Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/798126153/exclusive-seattle-area-voters-to-vote-by-smartphone-in-1st-for-u-s-elections

146 191 7 years ago

deogeo7• 7 years ago

In related news, Saudi Arabia hacked Bezos' phone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22122779

Could a similar hack be done on a larger scale, and used to alter votes before they are sent, without changing the electronic signature?

Lets assume no until proven otherwise. And if proven otherwise, lets assume it was an isolated incident, and it won't happen again after a "commitment to do better".

Lets also assume Mr. Tusk's firm can be trusted - after all, why not put a private middle-man between voters and elections? As Mr. Tusk correctly points out, the only plausible explanation to resistance is wanting to suppress voters.

flareback2• 6 years ago

This doesn't even need hacking. You just go on facebook and find someones name and birthday and vote as them.

extrapickles• 6 years ago

Actually the voter database is public record[0], and it includes birthdays. This means that it would be easy to have 100% turnout in the first few seconds of the polls being open.

[0] https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/vrdb/extract-requests.aspx

mikece2• 7 years ago

Making a big case about voter turnout not being as great as other countries is a red herring. We have it really, really good in this country. So good that, practically speaking, it doesn't matter who gets elected because things will continue to stay good. I read low voter turnout as an implicit vote of confidence in the system as a whole. You can be sure that if [stuff] was actually hitting the fan then everyone would show up to vote (and try to vote twice) to fix the horrible mess the city/state/country is in (whether in reality or perception).

While I would agree there are definite issues with security, I really don't like the "print out the digital ballots" idea would rather see something block-chain based which is public and easy to audit.

And I think it's unavoidable that some sort of biometric or other proof of identity will be required (take a selfie in order to vote!) before "voting with your phone" become commonly accepted.

deogeo7• 7 years ago

Turnout can also be improved by voting on Sundays instead of work days. Yet they skipped that step and went right for electronic voting, that's nearly unanimously opposed by experts.

mikece2• 7 years ago

Even better: 11 day window for voting window, starting on a Friday and ending on a Monday. Two full weekends to vote, no excuses for not being able to make it. Some states already do this with "early voting" which starts up to two weeks before the actual election day.

And if you could pre-print your completed ballot to be scanned (once your identity if verified per local requirements) then the process could be very, very fast and efficient.

ssully• 6 years ago

Just make it a national holiday

Finnucane• 7 years ago

I read low voter turnout as an implicit vote of confidence in the system as a whole.

So, then the folks in Sweden and Denmark are voting because they lack confidence in their government, whereas in Estonia and Latvia, all is fine?

dsfyu404ed• 6 years ago

I can't comment on confidence in the system working well reducing turnout but I suspect that high confidence in the system being so broken voting won't ever fix it reduces turnout.

rsynnott• 7 years ago

I read low voter turnout as an implicit vote of confidence in the system as a whole.

Look at a map of voter turnout in Europe, and ask yourself is that REALLY credible.

It's more likely that US low turnout is because, for many voters in many elections, their vote is kinda meaningless. If you live in California or Texas your vote in a presidential election is meaningless, say, and probably also in a senate election. Depending on your district, your vote in a house election is probably also meaningless; most are not competitive.

As a general rule turnout is higher in countries using some form of proportional representation, as individual votes are far more likely to be impactful there (in a PR-STV system, for instance, it is pretty rare that all of a constituency's representatives are effectively decided before the election, whereas that's the case in the majority of US districts).

Other factors; most US states have rather short ballot opening hours compared to other democratic countries (In Ireland, say, we generally have voting from 7am-10pm or so), and the US population is more dispersed than most developed countries, making traveling to a polling station more difficult.

That said, voting by phone is an obviously unacceptable solution, as it destroys the secret ballot.

rayiner• 6 years ago

It's more likely that US low turnout is because, for many voters in many elections, their vote is kinda meaningless. If you live in California or Texas your vote in a presidential election is meaningless, say, and probably also in a senate election.

It's not like votes in state/municipal elections are higher, and in fact they are lower. (Governors' elections are very significant on meat-and-potatoes issues like transportation, etc., and routinely get 45-50% turnout.)

Depending on your district, your vote in a house election is probably also meaningless; most are not competitive.

