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Linux-Based E-Voting In Brazil
John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."
We have web based banking. Why not web based voting?
If anyone thinks I care more about who I vote for than the money in my bank accounts (and my liability for debt) they're disillusional. The politicians are all just different monkeys screeching different things that suit them. In the last election I voted for (mandatory council elections) I didn't know or care about the candidates who'd only shown their faces 2 weeks beforehand. On the ballot I wrote "Fuck them liars all. This form of democrasy a joke". Am I the only one that thinks it's hilarious that we can bank online but not vote online?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I believe it is of interest due to the US election coming up soon, the use of voting machines with closed source on those machines and the tampering discussion.
Now, of course you could modify a linux machine as well, but with a potential army of hackers the security risks are handled much like the security in Linux: Assuming that for every one hacker that is malicious there is usually one or at least two that spot a problem and bring it to light.
Open sourcing the software changes nothing to the fact that it is impossible to check how the votes are tallied. It just takes two bytes change in the binary to reverse the results of an election. In a world where the task of counting votes can be done by a machine small enough to fit into a smart card, you'll never be sure that the code published is the code running if you don't want to trust the officials organizing the vote.
This is a step back from paper ballots.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You can vote blank or null vote with that machine. That's good, but I really
want to write %#%@%$!! in the ballot sometimes.
Brazilian cities were able to know the election results in the same day of voting, before midnight. That's pretty damn efficient.
Furthermore, as fas as trusting or not trusting goes, voting with pen and paper is not as perfect as one might think.
It has worked? I am not so sure about that, for an election to work it has to be void of frauds and offer some guaranties to the electors, like anonymity. Election are not a simple problem, in fact is a very hard one.
The elections on Brazil seem to work fine, in fact many of the "left" parties (Brazil has many political parties) felt their numbers get better after the electronic voting was installed. But the system, as it is now, gives no warranty on how the votes are counted, you have to trust it is working and has not been tampered and as far as I know the code and designs of the voting machines are not open for review by the population.
I trust that the system work, it has shown consistent numbers with the election day pools and as I said the system has been show to give results that are bad for the current government, that is the one witch could more easily tamper with the election, several times.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Looking at this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil
About half way down it lists the result of the 2006 election : couple of points on that:
(1) There are a lot of parties (~30)
(2) They have low overall control within the parliament (15% max)
(3) The socialists are on top
E-voting or no, if the socialists were to rig the election (a) it would be obvious that they did it, (b) they would have to go all out to make any kind of difference, (c) they are unlikely to have the corporate influence necessary to pull it off and (d) there isn't much you get for it.
In the US, on the other hand, there is effectively two parties each with ca. 50% of the electorate each, so rigging the election is (a) worthwhile and (b) easy to get away with. On top of that the Republicans are very good friends with the people that make the machines, and finally, you get to be 'leader of the free world' and all your buddies get rich.
Means, motive and opportunity - right there. The interface is the least of their worries.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
First, mobile phone cameras, or any other, were forbidden in the ballot - though from my experience this was only enforced in areas where there were a reasonable possibility of people selling votes or being coerced to vote, such as in Rio de Janeiro.
Second, no one said the process was unhackable. It is just much harder to hack than a paper and pen election. It is auditable by anyone with sufficient technical expertise, and that is good enough for mosrt people who care.
And finally, shut up and at least do some research on it before calling others idiots. The voter types a fucking NUMBER, not the candidate's name. A picture appears so even people who can't read can check if they are voting right (I concede tha some elder people do take quite a long time to vote).
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I trust it to work better than the old paper one, but the eletronic system is getting less trustworth on every election. The first version of it used a small embbebed system, with no OS, then it changed to a closed OS, then it changed to Linux (ok, better than the closed OS). It's system was entirely (hardware and softwre) verified by several specialists choosed by a transparent process, then comes the closed OS, that can't be verified, and suddenly the transparent process changes to the government just choosing someone from ABIN (brazilian inteligence agency - a known problematic body).
And just to add to the process, when the government finaly agreed to make printers pluggable to the voting machine, and plug some printers randomly, several of them were destroyed and the governemnt refused to count some votes.
Rethinking email
I work at the polls here in Virginia, and we have an electronic voting machine. Here's my review of the Brazilian device compared to ours:
In any event, I think SL geeks are obvious choices to volunteer to be Officers of Election. We know the vulnerabilities of the technology, and have the necessary attention to detail to appreciate the kinds of auditing checks that need to be done to run a fair and open election.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I remember signing on to the electoral roll in Canberra somewhere back in the very early 90's. A few weeks later I received a letter from the commission saying after an investigation I no longer lived where I said I did so they have removed me from their list. I'm thinking I live on a Navy base, I have no hope of being posted anywhere for a few years, so, er, WTF? What investigation?
I wrote back and asked WTF? They replied to the same Canberra address I enrolled with and said you don't live there any longer, you are no longer enrolled to vote, please update your electoral status at your new address. Thank you. Good day, and we are done here. Do not write back to us.
Meh. So I never voted for as long as I lived in Canberra.
A few years later I was posted elsewhere and received yet another letter from Canberra saying I never voted in one of the elections, tut tut tut, and that I would have to choose between a fine ($90 AUD I think) or tick a box that says "I did vote" - I think you can guess which option I chose.
Some patients of mine work with the elections in Brazil. Being a slashdot guy for a while I am always asking them questions about the voting system. What I have learned: # the code is available in advance for the parties OPEN SOURCE (only not online) # the software/firmware is loaded on the machines in front of the parties # the machine has no open slots for the outside world # it is sealed tamper free with a special seal that solf destroys once openned. # the is a hash code to ensure the validity of the files # only the vote is recorded, there is no way on knowing who voted on who. # the order of the votes on the files is radomly changed every new vote cheers,