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WA Election To Try Online Voting
AuMatar writes "According to the Seattle Times, the King Conservation District is going to allow online voting to combat chronic low turnouts. You can already view the voting portal. As a citizen of WA seriously concerned with politics, anything that completely removes a paper trail like this scares me. Luckily, this is probably the least important election in the state. I wonder if anyone will hack the election so 300% of voters vote for Firefly or Stephen Colbert or something."
... is to make people want to vote.
Not to make it easy for somebody else to vote in their place.
They could start by fixing a system rigged to ensure the preeminence of two parties.
Trust the politicians to not do that.
How many citizens would not give enough of a shit and not go on the website to vote? In today's day and age, you need to have Facebook voting /sarcasm.
---
I have never understood the emphasis on voter turnout. It is more important to have voters who understand (and care about) the issues being voted on than it is to have a large number of voters. Making it easier to vote does not improve the responsiveness of government to the voters, it actually does the reverse.
Of course if one examines the other policies supported by the "make it easier to vote" groups, one quickly realizes that they
want a larger number of poorly informed voters.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I can verify the paper trail myself when I vote. I fill in a black line with a marker and put in a scanning machine. It reads it it then drops it in a tub and I get a receipt with a code on it it. I can go watch them empty the locked tubs and watch a hand recount if it want. I can also watch the locked ballets sitting in a jail cell if I wish (in the case of a recount).
Gone!
Estonia has had electronic voting for years. Local district and government voting. :-)
From the article:
When Washington, D.C., tested an open-source electronic voting system intended for armed-forces members last year, a team of University of Michigan computer scientists hacked in and altered votes.
Each time a vote was cast, the hackers left a "calling card" on the screen, played the Michigan fight song and secretly changed the latest vote — until election officials shut down the site after two days.
"This obviously doesn't go a long way in building public confidence," Election Trust Managing Partner John Bodin said of the incident. But that shouldn't tarnish a "trusted" industry leader like Scytl, he said.
On another note:
Here is a Berkeley paper that looked at a voting system by Scytl used in Florida: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/scytl-odbp.pdf
They we're mixed in their findings (jump to the conclusion if your just browsing...)
I know fraud happens with paper, I know this saves money, but I'm still skeptical.
From the FAQ after the second link in TFA:
Q: How does the King CD eVoting platform provide end-to-end online balloting security?
A: Secured by Scytl USA, this solution provides end-to-end security. Votes are encrypted and
digitally signed by voters in the voters' voting devices (e.g., PCs) before they are cast. The private
key to decrypt the votes is divided in shares which are distributed to the King CD Electoral Board
(community stakeholders) before the election begins. The private key is destroyed in this process
and do not exist during the election. At the end of the election, the King CD Electoral Board
members have to meet to reconstruct the private key and decrypt the votes.
Encryption is a good start... really I have mixed feelings about this too. Any thoughts on this encryption anyone? - I would love to hear from someone with industry experience.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
So rather than politically engaged voters who care, travelling their voting station to cast a ballot, we can now encourage everyone to click vote, based on who has the best style, a trustworthy face and catchy slogans! Like. Comment. Vote.
Seriously, this is just a horrible idea.
You just cannot reliably determine anyone's identity online.
There are some functions of government that can already be accessed online, like paying taxes. But that's not a problem since no one besides the taxpayer would want to voluntarily contribute money, so there is little incentive for someone to falsify their identity for that. There is huge incentive for people to participate in a free process (voting) that determines the policy course of states and nations.
I hope they accept it.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Online voting, if it were done right, would give me much more confidence than any number of safeguards you might put on a physical chain of custody.
No, it wouldn't because fewer people would understand how the safeguards in question work. With a "paper trail" verified election, most people can understand how the verification works. Not only that, but most people would be capable of monitoring at least a local election to see whether it was fixed. They probably wouldn't, but they could. With electronic voting (online or otherwise) a much maller group is capable of examining the verification process and determining if it actually verifies anything.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Maybe I should change my name to Tom Dobbs and move to Washington.
Of course I would never tell anyone to hack the voting system, no matter how many "hack me" stickers have been put on the back of the machines.
Fight Spammers!