But why aren't they competitive? Because most people agree with the status quo. There is no point showing up to reaffirm the status who that you're happy with.

unethical_ban• 7 years ago

It sounded like a really silly verification system. Matching finger signatures on a smartphone with previous records?

Perhaps the voters should get a set of one-time codes along with a PIN from the voting office, and use that to validate their vote.

y-c-o-m-b• 6 years ago

Yeah the PIN would have been a smart choice. They already have mail-in ballots which means they could just as easily be given a PIN on the ballot they already receive.

skue• 7 years ago

This is for a voluntary county board position without regulatory power that by statute needs to be elected by March when no one is paying attention. So someone decided to try this out.

OTOH, the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent [1] and FWIW the Seattle Times recently wrote an Editorial also opposing the practice. [2]

Bottom line, this hardly constitutes some trend that WA state is moving towards, just something set up by a county office that is otherwise drawing skepticism.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/secretary...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/resist-push-...

cafard• 6 years ago

Thank you for the clarification.

specialist3• 6 years ago

Oh boy.

Thanks for links. I know, and have occasionally crossed swords with, most of the players mentioned.

Our conservation districts fund their own elections. They don't have the budget to pay to be on the normal ballot. The only fix would be for state government to appropriate the money. People like Toby Nixon have floated this reform at various times the last 20 years. Otherwise, there's no push.

Current WA SOS Wyman is ok, for a Republican. While she does nothing to expand the franchise, she does not share Sam Reed's, her predecessor and mentor, technophilia.

KC Exec Constantine absolutely knows better. He played a role in both of my efforts to protect the secret ballot (prohibit voter id from being printed on ballot) and delaying a major risky overhaul of KC Elections in 2008. Constantine is a wicked smart politician. So I wonder what his angle here is.

The automated signature verification has three show stopping flaws. High error rate, both positive and negative. Blackbox. Is another form of rent seeking by vendors; last time I checked, vender gets $0.10 per voter per election (not just per ballot cast).

I'm very proud of Seattle Times' editorial board on this issue. They learned, matured, adapted. I spoke with them 10+ years ago about election integrity. They were wicked smart, painfully polite & earnest, respectfully disagreed. One of my best interactions as an activist. While I disagree with Seattle Times on most everything (else), they are a worthy opponent.

I know nothing about the vendors mentioned, Tuck and Finney. I assume they're typical consulting bozos chasing sales and haven't really thought about the policies involved, and don't know enough to know they're bozos.

Gael Tarleton would make a great SOS.

Ill_ban_myself7• 6 years ago

I hope by the length of my next sentence I'll be worthy of some small part of the praise you're giving the Seattle Times here :-)

It seems to me that the only difference between an exit poll and a voluntary disclosure checkbox which, if utilized by a statistically significant portion of the electorate, could be leveraged by official government commissions to audit election results where online voting is offered is that one these options is in the price range of the national parties and not publicly disclosed and the other strikes fear into the heart of everyone I've spoken to involved in election process.

Voluntary disclosure doesn't have to be a slippery slope and I firmly believe can and will lead to more fair and equitable access to the voting process and greater participation if it enabled online voting to be audited.

No one believes that large numbers of people will be blackmailed into disclosing their vote and if this or discrimination happens at scale then make it explicitly illegal. For those who aren't subject to these factors and are willing to participate in a census it would completely change how elections are run for the better.

jimmaswell3• 6 years ago

"the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent"

Sounds like nothing but a combination of thinly veiled voter suppression or technophobia, either of which should disqualify someone from public office in the eyes of an educated voter.

venantius• 6 years ago

And this sounds like the opinion of someone who has spent literally zero time investigating how universal the consensus is among voting security professionals about how paper is still the best, most reliable, most secure technology with which to run elections.

fg6hr6• 6 years ago

Here is an educated voter who wrote some tech standards and knows a good deal about all this encryption stuff. WA Sec. of State is absolutely right here. We can't secure online systems even when most parties want to make them secure: all these data leaks prove that. When stakes are high, such as the ability to influence voting, this online system will be broken and backdoored before it sees the light.

usrusr2• 6 years ago

The root of the problem this "voter convenience at any cost" approach is trying to solve is that positions that low maybe shouldn't be assigned by vote at all. Vote for presidents, legislators and mayors, but you have to stop doing elections at some point before reaching the office of vice janitor of the public library. Very low voter turnout is an indicator that you are close to that point.

