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Elections on the Internet -- Not Any Time Soon
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.
Ah, it doesn't matter, anyway. The Supreme Court just set a precedent that says that courts can ignore ballots and state laws dealing with how they are to be counted, and "elect" someone by a vote of the court itself.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Are also arguments against absentee ballots. Perhaps we should get rid of those too- wonder who the president would be today.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Granted, online voting wouldn't be more secure, but provided the one-person-one-vote limit could be enforced, it would be a helluva lot more accurate than a room full of people searching for hanging chad.
The city council has moved to mail-in ballots for municipal elections in my jurisdiction. This too was a schmozzle of the hugest proportions, and think of how trivial that is compared to electronic voting...
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"?
--everytime you learn something a piece of your brain is replaced by something that someone else said
You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote. If they choose to let others watch their vote on their machine - fine. As for 'hacks' regarding viewing people's votes on their machines, this may be solved by vote-boxes or so that connect directly through your physical media, and run some firmware.
:)
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
...Mickey Mouse wins by a landslide!
Having to actually get off your arse and go to a polling place to cast your vote is A Good Thing. It makes sure only the truly motivated actually vote.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
The notion that voting on the Internet would constitute an advancement is disgusting. How many people without access to the Internet would have to work /harder/ than those who already are wealthy enough (presumably) to cast their vote via computers.
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.
"Old man yells at systemd"
hackers or chads... either way we're screwed.
- colin
new pasttime for scripot kiddes.. dosing voting machines
... Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf is elected President.
Kevin Mitnick for President.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Note that the above assumed by 'voting on the Internet', we mean voting from home. I'm not neccessarily against using computers at poll stations, as this doesn't discriminate against those without access to the Internet at home, or disproportionately empower those that do.
"Old man yells at systemd"
What a great pity... I'm sure I'm not the only one who was looking forward to voting for CowboyNeal. :)
These sigs are more interesting tha
Expect more from your editor.
Someone you trust is one of us.
You mean we can't use the Slashdot polling engine? I thought that was accurate to within .001%...
Didn't someone used to have a sig like 'the supreme court ruled it legal to screw voters, and demonstrated how to do it'?
Just proof that throughout the whole election mess people's opinions - from ordinary citizens right up to the members of the US Supreme Court - were dictated by who they wanted to be in office.
Voting by mobile phone text message is going to be trialled in the UK at the next election. See this BBC News story. This has a lot of the same issues as internet voting - have they really been thought throught yet?
A report on the reliability of various voting systems (including Internet) from MIT/Caltech.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
First of all, to institute a federal mandate to require all votes to be cast over the internet would require an amendment to our Constitution, which currently gives the States the right to decide how they want people to vote (within limits). Assuming this is done (a herculean feat), securing the internet for voting shouldn't be that hard a thing to do really.
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.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
I think people over-estimate the security of current voting methods. Ballot papers can be marked, ballot boxes stuffed. It is the legislation and the risk of being found out which discourages cheating, rather than the security of current methods.
How did they know a "party hack" wasn't standing by as all the Oregon voters used mail in votes?
Same issue really.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Geez. Nobody ever said life was fair. Maybe we should all just give up our computers since the poor and uneducated don't have access to them? Wait! I'm College educated, I should get a lobotomy so I don't trample the rights of the uneducated?
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
IMHO several voting systems can co-exist peacefully.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Well....half of americans, %54 are on the internet.
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
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Give me a break.
Why don't we just have poll workers go door-to-door, so we don't discriminate against people with no car, or people who live 4 miles from the polling station instead of 2.
Ooh, I know, lets prevent Lexus from making technological advancements in their cars, because some people can't afford a car.
Life is always easier for some people than for others. That's just the way it is.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
...Everyone voted for CowboyNeal!
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
This reminds me of the problems we had at the Universty of Michigan a number of years back with the student government elections, which allowed students to vote online. The problem arose because candidates would walk through the dorms pumping their platform, knock on people's doors, log them into the voting website and show them how easy it was to vote for them. Obviously, quite an uproar came about because of this and I'm sure a similar situation would occur on the bigger scale elections.
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.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
>> the computer science and public policy communities appear to agree
That's lovely, but the politicos will do whatever they like without regard to the experts.
After the last presidential election, I don't think we are ready for something like this. If they institute internet voting for this country, I'm packing all my stuff, closing out all my financial accounts and heading to New Zealand.
...
I think we need machine countable ballots, but also you must highlight your option in case it needs to manually reviewed. This should save us a couple months next time around
I live under the bridge, in a pile of feces.
This may be a great blow to a company I used to work for -- one of their larger projects when I left was a voting system in where you could go to a kiosk (say, at your local post office, mall, etc.) and cast your vote.
Oh, come on, we have a couple of hundred thousand people in the US who can't figure out how to vote using a punch card with printed directions, for crying out loud. And now people are suggesting standardizing voting using a computer and an internet connection to make things easier? *chuckle*
Now, touch-screen computers at the polling station to simplify voting... that'd be a much better idea.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Grammar check...
"... all too true." would be the appropriate way to finish that.
...than I really think we should go for it.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
OK, let's not categorize this as "elections on the internet." A more accurate subject would be "voting via web pages." What most people want, and I have asked, as well as observed, is an electronic voting booth. These devices will hopefully reduce human error, they will produce a physical paper ballot for each voter, and they will send the totals instantly over a VPN over the internet to a central collection point. That is technically voting over the internet, even though individual citizens still have to go out and hit the voting booths. Our elections will greatly benefit from such devices using the internet, and it is in the works. I posted a story not too long ago about Rhode Island's plans to work on such a system (rejected of course.) Slashdot admins, please watch what you say. I thought JonKatz was the only one who went off the handle with wild claims and broad misconceptions...