I'll ignore your sarcasm and raise you total seriousness. The big problem with voting right now is we're pitted against each other in a kind of prisoner's dilemma. But if we really applied social networking (Assuming no fraud for now) we could thrash it among ourselves to organize the nation's voters, where suddenly Democrat, Republican, Tea, Libertarian, & Green ALL find themselves bewildered on the streets as a really honest smart tech president cruises into office.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
How about a little context in the post about which WA we are talking about...
as far as the particular election goes, it may be unimportant. But, usually King County is the 800-lb gorilla for state-wide elections...
Washington really should just implement Oregon's vote-by-mail system, as it just simply works. But, instead, they have a half-assed implementation.
Actually in Washington state, I believe what's holding up vote by mail is Pierce County rather than King.
I'm not sure what the resistance is (I live in Pierce). I mean, I personally like the experience of going to the polling place, filling out my ballot, and gabbing with the older folks who volunteer to run the place - but after missing a few elections due to work issues, I signed up for a "permanent absentee" (vote by mail) ballot a couple years ago. It's simple, you can take your time filling it out... and you can still drop it off - for free - if you don't want to spend the money on a stamp.
#DeleteChrome
on line voteing can lead to you boss forcing you to vote his way and he can stand right over you as you vote.
Does online voting necessarily preclude a paper trail, or is there an electronic equivalent of a paper trail? What you want is something independent of the vote counting machines, which can be reasonably secured to prevent tampering, can be used at a later date to perform a recount if necessary, and which doesn't allow anyone to prove which way an individual voted (in order to ensure the secrecy of the ballot). I don't think you can do this with paper with an online ballot; you can't, for example, have people print out a record of their vote, unless you figure out a way in which a) the validity of these paper records can be validated in the case of a recount and b) individuals can verify that the paper record accurately reflects their vote, without allowing this record to be used to prove to a third-party that they voted in a particular way. I can't think of any way to do these two things, but perhaps there is some sort of cryptographic magic that could be used.
Low turnouts are good.
It means only people who CARE about the election, and likely did actual research, are casting ballots. The rest are just re-electing the same damn idiot, because they recognize the name - like visiting McDonalds because you're afraid to try something new. (I know - I did the same thing when I was 20 and stupid.)
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
The company's software appears to be from Scytl, a company based in Barcelona, Spain.
Would anyone consider it a national security issue that public elections be held with technology either openly and freely available for review or at the very least, controlled by entities with not just a domestic presence, but a domestic registration?
I don't think I'd be okay with the 2000 election "hanging chad" ballots being counted in India, because they might have been the more cost-effective solution. Isn't it okay to be a bit nationalistic about the manner in which elections are handled?
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
Can anybody think of a good "duress code" style mechanism to address this? Being able to, for instance, cast your actual vote at time A and then being able to cast further ballots at later times that are silently discarded? Some way of signalling to the web form that the ballot you are "casting" should be discarded?
Unfortunately, I can't think of anything that you couldn't also use quite efficiently for the various voter discouragement/vote misdirection tricks that are commonly deployed to suppress polling regions demographically known to favor the opposing cause...
>>>Online voting, if it were done right, would give me much more confidence than any number of safeguards you might put on a physical chain of custody.
Hardly.
If I wanted to steal an election, it's easier to flip a few bits and give myself 1 million extra votes, then to move around a couple thousand pounds of paper. Also the latter would probably make me get caught.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
IMHO, postal votes should be reserved for those who can't get to the polling station because of some disability or travel. The problem with postal votes is that, for a family, or anywhere that has a shared postal address, you simply don't know who is completing the ballots and returning them.
I expect that there are many households where the head of the household collects all the postal ballots, completes them, and then instructs the family member to sign (or simply forges a signature).
Online voting has the same problem, plus many others.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
...control "conservation" in King County?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Very strong turnout in favor of "H3r5bal V14gR/\". I hear he really stands up for the voting man, if you know what I mean...
I just don't understand the paranoia.
at the very least, let me vote at any polling location. that kind of convenience might require an ID check so they can pull up my ballot for my location, but if i don't want an ID check, i can go to my regular poling place.
All increased turnout does is increase the accuracy of the portion of the vote one has garnered, it does not constitute a mandate. Yes, I understand that perception is not reality here.
"If there had been a lackadaisical voter turnout, he wouldn't feel bold enough to lead this outrageous assault on workers' rights."
Maybe. We don't know that. 10% of the population turning out and giving him 90% of the vote is different than 90% of the population turning out and giving him 60% of the vote.
... or they are voting because they have been told to vote for a specific candidate by people they idolise, or who claim to have some authority over the people (such as ministers/other people who scare them).