And I'm not just talking election pragmatics here, I'm also convinced that lower offices will on average see less abuse if given to career bureaucrats than if given to people who invest the effort of running in an election for an uncertain chance to get - whatever they were hoping for. It's more likely to be worth the effort for the self-serving type.

downerending• 6 years ago

There should be an official list of elections that don't actually matter. Or perhaps those that do, since it would be far shorter.

I can't recall the last time there was an election in my precinct for any question whatsoever that was actually in play. These days I just give my wife my ballot to vote--it makes us both happier.

aazaa• 7 years ago

King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company providing the technology.

Oh, really?

Once voters have completed their ballots, they must verify their submissions and then submit a signature on the touch screen of their device.

Huh?

Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. ...

Finney must have never had to sign on a phone screen with a finger while driving before.

All of this digital theater of the absurd in a desperate attempt to engage people in the political process:

The board of supervisors election in the King Conservation District, for example, in past years has drawn less than 1% of the eligible population to the ballot box.

People don't vote because they don't care. Not because they can't make it to the poling place. They don't care because they don't see anything at stake.

There's no app for that.

netsharc• 6 years ago

"Finney must have never had to sign on a phone screen with a finger while driving before."

Why the "while driving" bit? Your argument was solid until you added these 2 words. Now you're saying "If it doesn't work while I'm busy operating a motor vehicle, I'm against it!"

all2• 6 years ago

It is a common (though illegal) use case, so definitely worth considering as a worst case scenario.

sornaensis2• 6 years ago

Wholeheartedly disagree-- if casting a ballot was as easy as sending a text instead of receiving and then mailing a letter or going to a polling location, I would predict much higher participation. People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. Votes only matter as groups!

So obviously you have to make it as braindead simple to vote as we have made everything else. What I do not see the purpose in, is complaining about or nay-saying these attempts. You're never going to convince someone that one vote is worth more than it is, which is what people really mean when they talk about 'engagement', because your vote on its own really just doesn't matter much and people intuitively get that.

Reducing the cost of voting to match the actual value of a single vote is the best move we have IMO.

awb• 6 years ago

People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time.

If someone has that worldview I'm OK with them not voting.

I'm not sure that X% more participation would improve our collective decision making. In essence we'd be diluting the vote of those who care the most with those who think voting by mail is too hard.

tmpz22• 6 years ago

Digital voting is a short term win and a long term catastrophe. Maybe we get better representation for a few cycles but all the voter fraud tactics that exist in regular paper ballot voting will creep into the process and be greatly amplified by the fact it is digital.

Countries with political leaders willing to stoop to the tactics of dictators will have a field day.

cwkoss5• 6 years ago

If you making voting online easy, we could easily see >100% participation - and that's the concern.

toast0• 6 years ago

Voter turnout is much higher than 1% on the November elections. Sure, reducing the effort of any given vote would help turnout; but also aligning this election with the general election would likely help (it also helps with the cost of elections).

tzs3• 6 years ago

> Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. ...
Finney must have never had to sign on a phone screen with a finger while driving before.

How is "while driving" relevant? I think that even the most ardent proponent of reducing barriers to voting would find it acceptable to make it hard for people to vote while driving.

t34543• 6 years ago

Politics is theatre, I don’t think anything ever gets done. It just gives people a forum to complain and they can feel like they’re making a difference.

Although this appears to be something local so there’s a chance it’s not entirely useless.

lgleason• 7 years ago

As a mobile developer I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the security implications surrounding it.

sdmike1• 6 years ago

As a security guy I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the security implications surrounding it.

flareback2• 6 years ago

As a citizen I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the security implications surrounding it.

all_blue_chucks3• 6 years ago

How is it worse than voting by mail?

tzs3• 6 years ago

King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company providing the technology.

If they mean that there is a public URL you go to, and then on the site only have to enter you birhdate and name to log in, and then you can vote--that can't be right. There's gotta be more than that.

