Ask HN: Couldn't security risk of online voting be bypassed by printing it out?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31967909

by zzzzzzzza • 4 years ago

3 24 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Why couldn't you just print out the relevant snapshot of the database for the election and manually verify it by, free example, mailing a copy of everyones vote to them?

I feel like hyper partisan politics of the US at least could've been avoided if we just had online voting. Instead I have to worry if democracy will be superseded by a one party state or possibly the country splitting into two.

dane-pgp5• 4 years ago

mailing a copy of everyones vote to them?

So everyone can prove to the person who bribed or threatened them that they voted how they were told to?

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

i don't see how this would be any different for online vs in person voting. if anything it seems like a worse problem for in person voting.

dane-pgp5• 4 years ago

For online voting, someone can log into the site/app and then hand their device to someone who bribed or threatened them. For an in person vote, you can mark the ballot one way and then tell someone you voted another way.

Also, anything done with computers is easier to automate, so you could take over a million devices with a virus, or just hack into the server where all the votes were stored.

dane-pgp5• 4 years ago

hyper partisan politics of the US at least could've been avoided if we just had online voting

Other countries with more proportional voting systems don't have the "too big to fail", two-party duopoly that the US has. Allowing online voting just means handing control of elections to whoever is in control of the servers (which in many cases will be the same people who are gerrymandering the districts and closing down polling places).

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

i agree i kinda wish we had a parliamentary system right now, but I feel that online voting could be done if it can be done in a secure way, but parliamentary system won't happen. then again i don't think online voting will happen either (that is, you could at least implement online voting locally but you can't switch to parliamentary system without changing the entire country)

dane-pgp5• 4 years ago

The question of Parliamentary vs. Presidential is orthogonal to that of Proportional vs. Plurality. (Sorry if that terminology just makes things more confusing).

To give a concrete example, the UK uses the same plurality voting system as (most of) the US, which leads to the same two-party dynamics, even though the UK has a parliamentary system.

There's nothing stopping US states from adopting a more proportional system while keep Congress and the Presidency the same. In fact, Maine adopted Ranked Choice Voting to achieve that in 2018, and Alaska followed this year[0].

(Actually RCV is not guaranteed to produce more proportional results, but it can stop vote-splitting and lesser-of-two-evils tactical voting, which makes the outcomes better reflect the true wishes of the voters).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...

verdverm3• 4 years ago

So now you know who voted and for whom?

Elections are supposed to be anonymous.

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

practically speaking probably at least half (or more in local elections) of the people who voted probably have a bumper sticker on their car telling you who they voted for already.

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

another thing is showing voter id at polling place. my drivers license already has my address on it.

h2odragon• 4 years ago

What's wrong with anonymous paper ballots, counted in public? Observable, testable, re-countable; the failure modes are well known and the technology adapts to a wide range of circumstances.

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

moderates can't be bothered to go to the polls as consistently because they don't feel as strongly. I would vote in local elections if it was just a hyper link. as it is, my elderly and partisan relatives all know when and where voting is done and I never hear about it.

uberman• 4 years ago

Nothing as long as every potential voter also has equal access to opportunities to vote.

The reality is that some people can walk up and vote while others have to wait hours to vote.

If we trust online systems to handle medical records, billions of financial transactions, and taxes it seems to me that we can create a system that allows easy online voting for every citizen without the artificial roadblocks we throw in place.

Of course, not everyone really wants easy and secure voting for all citizens.

verdverm3• 4 years ago

People want a system they can understand and trust. Electronic voting is not that for most people.

throwawayffffas• 4 years ago

Why couldn't you just print out the relevant snapshot of the database for the election and manually verify it

They do that, that's what the recounts and all the audits you hear in the news is all about.

Hyper partisan politics have nothing to do with the logistics of the election process. The accusations of fraud are the result of the hyper partisan politics, they are not actually the result of an insecure system.

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

i think the gov should tell you when you are eligible to vote rather than relying on you to find where they have (randomly) stashed that information, and ideally make it equally convenient for everyone, one other commenter suggested a universal on by default mail in voting system would be better and redundant with my proposal for online voting.

I asked gpt3 where I could get updates on elections I would be eligible to vote in my state and it told to subscribe to my secretary of state's twitter account, it has like 700 subscribers.

Nobody is following this information, except for politically active groups like churches which is where my relatives learn this stuff is happening. (aka hyper political people as opposed to moderates are the ones voting)

it just reminds me of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy when the vogons tell the protaginst that he has no right to complain since their plans for a hyperspace lane through earth were publicly available in their vault on whatever planet.

i also think convenience is more important than the secret ballot since many organizations could accurately predict how you would vote from correlations they have collected about you.

bediger4000• 4 years ago

No. It's sacred to travel to a precinct polling station, and stand in line so as to hand mark a paper ballot. Also, whatever the count is at midnight Wednesday, November 4, 2020 should be the official results.

Sarcasm aside, online voting can't really be recounted or audited. Vote by mail states like CO did risk limiting audits to increase confidence that tabulations are correct. It isn't out of the question that rolling over a carry digit fails. It's very low probability, but it could happen. Without a risk limiting audit, you just won't know

There's a lot of material on this topic from the 200x's, the... unusual... 2000 and 2004 presidential elections caused a lot of examination of voting systems and procedures. Internet voting, as it was called back then, was proposed and scrutinized closely, and found lacking.

michaelmrose• 4 years ago

This breaks entirely the expectation of a secret ballot which one cannot prove how they voted. Just the fact of your family getting a copy of how you voted in the mail could serve to intimidate many.

If you do want to vote illegally for someone else or several someone's which multiple people mostly republican did in the last go round the proof will be mailed to the criminal solving nothing.

This solves no real problems and introduces plenty. It's a terrible idea.

If you look at how the state of Washington does it they mail a ballot to every registered voters address as long as you keep returning them. You register by checking a box when you get or renew your ID and you drop the finished ballot either in the mail or in one of the many ballot drop boxes. You normally have WEEKS to fill it out before its due.

Would it really be an improvement to count the votes of folks so disconnected they couldn't check a box walk 50 ft to the mail box?

zzzzzzzza11• 4 years ago

honestly you might be right that an "on by default" mail in system would/could be better

Ask HN: Couldn't security risk of online voting be bypassed by printing it out?

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