Elections on the Internet -- Not Any Time Soon 329
jACL writes "From the Technology Review article: "After several years debating minimum requirements for voting equipment, the computer science and public policy communities appear to agree that the Internet--as it exists today--can't sufficiently safeguard the privacy, security and reliability of the voting process. Pitfalls range from the obvious, such as malicious hackers, to the obscure. For example: Every state requires that votes be cast in secret, but how can officials verify that a party hack isn't standing beside a remote voter?""
Unfortunately, this is probably all to true.
All the arguments against online elections (Score:2, Troll)
Re:All the arguments against online elections (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from the secret ballot, at present paper absentee ballots, properly run, are considerably more secure than internet voting could be. You'd have to suborn a lot of people to be able to tamper with paper absentee ballots in the mail, and someone would talk, but for e-voting you just have to crack a computer.
The bigger challenge in either system is verifying the identity of the voter. This gets worse when election officials aren't following all the rules. Florida rules required the request for an absentee ballot to include name, address, and voter registration number. Missing ID #'s got a lot of applications thrown out, but for certain voters in certain counties, republican party workers filled in the ID #'s. Furthermore, ballots were supposed to be postmarked before election day, which creates a difficulty when the damned post office doesn't date it's postmarks; in some counties, Kathy Harris got that rule waived, but not in others. (Who was it that sued about not counting everyone's vote the same?) But if the system had been run honestly, very few bogus absentee ballots would have been counted. It's just too hard to steal large numbers of identities when you have to send paper documents by snail mail, unless you create an organization big enough to make leaks probable.
My best guess is that if Florida had accurately counted all the votes statewide, George II would still have won. But we'll never know, now. And if the entire system had been running honestly, I do not think that either the Bush's most wayward son, or Mr. Roger's evil twin (Gore) would have had a chance at the nomination...
It only makes sense (Score:3)
you know where people live, they don't change their address every time they go home, you know from tax returns how many people live at an address. Who can verify anything electronically. Remember that old saw "on the internet no one knows your a dog"?
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2)
Feel free to fill me in on how they prevented that.
Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
If its all digitally signed and cryptographed, vote boxes sound nice to me.
Ofcourse it should always be allowed for people to vote as they do today, if for some reason they cannot guarantee their privacy, or an internet connection.
If people do vote as they do today, give voters a day off to vote, as sane Democracies do
Read the article.... then think (Score:3)
Two points on this
1) You can lie "Sure I voted for you Mr Big Gun"
and the second is that this isn't the issue the issue is Mr Big Gun standing next to you as you put the X on the sheet making _sure_ that you vote for him.
Not sure which countries allow people the day off to vote either.
Imagine managing the digital signature for everyone, BUT STILL ENSURING ITS ANONYMOUS.
The problems are huge, and they are right to reject it, especially in light of the problems of access to the internet.
Re:Read the article.... then think (Score:2)
Not sure how it is in the US, but in the UK ballot papers are individually numbered and can (theoretically) be traced back to the individual voter using the information on the polling card (which you must present). This is, apparently, to ensure that Mr I R Bukkake doesn't vote twice.
Admittedly, since this information is only stored on paper, it would be far harder to trace than a digital signature. It is still possible though.
No internet elections is A Good Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No internet elections is A Good Thing (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, I'm beginning to like that idea - the only problem is that the highest percentage turnout will be the fanatics (on whatever side - but not necessarily cancelled out) and the disabled would be under-represented.
Re:No internet elections is A Good Thing (Score:2, Insightful)
the disabled have no reason not to vote except lazyness, whby the way, I find that most TRULY disabled folks are the most motivated people I know.
(I say truly because being a fat ass is not a disability, nor is any other controlabl ailment that we so often see folks using to get those nice little handicap stickers so Grandmothers who have to use a wheelchair to get around, can not park in an accessable spot.)
sorry about the rant
Re:No internet elections is A Good Thing (Score:3, Funny)
Cowboy Neal!
Re:No internet elections is A Good Thing (Score:3, Funny)
But what about accessibilty? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Internet would be an ideal place for the mobility challenged to cast their vote. It is better to require everyone to cast their vote on the same day rather than send in early absentee votes because opinions may change over the lag time. I think that, rather than having traditional absentee paper ballots, we should be able to give the local board of elections our public keys and submit our enciphered ballots electronically. If we can't trust the Internet for election purposes, how can we for our financial transactions (ATMs) and taxes (e-file)?
There are people that will take you (Score:2, Informative)
Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the 'Net (Score:3, Insightful)
More wealth stroking. Internet voting would be all about making life easier for those who's lives are always considerably easier than those who couldn't vote online. How on earth can the article not point out how internet voting would undoubedly contribute to less political representation by those already on the wrong side of the digital divide (even if simply by increasing the participation of those on the right side of the digital divide.)
I'm not against using it for over-seas voting, etc, but to hope that one day we'll all be using the Internet to vote is a scary thought - the poor already have enough of a hard time being heard.