My guess is that what has been lost in the stories is how you get the URL. I'm guessing that they either email you the URL or they send physical mail which includes a QR code with the URL, and the URL contains some sort of unique per voter identifier (hopefully randomly generated anew for each election). When you go to vote the site knows who you are supposed to be from that identifier in the URL, and the name/birthdate is just for a consistency check.

Spivak4• 6 years ago

There's gotta be more than that.

I mean I agree but this is how in-person voting works right now. The only "secret" information is my polling place but anyone who knows my name can figure that out since the voter records are public and includes my address.

tzs3• 6 years ago

In Washington state it wouldn't be quite that easy. You either have to show an acceptable photo ID to vote in person, or you have to sign a ballot declaration and then cast a provisional ballot which will be accepted if the signature on the declaration matches the signature on your registration record [1].

[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=29A.40.160

thaumasiotes2• 6 years ago

If they mean that there is a public URL you go to, and then on the site only have to enter you birhdate and name to log in, and then you can vote--that can't be right. There's gotta be more than that.

Of course there is. You also need a User-Agent that says you're a phone. And you can't set the evil bit. ;D

filoleg5• 6 years ago

There is no more than that. The only "extra" thing is that they ask you to draw a signature at the end.

I really do hope this goes nowhere, because this is just silly.

slipheen2• 6 years ago

Beyond the security implications (which are huge and ought to be a deal breaker on their own), this seems to have a huge problem in that it's not private.

Your abusive spouse/boss/dealer could tell you that they want to see you use the app to vote their way, and there's not much to prevent it.

While going to a local precinct is inconvenient, no one knows what you do once you walk in that booth. That's important to avoid coercion.

lukifer2• 6 years ago

While I'm in total agreement, and think that this is likely a bad idea, doesn't the same problem exist with mail-in voting? An abusive party can hover over your shoulder while filling it out, and then walk you to the mailbox.

slipheen2• 6 years ago

Absolutely. IMO this exacerbates the existing problem.

That said, if the app supported changing your vote later on, it could be preferable to the mail-in solution.

anon4636372• 6 years ago

There's no solving infrequent social problems with technology, only socio-politically. I'm sure it does happen to a few people, but it sounds extremely rare.

At least a mail-in ballot usually has a "receipt," (that serial number thing that's torn off at the top/bottom) although it does little to show or prove a vote was counted, especially with the subjectiveness of interpreting handwritten marks. The bigger problem is electronic voting has no real records making it far easier to manipulate because there's nothing permanent to recount.

I suggest that to solve the receipt issue, privacy, speed of counting and accuracy to the best degree available, it's best to:

0. Make voting day a national holiday.

1. Mail every voter a durable, physical RFID token (signed by a closely-held private key) that has an unique code that is not recorded who it is given to. If they haven't received one before voting in-person, they can receive a random token.

2. The voter is first checked to make sure they haven't yet voted by keeping a database of "has voted"... completely independent of actual votes.

3. The voter either drops-off the RFID in a container in a booth for their vote preference, or they mail it sealed in two envelopes (outer mailing info, inner vote preference).

4. Votes are counted both by weight and by RFID scanning (whole containers of votes are scanned in batch) for redundancy.

5. Voters can check online in real-time if their vote was counted by searching for the RFID code they used.

6. Recounts are a matter of mass-scanning large containers (with appropriate chain-of-custody) of votes.

7. Tokens are reused to reduce waste.

jmg8766• 6 years ago

I never thought about how you could be coerced into voting a specific way like that and it does seem to be a big problem to me. But is that already possible with mail-in voting?

sornaensis2• 6 years ago

How is this different from voting by mail, then? e.g. basically everyone in Oregon votes by mail only.

zacherates• 6 years ago

... more relevant than Oregon: "Washington State votes by mail." [1]

[1] https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq_vote_by_mail.aspx

filoleg5• 6 years ago

How is this different from voting by mail, then?

WA also has vote by mail, but this kind of online voting is very different.

To vote by mail, you have to receive the ballot at your address, physically mark your choices, and then mail it back in. The potential for fraud or abuse of this system is fairly limited.