It's clearly a myth that low turn-outs are good. I mean, just think about it for a second. Seriously. It's fucking retarded to claim they are somehow good. Especially for the half-assed reason you just gave.
If done right it would take a damn-sight more than flipping a few bits. That's the whole point of the part where the OP said "if it were done right". It would also be a lot more secure than bits of paper which can't be checked by the voter, and which can go missing/be replaced.
The PRI used paper ballots and stole election after election for eighty years in Mexico.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
if they know they can get rid of
All thats needed for pacification purposes is:
"if they think they can get rid of"
They'll never do it, of course, as most voters consider their political party to be an unalterable demographic, no more so than they could change their race or age. But thinking its possible is good for pacification.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Governor Walker took it as a mandate because it is one of the things he
campaigned
on. And by the way, he is only doing this for public employees. Why should public employees be allowed to unionize?
So, basically, politicians who want to do what the voters want are "fascists". You apparently think it is a good idea to use government money to slant elections in the favor of Democrats. I have news for you, we are already in real trouble. Our governments are spending more money than they are receiving in taxes. Public sector workers have better job security, better pay, and better benefits than private sector workers.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If the paper trail existed, were you likely to get to verify it for yourself?
I personally have only gone and observed the counting process once, when I felt it was wise to make sure there were people watching. In my community, enough people observe the official count that I don't feel obligated to do it every time. I have also once verified my ballot was counted by validating against my stub's serial number.
It is a much different situation between having a paper trail that can be verified by the average citizen observing and an electronic database.
And there are people in Las Vegas who have built multi-million dollar stage shows out of their ability to confound the exact observation techniques you're relying on.
There is no sleight-of-hand that can solve NP-hard factorisation problems in less time than it takes to compute them.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Your naïveté is cute if you actually think your average voter has done legitimate research. I will grant you that low turnout means only people who care (either about a position or about voting in general will show up, and most of them will have a strong opinion one way or another, but the level of research doesn't tend to be beyond party lines or media favourites.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
"Public sector workers have better job security, better pay, and better benefits than private sector workers."
Could you cite a source for that please? I have always thought that an equivalent, comparable job at a private sector company paid better than one in government. I'm not talking about the "complete compensation package" that includes benefits, only gross pay. My ideas about this could be totally incorrect, they're only impressions I have formed by reading non-empirical sources. You though, purport it as a fact that my impression is wrong, so I ask you to cite a source, please.
>Online voting, if it were done right, would give me much more confidence than any number of safeguards you might put on a physical chain of custody.
I agree. Not sure if it's the chain of custody that's the bigger concern or verifying identity.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Perhaps you should read up on the problems with online voting before you make these sorts of comments.
Securing a vote is trivial, as long as you are happy that your ID is attached to the vote.
However this has the problem that you no longer have a secret ballot, apart from potential state sponsored discrimination, you can also be a victim of external intimidation, since others can see how you voted. Vote buying is also possible, since you can now prove how you voted.
If you eliminate any association of your ID from your vote, then you also eliminate you ability to verify that the vote you cast is indeed the vote that was counted.
You need to read up on the Debian voting system and hash functions. Not Condorcet, although thats cool.
Here's the last election tally sheet:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2010/vote_001_tally.txt
Also there is a procedure that you can vote multiple times and only the last counts. That would seem to eliminate all but very last moment intimidation. Which can be eliminated by everyone voting at the same time, more or less. How many can realistically be intimidated by one intimidator?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
King County already has a vote-by-mail system in place. In fact, the last King County elections were handled entirely by mail.
--Rachel
Especially when you see countries like Australia where voting is mandatory. 100% voter turn out has put us in a far better position than the US is in.
I moved from a vote by mail state (Oregon) to a polling place state (Alaska) and I found the opposite to be true.
I hated going to an out of the way polling place, being checked twice for my ID, signing my name off a list, going into a closet and then writing crap down. Would much prefer a mail in ballot for up here.
Oregon's ballot return was pre-paid by the state, at least through 2008, so no stamp required.
I agree, low turn outs are bad, it just insures the most rabid followers of the main stream candidates and super involved special interests vote.
In the US voting should be mandatory, stack a $100 fine on it if you don't vote at the national level.
I would wager that low voter turnout has very little to do with the ability to make it to the polls on time, and a whole hell of a lot to do with people just feeling like their vote doesn't matter anymore. At All. Period.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Someone tried to steal the Senate election up here in Alaska this last fall.
