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Online Voting?
Colin Winters asks: "While listening to NPR this morning, I heard that the Reform Party is going to have online voting this year. Does anyone know how are they setting this up? What kind of security measures to protect against fraud are they using? It seems that if this works for the Reform Party, it could also work for both the Democratic and the Republican parties, as well." A good and timely question considering that once again it's an Election Year. If online voting is to become a thing of the future, these issues and others will need to be dealt with if it is to be effective (and fair).
A very small amount of effort brought me to this press release by eBallot.net. They're the ones taking care of the voting.
Not much information on their site about the technical details - I would be interested in knowing how they maintain security while keeping the voting of individuals private.
These days, it seems most voters are too apathetic about the country (at least in the U.S.A.) to spend times researching the issues, reading the voter's manual, and then actually driving out to the polling place to vote. For people who never trust the government, there doesn't seem to be much reason to put any effort into the process -- but with online voting, all they have to do is skim one page and click to make their voice heard. It's hard to imagine that very people wouldn't vote if it was that easy.
Let's face it: most of the people that vote are either radicals or rich white guys. Middle America, as well as people like you and me -- cynical outsiders -- just don't bother to vote. And yet, these people are often the most vocal when it comes to what should be done about various issues. Online voting could finally give the people the power they wish they had -- there wouldn't be such a wide schism between policy and popular opinion.
Sure, true online voting may be a few decades off still, as there's still numerous security hassles and other issues to iron out. But it's exciting to see that we may finally be able to fulfill the promise of democracy at last.
I've heard on ZDnet's streaming news broadcast that Microsoft donated a million dollars worth of software to the GOP for their national convention. To be 'fair', they've offered the same amount to all the other major parties.
Smells to me like they've found a way around the tightened restrictions on purchasing indulgances.
Having worked as a majority clerk in the Republican primaries, I have a good idea of the checks, double-checks, and triple-checks that go on behind the scenes to verify that the people who are registered to vote are the people who are voting.
It seems to me that the first time online voting is used in local elections, you are going to have every election loser filing complaints with the election boards.
It would be best to restrict online elections to a small number of local races before it's fully implemented into national elections involving millions of people.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
If online voting takes over completely, then the goverments surely will have to put measures in place that allow 100% of the voting population to gain access to a computer connected to the internet. Obviuosly the simple solution is to have polling stations like now just with computers in instead. It does however mean that the rich are more likely to vote and the poor maybe less likely, shifting the balance of power. Ill stop ranting now.
If it costs too much, and doesnt work, you've been conned, stop buying microsoft.
If the certificates are PKI-based, eg. using a public/private key system, authentication is simple and very secure.
Only one thing: can you be certain the person behind the computer is actually the one that's supposed to vote? Well, the same is true for regular voting (at least here in The Netherlands, you don't need to show anything except your voting form when you vote.)
. . .That only have to count 3 votes. ;)
Is online voting threatening the right to vote by secret ballot at all? I mean, you are in a way giving it up voluntarily (by doing it from your computer rather than a private booth) but does anyone else see a situation in (say) a right-wing dominated workplace where someone says "OK, it's lunchtime, lets all vote for the 'Fascist Party' on the work's computer?" Obviously there would be social pressures for someone to vote in the same way as their peers as anyone declining to vote in private would get comments like "Oh! Going to vote for THE COMMIES then, are you?"
Online voting has the ability to be corrupted in several ways. First, and foremost, most people assume that a "one social, one time" style system could work, since anyone logging into an electronic voting booth would be required to give his/her voter info (some states have codes, others mimic SSN's) once a particular code, or SSN was given, and voting completed, that person would not be allowed to vote again.
There are a few major problems with this though. Quite a few Americans do not vote. While I am not going to go into the psychology, and ramifications of NOT voting, I will say that not participating is their right, and should not be violated. Electronic Voting "could" easily circumvent someones wishes simply because there are sites that have information on them that are more or less unsecure. I'm not saying someone with a couple kiddie scripts could do it, but a true cracker out to "change" the system would probably find it fairly easy.
IMO (which I do not consider humble, by the way) Not voting is extremely stupid. I defend it, but I don't personally think it's right. I also firmly beleive that stealing someone elses vote is criminal, much worse than that person not voting at all.