To vote with this WA online voting system, you need to know the name and the date of birth, that's it. Aside from illegality of voting fraud, the potential for abuse is just humongous, all you need is just a dataset of names and DOB.

devonkim2• 6 years ago

Voter intimidation at a local or institutional level is absolutely massive but giving people the _choice_ of voting in various ways hopefully negates the bad. I'd love to understand the data and anecdotal stories on this as well if any is available. I suspect that those in such abusive situations don't even get to vote whatsoever because they're physically captive / bound, but that is 100% conjecture on my part. Nobody advocating for this voting technology wants to encourage any form of intimidation and distortion of individuals' wills like you've described.

Analemma_2• 6 years ago

Washington already has voting by mail, and the solution to this problem there is that you can vote by mail but also travel to a poll station on election day and that vote overrides your mail ballot. I assume the same would be true here.

all_blue_chucks3• 6 years ago

Seattle has long ago decided that advantages of remote voting outweigh the disadvantages. If your boss doesn't give you time off to go vote you are essentially being coerced not to vote anyway.

The only difference here is whether the post office or a TLS connection are more trustworthy to deliver your vote.

deogeo7• 6 years ago

Not just TLS connection, but the whole stack of voting software vendor, OS vendor, and phone hardware.

Edit ("posting too fast"): For paper votes, no computers need be involved at all - they can be counted and summed by hand.

conanbatt2• 6 years ago

I think low voting participation is a much more serious issue than coerced votes. If 10% of people more voted, there is no chance in hell you get a 0.1% increase in coerced voting.

joshuaheard2• 6 years ago

I don't understand why a bank's website is secure enough to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I can't cast a single vote online.

coolspot2• 6 years ago

Because casting votes online makes it easy to start voting market where you get perks for voting in desired direction.

jedieaston• 6 years ago

I could just as easily start a system right now where I'll send you $15 to get a absentee ballot, vote how I want, and take a picture of it with some kind of unique identifier (post it note with your username on it, for example) before mailing it in.

It's possible that a much lower price would even work too, since if you were going to vote my way anyway, you'd do it for free. So I only have to convince the voters on the other side (and hope the electoral college doesn't override my proxy votes).

Klathmon2• 6 years ago

Because one can buy you a nice yacht, but the other can buy control over the most powerful military in the world, the stakes are just significantly larger for an election.

The reward provides a sort of ceiling on how much time and money can be spent on trying to break a system. Even if you could get access to a few billion dollars by somehow "hacking" a bank and get away with it, that means that you'd only be spending up to a few billion to do it, and you may spend a few years to plan, but not much more.

But trying to "hack an election"? I would be shocked if there weren't multiple countries spending billions of dollars across literally decades of time trying to find the best way to influence and hack elections in other countries.

Do you really think that ANY software is secure enough to withstand a team of a few thousand of some of the most talented developers money can buy working full time for decades on trying to break it? Because that's the kind of threats that elections face. And if that election happens at all on the internet, the adversaries can be literally anywhere in the world and still attack it.

There are also auxiliary reasons why electronic voting isn't ideal. It removes the ability for the average person to validate the security of their election themselves without a software engineering degree (in a paper election anyone can go watch the locked ballot box all day to ensure there is no tampering, and they can count along with everyone else at the end of the day). It introduces accessibility issues, it adds unnecessary bottlenecks and dependencies (there have been countless stories of there not being enough voting machines or them breaking down causing lines to get multiple hours long and in many cases prevent people from being able to vote before polls close. There's even evidence this has been done on purpose to sway elections by preventing people in some areas from voting as much as people in others), and it's really expensive!

And what are the benefits to electronic voting? slightly faster counting? (you can get results in minutes instead of hours...)

joshuaheard2• 6 years ago

You have identified many problems that need to be addressed. I hope eventually the security problems will be worked out. It seems to me that online voting is a natural evolution and would certainly be more convenient for voters like myself used to doing everything online.

the_snooze• 6 years ago

The security and privacy requirements are much tougher with voting. In banking, the people involved know who's doing what. Voting has to be completely private to prevent voter intimidation. Banking can be insured and transactions reversed. Elections can't.

johnchristopher2• 6 years ago

Because just outside the voting booth there are actual people watching after your safety and making sure you aren't coming into the booth with a gun on your head or any other kinds of means of coercion. Also, each candidates can make sure the others aren't messing up with the process.