~ now you know
There's plenty of voting fraud going on with the current system. You can't tell me that the "pregnant chad/hanging chad" system of voting is much better. Besides if they're worried about how to properly identify someone, then take a look at the E-File system being used by the IRS. I'm quite sure that the IRS won't stand for being hacked.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If we wanted to setup online voting, we could, but the powers that be don't want it, so it isn't going to happen. The technology is there, the problem, as always is with people. When people are at home, how do you know thier abusive spouse isn't watching them, thier boss, or Union chairmen. The only way to provide any reasonable privacy is to provide a place to do it.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
... please welcome the new President of the United States of America: 1337 haX0r d00d!
In Cairo, the newspaper Al-Ahram, an instrument of the government, claimed in its editorial that "It was an instinctive speech and Bush did not learn the lessons of 11th September". It continued: "Bush only instigates terrorism. With this speech, he gives good motives for some to continue with terrorism".
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, declared that "Bush is trying to take public attention away from the Middle East and is preparing American public opinion to continue to support Israel in its brutal oppression of the Palestinian nation".
An official in Baghdad accused Washington of state terrorism and denied claims that Iraq was a danger, although President Saddam Hussein has long decided not to comment on statements made by George Bush, deeming them unworthy of being taken into consideration.
The Deputy General Secretary of the Arab League, Said Kamal, is of the personal opinion that "Bush should show signs of greater wisdom. He ignores the calls for prudence launched by the European Union and I cannot believe that he does not know that Israel is on the list of countries which have weapons of mass destruction".
Israel has around 200 nuclear warheads. These comments prove how badly received were the words of George Bush in the region. Phrases such as "axis of evil", "we know their true nature" and "the USA is at war" and sentences like "I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons" are no more than hype, sausage-factory remarks designed to whip up hysteria. This they have done at home, but there are good reasons for the hail of criticism from abroad, and not just from Moslem nations.
Speaking inexplicably of an "axis of evil" between Pyongyang, Teheran and, predictably, Baghdad, George Bush launched into a diatribe which became more and more ridiculous by the sentence, so replete was it with barefaced arrogance.
Understandably concentrating on the theme of international terrorism, the September 11th atrocity naturally remaining fresh in the minds of all Americans, George Bush failed to rise above the occasion and present the vision of a world statesman. Even British newspaper editorials derided the speech as being a delusion, never close to reality.
Concentrating his venom on three regimes deemed hostile to the USA, only because they refuse to kow-tow to Washington, and practically limiting his mention of terrorist organisations to Hammas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, organisations which pose a threat to Israel but not the USA, President Bush made it clear that Washington remains biased and tendentious in its Middle East policy.
While it is right to condemn international terrorism, since attacks such as that on September 11th must never happen again, George Bush failed to mention the right-wing paramilitary organisations perpetrating acts of extreme barbarity in South America, organisations which are covertly supported by Washington, he failed to mention the IRA, which for years was funded by NORAID, based in the USA, he failed to mention the terrorist attacks in Angola by UNITA, armed for many years by the USA and he failed to mention the state terrorism carried out on a daily basis by Israel, against civilians, in the lands which Israel stole from them.
Singling out almost without exception Moslem countries and organisations, this speech was a cheap shot at America's traditional demons, even if the demonology is an invention of Washington.
The reason Iran is not favourable towards Washington is because the CIA operations to support the regime of the hated Shah Reza Pahlevi, who was totally out of touch with his people, gave the United States a hostile image among the people of this country. Fearing a growth in fundamentalist Islamism in the region, Washington then pumped Iraq, then the good student, full of weaponry to see it through its ten-year war against its neighbour.
Saddam Hussein having been pumped so full of armour that he became a danger, it was then necessary to incite Kuwait to made alterations to its oil policy which were ruinous to the Iraqi economy, forcing Iraq to take action. The massive intrusion in Iraq's internal affairs over the last decade have naturally turned this country against the USA also.
Finally, it is not beyond the realms of the imagination that Pyongyang is angered at Washington because of the military support it gave to its former enemy, South Korea.
Complaining that all three countries have weapons of mass destruction is valid only if these countries are aiming to use these weapons against the USA.
There is no evidence to suggest anything of the sort. The reason why these countries have weapons of mass destruction is to defend themselves against Washington's permanent interference and after the recent incidents in the Gulf and Yugoslavia, crises created and managed by Washington, who can blame them?
I think they are on the wrong track with internet voting. We should be casting votes digitally, but not over the internet. What about touch screens that store the vote on some form of media in a kiosk or something of that sort. Should be pretty difficult to mess up voting if you touch "Gore - D" and the screen makes you confirm it. It might be a little tedious, but it gets the job done.
WHuhu. ANd if you dont rememebr the reference, its not that important.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Voting on the Internet would allow more people to vote creating a more accurate representation of the countries ideas. Politicians don't want voters from all over the country voting, they just want the voters that support them to vote.
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.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
The secret ballot is not an obscure issue. It is one of the most important aspects of the US voting system. Perhaps it would not be so important without our history of every manner of vote fraud imaginable. The secret ballot prevents coercion of voters by threat of force, losing their job, or any other means by which one person can inappropriately influence another. This must never be compromised, and would be a serious issue if it were. We need developments that decrease the chance for vote fraud, not increase the chance.
using computers at poll stations...doesn't discriminate against those without access to the Internet at home, or disproportionately empower those that do.
Sure, it does. It makes it easier for those with access at home. People who typically fail to vote because they don't feel like going out and waiting in line can do it in minutes from the comfort of their own home.
Every election, you hear tidbits like, Republicans tend to win on rainy days because their supporters are more likely to have their own vehicle and thus more willing to go out in it. This would multiply that effect.
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?
Hello. I have to say that I can't even favour use of the internet for elections (and I mean elections in voting for your government sense). I have to admit here I'm actually someone who would resist the technology.
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
> Geez. Nobody ever said life was fair.
No. But the Constitution says that voting MUST be.
Easing access to the polls for those who can afford the technology equates directly to greater representation for those voters than for voters who don't have the skids greased for them.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
The ability of the internet to handle large-scale voting in a fair and secure fashion is here today.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Oh My God ! You mean I'm still going to have to leave the house every four years ?
Does anyone really think the people confused by the punch ballots in Florida would be any less intimidated by a computer? Not a chance.
