The Computer Scientist Who Prefers Voting With Paper (theatlantic.com) 219
Geoffrey.landis writes: The Atlantic profiles a computer scientist: Barbara Simons, who has been on the forefront of the pushback against electronic voting as a technology susceptible to fraud and hacking. When she first started writing articles about the dangers of electronic voting with no paper trail, the idea that software could be manipulated to rig elections was considered a fringe preoccupation; but Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election have reversed Simons's fortunes. According to the Department of Homeland Security, those efforts included attempts to meddle with the electoral process in 21 states; while a series of highly publicized hacks -- at Sony, Equifax, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management -- has driven home the reality that very few computerized systems are truly secure. Simons is a former President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); and the group she helps run, Verified Voting, has been active in educating the public about the dangers of unverified voting since 2003.
This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:4, Insightful)
Simons is one of the most prominent such, but definitely not the only one. This has been a vocal point being made by computer scientists and other security experts since at least the late 2000s.
Why on earth is this modded at 1? The ease with which computerized voting systems can be compromised has been shown over and over again, that I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the access was planned.
Paper is not perfect, but at least it makes it a little harder to compromise.
Re: This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of instances of tampering with paper ballots. Can you provide a single instance of an electronic voting machine actually being tampered with during an election?
You've summarized the problem. Electronic voting allows for undetectable manipulation.
Re:This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:4, Informative)
Paper ballots are used here in Taiwan, and they are counted, by hand, in public view immediately after polls close. Results are usually complete within a few hours. Ironically, this system was instituted under the KMT single-party regime to facilitate vote buying.
The voting is done by putting a stamp in a square on the paper, rather than filling in a circle with a pen (or punching a hole, etc.). So, by stamping the ballot in a particular way -- say, in the upper left corner, slanted to the left -- you'd indicate to the vote buyer that you'd fulfilled your end of the bargain. Vote buying is now pretty much a thing of the past, but the legacy of this highly open and public system has served the country well in its transition to one of the more thriving democracies in the region.
But this is not unique to Taiwan, lots of countries use paper ballots. The USA is really "backward" in this regard.
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In the USA, the problem with hand counted paper ballots is that, on election day, we frequently have about 20-30 different positions and referenda to vote on.
Where I vote, they have paper ballots, but they are machine counted. There is a record that can be checked for accuracy.
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Perhaps that should be changed. Here in Canada, we have a Federal system with a country made up of sovereign Provinces (and non-sovereign territories). We have an election for the Federal government and we have a different election for our respective Provincial government, each Province being in charge of their elections. Then municipal elections happen on a different day.
When I vote federally, I pick one name from a short list of usually 6-12 names. Likewise when I vote provincially. Municipal are more com
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Voting should not only be accurate, but that accuracy needs to be verifiable by laymen, and they should be able to understand the end-of-end process to tally and verify the count. Voting by computer violates that principle on a fundamental level.
As long as there's some form of paper record which can be verified later, it doesn't actually matter if a person can understand the process by which the vote is tallied. You should always do a certain percentage of randomly-selected verification to check that your method is working, no matter what it is — even if it is paper ballots. And as long as the piece of paper is allocated and/or designed such that it can't be used for vote buying, it doesn't cause new problems. Just let the voter see the paper
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To some extent. The problem is that a lot depends on how and where you keep your paper records. The more they are moved, aggregated and the longer they are stored, the more opportunity there is to tamper with them, and on a larger scale.
Paper records should never be moved or aggregated. Preferably, each polling station would have an individual safe where they are placed until the next election. The main advantages of paper ballots is the decentralization,the accountability and the ability to do a recount. You lose all that if they are aggregated. The polling stations should send their totals to the county where they become public record and those totals are sent to the state and then to the federal where again the aggregate totals are
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Around here, the polling places are usually school gyms or churches. Don't know if it would be practical to store the ballots permanently there. Of course our elections are simple enough that the common man can hang out all day and witness the voting and counting if they choose.
The weakness is the absentee votes, which should be stored like you say, at least until the final count is done. Last election here (BC), it took 6 weeks to finalize that it was basically a tie, 43-41-3 and weeks more for the legisla
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Around here, the polling places are usually school gyms or churches. Don't know if it would be practical to store the ballots permanently there.
