Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballot? 219
MIT recently identified the states "at the greatest risk of having their voting process hacked". but added this week that "Maintaining the secrecy of ballots returned via the Internet is 'technologically impossible'..." Long-time Slashdot reader Presto Vivace quotes their article:
That's according to a new report from Verified Voting, a group that advocates for transparency and accuracy in elections. A cornerstone of democracy, the secret ballot guards against voter coercion. But "because of current technical challenges and the unique challenge of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain the separation of voters' identities from their votes when Internet voting is used," concludes the report, which was written in collaboration with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the anticorruption advocacy group Common Cause.
32 states are already offering some form of online voting, apparently prompting the creation of Verified Voting's new site, SecretBallotAtRisk.org.
32 states are already offering some form of online voting, apparently prompting the creation of Verified Voting's new site, SecretBallotAtRisk.org.
A stupid idea made even worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting is one of the most stupid ideas that politicians have croaked up so far. And that means a lot, even after gerrymandering, lobbyism, and two-party-systems.
Electronic voting is basically outright stupid. You cannot control if your vote was really counted, or if it was counted for the correct party or candidate. Votes can be manipulated by inside jobs or hacking, and with a political voting result being a very profitable target, and the voting machines safety and security record far from being unblemished, voting fraud is a very interesting goal for many, not only political, parties.
The problem is that electronic voting cannot fulfill the legal and philosophical demands for a democratic voting. This is not a failure of the planners, programmers, or hardware developers, this is system inherent, as many aspects cannot be implemented correctly without invalidating other important aspects of the same.
Now there is this totally broken idea and they want make it available online, opening the doors to fraud and abuse even wider.
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You cannot control if your vote...was counted for the correct party or candidate
Oh, rest assured your vote would be counted for the "correct" party.
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As tech people we tend to focus on the serious technical issues with electronic voting (OPM hack anyone???) when there is a bigger and real world issue - undue influence. When you go to the voting booth no one knows how you really voted. But if there is electronic voting, your boss or your union can set up a bank of systems and "encourage" employees to vote with official watching what they do. Do you want you boss / union boss watching over your shoulder? The real pressure and peer pressure are not to b
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And an employee can surreptitiously video the vote corruption, and, if laws were set up effectively, get the company or union boss sent to jail for 10 years for tampering with a national/state election.
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They want it because it allows them to rig elections. Look at the current Republican effort to introduce voter registration everywhere, because they know that people who vote Democrat are more likely to be denied a vote when registration is required.
The technology isn't the issue, it's just another way to make it harder for the "wrong" people to vote.
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How do you confirm your vote was really counted or counted correctly in a paper system?
You volunteer as a poll worker.
Or, be part of an organization that supplies poll workers and monitors to protect their interests, which BTW is how it's done almost everywhere in the USA that has paper ballots.
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I've been a poll worker. It's not always effective.
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And you have no idea what happens at the polls. When no one acknowledges your complaint, when your written challenges are 'lost', when the lawyer you report to is refused access, you do what?
Oh yeah, before the internet you tell the local papers, the ones that also support the opposition...
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It can be done with a paper system. A rigged paper system is labor intensive and thus harder to handle. Usually large voter fraud in a paper system gets outed sooner or later. They're just now uncovering a lot of vote fraud from the 2008 election by going back and verifying signatures. People are getting charged and going to jail.
We already solved this problem (Score:2)
I thought the sectet ballot problem was the same thing as the "digital cash" problem or the "blind signature" problem, both of which are solved [google.com]. It basically involves storing a hash or digital signature of the vote along with the vote. That way no one who does not have a voter ID can vote, and the voter can verify their vote was cast, but no one can determine how they voted. This was solved around 2000, and often discussed on Slashdot at the time [slashdot.org].
How about this solution: snap elections (Score:2)
It would be known that the election will take place sometime this month.
But there would be a series of randomly timed, short 15 minute windows, announced via voting app notification, during which you can cast your vote with your smartphone or computer (requires fingerprint and face scan and secret knowledge to authenticate).
So you have to be being shadowed all the time, so that the vote coercer can be sure to catch you when the voting opportunity comes up.
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Along with this, it should also be possible to vote again in a subsequent random one of the voting time windows.
Only one of your submitted ballots counts.
It is your first-submitted ballot that counts.
The other voting sessions look real to any observer, but do nothing.