In Canada, national elections are handled by a nonpartisan Federal agency, Elections Canada. 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 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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
You know, I recently did some contract consulting in Florida, and considering how badly they handled paper ballots, I suspect they'd REALLY screw up Internet elections.
Just an observation.
wow .. i wonder how long it took them to figure this one out.
hmm... well shouldn't the focus be a better equipment at the booth? i think modern technology can provide a better and more reliable solution than what we have today.
And you can't throw any of them away because the system can be made foolproof.
+1 vt 4 tny blair pls. thnks, cyal8r 8)
People who don't have enough will to go to their polling place and pull a lever shouldn't be voting.
Internet voting is a dumb idea.
They can't insure that a party hack isn't standing behind absentee voters watching them fill in their ballots from their kitchen tables. What's the difference?
All that said, I think the security questions are a lot more important. It's probably a lot easier for dead former Chicago residents to vote over the Internet than... Oh wait...
i think that is the best way to balot folks, that way, you can get sections presented to you one at a time, allowing larger buttons, and less confusion, not tomention you could standardise on all interfaces, and even keep a running tally so you can just release the results as soon a the polling station is closed.
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.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Otherwise, you'd get a +1. Everyone has been pointing to that, but noone has acknowledged the fact that absentee ballots are not monitored at all, and any number of coercive tactics could take place with them. Maybe internet voting and campaign reform laws will have to come about at the same time. If candidate X doesn't have the money available from large corporate sponsors, then they can't afford to send their chronies out to force people to vote for them.
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.
~ now you know
>Lemme guess, your either Poor, a Communist, or a Democrat?
/am/ the wealthy. However, giving people the ability to vote from home is like going door to door to those who make above X$$ and saying, "Well, things are good enough, right? You have your house and car .. here, sign here, and you're vote is cast.", while those who already believe that the system is stacked against them (and rightly so) now see themselves lose even more ground in terms of access to representation and technology; the psycological devestation is recognized by psychology, and dismissed by the wealthy with the 'life isn't fair' argument. It's nothing but more self-affirming perspectives by those with the 'I'm here because I earned it' dillusion.
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?
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
stupid, he was saying that you would only be able to vote at a polling station, NO HOME VOTING!!!!
This Election Hacked by Chinese!
But right now you could say voting is easier for those without jobs or who work less hours. I make a point to vote every election and waiting in line to vote certainly has more opportunity cost for the wealthy than those who have no jobs.
We must remember that there are people who cannot make it to the polls. I was in a wheelchair during last year's election due to a car accident, and it was too late to get an absentee ballot. I found it exceedingly hard to get to my place of polling because I live in a hilly mountain town and the bus didn't go close enough.
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)?
what about those of us who have to work 2 jobs? we have less time to vote than the welfair slobs who do not work. so by your logic, the welfair slobs should be represented more......oh but wait, those fools are lazy.
there is no way to help the lazy, infact, I think that it is good that people who are to lazy to vote do not get represented, they do not want to participate in decision making then they should not get a voice.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That's right. "Let them eat cake."
> Demographics say more than HALF of that HALF is middle to lower income and minority.
Duh! Take anything that's distributed on a bell-shaped curve, such as income, and select two thirds of the X-axis (middle to lower income) and you'll get way more than half the population. Nice analysis, Einstein. I think the argument was about people at the lower end of the curve. You know, those little people that you dismiss with a click of your mouse.
>How can more people voting cause "less political representation" ????
The issue is more one of skewed representation. If the middle to upper income voters have MUCH easier access to the polls then their voting participation will soar while the voters who don't have that kind of access will not see a similar surge in participation.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
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...
Say no to software patents.
I can just see it now: the voting software wouldn't be user-friendly enough, my mom wouldn't be able to figure out how to use it, and just power off the voting station computer. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What responsible and educated descisions can anyone lacking at least a college education make about the important issues that concern our nation and our politicians today?
- Cloning and the Genome project.
- Almost all internet issues.
- Microsoft monopoly or not and implications of open source in the economy.
- Space funding.
- Current economics, other than 'Hyuck, lower taxes!'
Heaven forbid should we acknowledge that all men are not! created equal and that this countries voting, legal and politics are not working properly.Don't get me wrong, I love this country, I'm damn proud to be American and it's no questions asked the best country in the world but I believe the American people need to be willing to accept real changes to our government. Look at how this world has changed significantly in the last 200 years. Do we use anything else in our lives that was made 200 years ago? Oh I'm sure examples are out there so save your fingers the typing.
I don't mean to sound like a conceded prick but recently graduating from a university I'm probably closer to realizing than many 'older' people that a high school education these days is insulting. You can literally sleep through high school, turn in no work and obtain a C average for showing up.
I'm sure you can make a 1000 arguments about how this would continue the uneducated/poor downward spiral and blah blah blah. Maybe I'm just fed up with supporting the people in this country that don't support themselves. I work damn hard for my money and worked damn hard to work myself through college, to want to just give it to people that have no desire to better themselves.
All men are NOT created equal, but I do believe men ( and women of course ) should be given an equal chance at succeeding in obtaining an education and gaining the priveledge! to vote. But I'm rather sick of living in a country where it's 'ok' to not succeed. How bout we raise that standards bar back up a little and make this country #1 again in education
Sorry for the rant.
-TheRowk
You can change without improving, but you can't improve without changing. -Quote stolen from I don't remember who
For all the groaning in November, it's still critical that a recount was even possible. It was eventually done, the results published, and history knows exactly what happened. Had ballots been stolen or tampered, that would have become part of history too, even if the results then couldn't be.
The moment it's exclusively electronic, it can get cracked *undetectably*. The detection is the key.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
The fact that you seem to think theology has anything to do with socioeconomic status or political/economic ideology seems to support his conclusion.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
M$ will probably require a Passport for their coming release of Voter 2003. They won't need lobbyists any longer, when they can just fix the election!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Man! Where are you living and where is your head?
Take a look at tax statistics: In the U.S. the top 1% of earners pay something like 30% of income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay something like 4%, and actually are tax-takers rather than tax-payers, based on the government programs they use.