With paper ballots there would be a lot less to store than all the machines that are currently stored. It would be easy enough to supply a safe to each school/church but most churches and schools likely already have a safe so putting the ballots in a tamper proof box in a third party safe would likely be even better as then the ability to get access to all the different safes would be even more difficult. I also would have no problem with the ballots being put in individual safety deposit boxes or even se
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Never really thought about the logistics of storing all those machines. Another negative with voting machines.
Is there really any reason to keep the ballots after the election results have been certified? Generally the first count is enough to result in a clear winner with a few disputes that don't really affect the overall result.
When it does matter, such as our last Provincial election, most of the ridings (districts) had a clear winner, the close ones went through automatic recounts including digging out
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Never really thought about the logistics of storing all those machines. Another negative with voting machines.
And unfortunately many of them are stored in highly unsecure locations.
Is there really any reason to keep the ballots after the election results have been certified? 6 weeks and it was all over, which was longer then usual but once over, why keep the ballots?
The main reason to keep them for at least a couple years is if questions come up about the legitimacy of the election. 6 weeks is before the new guy is even in office. Once the ballots are destroyed, it would be much easier for a bad actor to change the totals. With an election, you have to always assume the worst which is that the people doing the certifiying and/or making the voting machines are potential bad actors.
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The way it works in Australia is that each time the papers are not being actively used (e.g. counted), they are sealed and the seal numbers are recorded. Then when they are opened again, the seals are checked.
The system is so strict that if there is any significant discrepancy, a fresh election is called [wikipedia.org].
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You can have central storage with boxes labeled by the precinct they came from. Since they've been pre-counted by machine, any serious attempt to change the vote later will raise suspicion.
This doesn't necessarily apply to really close elections, like Franken-Coleman in Minnesota 2008, but if the vote's that close it doesn't really matter for fairness which candidate is eventually selected.
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Yup, it's a bullshit title. Non-technologists seem to expect technologists to want to see high-tech solutions to everything, but serious technologists know that isn't always wise.
Bruce Schneier has [schneier.com] been saying [schneier.com] for over a decade that US elections shouldn't be made fully electronic.
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My State votes on paper in human-readable form and then uses computers to tabulate it. It works really well, you can have people from both parties standing there watching the ballots feed in and watching the counters go up! And you can re-count by hand. Best of both worlds.
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The best solution has always been mark-sense ballots done with _permanent_ ink. That way, the ballots are both hand-count and machine-count readable and we don't have the nasty "hanging chad" issue that plagued punched paper ballots.
Re: This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Insightful)
It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election.
It's hard to rig an election with a single box of fake ballots. It's also hard to bring in thousands of boxes without anybody noticing.
Re: This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Informative)
It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election.
It's hard to rig an election with a single box of fake ballots. It's also hard to bring in thousands of boxes without anybody noticing.
In addition, cryptographic security researchers have constructed a cost-effective, scalable, paper ballot system [usenix.org] which makes this sort of fraud (and others) detectable.
Paper, backstopped with math, is unquestionably the most fraud-resistant way to conduct elections. Pure electronic voting systems are perhaps the best way to enable fraud.
There is a valid argument for the use of electronic voting machines for accessibility. Large touch screens are easier to use, especially for people with disabilities, but they should merely be an interface to collect information for printing on a human-readable paper ballot.
I'm both a computer scientist and a computer security expert. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who understands computer security who would honestly support direct recording electronic voting.
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Per your statement on paper backed with math - blockchain actually becomes somewhat interesting in this, as voting is essentially one of the largest one time ledgers you could create and validate.
You should read the paper I linked.
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Use the computer count as the first estimate. Count the paper ballots manually.
You should read the paper I linked. With the Scantegrity system there's neither need for nor value in manual counts. Nothing precludes them, but other mechanisms make them unnecessary.
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The neat thing about manual vote-counting is that people know what it is and trust it. If we have human counters supervised by representatives from all concerned parties, we have guaranteed reliability. We don't have that while running paper ballots through a machine.