Well not really (Score:2)
I guess they haven't heard of smartcards and public key cryptography. Heck, this would even let voters check and verify the integrity of their past votes without anybody else being able to see them.
As if current voting systems (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As if current voting systems (Score:4, Insightful)
I show the person my registration card and some ID. They cross my name off a printed list of eligible voters and hand me my paper ballot. I then go behind a screen to make my selections, fold the ballot up, and then drop it into a box with all of the others. The system works in Canada and in many other places in the world.
Why do some people have to make it so difficult?
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Did you vote in the last Federal election? While every other Federal and Provincial election has been much as you described, last was different here.
Never did get voter registration cards, also no Elections Canada people with lists trying to make sure everyone is registered (could use the list to double check registration) as the government stopped Elections Canada encouraging people to register.
Checked online, both myself and wife came up as registered with the correct names. My wife mostly uses her maiden
Re: As if current voting systems (Score:3)
In my state (Oregon, vote by mail) I fill in a paper ballot, place it in a secrecy envelope and sign the outside of the envelope. Once they validate my signature by comparing it with the signature on my registration they remove the ballot from the secrecy envelope and put it in the pile of other validated ballots. At that point there is no way to tie a vote back to an individual.
I can also verify that my vote was accepted for counting by checking online with the Secretary of State's office. If there is a p
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I can also verify that my vote was accepted for counting by checking online with the Secretary of State's office. If there is a problem I may have a chance to fix it depending on timing. All in all I'm confident that my ballot is secret and that it is being counted.
All you really know is that your vote has been received. They may have thrown it straight into the trash though. That you're confident it is secret and being counted just shows you're of a trusting nature and optimistic.
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I wish people would stop using signatures for ID verification. I have arthritis, I can't reproduce my signature accurately over the long term. It was a real pain with credit cards until they moved to Chip & PIN. Signatures are also rather easy to forge.
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I want to reassure you that your identity is *ALMOST* certainly not tied to that number, if you vote in the U.S.
There, fixed that for you. You did not verify the code and hardware actually being used after all, right? (reminder: source code does no count for obvious reasons)
I gotta ask (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesn't anyone trot out Betteridge's Law of Headlines when questions like this come up?
What if we don't care? (Score:2)
Re:What if we don't care? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about people who live or work in areas in which voting for the wrong person could have consequences? Someone working at a coal mine who wants to vote Democrat? A person with an abusive spouse who doesn't want to vote they way they were told to? Just because you are comfortable telling people who you vote for not everyone else has such luxury.
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That was my instant thought. Amazon sets up warehouse voting areas where employees can vote under supervision "if they want to". Those that don't want to might not have jobs after the election. Every at-will state could work like this if the option to choose not to vote in secret existed.
I'm even in favor of getting rid of absentee voting for this reason. Lets have the polls open for 2-3 weeks, and offer rides a few of the days instead of mailing ballots back and forth. If you can't make it to an a
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I'm even in favor of getting rid of absentee voting for this reason. Lets have the polls open for 2-3 weeks, and offer rides a few of the days instead of mailing ballots back and forth. If you can't make it to an authorized polling place*, you don't get to vote.
You could start by having elections on a Sunday instead of having them on a day where almost no one has time to go and wait in line.
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It's not just protecting the results it's also about protecting your right to vote. If you can't vote for who you want to then you have lost your right.
Most elections don't work like the Brexit referendum so that isn't the best example. In the last federal election when many people wanted the Conservative Party out of power a group formed trying to get people to pledge not to vote for them and vote for the person most likely to beat the Conservative person running in their riding. This group (I forget th
Joseph Stalin once said (Score:3)
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Internet voting would basically remove the last remaining perception of legitimacy from any of this "democracy" farce that we have in this country. If government counts the votes, government will make sure the "right" candidate wins every time.
Secret online ballots with random code selection (Score:2)
One way to do a secret online ballot would be to have each voter attend a place of registration, where their identity is checked before they get to choose one unique voting card from among thousands. Each card contains online voting codes, which could be used for dozens of ballots.
The main problem with this is that it makes vote-selling easier than it is with physical poll attendance.
Remote secret ballots that prevent vote-selling may be impossible, because if you have to verify your identity remotely,
Is it such a bad thing? (Score:2)
At this point I feel like we would be better off making the vote completely transparent. The blind vote isn't helping anyone but the people who would want to rig elections, since there is no way to publicly vet the voting process
The subtleties can kill seemingly perfect voting. (Score:5, Insightful)
So in addition to all the wonderful possibilities for fraud and rigged elections, there is the simple disenfranchisement of entire groups.