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
Plus the local non-computer owners can go to the library to cast their vote. I saw this as a chance to avoid having to go to the elementary school (especially since it's several miles out of my way and has exactly enough parking for the teacher, and nowhere near enough for voters) to cast my vote. Also, it involves standing in line for over an hour if try to go before work. Voting is already pretty darn inconvienent for everyone involved, and I'm not going to complain if someone figures out a way to make it much more convienent.
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
If being on welfare is such a wonderful party, like hard working people (working too hard or not enjoying their work, I might add, or else they wouldn't be so upset at the slackers that do exist), why don't you just go on welfare?
Man, you're only looking for reasons to justify why you have to work your sorry little ass off to provide. You shouldn't in the first place, and that's what needs fixing, not these euphoric freeloaders, who are a minority of those receiving welfare. Shit, I've had bosses who are lazier than welfare recipient friends of mine, who make crud loads of money. We just need to keep feeling the way you do in order to avoid the reality that material wealth does not reflect the amount of effort you put into providing for yourself and your loved ones. It's funny, because it's the managers and companies who want to convince you that the only reason you have to work so hard is because of people freeloading on the system. You buy it, hook, line and sinker, believe we're all headed in the right direction, and then take on a 3rd job. Meanwhile, I sit in my cushy little 9 to 5 job, waste my time, and laugh at you. I want to help those people, which would help you not have to work your ass off
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
The study has just been published. Noone said that would be the ONLY way to cast a vote either.
Now THAT in ITSELF is a larger percentage than voted in the last election. Demographics say more than HALF of that HALF is middle to lower income and minority.
Lemme guess, your either
Poor,
aCommunist
or a Democrat ?
If youre poor and have no car you already have to work harder to get to the polling place. So we make it easier and more accurate where we can. So that argument flies like a brick pig with wings.
How can more people voting cause "less political representation" ???? Just because the wealthy will vote for somethign YOU dont like dosent mean less representaiton, it means more people voting, more representation. Like I said Im guessing this was either a troll or...one of the above 3
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
Let me guess. You want to pigeonhole my theology so you can feel yummy warm at night in concluding that I'm a raving idiot.
None of the above. I make lots of money, I dont believe in communism, and while I probably align myself with Democrat values, I dont know enough about either American party.
In a land of supposed 'equality', why are people so glib to dismiss a technological class gap.
Look, when it comes to getting your ice cream, or filing your taxes, or whatever, I could give a flying fuck if you do it in your Lexus, or you have to walk cause you have no money.
But when it comes to voting, don't you think that the means by which we vote should be independant of our social position? Otherwise you defeat the purpose of a democracy - by 'tipping' the accessability of representation in favour of a particular class.
Let's get one thing straight. I
Yes, your point about car ownership contributing to the problem is duly noted, but if you aknowledge that it exists, why are you so glib to furthur that gap in availability to the resources of exersising one's democratic rights? I can envision a world in which the wealthy are completely ignorant of the numbers of poor simply because its so much easier for them to vote that representation is tipped heavily in their favour. And then the wealthy wonder why the poor arn't voting - it's a lack of confidence in the system, much in part due to attitudes exactly like yours. Why should they try if the fundamental improvements to a democratic system is only available to those who are already prospering under it?
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
But when it comes to voting, don't you think that the means by which we vote should be independant of our social position? Otherwise you defeat the purpose of a democracy - by 'tipping' the accessability of representation in favour of a particular class.
Yeah, so let's make a law that you have to walk to your polling station, in order not to put those at a disadvantage who can't afford a car...
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
GUESS WHAT your COMMENTARY on OUR politics is MOOT.
You have NO fundemental understanding of the Democratic proccess here in the United States. It has been like this and always will be, look up Jim Crow laws.
There is no glibness, everyone is equal, to a point, and can vote, even with a Internet voting system in place.
REDUCING everyone to equal IS COMMUNISM.
Actually the POOR DO VOTE, Sometimes more often than the rich, Apathy infests the rich, not so true with the poor. Clinton being elected twice in this country is proof, MOST educated, upper class people (with the exception of liberals, in our country a socalist). COULDNT STAND HIM, He won his fist election with LESS than the MAJORITY vote, only some 40% of people in the US.
So what you are saying is, you have NO understanding of either our system, or parties, and yet you offer a foriegn comment on OUR process..This is rich....
Go back to the pub...........The UK's Govt is in such perfect shape I know you have nothign better to do than critisize ours.......Let me remind you OUR govt saved Europes ass TWICE
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
Politically, sure. But if you think I'm incapable of affecting the way Americans (who's comments are not moot, according to your logic) think about their process, thats your own set of blinders.
> REDUCING everyone to equal IS COMMUNISM.