While there are security items that can cure this, they are still a long way in coming. Retinal Scans, SSN's and hard encryption, along with fingerprint scanners are one way to go. They already exist, and are becoming more mainstream every day. These will make online voting a reality, and a secured one at that.
There will always be ways to circumvent a system. There always were, even in the old "click and pull the lever" systems. Forged Voters ID cards, fake documents, phony voters lists, and multiple voting are a few. The problem was that with these, 1. A person had to physically be there to vote, which took time. 2. Someone had to come up with a voters list, which took time. 3. Documents had to be forged, which took time.
By allowing electronic voting, you can speed up the above three things to damn near instantaneous. A small group of people playing over a large field could have a exponentially more significant impact on the final tally than before.
I would approach electronic voting with eyes open, alert, and fully concious of the ramifications of getting it wrong the first time. After all, the people we chose to lead, lead us to where THEY want to go; pray you chose someone you can stand to follow.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
There are two Reform Parties, each with its own convention, because a large portion of the Perotistas can't abide Buchannan and decamped to a nearby venue. It has something to do with social (pro-family, pro-life) as opposed to economic (low taxees, more "Defense" budgets) conservatives. Buchannan clearly controls the original site.
Because of the split the reporters are mostly reporting that they're overextended, they only planned on one convention.
Seeing the results of the primary (both electronic and snail-mail ballots, and a breakdown would be amusing, too) will be interesting, but irrelevant. The convention(s) will decide on the nominees. They might even figure out which convention was official by 7 November.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Personally I can't think of any ways to safeguard against fraud; maybe they exist, but they're not coming to me. Besides which, I don't really see the point of introducing online voting. If you can't spare the effort to walk a few blocks (or request, fill out, and mail an absentee ballot), why should you be allowed to do it at the click of a button? Apathy is the problem, not the fact that not enough votes are recorded. Making it simple to vote won't remove the apathy, it will just flood the system with uninformed votes.
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Voting booths, and their amazing low-tech privacy method (a cloth drawn behind you), literally beat the socks off of anything available in the digital world... Right now husbands and wives can cast separate votes on issues and not have it thrust in their faces, so they get by. What happens when voting is done from the den, with one person sitting right next to the other? What if they've been arguing about an issue for hours and one party just wants to get to sleep so they cast their vote, in plain site of the other, for something they don't necessarily agree with?
Aside from all the verification and other security concerns, confidentiality is one that had better not get overlooked.
I think this is relevant to the subject, although not directly. Here is a system proposing to democratically write any sort of text: VeniVidiVoti.
It's really not useable at the moment (but for the i18n part), but I'm working on it, and would gladly receive any feedback about the principles.
To resume them: they try to mix delegation and direct participation, thus would allow for a very lively sort of process. Although it would probably not apply to anything like laws, they could permit to democratically create any sort text for any sort of group.
I'm just wondering what the benefit in on-line voting is? I can't really imagine that turnout is going to increase, especially in countries where a large proportion of the population are not net-connected yet (most of Europe). Those individuals who are not able to travel to the polling station through work or disability in the UK are entitled to a postal vote. Given these two facts, why would a government want to introduce a new form of voting other than because it makes them look as though they are embracing new technologies?
With regards to how you can secure this system, well, you certainly can't do it over the net until governments start recognising electronic signatures and biometric authentication is more common. At the moment, if all a website does is ask me for my electoral role number, then I can pretend to be anybody on the electoral role. It's a bit like the Amazon system whereby you can submit a review as the author, and the authentication to make sure you are the author is a form that pops up saying "Are you really the author of this book? Yes/No". Not exactly the best way to run a democracy.
Why is this?
Well, here are a few of my reasons:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I know it's good for a lot of things, and maybe voting on small things can be one of them under certain circumstances. I don't think I'll ever believe that the net (as it is today) is anywhere near an ideal infrastructure for voting in major and important elections.
Even if all the encryption and validity and security and anonymity issues were worked out, there's nothing to guarantee that a neighbour hasn't walked into my home, pointed a gun in my face and ordered me to vote for someone.