Then we have bully voting. Quite simply an enforcer for some minor gang might show up at an apartment block and tell everyone that they vote in front of him and his men.
The above voting irregularities might not seem like much, except that so many elections are won by a percent or less. In the case of a local councillor or alderman a few hundred votes could easily flip the result of an election.
In a nation with a problem culture like one of the above. This could easily swing an election.
No (Score:2)
It's that simple. Just a No.
The moment there is even a possibility for a vote to be monitored and/or identified, you have a broken system.
The moment there is even a possibility for a vote to be tampered with, there is no vote.
Voting hinges on the anonymity of the caster, and the transparency and trust in the process. Electronic voting, either on machines or on the internet gives you neither.
It's been done, though (Score:2)
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The problem is that a person can claim their vote is hacked. Which means they can check if their vote was properly cast. Which means so can their boss/a mobster/abusive spouse/guy buying their vote.
That site says it avoids the issue, so obviously it's not possible to track their vote.
Stand up for what you believe in (Score:3)
I would give up anonymous voting if it meant I could trust my vote couldn't be manipulated in secret.
Though I do understand the implications of it as some countries in the past have used such systems to remove potential competition to their own party.
The way I see it, if they're going to cheat to win, may as well make it as difficult and time consuming as possible for them.
Vote on paper, in person, behind a curtain... (Score:3)
Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballo (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Computer based voting of any kind is a bad idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
ARE there any other questions?
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Once we go back to open ballots, fraud will drop, and online voting fraud will become irrelevant as well.
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Care to point me in the right direction?
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Really? Noone can figure out who you voted for and you can ensure your vote was counted properly? I thought it was one or the other. Care to point me in the right direction?
Most of the voting systems by David Chaum. I assume others' systems as well. All of these systems work by similar methods. One common trick is that if N numbers are XOR'ed together, then any number can only be revealed by again XOR'ing with the other N-1. So your vote can be XOR'ed with something that hides the actual vote, but the combination of the two can be checked from a list. There are other methods as well. I would explain it all, but I am not a cryptographer.
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There are other methods as well. I would explain it all, but I am not a cryptographer.
And that is the problem. To actually verify that these systems work as they claim you need PhD in cryptography which means 99.99% of the voters are left out in the cold. Plus having a working theory is one thing, letting voters make sure on election day that the implementation is not buggy and does not leak your votes to third-parties via a side-channel is another entirely [youtube.com].
Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballo (Score:4, Insightful)
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Laymen cannot audit this system, nor is the process of assuring anonymity and an accurate count transparent or comprehensible to laymen. That means they cannot trust this system... which is kind of an important aspect of a ballot.
In California I make inkspots on a piece of paper, then it is fed into a big machine. I get s sticker that says, "I voted!" Is that better?
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Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
Same goes for the power grid, and the Internet, and pharmaceuticals.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to trust the concept of trusting a reputation based web of trust. We can't personally understand MOST of the technology that supports our modern lives.
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Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
That's irrelevant. The interests of the people who build the cars are aligned with those of the people who use them, and if that proves not to be the case then there are liability laws that ensure that you can be compensated if your car is not built to spec. In contrast, the interests of small subsets of the population are typically not directly aligned with the rest when choosing a government.
In the UK, our elections run by putting a cross on a piece of paper, which then goes into a box. The boxes ar
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Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
If cars or airplanes of a specific make keep crashing laymen are going to know pretty quick and will buy from its competitors. Same thing for the power grid, and the Internet, and pharmaceuticals.
But if done well, laymen would not know that the election was stolen. And it's not like you can go to the competition. Not only has the government a monopoly on elections, you cannot even escape whatever decisions it takes (no moving abroad is a not an option for most people).
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I think that countries need to switch to an open ballot because of the conflicts between the secret ballot and hybrid direct/representative democratic systems and electronic voting (which thanks to advances in cryptography becomes more viable every day). However the only reason the US didn't have huge trouble with an open ballot was the decreased motive for vote buying, since all voters in that time were white males - and usually from the upper classes at that (during much of that period, the white males al
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s/oligopoly/oligarchy/g
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For the first 100 or so years, voting in the US was open ballot. The only reason it changed was because there was a civil war. Corruption and vote fraud was much less with an open ballot, and so long as you aren't in a situation with armed insurrection, is clearly superior to the secret ballot.