Usually it's enough to spot-check the machines, selecting maybe 1% or 0.1% of precincts randomly after the election and comparing the manual count to the machine count.
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It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election.
It's hard to rig an election with a single box of fake ballots. It's also hard to bring in thousands of boxes without anybody noticing.
Imagine a fake box was introduced. It could succeed because of low voter turnout. Typical US voter turnouot is so low that the box with fake ballets would not raise suspicion. The sum of the votes, including the fake ones will be less than the total of eligible voters for that polling location.
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Boxes are labeled with the precinct identifier in my state. A box of ballots would either have no precinct on it, which means it's phony, or a duplicate precinct on it, which means something bad's going wrong.
Re: This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Informative)
Yes paper can be destroyed, replaced, and added to, impacting the outcome. But the impact will be at most ONE small district. And you would need to do this at multiple voting centers. There are 435 districts in the US. Great path if you want to rig your very local election.
But going to major cities or state levels... the amount of money you would need to spend to significantly impact such elections would be a waste of funds and a high risk for capture through multiple attempts. It would be far more cost effective to spend that on ads to sway public opinion or a candidate directly.
At the federal level... easier to buy out the Electorial College. That may seem difficult but nothing compared to what you propose.
With electronics, you have a centralized, standardized, single target. But this target would have multiple stages to attack, any of which can yield control of the entire system.
It is possible to create a good enough electronic voting system but we just don't have anyone nearly competent enough to do so. Our current system of hundreds of thousands of cogs watching each other is more than good enough at the moment.
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It is possible to create a good enough electronic voting system but we just don't have anyone nearly competent enough to do so.
We have to assume the worst, i.e. that the people in power to guarantee honesty and competence are the same people who don't want an honest election.
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In which case we don't have fair elections no matter what we do. If there's nobody willing and able to act on complaints of dishonesty, anything goes.
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Re: This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Informative)
Paper ballots can easily be destroyed, damaged, or faked. It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election. It's a shame that people like you who should know better are proposing to make it easier for criminals and foreign powers to rig elections. We would be far better off using blockchains to store votes and using that to ensure security. It's unfortunate that you and so many others are standing in the way of progress and better security.
Looks like we have prefect doing it's job as the enemy of good.
Besides, there is a world of difference between the effort it would take to coordinate a nationwide paper ballot hack. You would have to have a whole lot of people with physical access to the ballots, and a well coordinated ability to do the dirty work without detection, versus a few people sitting in a nice office somewhere altering the results.
Your blockchain idea is another example of how the next solution will be the secure one. Then the next one after that, then the one after that.
Nope, there is no way that we should allow voting to be yet another casualty of the Internet of Things debacle.
Re:This is the attitude of many security experts (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I think almost anyone with the slightest knowledge of embedded software and security practices would prefer paper over electronic. If working in this industry has taught me anything it's that security is based mostly on hoping that no one will ever have access to your hardware for long enough to find flaws in it. Sure, there is some layer of security usually, but developing those properly is hard, and usually someone somewhere punches a hole in it so they can do practical things, like program the device with an initial firmware, or debug it. Then we haven't even discussed all the flaws that just sneak in as coding errors.
You need to add human nature to the mix. Think of money. Think of gerrymandering. Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their side wins, including making it difficult for the other side to win.
A very hypothetical but plausible situation:
Joe Blow voting machines incorporated has a bit of an inclination toward one party or another. Well, one party or another would like to make certain that their party wins. So maybe 20 million dollars changes hands and is stored in some offshore bank.
JBVM simply adds backdoors that will slightly alter the results, weighted in favor of the group that gave him the money. I think it was Carnegie-Mellon U who originally came up with a hard to detect vote alteration method during one of their hacks of voting machines.
The ease with which electronic machines can be hacked makes it hard to believe that it hasn't occurred already.
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It's naive to believe that it hasn't occurred already. But it's not a defect. It's by design. The defect is in the peoples' consent to their use. If nobody rises up, don't expect things to get any better.
I suspect there is a bit of an uprising going on at the moment.
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No electronic system that you do not control everything, end to end, can be provably secure. I'm talking the level of control to know exactly what is inside that silicon, and that there is no direct or indirect way to meddle. You also need provable security on the software. Military systems can now cost much more than consumer systems to even attempt that level of traceability.
