Slashdot Mirror
Canada Considering Online Voting In Elections
ehud42 writes "Slashdot readers generally agree that voting machines such as those from Diebold are a bad idea. Well, what about online voting? That is what the Vancouver Sun is reporting. Given that voter turnout in our most recent election was the worst on record, Elections Canada is kicking around the idea of allowing voters to register online, update registration information online, and maybe even vote online."
Voting must be anonymous and private. If you allow online voting, then nothing prevents someone from standing over your shoulder and paying you $50 to vote the way he wants. Yes, absentee ballots have the same problem, which is why I think Oregon's all-mail voting system is terribly dangerous. This vulnerability isn't theoretical: the scenario I describe actually happened throughout the 19th century and led to some very crooked elections. It's why we switched to a secret ballot in the 1880s. Let's not forget our history here.
1) easier for the apathetic (and likely uninformed) to vote?
2) easier to hack an election?
No good reason. It's just a stupid idea all around.
Do not want.
Diebold concerns aside, online voting can be so severely tampered with that it's not even funny.
Concerns of forced voting come first to mind, i.e. someone coercing you into voting a certain way. But a lot of things can go wrong, specific to computer networking and technology itself:
* A Trojan horse can be planted on a system and activated soon after the voting period starts, calling the election servers and registering a vote on the owner's behalf. This would be subject to reverse-engineering the election process as it goes through on a real host with Wireshark, but feasible with good auto-update code on the Trojan horse.
* An intermediary host meddling with data. This can be a router, WiFi hotspot with hacked firmware, or even an ISP. Mitigated with the use of HTTPS, but users must not bypass warnings of bad certificates!
* (If the election is validated by name) Brute-forcing names and hoping to hit a Canadian citizen's name.
* (If the election is validated by GeoIP) Using a Canadian host as a proxy.
* Other countries' nationals could rig the election (see the comment below about 4chan rigging the election) if validation is not performed or performed incorrectly.
So, yeah. It might work. But it has to be foolproof as much as possible. Maybe send each citizen a card with an online access code? But the non-technological means of tampering with a person's vote will still apply, i.e. coercing them by one way or another, or even the lure of financial gain: "here, pay you 20 bucks to vote for Mr. X"... which is a way for the system to become corrupted.
So again: Do not want.
How is coercion easy for walk in voting when no one but the person voting can definitely know who the person voted for?
When voting online, someone could be standing over your shoulder making sure you are voting for who they want you to vote for.
DO NOT WANT
And as a Canadian let me say that the reason that "voter turnout in our most recent election was the worst on record" was because THE CANDIDATES SUCKED. I almost voted for the Communist just because I didn't know him and therefore didn't want to punch him in the face.
And then there's the fact that you have to vote for the party and not the person, so if I hate Harper but like the local Conservative I'm screwed. So, to cast a vote I feel good about, both the local guy and the party leader have to be good. Two good politicians? This never happens.
Online voting won't fix a bunch of broken parties, it'll just make tech-savvy people ignore online voting just like they ignore real voting. Let's face it, it's damn easy to vote. If you can be arsed to get to the polling site, that's the hardest part. After that it's having your name checked off and marking an X. If you catch it outside the rush it's faster than popping over to the 7-11 for a Big Gulp. Seriously, if people are too lazy or indifferent for that, then anything with a more complex authentication strategy than an online "BRING BACK CANCELLED SHOW X!" petition is going to be too much work too.
Considering that the story is about Canadian elections, who gives a fuck what the American public thinks?
Right, you didn't read the headline, never mind the summary, and god forbid reading the article.
I'm quite Canadian myself, which is why I'm especially worried about this. You seem to be failing to grasp the simple fact online voting is fundamentally different from the current system, and has serious problems that are (at best) hard to fix, and no amount of shouting "CANADA FUCK YEAH" is going to make them go away.