A bank has no way to know in real time if you are being forced to transfer hundred of thousands of dollars or not.

nokcha• 6 years ago

Because elections have strict secrecy requirements that bank transactions don't. Once you cast your ballot, it can longer be associated with you. So if someone hacks the election equipment to alter the ballots, there is no way for you to find out that your ballot was altered or to reverse the alteration. In contrast, fraudulent bank transactions are routinely discovered and reversed.

gnulinux• 6 years ago

If it's going to make you feel better, your bank's website isn't as secure as you think too; it's not bulletproof.

fg6hr6• 6 years ago

Why does everyone downvote this comment? Imagine this is master Yoda is asking a naive looking question to make you think.

USA is ruled by laws, not people. The laws can serve as a veil between those who set them and those who follow them. Online voting enables the SkyNet plot: laws are voted for online, but it's AI who casts them.

legitster5• 6 years ago

I want to point out that voting in Washington state is incredibly easy. They mail you a ballot, and a packet with detailed information on every single candidate and issue, and then you can drop your ballot just about anywhere - supermarket, mailbox, probably the street (who knows). It's probably the best voting system, hands down.

I don't buy that a smartphone magically hits some convenience threshold that turns out voters.

Spivak4• 6 years ago

I mean it would work for me. I typically vote by mail but if my phone popped a notification that was like "It's election day!" and let me vote it would be done less than 5m after the ping.

legitster5• 6 years ago

Voting without the information packet seems mind boggling to me. But then I realize that's how 99% of the world votes and I understand so much more now.

will4274• 6 years ago

How can you vote in less than 5 minutes? For president, sure, but state elections have dozens of people you've never heard of and non-partisan positions and ballot issues. It's only really possible to vote in less than 5 minutes if you're obsessed with state politics or if you're letting somebody else's thinking (either a newspaper or state party) substitute for your own. I think I'd rather you didn't vote.

JumpCrisscross3• 6 years ago

It's probably the best voting system, hands down.

The disadvantage to this system is the erosion of the secret ballot. Someone (e.g. an employer, spouse or friend) can now ask you for proof of your vote.

(I think absentee ballots should be voidable in person.)

legitster5• 6 years ago

Personally, I have never had this happen nor heard of it happening. Not to say it shouldn't be a concern, but I am reluctant to buy in to the idea based on a complete hypothetical.

Needless to say, someone demanding to see my vote counts as a felony still in our state. Maybe it occasionally happens? But it would take thousands of deliberate felonies to meaningfully change an election.

alistairSH• 6 years ago

I'm missing something... how does mailing your vote allow somebody to demand that vote be exposed? If my employer asks me how or if I voted in VA (in-person paper), I tell him to fuck off. If my employer asks me how or if I voted in WA (mail-in paper), I tell him to fuck off.

alpb2• 6 years ago

This election they're implementing the smartphone option for a local election has less than 1% participation rate. The goal is to show mobile option can boost voter turnout.

Gaelan2• 6 years ago

Huh, TIL the packet isn't normal. Growing up here, it seemed obvious.

mslong5• 6 years ago

Absolutely amazing that almost all techies in this thread are against this. Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level. What are we at right now, 60% on average, maybe? Our nation's policies would change immediately with such a massive swing in voter turnout, with adjustments towards forward-thinking, liberal policies.

chimeracoder2• 6 years ago

Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level

Why not just allow everyone to vote online, with no registration? Just type in your full name and select a candidate, no email or password required. It'd guarantee 100% turnout - maybe even >100% turnout, if enough bots join the fun!

The problem with digital voting is that it cannot be made sufficiently secure. It's not a matter of "there are problems we haven't solved yet", but rather "there are problems that we provably cannot solve".

mslong5• 6 years ago

Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically fathom?

phtrivier• 6 years ago

Actually I'm more concerned about online voting meaning 142.3333% turnout.

Not that I'm scared of some malicious foreign hacker getting paid to break the voting system.

I'm just terrified of the human being getting paid to do the programming in the first place. Never trust them. -(Source: I live inside one of them.)