The net could play a role in some areas, but allowing people to vote from places where the environment isn't controlled is a bad thing. Allow this and there's no way to guarantee that voters are voting at their own free will.
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I think the other posts are covering online voting's problems and advantages pretty well, so I'll write about the other half of the question: the Reform Party and what the web can do for them. Disclaimer: I don't like them, but I will try very hard to be impartial.
The Reform Party is falling apart. Two years ago, when Governor Ventura was elected, the Reform Party was deeply divided between Ross Perot's people (pro-balanced budget, protectionist) and Jesse Ventura's faction (basically libertarian). Governor Ventura's campaign team made heavy use of the Web and email to organize his campaign, and received no help from the national Reform Party. Ventura felt that Perot was trying to dictate everything to his party.
Eventually, everything came to a head during the race for a Reform Party Chairman. Ventura and Perot each had their favorite guy, and Ventura's won. Perot spent about a year undermining him, and then his faction organized a 'surprise general meeting' where only Perot people managed to show up. They voted the chairman out, over objections that the convention had been illegally called. At one point, the situation at the meeting was so strong that the police had to be called to break up a fight. Ventura quit the party, saying the party was dead.
That's when Pat Buchanan showed up. His views are very different from Perot's. He believes in a national industrial policy, heavy protectionism, opposes immigration, etc. In many ways, he is the opposite of the Libertarians-- a liberal radical on economics, and a conservative radical on social issues.
He ran for President, and this time, Perot laid low. I don't know if he is trying to get out of politics (realizing that the Reform Party is pretty much dead) or if he is just trying to let the party onto its own feet (I think the Ventura thing killed the possibility of that happening).
Perot's faction, though, is pissed. Buchanan won the primary, but they say that he used non-Reform Party voters to do it (the point of a primary is to let a party know who its members support-- there isn't much point in having one if many of the voters will jump off the ticket if their man loses). Buchanan says he has expanded the appeal of the Reform party. The dispute got so tough that apparantly, the two factions are each holding their own convention, have nominated their own candidates, and each claim that they are the One True Reform Party.
Whichever party is the One True Reform Party is entitled to fifteen million dollars in federal campaign funds, so this question will probably end up in the courts. Ultimately, the Reform Party still isn't sure just what it actually stands for. It originally tried to be a vote for a moderate in a time when the Two Big Parties were seen as radical, ideological opposites who couldn't agree on anything. Now, people are more worried that the parties look too much the same. That pretty much squeezes the Reform Party out.
Now, at last: how will this affect on-line voting? Well, I'm not sure what they will be voting for at this stage-- they have their candidates (in fact, they have too many candidates!) and they have had their convention, such as it is. The web might have been a good forum for them to reconcile their differences, or hammer out a set of guiding principles. But their problem is that they are not a community.
Everyone on Slashdot starts with a certain level of similarity-- RMS and ESR (to shamelessly pick at a longstanding political feud) are still very similar in many ways. I don't know that Reform Party members have anything in common other than a feeling that they don't like where the country is going. They have formed into cults of personality which all have radically different views on what the party should be. And so, to be honest, I don't think that the internet can band-aid over all these differences and make their party work.
I think that Perot hung on for too long, and by not allowing the party to digest his views and Governor Ventura's, he turned the party politics into an adversarial mess. Parties are built on compromise and dialogue-- Perot basically destroyed the faction which didn't agree with him. I think the party is now suffering for it, and will finish flying to pieces this year. Add to that that people want the major parties to be more, not less, radicalized this year (that's why the Greens and Libertarians are doing so well), and you pretty much leave no place for Perot's people.
We set up encrypted voting systems, issue everyone an id and let them vote. But we tell them if they cheat, we will send Eminem to their house to beat them up!
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Crudely Drawn Games
"in countries where a large proportion of the population are not net-connected yet (most of Europe). " are you stupid? most of europe (possibly except east-europe) has higher % of population connetcted to the net than USA.
Agree or disagree, that is my opinion, and unless someone can show me a better way, I'm sticking to it.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I guess you mean this one. I don't think it will make it into the archives. I think (not that sure) that it has to be above 0 to get archived. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I suppose this is Canuteish, but i really don't want to be allocated a unique id, and i particularly don't want it to be tied to my retina scan or fingerprints or dna or anything else. it leads directly to people saying things like 'if you've done nothing wrong then you've nothing to fear' and that gives me migraines.