My dear scared friend, who said I wanted to reduce everything to equal? It's truely not my fault if you want to extropolate my 'moot comments' to an extreme that aligns with a political ideology I reject in my
> Let me remind you OUR govt saved Europes ass TWICE
Thanks for the help, even though I'm not in Europe, assumer. Now, if only America could help nations because they actually wanted peace and freedom, not the IOU you seem to implicitly believe America deserves in these cases.
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
I am personally of the school we should go after our bad debts in the form of land or resource, england, russia, japan, etc. We SACRIFICED OUR BLOOD, for your people. Im an Isolationist too, so actuallly helping anyone is out of the question.
Youre correct, I apologize, I could tell from the speech pattern you were a UK'er, Canada, pretty much the same thing.
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
Re:But... (Score:2)
I was illustrating that these types of improvements tend to benifit those who are more-or-less happy with the way things are, and thus, it would do little to improve represention of those who seek or need the most radical changes in the political and economic climate.
All of this tends to lead to 'boiling points' where those in poor conditions completely lose faith in the system, as it tends to only focus on improving the lives or representation of those who are already well off, and simply garauntees that more pressure is allowed to build in the social 'fault line' until something dramatic happens.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
If I made a mistake, I am sorry, it's the way I read your comment that made me assume what I said. If I am wrong, again, sorry.
But now I have to agree with envelope's comment. [slashdot.org] If you believe that different types of access to vote will create barriers for a better development of the democratic system, and a better choice of governament, then you should extend your argument to convince me why, why other facilities are different than the one possible using the internet.
I have to say, that if you want to break the status quo, it's not about HOW we choose our representants, but instead, like it has always been, about WHO you chooe.
Instead, if this situation must be changed, first convince everyone (from the bottom of the social pyramid) that voting is important (since in USA is optional), that they must vote, and, inform who are the candidates, why they must vote for whetever they choose, give them the ability to think and make they know that there are ways, peaceful ways, to change the system.
It reminds me of 'Don't give them food, teach them how to fish'.
Re:But... (Score:2)
Except for that the prevailing attitude is, "Don't give them food, and, okay, well, sure, teach them how to fish. But don't tax me for it. And I don't want to be the one to teach them. And make sure they have to buy their own fishing rod. And I don't want to be forced to fish less because now we have more fishermen." The wealthy want their cake, and then they want to eat it. It's a harsh reality of life that improving one's material wealth above those around them is an individual choice, and that if said activity causes the disempowerment of the lower social classes, you'll have to pay for it in things other than money (such as convenience, time, self-discipline
The car argument has been brought up as an example of why this gap already exists. Duly noted. It does, and look whats happening to the world. And this will only make it worse. That whole "Well, things are already unequal, so what's wrong with making it a little bit more unequal" argument is self-affirming redderick, and I have no doubt that it only contributes to the social 'fault line' that has exploded many times in history before.
Re:But... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, maybe it is. But it doesn't have to be yours, and surely it's not mine (and I am not saying that it is yours either, just that I don't know you enought to confirm this or that). What I meant is that attacking ways to facilitate the wealth to choose the governament it's not the best way to help those on the pyramid's bottom to achieve a better life. It doesn't matter, IMHO, how you choose, but whom do you choose and why. Give people information and release them free.
The wealthy want their cake, and then they want to eat it.
No, everybody wants the cake. It's not only the wealth, this is a classic falacy of A = B, B = C, so A = C (whic is not true). It's not because the wealth have more cake, and they want more, and they have better ways to have it, that the poor won't get any piece, or that they are forbidden to try to get it.
But, I must note, I DO THINK that this happens, poor are forbidden to touch the cake (at least the sweet part of it). I just don't agree with the way you put it, since everyone wants the cake.
That whole "Well, things are already unequal, so what's wrong with making it a little bit more unequal" argument is self-affirming redderick, and I have no doubt that it only contributes to the social 'fault line' that has exploded many times in history before.
Me too. I am against what is preached. But the car argument IS NOT the reason why the world is fucked up. If so, we should not be allowed to vote. If we were to forbid every way to make people vote easier, we would have simply to have only one voter. If you present the argument that distance from the voting point is harmful to those far away from it, you will get to the point where the only possible solution is to have only one person casting their vote.
It's a bit strange, because practically, that's what happen. You have the 'one' media in favour of a candidate, the 'one' society sector in favor of a condidate, etc... Our socials desire to have interactions with other humans and the concessions that we allow to make these situations possible, generates an attrition to the final objective of a democracy.
Sadly, this has been said many times, since the governament wants to keep their power, and they have to get votes from people to do so, democracy is in fact a denial of the truth, the 'ultimate' truth. Because the power is always bending itself to allow the continuity of the status, and NOT pursuing a real, real close to, truth.
PS: I am enjoying having this conversation, and don't take anything personally
Re:Maintain the Status Quo even easier! - on the ' (Score:2)
This isn't about poor people having to walk to the polling station. This is about wealth people not having to walk 5 feet to ensure that the status quo that keeps them relatively wealthy stays in place at the cost of those who require changes to the political and economic agenda. It's funny, by the time the shit hits the wall, those nailed against it are always wondering what was going on all that time where they felt everything was hunkey dory and that those in need were just lazy bums. At least when you go to the polling station, you see who else lives in your community. Otherwise, I promise you, you can go years convicing yourself that those who desire change that would require sacrifice on your part just dont get it or are lazy or some equally self-affirming reductionist perspective.