In a situation where you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul's support, and if the income tax situation is any reflection, Paul's being heard loud and clear.
Personally, I'd like to make property ownership a requirement for voting. Or institute a poll tax. I'm sick and tired of being shafted by the Imperial Federal Government so the leisure class at the bottom of the food chain can be provided with sustenance.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Ah, you show your laziness and girth by equating the right to vote with the luxury of transportation methods.
...
...
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
"Old man yells at systemd"
In different words: it's just like the voting system we have now.
Thanks for the correction. Ideology is certainly the word I should be using.
"Old man yells at systemd"
...is the lack of internet access in cemetaries, where many voters currently "reside", thus cutting down on one form of (ahem) creative voting.
What is the point here? That "government" is the key to making these peoples' lives easier/better? How about they do it themselves? The only thing the government is required to do is present an environment where everyone has the opportunity to better themselves. They aren't required to even the playing field later.
From the article: "But voting poses a unique problem: elections require that the voter's identity, once verified, be stripped away to ensure anonymity."
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.
I was looking forward to Slashdotting the vote!
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.
do not read this line twice.
CmdrTaco for president!
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
Yeah, right. This election was awful on both sides pal. As have been most major elections in the past century.
Lets see... we got a democratic party in Detroit driving through the worse part of the urban decay there (that's most of the city if you have been there) with a semi-load of cigarettes and other sundry's handing them out for the return favor of driving them down to vote demo.
We have a demo carpet bagger winning the election in NY by a margin that falls WELL outside the statistial margins (no matter how you make the numbers look) and subtle but ignored calls for recounts and claims of fraud (thanks democratic press).
You have California, where tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and non-citizens were allowed to vote.
You have Oregon and Washington State debacles in vote counting and verification.
You have claims of massive demo fraud in Atlanta which have gone largely uninvestigated even though there is witness and document proof of the claims.
You have the whole chad issue in florida where idiots who can't read (you would have to be an idiot not to figure out the ballot... it's easier than Illinois ballot where I voted) punching a vote and then claiming their stupidity in not following simple instructions should change their cast vote, as well as demo recounters wanting to count every single dimple, scratch, nick and torn corner as a vote for their candidate.
Do I agree that the election should have been decided by the supreme court. Hell no... it's just plain against everthing we stand for and our founding father's intentions. However, the laws in place in each state could have dealt with the situations if enforced as intended and although there would be controversy (when isn't there?), things would be more "normal" in our last election. The last count, supported by the press, had GW winning in Florida anyway.
Drop it liberal trash...
Actually, doesn't that make you the fucking idiot? Why are you working two jobs? Why not just sit back and enjoy the fruits of welfare? Oh wait, I forgot .. because you're a hard working honest individual, unlike those welfare slobs.
.. because I'd be giving up some of my time, effort, or material wealth for you. And yet, you reject it because it'll help a small minority of freeloaders. And the suits just keep laughing and lining their pockets ...
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
"Old man yells at systemd"
From the article:
Over the Internet, however, identity is notoriously easy to fake
This is also true of the physical world. Its not too difficult to get fake IDs and papers. But the bigger thing is (and I dont know how true this is of other states) here in Michigan, you really dont even have to have any fake ID. All you need to know is the name and address of the person you want to be. When I went and voted a few years back, there was a poster on the wall indicating Michigan laws regarding voting and identity. The gist of it was that the people running the voting booths have no right to verify your identity (they cant even ask you to see your ID or voter registration card). If there was any question as to who you are, you would be required to swear an oath on the spot that you are who you say you are and that you are eligible and registered to vote.
I couldn't agree more. After the US presidential voting debacle there was a lot of attention paid to the history of voting here. Much of the laws had (and have) to do with keeping the riff-raff from voting. Hence Tuesday voting instead of weekend.
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 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.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
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!
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Just not technically feasable is right.
First, we need national voting reform. A single uniform ballot for all national elections and candidates, in electronic form in a secure and uniform manner. States can handle their own elections, but the Fed should handle this. I personally envisage a large tablet system with a neutral and unbiased position by position breakdown with a touch screen and confirmation popups for each federal elected position currently to be voted on. It can be in multiple languages (though I personally think we need a single national language made official and save money on supporting all these other damned languages through printing up multiple documents for each person who doesn't speak english), and even include simple images next to the voting area for the candidate that shows how they look (though this might not fly if the tablet is not color and for the reason that images can be bias themselves).
After this, the government needs to build a FedNet for all federal computer operations that is distinctly seperate. Voting stations link to it, via sattelite, and upload results to a mainframe who tally's votes.
The voting station then prints you a reciept of your votes (on a card you insert with your name on it) as proof that you voted and for whom.
This would be uniform, simple and easy to use even for idiots like the ones in florida who can't read instructions, and secure.
As to remote voting... I just don't see it happening while the possiblity that the data being sent can be corrupted or intercepted and modified.
I find it funny that we can file our taxes over the internet to the IRS, but we can't get an anonymous voting system put together.
does that seem odd to anyone else?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
>What is the point here? That "government" is the key to making these peoples' lives easier/better?
Yes. That's exactly the point. Here's a quote which you've apparently never read before.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
> How about they do it themselves?
What resources do you propose they use to counter the resources brought to the table by the rich and powerful who oppose them, other than the power of their numbers as is ostensibly represented by the government. (We the People, remember)
Geez. Some peoples' ignorance of the democratic process is mind-boggling. Do you think the government is some third-party entity like a referee in a football game? The government is us. We the People! WE THE F@#KING PEOPLE!
Unless, of course, the rich and powerful find some way to stack the deck against the people by using money or something.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
is pictured here - is that undisputable enough? But seriously, in a razor close election the losers are always going to try to tip the balance by complaining about something, no matter what you do or use.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yeah, you know, if Keven Mitnick ever gets elected president you know something fishy is going on...
"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?"