You know how important those Reform Party primaries are! Once you take control of the Reform Party, you take control of the polls!!!
Let's take the opportunity to bring the whole system up to date and in line with modern thinking.
Everyone votes with their credit cards. a quick swipe and press a button. It makes sure you're eighteen, and it excludes anticonsumerists, poor people, immigrants and slackers. Do you want those people setting your taxes? right.
two votes for platinum.
In a recent government class we were given the project to rewrite the Texas constitution, and the group I worked with was to handle the election parts. Since 90% of the people in the group were CS people, we natrually thought of online voting. When doing research though, we found that a perhaps easier to implement system would be a sort of limited online vote, versus voting from home.
If you allow anyone to log in and vote over the web, it opens up the door to massive fraud, because people can pretty much use whatever tools they have at their disposal to comprimise the system. Our solution was to only allow online voting from certain public places with internet access, such as libraries, schools, and the like. In these places the access at terminals is usually more limited, and monitored, reducing the ability to easily do damage. With specially designed software running to do the access (not just something over the web) it would possibly be even harder.
This compromise doesn't give the option of voting in one's underwear at home, but it would increase the number of polling places, and possibly the hours of operation.
And they were interviewing one of the members of the Reform party whose job it was to arrange the vote and they also interviewed the folks at eballet.com for small time.
Firstly, this wasn't only online. They conducted the ballot via mail, phone, as well as online. Also, the way they verified the votes is the same way they verify all votes whether online or not: the voting registration numbers. The internet voting was only open for a short window of time anyway...like 3 days if I recall correctly and the dates were mailed to reform party members.
As to the validity of the vote, both people interviewed assured that no votes were counted twice. Even so, the validity of the vote has been questioned and has something to do with the breakup of the reform party. I don't know enough about what happened to comment on that aspect.
According to this Yahoo story both Reform Party conventions rejected the national mail-in and Internet vote, claiming election fraud.
"Wait a mo....just starting Mozilla on my Linux watch...I haven't voted yet today!"
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Online voting has more potential than just replacing the existing voting system. Online voting is a perfect fit with direct democracy, through online referenda. Votes could be held not just once every 4 years to choose which politicians to elect, but also for any important issues that come up during the term. Online referenda could be citizen-initiated, requiring a certain percentage of the population to digitally sign a petition to hold one on a given issue. This would put power back into the average person and make them part of the country's decision making process again, rather than have just one vote every four years, with dubious likelihood that the person you vote for will actually represent you the way you want.
Once the initial overhead of setting up online voting was through, the cost to hold elections/referendums would be low. We may not be ready for this yet (many people don't have access to the internet, and we need to iron out the security detials..) but in the coming years, this could become more and more possibile. This is the reason that I think online voting is an exciting prospect.
Buchanan received 49,529 votes to Hagelin's 28,539 votes in the primary balloting. Now they are both claiming to the be the "Real Reform party", they will likely end up in court to try and fight for thier gub'ment handout.
personally, I think that Buchanan is being a good little 'publican and is (knowing that no resonabley mineded moderate would consider voting for him), destoying the reform party and taking away the conservitive protest vote (thus helping bush).
I would think it'd be relatively easy to set up a system for online voting. I mean, there have been registered absentee ballots for a very long time. Why couldn't we have a registration process whereby each person who applies must prove some minimum criteria (old enough, alive, citizen, not incarcerated, etc.) to be given a uniquely generated electronic key. When they wish to vote, they must have a valid key to do so, with each key expiring after one use. I think that with the advanced algorithms in use in the computer industry today, it should be a fairly simple task to choose one that is uncrackable. That should stop the miscreants.
Therefore we elect our representatives to be bored for us (at the price they are allowed to do whatever decission in our name). And this is where eVoting could make big change! With eVoting we can:
The local county voting authority is planning on "Electronic voting booths", vs internet voting. There idea for this is, these systems would be faster to use, so more people could get thru the poll's faster, and would allow to deploy in business locations. I REALLY like this idea, and think its a great step towards the future.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
In a previous posting someone pointed out that one may not want to vote for any of the candidates or alternatives. In many countries, including the US, I would believe, there is a huge barrier of entry, which means that we are not getting the best people to the best places, or the best initiatives to choose between.