> Life is always easier for some people than for others. That's just the way it is.
You know that kind of attitude doesn't go very far for those on the flip side of unfairness, and it certainly wont prevent anyone from taking action if they believe you only accept that attitude when things are going your way
Not that I think it matters. Every system reaps what those with opportunity and wealth sow
Another pitfall ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Another pitfall ... (Score:2)
Shame (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot Polling Engine (Score:3, Funny)
Text voting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Text voting (Score:2)
You're going to let teenage girls decide your next local elections?
Karma Whoring (Score:3, Informative)
How To Secure Voting Via Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine this, each county in every state runs their own VPN between the voting offices. Each VPN would feature a different encryption screen, and each vote would be encypted as well. This means that not only would every vote feature 128-bit encryption, the entire VPN would as well, making it impossible to know who placed what vote. Also, ballot stuffing could be eliminated because not only would you have to crack the VPN, you'd also have to submit a properly encoded vote in order for it to count. One misplaced 0 or 1 scratches the entire ordeal. Since the VPN's would only be up for one day, hackers would have little time to break the encryption.
Just a few thoughts.
Re:How To Secure Voting Via Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you talking about having secure kiosks at each voting office? If you are, I assume that you mean to only allow voting from these kiosks, and not allow voting from home. If this is what you mean, then why use the Internet at all? Phone lines from each voting office to a central collection office would be much more secure. 56Kbps is plenty for this, since we are not talking about very much data, even with encryption.
If you are talking about having home users connect via the Internet to their local voting office, then you are missing the big security holes.
It is trivial to secure the actual connection between the voter and the voting office. The big problems lie in securing their PC.
Picture a version of any of any of the big worms that have circulated recently. All it would have to do is intercept the voter's mouse clicks in the voting app and redirect them to a different vote. If it was clever enough, it could even manipulate the video display buffer to make it appear to the voter that nothing has changed.
These worms spread like lightning, and could be unleashed on the day of the vote, making it unlikely that Joe User would update his virus checker in time.
I'm with them (Score:2)
Plus, there's the "Punch the Monkey to Vote for Gore!" banner ad menace.
Bah... (Score:2)
On a serious note, I doubt there will EVER be a computer that can be considered secure. If a human can get to it, they can hack it.
Awaiting rebuttals...
Similar Problems (Score:2, Interesting)
Couldn't you just imagine the candidates to sending out their lackies to people's homes showing them how to vote online and how to click on their candidate's name and then click the submit button? I wouldn't put it by any political party to try this type of underhanded scheme, and I hope we never ever see that.
We won't get online voting for another 10-20 years and especially not until we can safeguard against "attacks" like these.
On a sidenote, I'd be interested to hear from any current Michigan folks to know if the student elections are still happening online.
Peace out.
Re:Similar Problems (Score:2)
How about chartering a bus to bring people to the polls, and showing them a marked sample ballot during the ride? This is actually a fairly common practice. Where I grew up, a big real estate speculator funded a political organization that would pick up old folks from their homes, prime them to vote against anything and anyone that might raise real-estate taxes, and took them to the polls. In local elections, this could actually amount to 1/3 of the total vote. Or I heard about Democrats in Florida's larger cities sending busses out to the welfare housing, etc. But in one case they got the instructions wrong -- told their clients to be sure to make one punch on each page, but in this city the presidential candidates had been spread across two pages (to avoid the damned butterfly ballot), so anyone who followed instructions voted Gore and someone else for president...
The Democrats ability to shoot themselves in the foot, again and again, has always been amazing.
Getting back on topic -- we've always had party workers trying to be "helpful." Before voting was reformed with ballots never leaving the polling place, they could be even more helpful, giving people an already filled-in ballot to drop in the box. (To prevent any form of this, where I vote there is a tear-off serial number on the ballot. You come out of the booth, they check the number is the same you went in with, then tear it off and feed the ballot into the scanner.) The big trouble wasn't the helpfulness -- it was that too often the party workers were also paying bribes to get voters to cooperate. And that's the reason no form of voting from home (including absentee ballots) should be allowed except for a few percent of people who genuinely cannot make it to the polls.
One of the main problems with internet voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, touch-screen computers at the polling station to simplify voting... that'd be a much better idea.
Re:One of the main problems with internet voting (Score:3, Informative)
Simpler is better (Score:2)
In Canada, national elections are handled by a nonpartisan Federal agency, Elections Canada [elections.ca]. Everyone across the country gets the same kind of ballot, a simple card with circles beside the names where you make your "X". No punch cards, machines, or other fancy things that can go wrong or confuse people into voting for Pat Buchanan. It's only a coincidence that the same party [liberal.ca] keeps winning elections. I swear!
