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Is Arizona's Internet Voting System Safe Enough?
JMcCloy writes "Kevin Poulsen, senior editor at Wired News, asks readers 'Is internet voting safe?' and has a poll at the end of the article. So far, 32% responding actually think that internet voting is worth it, risks and all. It is scary how easily people can be persuaded to trust a system that is so vulnerable." The system described, used in Arizona in last year's election process, isn't just checking a box and clicking a button, but Poulsen lays out some scenarios by which it could be subverted.
Yes 32%
No 22%
Ron Paul 46%
... an Internet poll about the "safety" of Internet polls.
Especially if you are "persuaded to trust" the results and derive some sort of observation from it.
I still refuse to believe that eventually we couldn't make Internet voting more secure than paper ballots.
I already consider online banking to be at least as secure as ATM transactions, and I see no reason why a properly designed online voting system couldn't be the same.
That being said, the current state of the industry is pathetic. For instance, not too long ago a Diebold machine was exploited by its anti-virus software. If you have anti-virus software running on your electronic voting system you're doing it wrong.
If I ever start a dictatorship, first thing I do, is get everybody voting electronically.
There is a negative correlation between a knowledge of computer security and the desire to introduce Internet voting. The more you have of the first the less you want the second. If crackers can get into the Pentagon computers and when we find the plans of Marine Helicopter One in a Tehran coffee shop, then we should realize that getting into a domestic voting system to alter the results is trivial.
The voting machines are about the same security level as WEP.
Starting one day after computers are granted the right to vote.
Until then let's have people do it. If it's not important enough of an issue for some people to take the time to even count the votes, it's not important enough to put to a vote.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So far, 32% responding actually think that internet voting is worth it, risks and all. It is scary how easily people can be persuaded to trust a system that is so vulnerable."
So you're saying that an internet poll (something that's guaranteed to have a bias towards everything internet) has a strong majority of people agreeing that internet voting is not worth it, and the conclusion you reach is that "[it's] scary how easily people can be persuaded to trust a system that is so vulnerable?" The numbers seem to suggest that it actually isn't all that easy to persuade people to trust such a system.
Whereas "true" Internet voting is a phenomenally bad idea (when implemented in a way that's acceptable to the majority of voters), the Arizona system isn't really Internet voting. It's more "absentee ballots" that use the Internet as the delivery mechanism rather than the normal postal system.
Mail-in ballots are extremely common in Arizona ever since they changed the "absentee balloting" system into a more generic "everybody can use it" system. For instance, I have a ballot automatically mailed to be before every election, no matter how big or small, without me having to do anything but sign up a couple years ago. It's very slick.
The ballot is a normal paper one exactly like those found in the polling place. I fill it out by completing arrows pointing to my choice (easy and not even remotely ambiguous) then put it in a specially coded envelope that I sign and mail in. On the other end, a poll worker opens the envelope, marks that I voted (to prevent multiple votes), saves off my signature, and puts the ballot through the normal recording devices to record my vote. The voter lists in my local polling place have me marked as "mail in" so if I were to drop by on election day, they would accept my ballot but it would only be counted after all other ballots are counted and they can verify that I hadn't already voted.
It's extremely convenient and has made the difference between voting only in the major elections to voting in all of them (and learning a lot more about local candidates in the process). The drawback is that I have to trust that my vote isn't tied with my name. See, when you are at a polling station, then they record that you voted, but your actual ballot isn't in any way tied to you. With the mail-in process, it's possible that that is still the case (maybe the person/system opening the envelopes isn't the one recording the votes)... but you can't know for sure. For all I know, they may have a database mapping people with who they vote for. Honestly, that doesn't bother me at this point. I am pretty vocal about who I vote for and have even publicly posting my voting lists for the world to see before. I guess I would stop the mail-in only if I had reason to believe that my vote wasn't being counted.
Anyway, that's the mail-in system. The "Internet voting" system is effectively that but for people overseas. That option was never available for me since I'm local. The only difference is that instead of putting their ballot into an envelope and signing that, they instead scan it in and upload it to a server. Everything else is identical.