It is right there on-line activity can make a change. Just look at slashdot, where it is infinitely easier to speak out than by asking a newspaper if you could please write their political column next Thursday.
Hopefully, more software will emerge that will enhance the selection process of good candidates and good policy by using e.g. moderation, voting, "packing" (people self-organising stepwise behind a candidate or text, just came up with the term, pick another one if it sounds fuzzy:-).
You bring the beer, we've already got the nuts!!!
I play with computers
I own computers
I read on computers
I write on computers
I write about computers
I program computers
I teach computers to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.
In the town of Littleton, MA, I vote on a paper ballot, and I like it just fine.
Through normal channels, each person gets their voter registration card. This card has a unique number on it, very long to reduce chance of being able to guess one correctly. Person goes to computer, sets up key pair, connects to central server, and encrypts and signs their number + ID info (name, age, etc). This proves that key pair belongs to person. Then comes the actual voting protocol. Let's assume for simplicity only one thing to vote on (Pat v. whoever).
I create 10 votes for pat and 10 votes for Ross (I am pretty sure it's not him but I don't remember the real guy's name; I'll use Ross). Each vote consists of a GUID, and who the vote is for. The GUID is a long number (128bit; longer if neede to prevent collisions) that is randomly generated. However, each Ross vote is paired with a Pat vote (same GUID). I then Blind the votes with a blinding function -- need the blinding factor to get the vote out. This is actually just multiplication by a large number; DES or equiv doesn't work here. I then sign each vote and encrypt to central office.
Central office gets all the votes, picks one to make valid, and asks for the blinding factors for the rest. It then decrypts, verifies, and unblinds these. It then checks that each is a valid vote and that the GUIDs come in pairs. For the last vote it decrypts, verifies, signs with a DIFFERENT KEY PAIR, encrypts to voter, and returns the vote (both of them). The voter then decrypts the vote, unblinds it, picks one, and sends it in to vote. This last step (submission) is not connected to the others; I could put my vote on a disk and take it to the library to vote if I'm paranoid.
So, this meets all the needed requirements:
One person, one vote: registration + GUID (can't submit vote more than once; central office won't sign more than one.
Anonymous: when I send in my vote, it no longer has my key connected to it, and the central office doesn't know the GUID.
can't be faked: partly in the registration, partly in the crypto.
Third party can't see: its encrypted
Third party can't change: same
I can cverify that I voted and who I voted for: I can send a request "who did this GUID vote for" to office, and it can tell me. If I'm paranoid, I worry about the central office tracking IPs and such, so I don't ask or ask from a library etc.
Did I miss anything?
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It's like a mantra, I swear - "a third party vote is a wasted vote". The media push two candidates, the parties push two candidates, and pretty soon we all believe there are only two candidates.
I used to feel that I shouldn't vote because I couldn't (didn't want to) keep up with all the back-and-forth maneuvering that goes on with the media and the parties. But it's possible to read up on the parties and the candidates. You can even find out where your views on the issues fall on the political map and compare it to the candidates. There are some really brilliant thinkers in the various newsgroups, unfiltered by corporate sponsorthink. Granted, some of the contributors are a taco short of a combo plate, but hey, at least we don't have to let the TV think for us anymore. We can also count on Salon to provide good coverage of the issues and candidates. It doesn't take much time at all to become informed enough to make a confident vote.
There are really no excuses left. Get informed and vote.
=================== Pretty? Feh. Shiny? Feh. A Jedi craves not these things.
A friend of mine works for one of the online voting companies. According to this person the Republicans were all prepared to use online voting at their convention, but pulled it at the last minute. Allegedly the Bush campaign staff didn't want any possibilty of changing the carefully orchestrated nomination-by-acclamation procedure.
I can handle going to a local school once every couple of years. If government wants to make things easier for me, they should make it easier to register my car, or make it easier to fill out my taxes.
The "John Hagelin" idiots have really destroyed the Reform Party. If you look at the Natural Law Party page you can see that this guy has NO chance of getting votes -- the whole NLP is a bunch of eastern mystics who want to use 'transcendential meditation' to solve all the world's problems... yeah, right. This guy should be running for the Legalize LSD Party, not the Reform Party.