Chile also had open ballots and was not in a state of civil war or armed insurrection. Yet, as soon as they switched to secret ballots [harvard.edu] the election results changed significantly.
You're forgetting whole cultures and communities where women don't have equal rights (no matter what the law says), and employers who have the will and the means to try and nudge the balance.
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Use a gift card and mail to a PO box service that is engaged under a pseudonym and paid for in cash. Gift cards can be purchased at most grocery outlets, again for cash and anonymously. If you are REALLY paranoid use a VM'd OS that you subsequently wipe on your local library Wi-Fi, or at McDonald's or even Starbucks. For the extreme tinfoil helmet, you can buy for cash a very cheap used laptop that you can dispose of AFTER the transaction, preferably in pieces in several different trash bins behind local gr
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Use a gift card and mail to a PO box service that is engaged under a pseudonym and paid for in cash.
Of course the whole "Internet voting equals Internet buying" analogy is fatally flawed. That's because the store does not care who you are as long as you pay so it's willing to accept a gift card you bought anonymously. In contrast the government wants to restrict voting rights to its constituency so it will never let you vote without first providing some form of identification.
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You still need to give an address.... how hard is it to track down the purchaser if you have a physical address?
P.O. Box? Just find out who owns it or stake out the location and wait for the pick up.
Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ball (Score:5, Informative)
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Amen.
PS: an improperly fitted lock could let the bomber into the building, and *boom*.
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I don't want my vote to be anonymous. The fraud at the ballot box is out of hand in the US, similar to that of many "third world" countries. With the new digital age the opportunities for fraud have been magnified to an incredible degree with the ability to change or eliminate thousands of votes electronically. I think if you want an anonymous vote you should be able to vote on paper and if not then a verifiable digital vote. Leave the option to the voter. I'll vote online only if it's not anonymous.
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I think if you want an anonymous vote you should be able to vote on paper and if not then a verifiable digital vote. Leave the option to the voter.
Leaving the option to the voter is the same as leaving it to vote buyers and coercers.
One thing, no fucking chads.
Like Internet voting is the only solution to hanging chads. Guess what, in France we use paper and never had and never will get hanging chads!
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And so Estonia's solution where people can vote online but override their vote on election day by casting a vote in person isn't a solution why? And that's just one of many possible technical solutions.
And the current practice of mail voting doesn't already eliminate ballot secrecy why?
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Voting is meant to be anonymous.
Yeah, but is it really anonymous? Most states require a government issued ID in order to vote. The second that ID comes out into open air, you have to assume that all of the information on it has been given up.
At best, I would say that our current process is semi-anonymous. Given enough effort, your vote can be deduced.
I am personally all for online voting. The reason is just this: The more people that are able to vote, the more democratic the system.
I think that REASONABLE anonymity can be achieved through
Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballo (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah. Koreans working for a few bucks internet cafes...
You think you can prevent that? With current technology?
All you really have to do is register 500,000 votes in a district with 60,000 registered voters. Invalidate the election. Hilarity ensues.
Re:"Technologically impossible?" (Score:5, Insightful)
"we'll probably figure out how create a system that uses authenticated electronic ledgers to prevent fraudulent tampering (blockchains, etc) while still preserving anonymity."
We'll probably not.
Authentication means "undoubfully identifying something's author (or owner)". Anonymity means "impossibility to identify something's author (or owner)".
See the problem?
I'm with you about distrusting "any blanket assertion", but in this case is an obvious logical impossibility, not even physical impossibility (i.e.: a perpetual motion device)
Now, remember this whenever somebody comes to sell you a "trustable e-voting system": it's even less credible than a guy trying to sell you a perpetual motion device.
Re:"Technologically impossible?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because it's not possible to bug a voting booth with a hidden micro-camera. Uh huh.
Let me give you this alternative to the ballot booth. Allow people a period of one month to cast their e-ballot.
Someone wishing to peer over that person's shoulder then has to follow them around everywhere they go, or imprison them, for the month.
In the cases where that is happening (for example, extreme marital abuse, modern slavery etc) the subject person has a lot bigger problems than whether they got to vote or not, and i
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Bugging or putting a camera on a voting booth would be a monumentally difficult, risky, and possibly ineffective way to coerce a vote.