If you want electronic voting, the best idea is probably the system used by the City of Toronto in last fall's mayoral elections -- the ballots were paper, but the counting was electronic. To vote, you filled in a region beside a candidate's name, much like those computerized multiple choice tests. All the counting was done 1 hour after polls closed, and they still had paper records to verify the results.
Re:One of the main problems with internet voting (Score:3, Interesting)
1) I've programmed for touchscreens for almost 1 decade. None of them are 100% foolproof. Depending on the type all kinds of contaminants, dry air and wear can register incorrect selections. There'd have to be a more complicatd setup of "Are you sures" making the entire process slower and maybe even MORE error prone.
2) Secondarily, the idea of an electronic only system is also bad. At minimum, this touchscreen terminal had better punch out a physical card that can be recounted! There needs to be a hard record of every vote. Otherwise power failures, HD failures, both accidental and not, will lose votes FOREVER.
I believe that the only proper way to do it is mechanically with punch cards. Now the machines themselves can be greatly improved over the cheap ass pin systems most states use today. But I really don't want to use a computer to vote in any way and I've been a software engineer for 23 years! I know what there is to be afraid of.
Re:One of the main problems with internet voting (Score:2)
The butterfly ballots are easy enough to use. The Democrats just realized that they were going to lose (by an amazingly small number of votes) and they hoped to "rectify" things. In cases like that it is always possible to find folks that will come forward and testify that the system was "too hard."
The one thing I like about a punch card system is that it is easy for the voter to verify that that their vote was cast correctly. They simply take the ballot out of the machine and make sure that the holes are in the right places. With computerized terminals it would be too easy for someone to write a one line Perl script that changed every third vote for their oponent into a vote for them. Now, if the computerized touch screen system also generated a physical ticket that the voter could verify (and which would be used for hand counts) then I am all for it. I am all for simplifying the system, but I want to be able to verify that no one is diddling the results.
What's with this Jon Katz'ish post? (Score:2)
Could be done, but it won't happen. (Score:2)
That would make it too easy to vote. (Score:2)
As for people saying that voting on the Internet would create a bias because only rich people could vote is just plain untrue. You will still have the plain old voting booths, and if not, just replace those voting booths in the town hall with terminals to log on the Internet. You don't have to own a computer to vote.
anonymous online voting... (Score:2, Informative)
An untraceable, universally verifiable voting scheme
Recent electronic voting schemes have shown the ability to protect the privacy of voters and prevent the possibility of a voter from being coerced to reveal his vote. These schemes protect the voter's identity from the vote, but do not do so unconditionally. In this paper we apply a technique called blinded signatures to a voter's ballot so that it is impossible for anyone to trace the ballot back to the voter. We achieve the desired properties of privacy, universal verifiability, convenience and untraceability at the expense of receipt-freeness.
The secret ballot is not obscure. (Score:2)
Security issues? (Score:2)
This is an idiotic statement. When the security issues get resolved, who the hell wouldn't vote over the internet instead of having to go out to the voting booth?
And it seems to me that the security issues could be easily resolved by the government issuing us public/private key pairs. We would all go in somewhere at our leisure, verify our identity and get a doohickey that plugs into the PC via USB, serial port, or whatever. The doohickey would have a public & private key in it, and wouldn't provide a way of getting the private key out. But it would provide an interface for signing any data sent to it and returning it to you. They could just note who got what doohickey (and correlate the public key with your social security # in a central repository), and now you have easy electronic identification, signatures, and the ability to send private info. Of course, I wouldn't trust anything like that for my own encryption (FBI backdoor, anyone?) but it should be fine for voting. It just signs your vote with your private key, encrypts it with the government's public key, and sends it on its way. I should be able to log into a specific site on the internet and see my vote (encrypted with my public key, so others can't see it) so I can go contest it if it was somehow falsified.
Now that wasn't so hard, was it?
Re:Security issues? (Score:2)
Knock, Knock.
"Hello"
"We're from the Cosa Nostra party, and we're here to 'help' you vote."
--- later ---
"You understand that you can go to the election commission and contest this vote. Do you also understand that we'll hear about it and blow up your house?"
Re:Security issues? (Score:2)
Re:Security issues? (Score:2)
Now if they only had a way to detect dead people voting... Although the local poll workers might resent that, they're all over 80 and it's getting hard to tell the difference.
Re:Security issues? (Score:2)
I do agree, though, that it's much more important to have accurate vote-taking methods before we worry about voting via the internet. But, that said, I think the method I described would be much more accurate on average than our current voting methods...
Re:Security issues? (Score:2)
I'm even a Luddite here (Score:2, Insightful)
People are saying voting over the internet, but I would say this was insecure. I believe voting for the government is so important that you really have to minimise the security risks. There are problems with manual voting as it is. But i'm still happier with it than internet voting. When I think voting, I'm now assuming all the computer are ones owned by the government kept in central locations for public voting. I can't see voting from home being too good.