The article does make a few good points on some ways that that system could be subverted. Yeah, there are definitely a few more attack points... but they seem a little far fetched at this point. The level of effort required to implement any of the attack vectors would only be worth it if done at a bigger scale. That is, if this started being available to ALL AZ residents, then it starts to matter. For now... meh.
You better have voted correctly or you're going to get your legs broken.
Yes we need a secret ballot.
If you are fool enough to trust unions substitute employer, same answer.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes, but that requires us to believe that the government will implement digital security right and well. I agree with the statement that is can be done right, but I vote the other way because of the chance that it actually will be done right. Besides, the failure mode of bad internet security is worse than the failure mode of bad physical security imho. There are always people around for physical voting, which itself is a security measure. It's not a foolproof one, but the wrong internet voting system will provide a greater opportunity, both in ease and magnitude of cheating, than physical voting.
You have got to be kidding.
Were you watching Minnesota in the last congressional election?
How many ballots have to be 'found' a week after the election to be more then a 'bit of fraud'?
Amazing how they 'found' just enough ballots for their chosen party to pull out the election.
Nothing matters unless they also fix the registration fraud problem anyway.
If you can 'vote early and often' it doesn't matter how you are voting.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But security isn't the question. The problem is that with secure and anonymous electronic voting there is no outside way to verify that the results reported have anything to do with the votes cast. Whoever controls the system can make it report whatever results they want, and there's no way to tell if they are telling the truth or not. If your first thought is "well, make it open source," think again.
The difference being that the banks (which run both ATMs and online banking sites) don't also control the money supply. If they did (e.g., if they could just create money the way the government does) we'd have a major problem. No matter how secure the process is, once it subsumes enough levels that you have know way of knowing if it's just reporting made-up numbers, you have a problem.
--MarkusQ
As others have already pointed out, it becomes impossible to verify that our elections officials are acting honestly. Some do; some don't; most have an unfounded trust in their employees/volunteers (to not assist in fraud). This is the big problem.
There are myriad other problems too. What happens if the polls are closed early by to a DDoS attack? How can you guarantee the server won't be hacked? (It happens to banks sometimes.) What about the machines people are voting from? If they're voting from home (and not a kiosk), you can tell your computer to vote for candidate A, your computer can tell you that you voted for candidate A, but the botnet virus on your machine may have voted on your behalf for candidate B.
We're miles away from free and fair elections, but Internet voting is the wrong direction to travel to get there.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
And how do you know that the code running on the server is the same as the code that was opened for public review? How can you ever be sure that an "administrator" (or hacker) hasn't updated values in the database? There are too many possible problems, even running open source. There would need to be a bullet proof algorithm in place, and nobody has proposed one yet (that I've read, and I've looked). I'm willing to admit the possibility, but I think it is impossible.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Any change, technological or otherwise, that reduces the influence of the idiots in this state can only be a good thing. Sweet merciful Christ, just look at our senators, our representatives... Napolitano is the first governor in decades that didn't end her term in disgrace or prison, and she gets promoted out-of-state. McCain is our sane senator.
I actually have the opposite view. I think the reason electronic voting is being done so poorly is to prevent allowing a true democracy strip the power from the current 2 party system.
While not simple to get right, a effective convenient secure system would make voting too simple. We could actually have more rounds of votes, and eliminate needing just 2 candidates at the beginning of the election. More issues could be voted on, more laws, quicker correction on corrupt politicans, etc, etc. Those in power have much more interest in preventing trust-able e-voting than not.
We have to assume that if the Internet is secure enough for us to buy stuff, then it is secure enough for voting.
Not true, for several reasons. There are several additional security constraints on voting. For example, you cannot be allowed to prove how you voted. Therefore, you cannot receive feedback on how you voted. You can't "balance your checkbook", so to speak. They know this and can set the online balance to whatever they choose. That's without hacker involvement. Online purchases are actually much riskier than most people are willing to consider. "Identity theft" has skyrocketed, and compromising online purchases is one way that's done. Sure the transmission may be secure, but either the client or server may be compromised (and are, regularly). Banks have simply decided to live with a particular level of fraud. HTTPS is only a small part in the equation.