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.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Having worked for several political campaigns, I can tell you that if you contact your party they will send someone to take you to vote and drop you back off at home. We do it all day long during election day -- And some campaigns even send lackees door to door trying to find people that haven't voted yet and offer them a ride (albeit in neighborhoods that heavily favor their party). "But I'm an Indepedant" or "I belong to . Not a good enough excuse, for ever party there are people that will come pick you up and take you to your polling place, and as well there are non-partisan groups that do the same thing for people with any party affiliation. You may not think your one vote counts, but the different political parties do, you wouldn't believe how much they scratch and claw for those single votes. "But I'm too lazy to pick up the phone to call someone for a ride." -- Put down the voter registration down and back away from the ballot!! ;-)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
>> Wait! I'm College educated,
Having gone to college (or College) does not make one educated.
>> I should get a lobotomy so I don't trample the rights of the uneducated?
Don't bother, no one would notice the difference.
- Are voting in a standardized fashion
- Are voting alone
- Only vote once
- Understand the voting instructions
Ironic that on the heels of the whole MS security discussion, and the rehash of the "computers will never be truly secure" conversation, that we somehow think that one of the fundamental tenets of our democracy can work not only on computers, but over the Internet. Doesn't anyone else see the lunacy of this proposition?Now, computer terminals safely ensconced at the polling places themselves might offer a few advantages...
Was that out loud?
It would be amusing, were internet voting (or, for that matter, any computerized system like a touch screen) to ever be implemented, to have the system also provide information on the candidates. For instance, a full listing of all the financial information that the FEC requires, plus their voting record or other history as is relevant and of public record.
;) )
("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*
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
...against Palm Beach voters. They've figured out where the cup holder is on their computers, but haven't figured out why you need a rodent to operate it.
I like this "I dont know enough about either American party" Youre not a US citizen ????
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
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
People who typically fail to vote because they don't feel like going out and waiting in line can do it in minutes from the comfort of their own home.
Could probably change that to 'from the confort of thier own cube' since i'm betting alot of people work on election day...
or perhaps it is the fact that one of my Jobs is working for the welfair office and I see how so many of these people are just freeloading because they "can't work because they have carple tunnle"
or how so many scam the system by providing bad information, not updating their situation, etc.
perhaps it is the fact that my friend is a nurse at an iner city hospital and she hears single mothers on welfair wonder why a mother would ever work because they need to be home with their kid.
hmmm perhaps it is that that makes me think the way I do.
don't misunderstand what I say as thinking that no one needs assistence, but there are so many that milk the system because they can, it just makes me sick.
oh, and a person on full programs, brings home the equivelant of around $45000 per year, so not having to work, and still having an ok life is a pretty good motivation if you ask me.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
First, it should be pointed out that any problem inherent to at-home voting via the web already exists with mail-in ballots.
But, just because internet voting at home might not work, doesn't mean internet voting can't work. Presidential elections require a nationwide network. Right now, they use paper & "sneakernet", with lots of sneakers between points. Even if it has drawbacks, the internet is a much more efficient and secure nationwide network. It's just a matter of how to use it. Probably the first step would be to replicate as many of the paper processes as possible.
You could still benefit by replacing those old machines with touch-screen (or voice-activated, or braille, etc.) booths and VPN to a "tally server". Your client could have multiple interfaces, so if someone's too lame to understand the butterfly screen, give them the 'voting wizard' and a dancing paperclip to help out. On the server(s), you'd get near real-time results without media conglomerations swaying results with early "predictions". No chads, no democrats with stacks of punchcards in their car, and best of all, here's your recount:
SELECT COUNT(VOTERID) FROM VOTES WHERE CANDIDATE ='BUSH' AND STATE='FL'
I would vote for cowboy neal. He could probably do a better job than most of the morons that are in office now. Besides, for all of the bashing he gets here on slashdot her deserves to have one of those purty little interns.
Ohhh, your a naughty little birdy...
Mod this crap down,
He isnt even a US citizen.
> GUESS WHAT your COMMENTARY on OUR politics is MOOT.
.sig. I'd simply rather say that things are so wildly unequal right now that we need more equality. Not total equality.
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.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Let me not address the technical issues of how people's identities will be validated if internet voting is tried -- that's an implementation problem, and I'm sort of a big picture kind of guy... :) Or just unqualified.
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.
Well, the IOU system was failed when we started it, EVERYONE lent to has defaulted. They want and take, but wont repay,
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.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Okay. Look at your economy, and how much it owes to exportation of goods and access to other markets. Look at how much the very life you live depends on the sacrifices of others. People die every day, all over the world, at the hands of American companies. We give our blood.
I'm sorry, but where is your IOU we should be able to cash for giving you access to our wallets and crushing our domestic industries?
"Old man yells at systemd"
The White House confirmed today that voting on the web was indeed not a good option. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesperson, elaborated in today's press conference that the main reason the president cited behind this stance was that Al Gore invented the Internet and it would not be a fair playing field.
On a more serious note, neither Democrats nor Republicans have yet figured out how they will control the election results after voting is completed since they wouldn't be counting ballots on a national TV, and running out the clock at their option. It was further troubling that Larry Ellison promised to provide free clustered database solution which was presumably "unbreakable", and would take only 2 seconds to count all votes instead of 3 months.
If a person has been such a failure in life that they can't even afford or make sacrifices to own a barebones Internet capable computer and Internet access, I would prefer they not vote. These people do not have the intelligence or motivation to be trusted with the responsibility of electing officials to move our country forward.
If a person hasn't yet bothered to learn the basics of this "Internet" thing, I would prefer they not vote. As businesses, government and individuals rely more and more on the Internet to communicate, I don't want people who know nothing about the Internet to be trusted with the responsibility of electing officials that determine future Internet policy.
While I do believe that both secure Internet voting and traditional community polling places should be available, I believe increase in collective IQ and achievement oriented nature of voters from Internet-only voting would be a welcome result.
Aren't you an angry little person!
It strikes me, in reading your screed, that you believe people should be forced to live the way you deem proper. And you're willing to use government, that monopoly on force, to accomplish your goals.