Pat Buchanan might not be very popular in some circles, but at least he gives the Reform Party some legitimacy. He is the right wing's equivalent of Ralph Nader.
I pretty much agree with you except on Buchanan, but I didn't want to inject more opinions than necessary into my analysis of the Reform Party's structural problems.
It is a common misconception that Buchanan is radically conservative. But George Will argued persuasively in 1992 and 1996 although Buchanan's old job was to be conservative on Crossfire, that his actual beliefs on most issues were radically liberal (government controls on trade and the economy). What excites radical conservatives was that he was very conservative on social issues (gays, abortion, etc).
Not many reporters listened to Will at the time, but it is telling that as soon as Republicans who were radical conservatives on all issues appeared (Alan Keyes, Gary Baurer), Buchanan lost nearly all his support.
When a primary ends, the factions form a compromise based on their voting strength. They form a message for their party which everyone in the party can live with and which can win the general election. But how do you compromise between Hagelin and Buchanan? They're nothing alike, and that's why the Reform Party is breaking up-- it has no overarching message. It is a cautionary example for people who want to just vote 'no'. I could summarize the Greens, Libertarians, Republicans and Democrats in about five minutes. All we know about the Reform party is who's in it.
I agree with you that Ventura isn't a big-l libertarian. He would be at home as a New Democrat or a Libertarian Republican (both are strong, growing factions in their party). I think he chose the Reform Party for recognition, but also because with them, he wouldn't have to compromise on his message. Very rare that you can do that and win an election-- it only works if you accidentially represent a good compromise between the major parties.
Label me as a cynic if you wish, but often I feel that the biggest problem the US has isn't too few people voting in elections, but rather too many.
My Weblog
I think online voting is a bad idea. Much as I like it for my stock proxies, electing politicians is another story. I believe fraud would skyrocket to such an extent that most elections would be questionable. Once you don't have to show your face at a poll, there's pretty much nothing standing in the way of registering large numbers of nonexistent 'voters' and having them vote the way you want. The mail-in ballot system that's becoming more and more prevalent is bad enough, but putting it online makes it way too easy. Just think of the [insert favorite demon group here: Christian Coalition, AFL/CIO, etc.] getting their members together to create vast number of new voters in an attempt to influence the outcome of some tight contest. The stakes are high enough that this will happen.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
There are two responses to this. The easy way, is to view the market as the Right Answer(tm) to all things and view this as a feature. In this case, we might as well make it easier and give each user a chit than can be used to make their vote. This chit then could be traded on ebay at the going rate.
On the other hand, for those who feel that democracy is supposed to implement one-person one-vote instead of one-buck one-vote would want to undermine this market. The only way of doing that is to make it very difficult to make place a vote. For example, you might require the person to send dozens of emails back and forth to the system--any one of which can change the result of the final vote. (For example, use a parity function.) Then unless the purchaser watches all the emails over a period of weeks, they wouldn't know who they voted for.
Unfortunately the democratic solution only works if you make e-voting truely an anoying and costly way of voting.
Bummer that not everything can be solve by computers.
The Reform Party's primaries have already happened... Just like the recent Arizona election, they used Election.com to handle the ballots.
Here's a Wired News story about the election.
"My God. They've elected...Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf!"
--Everybody wants a rock to tie a piece of string around.--
Why is everyone worried about the voting when it's already impossible to verify the vote counting?
... different from me in their opinions ... that it's hard to draw any conclusions from the available evidence.
.. but remember that this just requires signing, not encryption. We should want the process to be verifiable by third parties.
I suppose that one could assert that one point of weakness is enough. Or question opening oneself further to manipulation. But if the counting is compromised, then the votes don't matter. And I've frequently wondered if people could really have voted "that way".
OTOH, so many people are so
If it weren't so implausible, then I would campaign for open source vote counting programs. Of course then one would need to worry about tamper proof communication protocols (secure sockets good enough? GPG?)