From a practical standpoint, only close elections can be stolen anyway.
Again, not true. The public only needs to belive that it was close. That's not too hard, really.
If a close election is stolen, then approximately the same number of persons disagree with the result as if the election were not stolen, so what difference does it really make from the standpoint of quality of outcome?
I see your point from a pragmatic point of view, but I disagree. I don't want to see people with power getting away with abusing us and grabing more power. It's the principle of the thing. Besides, we don't want to encourage corruption. Period.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I am politically active student (Member of the Left Youth of Finland, etc.) in a country that doesn't use two party system and I disagree with all of your points.
I actually have the opposite view. I think the reason electronic voting is being done so poorly is to prevent allowing a true democracy strip the power from the current 2 party system.
Well, I live in a country which has never used electronic voting in electing the parliament. There are currently 14 active political parties in Finland (15 in a few weeks as the Pirate Party recently managed to get enough supporters to register themselves as a party), 8 of which are currently represented in the parliament. (The remaining parties only have representatives at municipal level).
You can't blame the two party system on normal voting being so complicated and electronic voting being the answer or anything. It is political system that has it's merits and flaws but it not only can be but is also very easy to implement even without electronic voting.
While not simple to get right, a effective convenient secure system would make voting too simple. We could actually have more rounds of votes, and eliminate needing just 2 candidates at the beginning of the election.
We have more than two candidates here with still a few rounds of votes. We use this method. Each party has it's own list. Let's say I vote a candidate in the Left Alliance as do 1000 others. The most popular candidate within the left alliance gets 1000 votes, the second most popular within the left alliance gets 500 votes, the third most popular gets 333 votes... After that, candidates from all parties use those numbers to see who gets elected. Again, it has it's flaws but it works quite well.
More issues could be voted on, more laws, quicker correction on corrupt politicans, etc, etc. Those in power have much more interest in preventing trust-able e-voting than not.
Direct democracy is beautiful idea. However... If your problem is that you feel people don't pay enough attention to politics in elections (they don't remember the bad decisions politician have made, etc.) then how do you expect them to pay enough attention that they would have good, well thought out and educated opinion on even more issues?
Also... We aren't talking about electronic voting here. We are talking about internet voting. The kind where violent husband can force his wife to vote for extremist parties because there can not be any precautions to protect from that.
Phooey. For any such system you can devise, it would be possible to implement a "mock-up" system that appeared to use your clever safe, secure, and trustworthy system but in fact did not (to see this just consider the fact that any software solution could itself be simulated in software). This simulation could be presented to the user while the actual election was run by a guy in another city with a spreadsheet.
If the electronic system encompasses enough of the process and provides perfect anonymity there is no way to be certain that the results are coming from the process you designed and not from some clever simulation of it that looks the same but fudges the results.
-- MarkusQ
Last time I voted, I wasn't strip-searched for cameras.
Here's how Tony the Mobster buys your vote: you'll deliver to him a small video of you in the booth, with the ballot clearly made out as a vote for what he wants, and you exiting the booth putting the vote in the urn. The he won't shoot your kneecaps.
He'll probably even help you with a good enough covert camera if your cell phone will attract too much attention.
Anybody got an idea for how to limit this? Tony is a resourceful man, he can send goons to your polling station who'll observe you...
The system you linked to has numerous obvious flaws for internet voting, even after skipping over the fact that it isn't intended for use in an unsupervised environment. For example, a compromised machine could simply delay transmission of a ballot it wished to tamper with until after the user had decided to challenge or cast it. Likewise, the central tabulator could still produce bogus results. And there appears to be nothing that would prevent the transmission of phantom ballots for voters who never showed up. And so on.
-- MarkusQ
Agreed. Specifically, the anonymity "requirement" means that you're left with nothing but trust, because ultimately you'll want to address problems of the form "These N people voted for X yet X only got N-1 votes" and you can't do that unless you have "These N people" to start with. Otherwise, as long as each candidate that anyone votes for is given at least one vote in the final tally, you're stuck with trust.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Even that low standard has been failed, as in the case of the guy who objected because he officially got zero votes even though he had voted for himself.