I'm going to throw some ideas out here - if you can find a reason against them, i would love to here (this isn't a challenge, but I'd love to see if someone could put my mind at ease over voting).
(1) I would think that the internet was insecure that you had to use a VPN to allow proper voting. Even then I would still like a closed system where all the power is in government hands.
(2) The system has to have power backups just in case someone starts to tamper with the election. This would be essential in "unstable" areas which are about to vote.
(3) Who controls the system? I would say it would have to be open and free (yeaahhh! - obligatory slashdot herd cheer) with anyone, and I mean anyone, being able to get to the source code. That leaves the fact that the binary produced from the code has to be verified. You'll need qualified people to do this, which costs even more cash.
I also thought about electoral lists, but either way (computer or manual voting) they can still be tampered, although it might be easier on a computer. I just think that allowing people to see the process prevents as much tampering as could be done if people managed to attack the "box" which controls the lists. When i say a "box" I don't mean the central lists, but the one PC which contains the list at the local school where voting could take place.
I do want to believe, but something keeps on telling me that we should keeps things as they are for the now, and restrict this kind of voting to places where it doesn't make too much of a difference. If they could test it in school polls and then corporate polls, and it was shown to be foolproof I wouldn't mind, but I'm very skeptical (the theme of this whole post). I wouldn't mind if they tested this in government opinion polls, where they realise that error could occur, and that it might not make too much of an impression on the governing of the country (i.e. discard the poll if the results are within 5% of each other or something).
Anyway, that's my rant over for the day. Later
why not? (Score:2)
just use Keyosks at voting stations (Score:2)
to make it safe from crackers, just make them so that they have no connection to the internet, the polsers can just hit the results button on their master station at the end of the night, and get a print out of the numbers, then call whom even with their results.
Internet voting by LDAP IN THE POLLING PLACE!!! (Score:2)
This is not an all-or-nothing issue. Even if trusting the vote of an almost anonynmous user somewhere on the Internet is ludicrous, this doesn't mean that we should ignore the Internet's rightful place in the electoral process: distributing public information
Because we have strong crypto, and we have the political institutions to handle certification authority, and there *are* ways to do authentic but anonymous signatures, I feel we should use a vote recording system that takes advantage of these features to avoid the vote recording problems of the 2000 US presidential election.
Imagine authenticating ONCE PER YEAR with the County Clerk's office, where they register you in their LDAP directory and give you a card with an x509 certificate. The judges at the polling places can hand you an anonymous x509 certificate -w- private key from a pile once they authenticate you via LDAP (with your picture). You can use the anonymous x509 to record your votes to another LDAP directory from a machine in a voting booth. You put your card in, the machine asks you to verify the fingerprint on the certificate matches what the card says, and then presents you with a slate of choices. When you're done, it shows you a raw XML format completed ballot. You sign it with the anonymous key. The voting machine accepts the signed ballot only when it has a certificate revocation for the signing key to go with it. The election judge sees a green light over your booth, presses a button, and the directory of votes and CRL of valid anonymous certificates are updated. You go home, and at the prescribed closing of the polls, each polling place opens its directory of recorded votes up for the big LDAP replication. Votes are tallied in batch time, and recounts can be done at will after the tally directory is populated.
The real problem is the federated system of feifdoms down in all the County Clerk's offices of your hometowns. Putting this kind of minimum standard to their practices amounts to cutting their crooked balls off. The bigger the Clerk's office, the bigger the fight they put up.
Re:Internet voting by LDAP IN THE POLLING PLACE!!! (Score:2)
Not just today -- this will never work (Score:2)
The problem of assuring that someone's vote is uncoerced is one that means Internet voting should never be implemented. Oregon's approach of doing all mail-in ballots is a terrible idea for exactly the same reaon. This is a fundamental problem and not one that can be fixed by technology.
It's actually a difficult thing to make sure that people's votes are both secret and uncoerced even in public polling places. The rules about who can stand in or near polling places, how they have to be arranged, what the booths look like, etc., are complex and detailed because over the years people have come up with all sorts of ways to control the results.
I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime (Score:3, Interesting)
It amazes me how old our voting system is. I live in teh sitcks, but somehow we've managed to use fairly recently technology - like the tactile button/LED machines with scrolling paper a few years ago to the new touchscreen machines in the last election (modelled just like the tactile button machines) to reduce confusion
Just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we should. I'm not sure Internet voting would improve the integrity of the voting and in teh end that's what relaly counts. If you don't care enough to get off your fat butt and vote in your local fire station, etc, then you don't need to be voting!
Here's how my mom would vote... (Score:2)
What about recounts? (Score:2)
The moment it's exclusively electronic, it can get cracked *undetectably*. The detection is the key.
in different words.... (Score:2)
In different words: it's just like the voting system we have now.