OTOH, if the above is ever to mean anything, then secure voter ID is also necessary. But I'd prefer credit-card like information over social security numbers. The trouble with actual credit cards is that some folk don't have any accounts, and some have several. But would anyone want a centralized registrar of this information? (OK, there are good reasons. But there are LOTS of drawbacks!)
I don't currently have a solution, but guiding principles are that centralized controls (chokepoints) are to be avoided during the design and that verification by anyone who wants to take the effort should be possible. Usage of standard modules whenever otherwise feasible is also a good guide.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Slashdot article about it
To vote on-line from home, voters would fill out a form they could download from the party's Web site, choose a personal identification code, sign it and mail it to the party. Once the signature is verified, confirmation would be sent to the voter by e-mail. On election day, the voter would open the party's Web site, enter the identification code and cast the electronic ballot. that is how abcnews.go.com said they did it.
Article on abcnews
-- James
While all the big media outlets hype online voting, my feeling is that they (and the masses who follow them) are obfuscating the true future of online citizen participation.
In the near future, citizens won't simply be voting, they will be building and deliberating initiatives, in other words, legislating! With citizen-sponsored initiatives already legal in 24 U.S. states and hundreds of municipalities, it's only a matter of time (and a few technical steps) before we see not-for-profit online sites dedicated to ordinary citizenry posting initiative ideas and asking other citizens to "sign their petition," followed by the constructing of the legislation, deliberating on that, then finally, voting.
There are already cases of individual initiative sponsors putting up web sites to promote their initiatives and to get individuals to snail-mail them their petition signature. And with digital signatures becoming legally binding, it thus becomes easier to gather signatures online.
The bottom line is that the citizenry inevitably won't just settle for voting on their representatives every two years. They will want to decide individual issues and implement them in real-time. Direct, digital, deliberative democracy is the next big thing.
For great discussion about direct democracy, I recommend taking a look at cicdd.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
While anyone may submit to Risks, some of the people who post there are respected experts in their fields, and will often write very well-thought-out criticism of online and telephone voting schemes as they are actually practiced - usually without much regard for security and privacy - as opposed to the ideal schemes thought up by security experts and cryptographers.
I can't remember any specific posts on online voting, lets see what the search form produces:
Just searching for "voting" produces dozens of submissions, mostly related to computerized voting - that is, electronic voting booths, which have their own reliability and security issues but are not what we're discussing here - but see Computer Causes Chaos in Brazilian Election in which a program designed to weed out fraudulent voters (like dead people) canceled the voting rights of 70,000 twins.
Searching for "voting;online" produces a few hits such as the announcement of Arizona's online voting and a comment that there is no promise of privacy in online voting - that your identity and your vote won't be correllated, which is forbidden for conventional voting.
Wonder about the accuracy of unofficial online votes? Check out the risks of paying attention to uncontrolled e-voting in which a public opinion voting site on abortion funnelled votes from both sides to the anti-abortion side.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Personally I don't vote because of several reasons including:
I don't want to make a special trip to wait in line and mess with this hassle of somebody finding my name and marking it. Further I don't want to get up early in the morn before I go to work to vote and after work I want to go to bed.
If it were possible to vote online I would defintally do it. I'd much rather login with my voter number and password click a few buttons and log off in my PJ's before I hit the sack.
Oops!
Not all pro-lifers are radical, bible-thumping, ignorant, flat-earth, gay-bashing conservatives.
Libertarians for Life
Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians
Links to other radical and "leftist" pro-life groups
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I think this is great! It gives people the opportunity to directly participate in a fantasy world where the reality has no basis!
Oh wait. Did you say online voiting? I thought you said online gaming. They need more sax and violins in online gaming.
If you offer electronic voting, the barriers to access are lowered. That's not necessarily a good thing. It used to be, you'd have to get your ass off the couch, walk down to your local town hall/library/school and mark yer ballot. If you honestly cared enough to vote, you'd take the effort to do so and made your choice count. Electronic voting would be as cautious as me filling out a Slashdot poll-inconsequential because the bar is so low anyways. Click click.
Now, that said, take it to the next level-now, special interest groups don't have to try hard to convince reasonable minded people to out and vote. Usually, you round up a bunch of people, put them in a bus and drive to the polling station. But now, they can just herd their followers through a portal!
