Azerbaijan Election Results Released Before Voting Had Even Started 266
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Florida's hanging chads ain't going nothing on Azerbaijan. Fully a day before the polls were to open, election results were accidentally released via an official smartphone app, confirming what everybody already knew — the election was rigged from the beginning. The official story is that the app's developer had mistakenly sent out the 2008 election results as part of a test. But that's a bit flimsy, given that the released totals show the candidates from this week, not from 2008."
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
while it makes impossible to "rig" the election it makes it totally easy to rig the election the other usual way: voter intimidation, peer pressure, pressure from family, employer requiring certain vote, buying of votes... voted for legalization of pot? goodbye job.
this is why the pen & paper and a decent society to handle that is the only way to do them(enough volunteer vote counters from enough parties).
if you can prove who you voted then you can be persecuted for voting certain way(or if you refuse to prove being "loyal").
and if the vote organizers are crooked then they could crook the signed voting too, press vote and all you would get would be "thank you for your vote for power party 1." or just have everyones receipts show up as normal but the total tally being something wildly different..
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, in those countries that have smartcard-or-equivalent national IDs, cryptographically signed votes would be trivial; but you'd be reusing keys explicitly designed to not be anonymous, indeed, designed to be identifying. That is an issue. Beats some 'SSN+Mother's maiden name' bullshit; because at least it verifies something; but it isn't what you are looking for.
If you anonymously issue keys, now you've got a weak spot there that crypto can't help you with: the crypto makes it quite possible to ensure that Anon_Key_X was responsible for Vote_X, and only Vote_X; but you still need to devise a system by which an eligible voter can obtain (without some absurd hassle) one and only one anonymous key, without it being covertly linked back to them, or them being able to sign up for ten, or the people running the system being able to generate 250,000(or simply keep a copy of the keys as they are issued, and 'win the race' to get a signed ballot into the pot with that key).
If you have such a system, you also have a system that could trivially just hand the voter a ballot, since you have already satisfied anonymity, uniqueness, resistance to plural voting, etc. No need for the crypto at all.
(Also, aside from that, a country with vote rigging tendencies is presumably going to use hierarchical PKI, not some web-of-trust cypherpunk wet dream, so what exactly will an election whose ballots are signed with keys that all descend from the 'Glorious Cryptographic Key for Make Benefit of People's Republic Motherland' prove? Hierarchical PKI schemes, as SSL has taught us, work OK if you are primarily concerned with criminals and frauds; but if the CA is the enemy, you are fucked. If you are the root, you can generate mathematically pristine child keys as fast as your little ASICs can carry you without the slightest trouble.)
In post-Soviet Azerbaijan (Score:3, Insightful)
Ballots determine YOU!
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only a handful of mathematicians would trust that.
Paper ballots with independents actually conducting the election taking ballots and counting them, etc, with overseers from all political parties welcome to watch the entire proceedings, from start to finish.
Simple and transparent.
Wow, that's bad (Score:5, Insightful)
"The system uses standard personal computers as voting terminals,"
Geez, the NSA pawns PCs. Are you f**ing kidding me?
"with voters using a barcode to authenticate their votes."
Identifiable? i.e. you can be datamined on your voting choice?
"Voting terminals are linked to a server in each polling location using a secure local area network. No votes are taken or transmitted over a public network like the Internet."
FFS, there's no such thing as a 'secure local area network' now. You have a huge agency attacking every network it can. Networks not connected to public networks are hack physically, locally or via third party companies. If Belgacom can't keep its backoffice networks protected, what makes you think you can?
Really in a post PRISM world, recognize that you cannot trust electronic elections, encryption is broken, the keys you send around by email, they're intercepted an read. The networks you create ad-hoc, they're broken into. If you don't want the NSA or GCHQ choosing your PM, you need a paper audit trail.
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not one to roll over to this sort of fraud myself, but I have little faith that identity wouldn't simply shift the solution to the 'problem' of the people's will in a different, and likely violent, direction.