Yes, that's the first part, you need to control everything to prove it secure but there is a second part as well. You also need to have someone you can trust doing the controlling. For the most part, in the military, everyone is on the same side. In an election, by definition, there are two competing sides. So you need an uncorruptible neutral third party who has control of everything. Even if you find this mythical beast, you now have a single point of failure and a single attack vector. Every power
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You don't need incorruptible neutral parties. You need people who are willing to do the job while being watched by observers from the parties. If a counter tries to cheat in favor of the Democrats, the Republican observer shuts it down, and vice versa.
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Vary the order of candidates and choices in paper ballot
But thats your vulnerability. The top candidate gets the most votes so if you bias the order on the ballot, you bias the outcome.
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Yes but if you use a random number generator for that you are vulnerable to a tweaked algorithm, as is the case with crypto algorithms.
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You left out the possibility of manipulating the voting rolls by various means, so the "right" people have a significant advantage over the "wrong" people. I've read of absentee ballots facing different degrees of rigor depending on the candidate, removing voters from the rolls without sound reason, making it easy for the "right" precincts to vote compared to the "wro
"The"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't it be "the overwhelming majority of computer scientists who've even casually looked at voting security" in favor of paper ballots over the current implementation of computerized voting? Hasn't this been the case for well over a decade?
Ryan Fenton
Re:"The"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't it be "the overwhelming majority of computer scientists who've even casually looked at voting security" in favor of paper ballots over the current implementation of computerized voting? Hasn't this been the case for well over a decade?
Unfortunately, the flipped statement is also true. The overwhelming majority of people opposing the current implementation of computerized voting are computer scientists who have even casually looked at voting security. This makes for a fairly small group, and they deserve the assistance of those of us not qualified in CS but who think they're almost certainly right.
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Unfortunately, the flipped statement is also true. The overwhelming majority of people opposing the current implementation of computerized voting are computer scientists who have even casually looked at voting security. This makes for a fairly small group, and they deserve the assistance of those of us not qualified in CS but who think they're almost certainly right.
There are scientists out there who can have their opinion bought.
So if I read you correctly, you are saying that a system that requires private physical access to a huge number of ballot boxes is less secure than a system that is the equivalent security wise, of Internet of Things security cams?
I'd be pretty reluctant to hire a security expert or computer scientist that believes such a thing. Then again, there are people who belive we never wnet to the moon.
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I think you have completely misunderstood me.
What I was saying is that while computer science and security experts understand the danger, they are just about the only group that does. They need help getting the word out, because the public writes them off as alarmists even in the face of clear evidence that they are right.
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When I get into discussions, I also raise the ability of most people to clearly understand that the process is fair. In a democracy, it's at least as necessary to assure the voting public that they weren't cheated as to select a winner.
USE PAPER!!! (Score:2)
THIS ARTICLE IS POSTED AS THOUGH THIS WOULD SURPRISE US
We are well versed in these disciplines, none of this surprises us.
Sure, there are always kids around this site, many of whom probably think we can do this securely with blockchain or some other shit.
THOSE KIDS WILL GROW UP, GAIN EXPERIENCE, AND COME TO THE SAME REALISATION AS THE ADULTS
USE PAPER
Re:USE PAPER!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually... hybrid is best. Vote with paper, scan and tally with computers. If there is any doubt, you have the original paper watched over by election officials to verify.
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CORRECT: USE PAPER
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Or vote with computers, but produce paper (and show the voter the printout behind glass for verification) as a backup. Whatever method you use, it's critical to produce a paper ballot which is either created or verified by the voter. With that, at least you can go back and look for fraud.
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>Or vote with computers, but produce paper
I disagree. If the computer is handling the voting, it's easier to corrupt the process, and an equipment malfunction means the poll is closed.
Paper and pencils - vulnerable to fire and theft, but not much else. (And yes, pencils, because they don't dry up in storage, their marks don't run if the ballot gets wet, and you can still see traces of the old mark if someone tries to erase and replace it)
Vote Safer. Vote on Paper. Vote Absentee! (Score:3)
My state still uses the old Diebold DRE machines that CAN NOT be audited. I was on the evaluation group when they were chosen after the 2000 election and was a lone voice pointing out their lack of security and impossibility of being audited or having a valid recount.