All this reminds me that I have to remember registering to volunteer at the voting booth for the local French elections in a couple weeks.

You know, those local elections where no one will agree on anything, except the results - who will have been (not that painfully) counted and recounted from good old paper ballots by volonteers who could have spent their Sunday night on hacker news like serious techies.

fg6hr6• 6 years ago

If you wrote this with a double intent, you would be a great politician, seriously. By the double intent I mean that on the surface level this clever speech looks good and convincing, but between the lines it delivers the opposite evil message.

The techies are against this because they know the technical side and understand how fragile this seemingly secure system is. This is the equivalent of 737 MAX story: the execs shout how solid the plane is, while engineers cry the opposite. They speak up because they are on the losing side: if this system gets implemented, it won't be them who will control the votes.

The "major security risks" are intentionally there. These are backdoors that allow the right people to control the votes.

We don't need 100% voter turn out. We only need voters who care. There are a lot of people who don't care and have no time or desire to learn about what they vote for. These careless voters are often easily manipulated by media and thus someone who controls the media would love all these people to vote.

The nation policies would indeed change immediately: it would be a rapid erosion of those rights we still have; and if "forward thinking" means repealing 2A, then no thanks, I'd rather use my backwards thinking here.

choward• 6 years ago

I still don't get what this has to do with smart phones. The article says you log in through a web based portal. They made a mention of phone apps though. I don't understand why voting would only be accessible by phone and not a normal computer.

anon4636372• 6 years ago

Voting by mobile is extremely problematic and shocking.

1. No paper record.

2. No privacy.

A better way would be to use anonymous physical RFID pebbles that are placed in a container to indicate voting preference. Votes can be both weighed and scanned for counting redundancy very quickly.

Mail-in voting would consist of mailing back the pebble chit in an outside return envelope with an inner vote envelope designating the preference; the outer envelope is removed and mixed with many others before sorting.

Then later, no matter how a vote was cast, it's possible to find how a vote was counted (by the voter searching for the RFID code(s) they used) in real-time because all votes were mass-scanned in RFID containers... that is, there will be a number of large containers that contain all votes for a particular preference in a particular election. Subsequent elections reuse the RFIDs to eliminate waste. No hanging chads, no provisional ballots, no hacked voting machines and no voting by mobile.

cwkoss5• 6 years ago

Inner envelope would need to block RFID signals or votes could be lost based on preference.

_bxg1• 6 years ago

https://xkcd.com/2030/

annoyingnoob2• 6 years ago

Vote is the new app that makes voting easy. No more paper booklets full of legal mumbo jumbo. Just press the Vote button and Vote does the rest, done and done.

Vote automates your votes by choosing the best candidates for you using SocialAI technology.

dane-pgp3• 6 years ago

I guess you're being satirical, and maybe not everyone appreciates that, but you raise an interesting idea. Could AI (or rather, some simplistic machine learning algorithms) help to inform voters about which candidates share the same values as them, or what position on a ballot proposition they should take to be consistent with other views they have expressed?

Of course, that might end up putting a lot of power into the hands of the people making the algorithms, but if the training data and source code were transparent, and the output of the algorithm included a human-readable explanation for its recommendation, then it might actually be a better system than people voting the way they are told to by the only newspaper or TV station that they read/watch. (People should still then go to a ballot box and cast their vote on paper, though).

Here is a TED talk which introduces this idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGWML6cI_k

annoyingnoob2• 6 years ago

That sounds super scary to me. I mean where do you get the information that informs expressions you might make on the internet? Is it those same newspapers and TV stations? Other places where you self-selected to go? If so, whats the difference between going with the source(s) vs going with your expressions?

I'll agree that voting should be on paper. I'm not ready to boil it all down to something like a dating app.

fg6hr6• 6 years ago

If I was an evil dictator trying to win elections, this is exactly how I'd appeal to the clueless majority.

cwkoss5• 6 years ago

I hope someone hacks the vote to make Mickey Mouse or some other stupid name win.

Phone voting is a cybersecurity nightmare.

filoleg5• 6 years ago

Why would someone need to do any "hacking", if the only thing needed to vote is name and date of birth. Someone could easily aggregate all that data and write a short python script to do all the voting on everyone else's behalf.