Security vs. anonymity (Score:2)
This is probably the toughest nut to crack. Not only must identity be stripped away, but it must be stripped away in a way that's transparent to the voter.
When I vote in my local precinct here in Virginia, I go to one set of poll workers to identify myself. When they're satisified that I'm who I say I am, and that I'm a registered voter, they hand me a little index card that acts as a chit which allows me to vote.
I then hand the chit to the voting booth attendant. The voting booth attendant knows I'm permitted to vote, but doesn't know anything else about me. Consequently there's no way to tie my identity to my ballot. Furthermore, it's plain to me as I go throught the process that there's no way to tie my identity to my ballot.
Online systems could use a similar chit system to insure voter anonymity, but this would not be in plain view of the voter. The voter would have no way of knowing that his identifying information is not being stored along with his ballot.
Until that problem is solved, I personally have no interest in casting my ballot online.
Rock the Vote? (Score:2)
However, I was *not* looking forward to Bill Gates running for president and all of MSFT's employees each voting hundreds of thousands of times.
Re:Rock the Vote? (Score:2)
Yeah, we'd have to crack the MSN computers (it's been done before) and change all those votes to
Closed Source counting software (Score:2)
All of the commercial vendors of election software are using closed source, running on top of closed source OS. This allows wholesale rigging at either end.
Just insert a script into next version of Windows: If Date is 11/4/04....
Here's Industry Standard's coverage [thestandard.com] of a panel on Internet Voting sponsored by the Freedom Forum during the last Democratic National Convention. My Q&A with election.com CEO Joe Mohen is at the end, tho they missed the closed source issue.
Seeing my neighbors (Score:2)
Besides the easy ability for fraud, etc, that others have mentioned, I think it's a bad idea simply because it would attenuate one more of the instances where you get to see and speak to the other people in your neighborhood.
Everyone there at your polling place lives somewhere nearby, as you do. Isn't it nice in our personalized, lonely world, to once in a while be in a situation where you get a good look at who the neighbors are, maybe even get to say hi? Maybe you can meet that old lady who's always going on her evening walk past your house at about 7pm. You might be able to say hi to the guy down the street who's always working on his car. I think it's a wonderful exercise, not only in civil rights but in community, of which there are damn too few these days, and it'd be a shame to run the risk of losing it in the future.
Remember California kiddies, primary vote is on March 5!
Re:Seeing my neighbors (Score:2)
Re:Seeing my neighbors (Score:2)
I suppose not, except in that I think internet voting, if they ever got over the security/legal hurdles (which are huge), has the potential to become THE way to vote, since it'd be quicker, cheaper, & easier to count (& recount). Hell, you could have vote tallies in real time.
I guess I'm just not that eager to do away with one more community interraction. Doesn't anyone want to know the people in their neighborhood anymore?
Voting on the net. (Score:2)
does that seem odd to anyone else?
Re:Voting on the net. (Score:2)
Re:Voting on the net. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Different challenges. Anonymity conflicts with security. You can't keep an audit trail on computer without identifying information. With internet tax filing, the ID has got to go along with the records; with voting, it's supposed to be stripped out.
2)Your vote is supposed to be entirely private. Your tax return isn't (your spouse signs it, your accountant may know more about it than you do). I'm not sure there is any real security against internet snooping, except that finding your return in millions of packets would be a big job...
3) No one is going to come around to your house offering $100 if you will let them file a tax return in your name. Before reforms were instituted in the late 19th century, there was a lot of flat out vote buying in the USA, but now only congressmen get to sell their votes...
Same for real life (Score:3, Interesting)
And how do they do the same for physical elections? They have vote "watchers" or some such. Even with vote watchers people can be influenced by others [1]. There is nothing stopping us from voting electronically (disregard over the net) in the same way we do physically, in central locations. What voting electronically DOES do, is allow us to have verified results as soon as votes are cast, without introducing human error and speculation (yes yes, subject to the usual haxoring of the process, but that is probably lower than the margin of error introduced by over-speculation and human error).
[1] Real event: the mother of somebody I know was told upon going to vote for the first time in a new county, that she had to reregister, but was strongly dissuaded from registering as a Democrat, because, as the pollster said, the county was largely Republican and she "could not vote if she was a Democrat" (a half-truth: she wouldn't be able to vote in *Republican primaries* (DUH!), but this wasn't made clear to her.), so she registered as Republican. Yes it might have been her fault for being persuaded, but AFAIK, it is a *Federal crime* to defraud the election process...it's even more horrible that the people supposedly watching over the polls to keep them neutral do it.
Re:Same for real life (Score:2)
You don't happen to remember what country this was? I want to know what other country on earth has both Democratic and Republican parties.
Why is this even a good idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, computer terminals safely ensconced at the polling places themselves might offer a few advantages...
Pair it with information... (Score:2, Interesting)
("Vote for ---? This candidate has been funded by... and his party has been funded by... Please confirm."