I leave it to you to review the lessons of the last century. Though, God knows, I don't expect you to do so. Those who worship at the altar of Marx tend to have their eyes firmly focused on the future as their jackbooted feet trample to death the tens of millions who don't share the vision.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I honestly believe that this is the first time I've heard someone criticized for working hard. This guy/gal wants to provide for his family and you're fragging him/her? Pretty harsh.
I'm also interested in how you think things should be (as you say above, we shouldn't have to work for anything), and how we are going to achieve that. Magic? Star Trek Monetary Compensators? Nice try, please come back when you make sense.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Unfortunately, this is probably all to true.
Did Taco actually make an effort to verify this? Oh, it's just an expression.
What about elections by mobile phone? They are trying that in the UK -i d_1802000/1802956.stm
i d_1799000/1799883.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/news
Would that be any more viable than voting online? My thought is that the percentage of people with phones in the UK and Europe is so much greater than in the US that it might not be an option right now.
The BBC article also mentions voting by digital television. That's the first I've heard of that option. What percentage of people in the US, or for that matter the UK, have digital tv available to them??
Here is another BBC article that talks about the fraud that could occur with online voting -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/news
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
This is the first fucking thing that made sense in this entire thread.
What the hell is this guy's problem? Technology is not a right, and what is so special about voting from home? What, save an hour once a year, if that? Woopee.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Unfortunately, it's best to leave the burden on the people, and not the government.
If we were to allow internet voting, the burden would now be on the government to provide a secure and accomodating large scale solution.
Let me ponder their previous track record.... the Post Office.... IRS.... DMV. hmmmmm.
I sincerely doubt that the government can provide a viable solution without introducing hordes of bureaucracy and inneficiencies, especially on an endevor of this magnitude.
The sad part is, the burden is best left on the people. If we want a fair and efficient voting process, people will still have to leave work, find their polling place, and cast their vote manually.
However.. I would entertain the thought of a solution developed by private industry, but that opens up a new can....
"...for those on the flip side of unfairness..."
Fuck 'em. If they can't pull themselves up, too bad. Don't bother telling me that I don't understand- I've been places you can't imagine.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
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.
I think that we're still stuck with our country identity! When is the internet society going to take over the current political system? C'mon I want to see that SOON. United and OPEN.
security is certainly an issue, but with any electronic means there isn't a way to physically audit the election. if the computer's bits say that x votes were for someone, there isn't anyway to really say, "are you sure?" as you can do with a manual recount of paper ballots.
The Florida voters gave Bush the victory. All the Supreme Court did was halt another attempt to tamper with the ballots.
*jiggies* wow! /. takes posts from my konqi again! whee! 8)
I think democratic voting is outdated anyways. Each political candidate from each respective party should go to a lake (any lake) and wait. It will be very clear who is chosen when a maiden rises from the lake and gives them a sword. This is how it's done in every other country. We should do it that way in ours. No internet involved, and besides what's the internet anyways?
Noone said YOU HAD to buy.
America did quite well, BEFORE it stated participating in a global marketplace, better than it does now. We had our OWN SELF sufficient industry. Contained within, we needed imports of VERY few items, prior to th 70 oil wasnt needed as an import. Rubber, Sugar and a few hard raw materials were the only imports needed.
I would GLADLY see america's import/export closed, it would be a boon to our domestic industry hard at first but much better in the long run, CAN NAFTA, and make all who import pay tarriff, heavy ones, they make us why not us them ?
My life depends little on others sacrifice, myself and my family HAVE sacrificed much, for 200 years every generation except my father's has fought in our military. We have sacrificed in industyr as well, NOW you tell me what good ANY of those sacrifices did for US no, in WWI and WWII ? Europe is free, but how does that help Me ? I live in the states.
It always kills me outsiders views on this country, I have travelled ALL over the world, and they have No clue what is going on here. I guss if they did , THEY would be the singularly most powerfull nation on earth, as we are. Militarily, Economically, Socially, etc. I guess the point is they dont get it, if they did they would be where we have been the last 100 years.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
> So, before you stupid Liberals and Democrats start taking credit for the Internet, just remember, It's not true!
;-)
Dude, this is the funnies thread ever!
Who gives a fuck to the so called "Internet"? it is just a tcp/ip network which happens to range worldwide. In my point of view, it is inevitable that as technology matures, we would have a worldwide ip network eventually.
So, this Internet mith and hype ppl can kiss my ass. What a bunch of retards.
(mongoloid reply, please, mr donkey
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective on who it makes friendship with"
> if they did they would be where we have been the last 100 years
... they are different people. Humans have cultures, and some cultures dont value the things that makes the American system function. Yes, they have no idea what goes on in America, but Americans (barring those who've done sufficient travelling) are in exactly the same quandry. I've been through 30 of the 50 states, have friends down there .. an 90% of our culture is exported from the states. In fact, as much as Canadians are maligned for being more politically and socially aligned with the UK, the fact that we primarily consume American culture says to me that if we arn't already converted to American economic and social ideologies, we will be, as a majority, within the next decade. So people /do/ have a clue what its like to be American; but people don't want to be like Americans arn't automatically identifying themselves as people who don't understand how it works or why it works for them. Essentially, American culture is all about flaunting and expanding and embracing, so you have to understand its quite difficult for people in other countries to be objective about it. Just because they don't want to be the singularly most powerful nation on earth doesn't mean they have no right to disagree with the current methods and ideologies of the singularly most powerful nation on earth.
Anthropologists point out that much of the success of western nations is due to the avaiability of steel (to make guns), the availability of farmable land, and the way germs and desiese is spead around our ecosystem by way of weather systems. So I wouldn't feel so smug about justifying the methods with the results. There's nothing to say America didn't just luck out with the land.
However, I agree with your views on import exports. Kill NAFTA, and lets get back to serving our own countries needs. I'm down with that, and frankly, its refreshing to hear you say that.
But note: by the same token that people do not understand the US
"Old man yells at systemd"
You do know that 50% of the population does not have a computer right? And they're not all "loosers" either. Your thinking like a typical ivory tower snob. Maybe you should personally put a computer in everyones home so they can vote. Then you can come back here and spew your crap...