Canadian paper ballots are amazing (Score:5, Informative)
The ballots we use up here (and the system we use to count and track them) are amazing.
The voter goes to a table where the ballots are handed out by elections officials. The ballot has the candidate's names in alphabetical order and a removable counterfoil that has a serial number that matches against the book that the ballot was torn from. The official puts their initials on the ballot and hands it to the voter. The voter goes behind the screen and marks the ballot and folds it. The counterfoil and initials are still visible.
The voter hands the ballot back to the offical who checks both the signature and the serial number on the counterfoil (this ensures the voter has returned the ballot they got). The counterfoil is then removed and now the ballot is completely anonymous. The voter then gets the ballot back and she places it in the ballot box in front of the official.
When it comes time to count the votes, the elections officials count all of the ballots in the presence of other non-partisan officials as well as the candidates themselves or their representatives -- a vote isn't recorded until everyone has seen and verified the ballot. Once everything is counted and verified (does the number of ballots counted match the number given out and returned by voters, etc) the tally is made on paper and the ballots themselves are sealed up and passed up the chain. They are kept for 7 days in case a recount is needed.
The great thing about this system is that it scales to any population size since the ballots are counted right there at the polling station, box by box and verified on the spot.
It's certainly not perfect and there are some opportunities for tampering but nothing even in the same universe as the kind of wide-spread hacking that can occur with electronic systems.
more detail:
http://www.elections.ca/conten... [elections.ca]
http://www.elections.ca/conten... [elections.ca]
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Since I post too much and never get any mod points, all I can give you is a virtual +1 Informative.
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What it doesn't scale to is US-style ballots with at least two dozen races or questions on a given ballot. Counting those by hand at the polling place is going to be difficult at best.
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Honestly, I'm not sure. I suspect you're right that it's a bit of overkill.. but as you say.. an extra layer of security that is simple to implement can't hurt.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been complaining for many years, ever since my State ditched the simple and effective "punch cards" and went to horrible touch-screen computer voting. It removed every trace of auditing capability and introduced a system that not only could be horribly abused or hacked, but also made it easy to track the identity of who voted- clearly violating the principles of confidentiality of voting.
Finally, this November, my State switched to paper ballots. The voter is registered as usual, then given a generic paper ballot, and just marks on the paper what they want, and the voter inserts it into a machine that reads it and stores the sheet of paper securely. Cheap, simple, easy-to-use, 100% verifiable, and anonymous. I only hope that every State follows such an example.
The next challenge is to get ranked/IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). Then things can really start to change for the positive.
http://fairvote.org/ [fairvote.org]
Hybrid required. (Score:4, Insightful)
People seem to praise paper ballots like they are flawless but they forget that ballot box stuffing and corrupt vote counters existed before we invented the computer.
What we need is a hybrid system of human readable votes and computerized automation. While generally hyped as a technology a information for a blockchain could be stored both on the paper ballot and voting machine memory to ensure no votes had been inserted, erased or altered. Using this methodology with a series of isolated single microcontroller systems not just air-gapped but lacking the basic hardware needed for network communication would combined with signed binaries and radiation-hardened software (yes, that's a thing) would radically improve security.
We have the technology to fix this problem and remove all single points of failure but have yet to do it.
An interesting series of events, maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Do I have this right? We have "progressive" organizations (called such in the article) that fought hard for electronic voting machines. Trump gets elected. Now they want paper.
There's been suspicions among "right wing" groups that these "progressives" have been using absentee voting and electronic voting machines to make vote fraud easier. The progressive candidates get their head handed to them on a platter in an election a year ago and NOW they think electronic voting is a bad idea?
There's a part of m
"The" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called computer science, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really "information theory and practice". If people whose first idea usually is to use a computer tell you not to use a computer for an information gathering and processing job, you should take heed. You know they have tried everything to make it work with their favorite tool, but they still ended up recommending against it.