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"we'll probably figure out how create a system that uses authenticated electronic ledgers to prevent fraudulent tampering (blockchains, etc) while still preserving anonymity."
We'll probably not.
This is not impossible. In fact it is a solved problem. Blind Signatures [wikipedia.org] can be used to do this. I actually designed and mostly implemented such a system: Source and docs here [github.com]. I also was not the first to do this (David Chaum deserves far more credit than I do: his contributions to cryptography have enabled so many amazing things including my little experiment) .
That system lets everyone vote exactly once, maintains secret ballot, and gives voters the tools to confirm their vote was counted, and if not they
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Authentication then anonymity (Score:2)
What you're missing, I believe, is that the authentication is required at a certain time, and the anonymity is required at a different, later time. Thus the two can be achieved with a clever enough crypto protocol. The intervening time (casting the ballot: that is, marking the answers, and the transformation of the authenticated right to author those ballot answers into the anonymized record of the ballot answers) can be managed using a secure session.
You are missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You are completely missing the point. All the cryptography and the blockchains and the secure protocols in the world can not detect if someone is standing behind the computer with a wad of cash (vote buying) or brass knuckles (coercion) and checking that you are voting right.
One of the core features of the secret ballot is the voting booth, where the voter is alone to do the final choice, with official oversight.
Of course, the privacy of the voting booth is not perfect, it is weakened by all sorts of features, from absentee voting to tolerating children in the booth with their parent. But it is still the norm for most voters and is way more solid than a situation where the norm would be to vote from home.
Re:You are missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You are completely missing the point. All the cryptography and the blockchains and the secure protocols in the world can not detect if someone is standing behind the computer with a wad of cash (vote buying) or brass knuckles (coercion) and checking that you are voting right.
Indeed. Internet voting is in reality giving spousal abusers a double vote.
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Indeed. I should have been more explicit in my message: the wad of cash and the brass knuckles were colorful examples, but the real threat comes from peer pressure within the family, even more so because it is most often implicit.
(There is a scene in an Astérix comic book: the village must vote between its current (male) chief and a woman; the Druid explains the secret ballot procedure, the woman candidate proposes a show of hand, and then a show of hand to decide if the actual vote will be by a show o
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For those who think the "voter ID" requirements are prejudiced against poor people, just make state non-driving license IDs free.
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Are you paying attention? 'Voter ID' laws are being challenged constantly by one party, implemented and defended by another. That's not on the table.
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How about instead we just have voting booth machines available at every Town Hall/Police Station, go in, put in your information (or scan your driver's license for it to be quicker) it uses facial recognition like the new automated passport machines, and leave it open for an entire month. So anyone can go vote the 30 days up to the election and the results are tallied that night.
Either these voting booth machines are entirely automated, which seems to be implied, and then it means the machine has both your vote and your id, meaning it violates the anonymity requirement; or you need to have not one but multiple clerks and party representatives manning the booth to ensure no one person can rig things, for a whole month which is going to be very expensive.
Either way the voting machine will need to be guarded day and night to ensure no one tampers with it, again by multiple individua
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So just use bank ATMs that are located in already secured bank lobbies. Use law enforcement personnel or security guards to monitor the ATM's during business hours (I already see LEOs in bank lobbies as it is). Use card access doors (valid ID or bank card will open) and surveillance video after hours.
Yes, this de-annonymizes your vote.
I get that this can be a problem. But I don't think it is unsurmountable. I am sure we can get there if we really tried.
I think it is a worthy goal to allow everyone a say.
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Unattended voting booths have two major problems, fraud and failure.
Attended voting booths do nothing to stop fraud. Democrats have blocked every law that requires a person have some form of identification at the polling place. They also point out the the level of fraud detected is very low. Ever stop to wonder why they don't want a process which would detect fraud?
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Attended voting booths do nothing to stop fraud. Democrats have blocked every law that requires a person have some form of identification at the polling place.
Not at all, they've challenged laws that were deliberately and purposefully engineered to restrict the electorate and cause harm to many voters.
This doesn't stop every law, just those that are poorly conceived.
They also point out the the level of fraud detected is very low. Ever stop to wonder why they don't want a process which would detect fraud?
Have you ever stopped to wonder why Republicans are so insistent that there is fraud, yet never bother to invalidate their own elections?
I mean really, they're the ones who are claiming that we can't trust the election system, yet they're in office, so thus why are we trusting them to decide the laws
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Yeah, it used to be that I could go in to any DMV location on Saturday.