If we allow for internet voting, how can we prevent some thug standing next to you to be sure you vote for the "right" candidate? This would give organized (as well as less-organized) crime an opportunity to corrupt government far beyond what the lobbyists have done so far. And just imagine what Big Tobacco (or some other well-financed special interest group) could do under those circumstances. Hell, imagine what organized religion could do: "Vote for the democrate and you're going to hell." "Make sure that your brethren in God don't slide down the slippery slope."
The bottom line is that without a guarantee of secrecy (on the large-scale), the voting process would be exposed to corruption so bad, Iraq would have freer elections.
Most of these are easy to solve with trivial teqniques, and really
shows that the article shows that it is a restriction of peoples minds
and not the e-voting as such. It's easy to argument against everything
if you use the old way of thinking, and don't do the necessary research
into what is possible. I'll try and address the points and show that
there are teqniques to make them atleast as good as todays normal elections
and maybe even better.
A note I would like to make before embarking on this journey is that
elections should atleast until a certain amount of trust is gotten be
combined with normal election, so that people who doesn't feel confident
in the new system can always use the old. This is also due to all the
script kiddies out there who pose a major problem in terms of DOS attacks.
Anonymity/Privacy:
This is the point that is the most important about
democracy and therefore also the one that should be stressed the most.
The funny part about this is that it has been known how to do this for
the last 5 years following a paper by R. Cramer, R. Gennaro and
B. Schoenmakers: A
Secure and Optimally Efficient Multi-Authority Election Scheme and
probably before that by others. This is done with homomorphic encryption
which can be compared to putting your vote into a box and locking it.
Then you can take all the locked boxes and combine them into 1 big
(without opening them) and then open the big box and get the result, which
will tell nothing about what each person voted (unless they all voted the
same). And there are alot of other schemes that improve this in certain
ways or make voting in other ways. An example that improves the above
(from exponential decryption to polynomial) is by M. Jurik and I. Damgaard:
A Generalisation, a Simplification
and some Applications of Paillier's Probabilistic Public-Key System.
Infrastructure:
This is probably the thing they're most right about. The problem is that
to make something sufficiently secure you need digital signatures and
that means you need a PKI (public key infrastructure). There are different
ways to do this. First you could require everyone that want's to use
the internet voting to register a public key. Secondly you could distribute
key cards. These 2 are both cumbersome and expensive, which is why I
tend to agree with the article on this point. But there are products out
there that can solve this easily eg.
Cryptomathic which has a
product named easy sign (got to products->Trust Products->easy Sign). In
short this sets up a server that has all the secret keys stored in a
secure way and users can the get the server to sign for them by using
a password system. This is not optimal in terms of security but it is
very close and it grants an very cheap PKI.
Vote buying/Should "surfing":
This is a real problem to e-vote, since you can't really see the person
doing this, but it is also one that with just a little bit of thought
can be done pretty easily. To avoid that anyone gives away their chip
card, password etc. you just bind it to the government information, so
that you can always go to a web site and get your health record, IRS
numbers and stuff like that with the same means of authentication. That
means that if you give it away you will not only give your vote away, but
also alot of personal information. To avoid that you have someone stand
behind you and make sure you vote the right thing, you can introduce
regret offices, where you on the election day can come down and get you
vote changed (getting your signature and the election offices signature)
and then this will override votes that was made over the internet.
As a last point I would like to make is that today it is also possible to
buy votes, either with fake IDs (which might not even be need in certain
places) or give the vote a micro camera and make them take a picture
that they have voted what you wanted.
Vulnerability to hackers:
This I'll only briefly discuss since the 2 papers mentioned in the
anynomity/privacy section actually provide threshold decryption,
which means that if a certain fractions of the servers (>50%) is online
and non-hacked then the correct result can be found. If the servers
is running different hardware and software configurations, it would
take a _extremly_ good hacker to accomplish this in 1 day.
As for DOS there isn't much you can do, but you can always distribute
things which means that the attack will have to be larger to accomplish
total breakdown.
These are my views and I don't say that they are flawless, but they do
give a fair amount of security. There is 1 more point I'll like to
stress which was not in the article since this might actually be an
improvement. The 2 articles mentioned above provides what is known as
universal verifiability, which means that it gives any person the
possibility of checking that the result is correct (given enough
computing power). Now that would be something most americans
would have liked in Florida ?
There are people who only leave their computers once every year or two to vote in elections. The exercise they get from voting is probably the only thing sustaining their little Internet lives. Why do you want to take that away from these people?!
Seriously folks, the Internet isn't for everything, and we're all fortunate that it's not.
One more way for Al Gore to attempt to cheat the election just like he did selling cigarettes all over the US and leaving poles open past the deadline
:-)
not to mention half of the dead people who voted in the election and the funny thing is he went thru all that trouble and he still lost anyhow
gg
... well at least the recounts would be alot faster
Ken Dale Email: Protection on
The problem with the Slashdot polling engine is that CowboyNeal would be a candidate in every election...
Problem or feature?
Wheeeee
Damn.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Anyone who has ever read Comp.risks will be familiar with this subject. I think this group is mandatory reading material for anyone involved in computer science.
Peter Neumann has written a lot of insightful comments on electronic elections. Check out the "Electronic Voting" part of his page, which can be found here.
I'm wealthy, I'm not a communist, and I'll make my own decisions based on my knowledge and convictions thank you very much.
When a preacher says he'll move a mountain, no one believes him. When a scientist says so, noone doubts him.
That'd solve the pesky "key escrow" problem, as yet another added bonus.
cast your bit!
mtv: rock the bit!
All other reasons and problems aside... if voting is too easy and casual, then voters start voting casually.
Casual voting is dangerous. People are much more likely to be more informed before voting if they have to travel somewhere and take half an hour to vote, than if all they have to do is sit down at a computer at home, go to a website, click a few buttons, type a few lines, and walk away 2 minutes later.
The more effort involved in doing something, the more likely people are to think things through.