It's become pretty obvious (Score:2)
Basically if you'
The title of this irks me. (Score:3)
The editors seem to think a computer scientist would be expected to think digital only voting is a good idea.
Do you know anyone with expertise in computer science or engineering who thinks paperless voting is a good idea? I mean excluding people who work for companies that make the machines? Can you name even a single respected independent computer security expert who favors the damn things?
The overwhelming consensus among people who know anything is that paperless voting is a terrible idea.
*Everyone* with 2+ braincells prefers that. (Score:2)
Errrm, and your point being?
Everyone with 2+ braincells to rub together prefers voting with paper. Every computer expert on the entire planet says computer driven voting is generally a notably stupid idea. It's only dimwits and people who want power and have a solid interest in controlling elections that want computers as a middle man for votes.
This is news from more than 2 decades ago.
Anyone with any knowledge of computers wants a pap (Score:4, Insightful)
Electronically generated paper ballots could work (Score:2)
Not too difficult. Whatever the UI is, let the ballot be generated, and then a paper receipt printed for me to compare with the on-screen tally. If I approve, I click 'Accept' and take my receipt to the counters, where it is scanned and returned to me.
Later I can go to the web site and validate that my vote was counted as expected, either with the scancode or GUID.
Counting is immediate, accuracy is within my hands, and I can even self-select to be part of a QA process that audits the blockchain and confirms
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Then exchange the readable receipt/ballot for a QR code based receipt. Losing the chain. Potentially failed. And if you give in the QR code, you have to keep the PIN with it, and I'm just smart enough to figure out that faking a PIN is no risk to me if the collector has dozens, and can't keep track of the owner.
But even this fails, since such an effort would be hard to disguise, even in Philadelphia.
True, pay for vote or pure extortion is a risk, but this is already a risk.And already being practiced. Perha
Re: I am a computer scientist... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the requirements for a proper voting system is that ordinary people can understand it and oversee its correct implementation, so that they don't need to take someone else's word for it. Computers are basically out by definition.
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Computers have bugs, both software and hardware. They also may have backdoors installed by the company building these machines. By using these devices, you're handing over control over important events to a few people, the exact opposite of a democracy.
Votes should be and anonymous, hidden from everyone, including computers. Even if the machines don't tamper with the votes, there is a high possibility that they can make voting non-anonymous.
Paper voting is simple, transparent, anonymous, and hard to tamper
Re: I am a computer scientist... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a computer scientist, and I can confirm you are full of shit. Electronic voting only works in theory (and not even in a more complete theory that takes into accounts all actors involved in implementation & usage of such systems). In practice, you should only use technology to count physical ballots efficiently.
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Please define "secure". The anonymity of voting goes against normal computer security, where A to B and B to A are always traceable.
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There's been a lot of work in non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs recently that can help with the anonymity issue.It's nowhere near ready for prime-time in an election, but good enough for a second-tier cryptocurrency.
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You're proposing something that I'd have to spend a little time on just to understand, and I'd have to carefully consider the implementation, and I do know something about software and proofs. The average person won't understand. There is a tremendous advantage in having a system that's obviously fair, rather than one with no obvious unfairness.
Re:Paper has no advantage over digital records (Score:5, Informative)
Whatever actions you perform on the paper votes to optimise the security of the system can be done on digital records too.
A layman could inspect a polling station, and witness the paper ballot counting to confirm everything is done accurately. The same layman cannot inspect an electronic voting machine and confirm it has counted all the proper votes.
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And what if that layman wants to unfairly affect the results?
The layman is only allowed to watch, not touch.
At the end you have to trust in something/someone
No, because you can go to the polling station yourself, and be that layman.
a properly designed electronic system can perform lots of checks, backups, logs, perfectly-understood-by-laymen reports, etc.
How can you tell it's actually properly designed ? You have to assume the worst, namely that it was purposely designed to rig the election, and fake the checks, backups, and logs.
Or how do you think that virtually everything works in the world?
We do what we can. Elections have some unique aspects that make it necessary to be extra vigilant. The anonymity of the process makes a proper audit very difficult, and the stakes are huge.
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You can rig a computer system as much as you wish, but there will always be a clear track of actions and actors.