Now, I have to take time off of work if I need to do anything that requires the DMV since almost all locations are closed on Saturday now.
Also, the hours are exactly the 9-5 business hours that I also happen to work myself.
If it is about money, why not close the DMV for a few hours in the morning and/or afternoon every day and stay open later? Or how about closing the DMV on Wednesdays in favor of keeping it open Saturday?
Wouldn't the po
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Or for someone who works a job where they cannot really get time off.
All the DMVs in my area stopped servicing people on the weekend and cut their hours to less than banker's hours.
precisely - it's the diffuse one person booth (Score:3, Interesting)
The modern system using one person voting booths distributed around with the ability to have outside supervision that people are really voting by themselves works quite well.
Likewise, marking a paper ballot and using electronic counting gets "auditability of results" and "rapid tally" - a recount is possible if there are questions, but the tallies can be electronically (and vulnerably) done quickly.
The remaining flaw is "access by disabled persons" - if you're blind, it's tough to mark a ballot with a pen -
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There's a simple solution for that: You can vote as many times as you want, but only your most recent vote counts.
Vote buyers would insist on the votes being cast just before the polls close, though that does create a manpower bottleneck if you want to buy lots of votes, unless they keep a watch on all their sellers via video link.
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A solution would be to allow multiple votes, that all appear to go through, but to allow a vote to be sent as unalterable.
You still have the problem of most people not being good liars.
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You underestimate the dark side.
Re: You are missing the point (Score:2)
Beat voters. Intimidate them. Threaten them and their families, their jobs, their friends.
The dark side often wears long black coats. The photos of them in 2008 failed to elicit much outrage. You've seen photos.
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People have a hard time voting once, allegedly, which is why open voting was proposed. Not fixing anything.
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Re: Assembling people (Score:2)
So first we have to achieve effective freedom from systematic oppression, then we can have Internet voting.
The first one sounds like a pretty good goal anyway. And I think we're a long way along that road in liberal democracies.
What are we, some kind of tin-pot dictatorship with goons running around corralling people? I haven't seen that in my town for a while.
This whole "you will be co-erced into voting on command" thing strikes me as treating the adult population as if we were all helpless children.
I don'
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You're not well-acquainted with human history, are you? The reason that voting is setup this way is precisely because all those things you poo-poo as not being realistic actually happened. Not in the hyperbolic forms you state, but in effect. Vote buying. Intimidation. These are real problems, and you don't realize it because you've only ever voted while the solutions have been in place.
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The only way you can prevent fraud is allow people to check what they voted for is what they voted for. If you write down your vote on a piece of paper you know what you have written doesn't get changed behind your back, you can't do that with electronic voting.
If you allow people to check then you can always force them to check who they voted for in front of you. Maybe you have multiple passwords, each resulting in a different checked result, only the person knows which one is correct. However in this scen
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"If a vote is represented by a crytocurrency wallet balance"
Then you can always use a 2$ wrench to gain access to the wallet's content by brute force on the owner.
"and votes are randomly distributed to voters via paper wallets"
Which -so I hope, are destroyed after the owner deposits his or her ballot, then it is not an electronic voting system.
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If a vote is represented by a cryptocurrency wallet balance, and votes are randomly distributed to voters via paper wallets(no visible unique markings on the outside of the wallets to independently distinguish them from any other), so long as deposit of wallets can be done anonymously(Tor etc.) then this is a highly secure auditable method of electronic voting.
So auditable that a) the state will know exactly how you voted and can send the secret police should you have voted incorrectly, and b) it can even save you the trouble of voting since it knows your wallet id.
Please remember that the whole point of elections is to peacefully overthrow the government in power.
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The Electoral College serves a specific purpose. If your intent is to stop serving that purpose, be specific, or at least honest.
But do you know the purpose?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Open ballots are inherently fraudulent. They exist for the sole purpose of empowering the ruling party to direct violent retaliation against those who voted against them at their whim.
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Sure, they don't work in places with armed insurrection, but in more stable countries, they work much much better. Or are you asserting that the USA isn't a stable country?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Pah (Score:2)
Welcome to the Borg. You will be assimilated.
Re: (Score:3)
"incorrect votes".
That's almost funny. And pathetic.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't win you don't play. Voting may not change things, but not voting assures you of that result.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't use dollars? Ok.