The last thing I want is a president voted in through casual voters.
- Chris Jacobson
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
The trend that the USA will be our world boss will probably continue. Seeing that the choice of US president probably has as much impact on citizens of other countries as it does on US residents, I think we should let foreign citizens have some say as to who our president is. In a very real way, s/he governs the entire world, so most of the world is being governed without its consent. Internet voting would be one easy way in which we could give foreigners some input into our elections. (BTW, this is a joke, in the sense that I know this could never happen--though I do seriously think it would be the right thing to do, and the world would become a better place because of it.)
Not until everyone has a very long cryptographic signature will this be practical. That coupled with secure encryption to send the message without anyone reading it...
Its possible, even now, but people don't know what they need or have what they need. If everyone set up a really large RSA style set of keys we'd be set and ready to go (despite the difficulty of counting it).
The only problem is that the government would have to run a key depository thing and give signatures and such. Honestly, I think it is quite possible to set up a system now where this could be done by anyone wishing to do so.
Oh, and in 10 years someone might find a backdoor and look up your past votes or spend a long time breaking them or some such. There are other issues to work out, but maybe someone should be working them out damn it.
Oh, and sidenote. Mr Taco sir, its "too" as in also rather than "to" god damn it.
Just for your information, Finland was the first country in the world to officially announce it possible to vote through the internet. That is a fact, because I have done it myself. So that is a rather importaint thing to remember when going out and shouting that voting in the Internet is impossible.
This is not flamebait. The person who moderated it as such should be ashamed.
How would you like it if your rights were stripped from you in this manner?
Disencfranchisement of thousands of votes through beaurocratic incompetency is incredible thing to see in a country that prides itself on being a beacon for democracy.
Isn't free speech one of the bedrocks of American society? Or is the First Amendment a figment of my imagination?
Short of devoting a large chunk of their life to public service, being able to vote is the only chance the average citizen has to voice his/her beliefs on how their society should be governed.
Voting and free speech don't just go hand in hand, voting is free speech.
Next time you step up to the ballot box, or even open your mouth to complain about being given a latte instead of a mocha, imagine how mad you'd feel if someone ripped that ballot paper out of your hand, or stuffed a gag in your mouth so you couldn't raise the issue.
Remember, democracy isn't just for you, it's for everyone out there too. Otherwise, it's not democracy.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
>she hears single mothers on welfair wonder why a mother would ever work because they need to be home with their kid
.. the greed I see in my 200K earning bosses shows up in the culture and society, and thats why people want to bilk the system. If you feel top money earners dont scam the system as much as welfare freeloaders do, you're one very naive and inexperienced worker.
You're right! Fuck the kids! Live for yourself, girl!
The point is, if one cannot survive by working part time (and you can't), with kids, you're saying that the time the mother spends with the kid is less important than her spending most of her waking hours making sure they have something to eat, rather than have someone there to help them grow and mature as humans. Shit, don't put the cart in front of the horse. I'm all for equality, meaning men should stay home as much as women, but to suggest that people should put their career ahead of their kids does as much of a disservice to society (although not as immediately, quantifiably, or visually) as does welfare freeloaders.
And lets not forget
"Old man yells at systemd"
i say if you truly care enough for democracy and the effects you have on it then you should get off your lazy ass and GO TO THE POLLS. internet voting = stupid. if you dont wanna make the trip then stay home and let the SMART people run the country cause obviously you dont deserve to vote.
Don't forget the converse of this. For many people, this isn't easy, because they don't own a computer. To you and me, voting on the computer seems the simplest of things, ignoring implementation, but to the millions of people below the poverty line, even considering buying a computer is beyond their means. Now, I know that it's possible that we could also have public terminals from which the underprivileged could vote, but even that is discriminatory. Forcing the poor to get out of the house (or away from their two jobs) to go to a facility to vote while the more affluent get to spend two minutes doing the same thing from the comfort of their homes while still in their pajamas is wrong. That will end up meaning that the affluent have a more strongly heard voice than those less fortunate, and that is, very simply, wrong.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
by not supporting your children you are saying "fuck the kids"
you are showing them that you do not need to have responsability in life and IMO you are being selfish since it is an obviouse excuse for being lazy in life since I am sure the mother is not responsable at home even.
Remember, we are talking about sngle mothers, not married or even thoughs with boy friends.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
moo fuckaz
Cyber - Bandal
The security problems with voting from home platforms in public elections are almost insurmountable in the short term. Even if voter authentication and encryption were perfect> , we still have to worry about the following problems, for which there are no easy solutions: 1) Widespread virus infection of computers used for voting: The virus code could be silent until you vote; then it could prevent you from voting, or change your vote, and erase itself. Could be launched from anywhere in the world, even out of reach of U.S. law, e.g. Iraq. 2) Remote control attack: Sysadmins can use remote control software to spy on votes, or block them, or change them. 3) Automated peer-to-peer or centralized Internet vote selling / buying schemes: Think "votester". Again, can be launched or coordinated from anywhere. 4) Denial of service attack: Can disenfranchise voters in last hours of election. 5) Spoofing attack: Please click here to vote for the Green Party. 6) On-screen electioneering: Suppose your ISP presents political ads in your browser window right when you connect to a voting site. 7) Digital divide: Not all voters have equal access to the Internet. 8) Platform divide: All platforms that voters are likely to have must be supported equally. Not just PCs, but Macs (and Palms, ...). Not just Windows & MacOS, but Linux(!). Not just MSIE, but other browsers. Etc.
These are among the reasons (there are several others!) why the California Secretary of State's study recommended not diving into home voting any time soon--at least until these problems are solved. Other national studies, e.g. the National Science Foundation study and the Caltech-M.I.T. study, concurred.
You're smoking foriegn crack it you "seriously think it would be the right thing to do, and the world would become a better place because of it." Do you have any insight whatsoever on how elections are done in South American countries? Ever have any insight whatsoever that elections were somewhat corrupt to begin with? And now you are/were suggesting that the US allow all of the worlds creatures to have a say? Go back to your country. Now that is ignorance.