That's not helpful if there's no way to audit that track.
You are kind of implying that computers are obscure and unpredictable, but they are right the contrary. People are obscure and unpredictable.
Agreed. If people programmed the computer to rig the votes, that's exactly what's it going to do.
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automatically generating printed copies of all the votes such that people interested in crosschecking the results might count all of them manually
And what are you going to do if the voter claims that the printed vote is wrong ?
a format with many more advantages
There's only one advantage: it's faster. The whole election circus takes months. We can wait another day for the votes to be counted.
because of unreasonable fears
There's nothing unreasonable about fearing tampering with elections.
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Digital records are less reliable than properly processed paper records. There's different ways to attack digital security, and it's a lot easier to have an untraceable attempt with digital than paper.
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The big difference between most transactions and voting is that bank transactions are traceable and reversible. If there's a $2K transfer between my account and someone else's, I can find exactly why that transaction took place and how it was authorized. If it turns out to be erroneous and/or fraudulent, the bank can transfer the money back. If Joe gets 2100 votes and Moe gets 2200 votes, we can't attribute those totals to any individual or individuals. We have no records of who voted for whom, by desi
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However ballots have to be machine countable.
No, they don't. Manual counting works quite well.
Observers who oversee (but cannot inferfere with) the counting and double counting works great in many countries. And they even get their results quicker than the US, both for small and large districts.
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First, machine counting is more accurate than hand counting.
No, it is not. With hand-counting, the votes are always counted multiple times by different people. That gives greater accuracy than a machine that will make the same errors over and over again.
Your comparisons to other countries are not valid (you didn't even cite a single example to compare).
That's deliberate. If I did mention a single country, someone would jump in and say "oh, but country X is different because it has [fewer people|more people|bigger districts|smaller districts]".
It won't take you long to find countries where machine voting is illegal, and election results are still available the same night.
And the onus should be on those who claim that machine voting increases speed to provide evidence for that, because not counting with a machine is the baseline.
Look at the time needed just to hand count a few counties in Florida in Bush v. Gore.
That was hand counting machine votes, you dolt. "Dimpled chads" or misplaced optically readable stamp marks is not a problem where the votes are designed for human and not machine parsing.
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Minnesota had a gubernatorial election in 1962 that wasn't decided until May. Paper ballots were used, but there were still many ambiguous ballots that were disputed by the two sides.
That's a legislative problem, not a voting counting problem.
Instead of allowing party observers to hold up an election, they should be observers only.
The count should be done at least twice - one at the polling station, and one at a central location by different people who won't know the origin of the urn. If the two counts for any urn match, the urn is approved. If they don't match, it's sent to a third location for a recount, and if that result matches any of the two preceding results, the urn is approv
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No, it's a physical problem. Some ballots won't be perfectly filled out, but the law (at least here) says that ballots that show a definite selection of one candidate should be counted.
It's particularly important for voting by mail. If I fill out a ballot at my voting place, and stick it into the machine, it will reject it if it can't read it, and I can get another ballot, so there's some check there that doesn't exist with a mail-in. There are also things like the 2008 Minnesota Senatorial election,
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It's particularly important for voting by mail.
And that's a big problem in itself. It opens up for buying and coercing votes, as the person can be observed when voting.
Other countries solve this by having voting booths for early voting at police stations, town halls, hospitals, military bases and embassies in foreign countries. That allows for verifying that the voter has privacy when picking and casting the ballot, and assists with counting given that the ballots are handled like any other ballots, with an actual sealed urn being sent for counting,
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I've used plenty of paper ballots in previous elections. The only reason you can't catch the voter's intent is because it's a coarse first-past-the-post system where the person with the most votes wins. This prevents telling the difference between someone voting for a the best candidate or someone doing strategic voting to prevent a bad candidate from being elected. Likewise, a vote for a kook candidate becaus
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They are not a panacea. Instead they have been hacked in the past many many times.
I work as a casual election official in Australia, and believe me we know. For every hack that has been tried in the past (and quite a few that haven't), there is an anal-retentive procedure which combats it.
It's not a panacea, but Australia has some of the cleanest elections in the world. Nobody seriously disputes the results of our elections.