What ends up happening, I'll guess, is that lots of minor special interest candidates end up getting more recognition than they deserve-splintering the vote. Because when more people get a voice through a lowered level of entry, the end result is usually more noise.
I'll offer the situation with publishing-it used to be, only certain people got to write for magazines because there was an abstraction of editors, publishers and peers that one had to deal with as a writer. Nowadays, anyone can write their own web page, and get some form of authenticity.
This sort of noise is acceptable, because we the reader get to synthesize and deal with all these sources. But in voting, you don't get the chance-those thousands of voices are not just spouting an opinion, they're making a choice. Without the layers of abstraction of having to get yourself out to the voting booth, speeches, campaigns, we'll end up with a million choices, a million decisions and no clear winner.
--Calum
What amazes me is that ANY person on Slashdot would identify more with tyrany than with those being abused. ESPECIALLY after the Napster, DeCSS and DMCA affairs.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Once populations got past a certain size, pure democracies stopped working, and republics had to be set up where people elect delegates to represent them, and these delegates in turn vote on the issues. Of course with this came greater opportunity for corruption, with candidates pandering during election time, and doing whatever they wanted while in office, relying on the power of their office, media control and spindoctoring to slide through. For a long time the excuse has been that since pure democracy is impossible, that these are just the evils we have to live with for the next best thing. However, I can see the internet enabling a pure democracy. Imagine instead of relying on mr. politician up on capitol hill, hoping that he votes in line with your opinion, hoping that PAC money isn't coloring his vote, knowing that there is pretty much nothing you can do about it if he doesn't (until the next election when you'll again have to choose the lesser of two evils), that you just sit down at your computer (or at some public voting facility) and vote *directly*. I do not believe the amount of bills Congress votes on (or your local government for that matter) is too large for the average citizen to handle. For instance, in California, as far as I understand, they have public voting on individual issues. Imagine, in a matter of a few hours, the consensus of the nation could be tapped...instead of each special interest buying chunks of media to feed a perception to the populace, then waiting then rehashing all over again. Think of all the hotbutton topics...you have a poll *blam* there you go - irrefutable, discussion over. Of course there are the technical and logistical issues, but I think these can be surmounted. I'm just talking about an ideal situation here, but I would love to just be able to come home, have dinner, and spend 15 minutes casting my vote on the issues that mattered to me (not to say that 15 minutes would be the only time I thought about these), and feel good fulfilling my responsibility as a citizen, rather than waste years filtering out media noise just to vote for the candidate that will screw me less hard.
Of course for a democracy of any kind to work, citizens must be informed (witness our own democracy). But I have faith that populism will create better citizens - give people a reason to care, and they will.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
How many times a year do we vote? MAYBE twice??? The average person can make it to vote with little more than a 5 minute detour from the trek to work in the morning. NOT a terrible burden to have your voice hear TWICE A YEAR!
And for the person that claimed only radicals and rich white guys vote....that's BULL. I know plenty of people who are NEITHER that vote.
The claim that the other people (non-rich, non-radical, non-white people) who don't vote are the most vocal with solutions to problems might be true....but the claim that we have to have online voting for them to actually vote is ludicrous! If these people REALLY have such great ideas and are THAT vocal...so vocal as to be considered passionate about their cause....then you would expect them to be even MORE willing to go out of their way to vote!!!! Sounds to me more like they're just extremely lazy big-mouths also known as Monday-morning quarterbacks and backseat drivers! If you want to help solve problems, you vote. If you don't like the candidates, then you become active and either try to FIND good candidates or you run yourself. Even if you write someone in, it's still a statement. And the notion that only people in those two parties can win is ridiculous. Ask people who live in Minnesota....their GOVERNOR is from NEITHER party!!! It CAN be done.
Now, don't get me wrong...there's a time and place for everything and SOME DAY, there will be the time for online voting....but the technology is not there now...it is WAY too easy to crack the system. I will put MONEY on someone's ability to break any system you can design right now...at least, any system that is simple enough that the average voter can use it!!!!
Please, people, laziness is no excuse for not voting and the claim that we have to make it easier for lazy people to vote is silly. If they don't care enough to get off their butts twice a year, then they shouldn't complain about the elections.
hmph.
My thoughts. (like them or not)