| dotmatrix Aug 03, 2016 1:23 PM EDT |
>is probably the old one: Paper ballots, counted by hand I disagree. It is possible to design a system and infrastructure which is both more accurate than hand counted ballots and not very vulnerable to cheating. Hand counting ballots is one of the worst systems of voting. The supervisory persons may be bribed or locally biased against one or another candidate even within the same political party. In a hand counted system, there is exactly zero verifiability of the count by the general public... furthermore there is no way to know if your particular vote registered properly or at all or was thrown out by a protesting committee member. Hand counting is also highly subject to changed results in recounting. This is because people don't count accurately... statistically, if you hand count stacks and stacks of votes in a close election enough times your results will most probably switch from one candidate to another and back again. However, if each vote was cryptographically signed and verified, any recount should be identical to the original count. Furthermore, if the voting machines themselves are not networked and have only local control systems per each machine, the counts themselves would not be subject to 'hackers'... as the 'bad' guys are called today... Many of the problems with implementing a high quality electronic voting system in the USA are political and how things are funded. Voting systems are a 'States Rights' issue. Each State is responsible for its own voting system. There is no such thing as a 'national voting system' because that's not how the USA government is organized. |
| jdixon Aug 03, 2016 1:47 PM EDT |
> I disagree. It is possible to design a system and infrastructure which is both more accurate than hand counted ballots and not very vulnerable to cheating. It is, but: a) will it be done? and b) is the cost worth the gains? > In a hand counted system, there is exactly zero verifiability of the count by the general public... That's true for any system. Even in an secure electronic system, I have no way to verify the security or the count. I don't have the access I'd need. > furthermore there is no way to know if your particular vote registered properly or at all or was thrown out by a protesting committee member. It;s called a locked box. If I drop the ballot in, it was registered properly. Now counting is another matter, but that's why you have a committee supervising the count. > Hand counting is also highly subject to changed results in recounting. This is because people don't count accurately... statistically, if you hand count stacks and stacks of votes in a close election enough times your results will most probably switch from one candidate to another and back again. And? Too close to call elections are a fact of life. We can deal with them. They'll exist with electronic systems too. > if the voting machines themselves are not networked and have only local control systems per each machine, the counts themselves would not be subject to 'hackers'... as the 'bad' guys are called today... And there's nothing to stop the local people working the polls from inserting the desired votes for voters who didn't show up at the polls, or (if they don't have those keys), just making up voters from the local grave yard (they can arrange to get those keys) and inserting their votes. Any system can be rigged by people with access to the hardware and the systems. It doesn't have to be done via a hacked system. > However, if each vote was cryptographically signed and verified, any recount should be identical to the original count. And yet, even with our current electronic systems in place, they're not. Not the least because not every voter can be handled electronically, and the process of adding those voters votes is subject to error and/or manipulation. > There is no such thing as a 'national voting system' because that's not how the USA government is organized. This is a feature, not a bug. |
| dotmatrix Aug 03, 2016 2:40 PM EDT |
>This is a feature, not a bug. I agree on this point. However, there are some tools of government which would operate with fewer problems if there existed some method of providing these tools on a national scale in a 'standard' way without decreasing the States Rights provisions. One of the problems, of course, is that any such exception would be as abused as the 'interstate commerce' laws. *** On some of your other points... There can be a system which specifically disables the ability of poll workers to create extra votes or other fraudulent activities. If crypto keys are used, it would not be possible to create them locally. It's good to remember that crypto keys are now being distributed throughout the USA on credit cards... this has been the standard in other places in the world for a long time... the voting system need not be any more complex to use than buying a shirt at a store. |
| jdixon Aug 03, 2016 2:55 PM EDT |
> it would not be possible to create them locally. They wouldn't be created locally. They'd be created by the people working in the registration office and the keys passed to the poll workers to enter the votes. Or any other way of entering them that would be difficult to trace. In many cases it would simply be a matter of not removing people who had died or moved from the rolls and issuing them new keys. And there's always the old method of simply paying people to vote a certain way. Election fraud is an old problem and for many of the techniques it doesn't matter whether the system is electronic or not. |
| dotmatrix Aug 03, 2016 3:34 PM EDT |
>Or any other way of entering them that would be difficult to trace. Tracking keys would be very easy. It could be done using signatures and hashes... and it could be done offline for better security. >Election fraud is an old problem Yes. >and for many of the techniques it doesn't matter whether the system is electronic or not. No. |
| jdixon Aug 03, 2016 4:01 PM EDT |
> Tracking keys would be very easy. It could be done using signatures and hashes... and it could be done offline for better security. I don't see how tracking them keeps false voters and their votes from being created in the system or helps with the buying of votes, two of the oldest methods of election fraud in the book. |
| cybertao Aug 03, 2016 11:17 PM EDT |
My perspective is plain old hand-counted paper is better than a half-assed electronic system. Purely for transparency reasons which an electronic system needs.
Voting fraud happens, but not on a scale that justifies fighting it being a priority. Encouraging participation is. Fraud is from a few trying to derail democracy. Poor voter turn-out undermines democracy itself. More honest votes getting cast diminishes the importance of dishonest ones. |
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