Re:Just unprofessional. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:couldnt be worse than america. (Score:3, Insightful)
but both are controlled by the same group of billionaires so they dont really represent normal people
Cynical ignorance being passed off as insightful commentary. This is even worse than partisan idiocy - at least the partisans are fighting for something.
its at least refreshing to see a government say, "well, yeah your vote is meaningless" as opposed to the United States, where people become upset if you dont believe voting is important
How privileged do you have to be that you think that an autocratic government is better and more refreshing than a dysfunctional democracy? Here's a suggestion: if you think Azerbaijan is such a breath of fresh air, why haven't you moved there? Oh, right, because despite of how bad things are in the US, it is still light years ahead of dictatorships like Azerbaijan.
Don't be overly critical. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:3, Insightful)
Athan Gibbs figured it out years ago: that whole unriggable elections thing.
Oddly enough, he was hit by a truck...
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
No... that's one of the problems with anonymity, it's easier to fake. However, it's very, very important, especially in places in which your vote is more likely to be coerced. The advantages of anonymity far outweigh the disadvantages.
Elections don't work that way (Score:5, Insightful)
Signing a vote isn't going to help one bit because fake citizens can be created that can sign fake votes.
You need anonymity to make certain people vote for whom they want, not whom they want others to think they should vote for.
The only way to prevent rigging is to make certain people get to vote in anonymity, but to be able to see every individual vote go into the ballot and after the voting has ended, be counted by many (independent) eyes.You need to control/bribe a lot of people if you want to get away with rigging an election if that system is in place.
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing people to check their vote from home would fuck up anyone whose vote was made under coercion. As it is, you can vote one way and say you voted another way.
This is less of an issue in the US, but it is still an issue... your boss asks you which way you voted.... let's just check that.
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problems? What problems?
You seem to misunderstand the point of modern elections. They are not in place so that the people can choose their representatives. They are there to suppress revolt by displacing the responsibility of bad government into the people.
Actually counting the votes is a pointless expense. The system works just as well by flipping a coin.
Azerbaijan are ahead of their time in more ways than the obvious one.
Could be a honest mistake from IT-people... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in IT myself, and I know how difficult it is to come up with good test-data for your testing...so what's better than production data?
I'm not saying it is so, but it could very well be that the testers have loaded into it this years candidates, made up some likely result, and run the software to see that it works...
And apparently it did! ;)
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you prevent people from being forced to give up their SN to prove how they voted?
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're being rather optimistic. It doesn't actually solve the problem. There's a Google video proposing a well thought out verifiable system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s [youtube.com]
But that doesn't solve the real problem either!
If someone in power with resources wants to rig the election doing it electronically makes it easier. He could let you check your votes and they show up just fine (as per the video's system), but you have no proof that your vote played any part in the final results! Yes it's audited by some experts, but the someone could plausibly bribe/coerce/select those few auditors.
That's why a good paper based voting system is superior. When your own representatives and volunteers are there to observe and jointly count the votes one by one, sign off on the totals, check that the final total is the sum of the subtotals it gets pretty hard to tamper with the counts and results. The way you'd rig it is with postal votes, have fake/"supplementary" voters and gerrymandering (electronic systems don't solve these either). Swapping or replacing the ballot boxes might be possible but only likely in isolated areas with few witnesses (in which case the area might be "theirs" anyway).
And so a good paper based system is also more likely to satisfy one important requirement of elections - convincing enough of the losers that they lost.
A fancy blackbox system is not really convincing from a IT Security perspective.
Whereas when the losing candidate's counting/observing team has been telling them that they've been counting the paper votes one by one and the results aren't looking good, it's far more convincing.
Rigging such a paper based system would require more visibly obvious methods. Everyone can safely assume it's rigged if only one side does the counting and does it behind closed doors.
Re:Cryptographically signed elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd also add that there's the problem of being punished for not voting a certain way. It could be a McCarthy level scare where you voted for Politician X and he's just been branded "the enemy" as well as all of his supporters. Your vote being public could mean that you are swept up in the hysteria and jailed or ostracized by the public for voting the wrong way.
Or it could be that your employer really wants Politician Y elected. They've invested quite a lot and your vote for Politician X "troubles" them. Perhaps they don't even outright tell you to vote for Politician Y but "strongly suggest" you do so. Maybe they don't even try firing you for voting the "wrong way", but now you're on a hit list and the first excuse they have you're out the door.
There are just too many ways that public voting can be abused. Yes, our voting system is broken, but no, public voting won't fix it.