Not advocating for anyone to do so, as this is extremely illegal, but imo whoever signed off on this kind of online voting system is an even bigger criminal in my eyes.

EDIT: upon reading further comments, I discovered that voter registration records in WA are officially public, and they include names and DOB (among other things). I am speechless.

cwkoss5• 6 years ago

Under US law 'unauthorized access of a computer system' is hacking, so writing someone elses name and DOB would qualify as 'hacking' in the legal sense.

dane-pgp3• 6 years ago

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 votes that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

macspoofing3• 6 years ago

I like the pageantry and ceremony of paper ballots at specific voting locations followed by manual paper ballot counting. I know in principle it's easy to automate this away by introducing online voting and other things ... I think those things will further alienate people from their local communities and society at large.

Keep paper ballots because they are inefficient.

plopz• 6 years ago

The problem is then what do you do with low voter turnout? The article says that this election has in previous years resulted in <1% of eligible voters. That is clearly untenable.

macspoofing3• 6 years ago

The problem is then what do you do with low voter turnout?

What's the problem with low voter turnout? If someone doesn't feel like voting, they should have that right. A non-vote is a vote of confidence that you are OK with any choice.

In fact, high voter turnout is usually indicative of major societal divisions or issues (case in point, the upcoming national election will probably have HIGH voter turnout as anti-Trump and pro-Trump people will turn out in droves).

The article says that this election has in previous years resulted in <1% of eligible voters. That is clearly untenable.

Why is it untenable? What is the harm? The alternative is you force people to vote, and they'll vote by choosing a name randomly from a list.

Ohn0• 6 years ago

Why is this an app? Why not web?

filoleg5• 6 years ago

It is web. They might call it an app or something, but it is web. I tried voting yesterday using their website on my laptop, everything was fine.

Biganon2• 6 years ago

Today I spent quite some time looking for the mobile app created by my town to allow people to anonymously denounce street harassment and catcalling when they see it. Then I found out it's just a website, and they call that "an app" for some reason.

mhh__• 6 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI hopefully they don't prove Tom Scott right.

m0zg• 6 years ago

This is idiotic beyond belief. Unless you have a verifiable, re-countable paper trail, elections can be made to go whichever way the person running the elections wants them to go. It's as simple as that.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. I vote in WA and most people on the ballot seem profoundly unqualified for the positions they're running for. For me it basically boils down to picking the person with the most robust education credentials, unless they're a commie, in which case I pick the next best thing. It's pretty bad. If I were hiring for myself, I wouldn't hire most of these people.

cookie_monsta2• 6 years ago

Being that the main driver behind this seems to be voter turnout, I have some suggestions:

1) Stop making all these penny ante jobs elected positions. These people are bureaucrats. Let them apply for their jobs like every other bureaucrat. If 99% of voters are saying they de facto don't care, maybe you should take the message.

2) For jobs that do matter, make voting compulsory.

Bonus point: have elections on the weekends when people actually have time to vote. Very few people need two days to drive their buggy in from the farm anymore ffs.

catalogia2• 6 years ago

Compulsory voting only makes sense if you allow "I don't know" as an answer. There's no value in demanding an answer for me when I know I don't have an informed answer to give.

cookie_monsta2• 6 years ago

Compulsory voting tends to mean that you're required to put a ballot into a box. You can fill it out properly, draw a smiley face on it or leave it blank. Nobody's checking your work.

joejerryronnie4• 6 years ago

Me and 10,000 of my bots would like to participate in this election.

fg6hr6• 6 years ago

I'm pretty sure there is a competing botnet that would be happy to override votes of your botnet. If online votes are counted only once, then what matters is which botnet is faster and has a better link to the voting servers. High Frequency Voting, in other words.

joejerryronnie4• 6 years ago

Haha, you’re right! So, as always, it boils down to an arms race between the two sides. So keep an eye on who's leasing office space near the voting server data centers.

diebeforei485• 6 years ago

I think that everything except federal elections should be done by smartphone (or mail-in for those who don't have a smartphone).

There is minimal risk that Russia cares about who serves on your local school board.

Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

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