Plus, allow the candidates to specify a short statement, and maybe the same for news services. *shrug*
Internet voting would be discriminatory (Score:2)
vote "no" on internet voting (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, my question is how internet (or any type of remote, instantaneous) voting will affect people's attitudes toward elections in general.
I can, on the one hand, see how internet voting would open up great possibilities -- people's votes are counted exactly, no room for error, people don't have to trudge through rain or snow to get to the ballot box, people living overseas or traveling at the time can vote just as easily as people in their home district, and people who may not have had access to voting before now get a chance. Internet voting might also give people a more direct feeling of influence in a vote's outcome. If the results could be released immediately, you would see how your one vote stacked up with the rest of them.
But on the other hand, and what worries me more, is that these very advantages might erode the significance and importance of elections. Or, change it into something that I might not like. Is it possible that voting, if made so easy as a click of the mouse, placed right next to the CNN poll, would become as meaningless to the average person? If every day, we encountered 10 polls asking for our opinion, how would voting for a person for office be made something with more weighty consequences? I know how little thought I put into an online vote, how would most other people feel?
The thing about voting, the way it is now, is that the physical effort, trouble, or fact that it is an extra-ordinary event, gives it significance and reminds people that this isn't just another mouse click after opening a web page. I worry that if we make it too easy to vote, or too commonplace, people may forget what voting actually means. They ought to travel to polling places, and see the other people who're voting, see who the members of their community are, and at least be mildly provoked to consider thoughtfully what their physical vote translates into. To that end, we should make the current process of voting as easy and as fair as possible. We can improve the system of registration to make it easier, create more sophisticated voting machines, help people get to the polls if they have difficulty, remove barriers to people who have been unfairly treated -- by all means do these things -- but in the end, voting should remain a special event, I think.
what problems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Privacy, security, and reliability, all seem like problems that are easy to solve. Just give each person in the U.S. a CD with their public/private key when they register to vote. As an added bonus we'd eliminate spam.
For example: Every state requires that votes be cast in secret, but how can officials verify that a party hack isn't standing beside a remote voter?
Simple solution: let them change their vote. Even if someone watches them vote, that's no more than their word that they won't change it.
Yup... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just proof that throughout the whole election mess people's opinions - from ordinary citizens right up to the members [newsminute.com] of the US Supreme Court - were dictated by who they wanted to be in office.
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:3, Flamebait)
Okay, that part was off-topic but this part isn't.
The real problem is two-fold. Making sure every voter is permitted to vote and making sure the ballot is understandable.
If you don't accomplish these things first, it doesn't matter how/where/when you hold the vote. Fix what's broken first!
You might argue that the Florida 'butterfly' ballot was understandable but the mere fact that people are arguing about it (to my mind) proves it wasn't clear enough. It should be undisputably easy.
Given the current state of the web, I don't see how they could hold an election over it. I can see the complaints now - "I pressed the VOTE button and...".
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, please. Name one. The election was November 7th, 2000. Fifteen months ago yesterday. In that time, not a single person has come forward to say that they, personally, were turned away from the polls. Two people have said that they saw police cars near the polling area and felt "intimidated" so they kept driving. Yet not a single person has claimed they showed up to vote and was refused. Surely, out of "tens of thousands of black voters" you could find a single one who was turned away?
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:3, Informative)
The US Civil Rights Commission acknowledges the issue on their website where it says "Non-felons were removed from voter registration rolls based upon unreliable information collected in connection with sweeping, state sponsored felony purge policies;". I know this is quoted out of context but feel free to check it out for yourself.
The BBC report estimates between 80,000 and 100,000 voters were wrongly prevented from casting ballots in Florida. The link to that report is here - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=29&row
I'm not suggesting we re-do the election but let's do admit there was a problem and work to fix it.
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:2)
You had your opportunity to come forward publically. You didn't do it, so apparently it wasn't all that important to you, though you claimed to spend weeks writing letters. Maybe you should have been reading those newspapers you were writing to so you would have noticed the hearings on the front page of every paper.
The new Fl. Voting machine (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't matter ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, they didn't "decide the election themselves". The people voted for Bush, the original count showed Bush received more votes in Florida, and the after-the-fact review of votes by the media also showed Bush received more votes.
Re:Cmd Taco needs a basic grammer course... (Score:2, Funny)
Grammar?
Damn, I'm all out of mod points... (Score:2)
Following my train of thought I came up with another idea. Let's say 20 years from now the election process is changed radically. Candidates are not allowed to advertise on TV, only by registering with the www.vote.gov webpage and having their personal info site, with links to all sorts of information about them. Online town hall meetings and debates will be their only time to speak to people live. Each citizen will be mailed a one time use USB dongle and if they plug it into their computer, then browse to their candidate's page and click on "vote for me" then BAM, that's it, they've voted. Seems easy enough to me. It would open the door to some interesting candidates.
Re:Damn, I'm all out of mod points... (Score:2)
Re:Not as Secure, but more accurate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:old school vs. new school (Score:2)