Joe Miller used a small army of lawyers, the poll watchers couldn't stop the assault.
Would you like to destroy the country from the:
A)Left
B)Far Left
There, fixed it for ya.
Who cares about the secrecy of the vote, in the United States at least there is no right to vote secrecy.
We didn't have secret ballots in the United States for presidential elections until 1888 and it wasn't nationwide until 1892.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot#United_States
I don't think you understand the meaning of fascist. What Gov Walker is trying to do is reverse some of the fascist policies that are already in place.
In essence, fascism is a lead into socialist just as socialism is a lead into communism.
Would you like to destroy the country from the:
A)Right
B)Far Right
There, fixed it for ya.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Hacking is the least of the concerns. This DESTROYS the guaranteed secret ballot. What wife or husband will tell their spouse: "no, you can't watch me internet vote"? How many union members or church goers will refuse the offer of their union or church to "help" them vote? How many employees will risk their job when their supervisor quietly expresses a desire to look over his shoulder while casts his ballot from the work computer?
If this becomes the rule, we will no longer have secret ballots in this country.
Well, let me know your old address in Oregon.. If your not going to be mailing your ballet in, I'll give you $20 and mail it in for you.
Higher turn out because of ease doesn't necessarily translate into more people voting, even with more votes being turned in.
There is somewhat of a reason why some states check ID. One vote for one person if that person chooses to vote should be more then just an idea. And in some areas, $20 a ballot is good money for something they couldn't care about in the first place... Yet it cheaper then TV adds and a lot of other things associated with getting a ballot measure passed or a politician elected.
What's the code on it say? Does it match to your actual physical ballot?
And it doesn't matter if one could, if everyone can't. They shouldn't steal your vote if you are watching. But if you don't bother to sit in the voting place all day, watching everything, then you can't verify your vote. There have been plenty of cases of entire ballot boxes being replaced before official counts are made. Not everyone can sit there all day waiting for the vote to be counted. And they shouldn't have to if they can verify their vote the next day.
Learn to love Alaska
True, you can look at a piece of paper in a tub, and maybe even locate it later in life. You can even look in the newspaper and see that some number was later calculated. So Paper to Machine you know, and can recreate. But, did that machines content ever really get looked at? You have no way to track, you have no independent validation path... pure faith from then up. Proper E-Voting ballots could easily be validated they reached the correct server, you could even have multiple servers from independent suppliers and verify the exact same packet reached every server in mSeconds. If one of those is the same server your eballot tallies go to today, you have much more assurances than you have today. IE your still trusting that last step to experts to validate, but you are removing all the possible problems today that can invalidate you ballot before reaching the final count.
Granted, a missing problem with e-ballot, is the psychological re-enforcement of having a "re-count" that makes people feel better (while mathematically proving the imperfections of the current system with every re-count changing the result slightly.)
And the problem where I am comparing a currently in-place system to a theoretically possible system.
With electronic voting (online or otherwise) a much maller group is capable of examining the verification process and determining if it actually verifies anything.
I call bullshit. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who assume that if they can't think of something that it's impossible. Want something that everyone can verify? Print out the name of every voter in alphabetical order with their vote next to that. Are you asserting that almost no one can understand the verification process and whether it's valid?
Not that I'm asserting that's the best verification process, but it is a clear one where everyone who can read their own name would be able to verify their vote without any receipts or anything else. And if someone doesn't trust the election, they can take the printed roll and add up the numbers themselves. 100% verification. 100% understandable. And it could be used with paper voting or electronic voting.
Learn to love Alaska
Why is the day everyone in America goes to the poles to vote a work day. If they want more people to vote why not make voting day a holiday. No we can't do that. Lets have everyone vote on line. My BS meter just broke.
Sure. Yep. Right.
You've seen how easy it is to hack supposedly "secure" software like Windows, OS X, Linux, Firefox, and so on. I don't know why you believe Voting Software is any different.
As for hand-counting/verifications, newspapers do that all the time. After the Florida election, USE Today, New York Times, and several other newspapers flocked to the scene and hand-counted the ballots, followed by a report to the citizens ("Gore lost because of votes in western R-dominated counties"). Now how would they do that with software? There's no way to verify it. No way to detect tampering.
Give me paper - thousands of pounds of it - something that can not be easily disposed of, or tampered with, without leaving a trail. ("I saw a guy shredding ballots - here's the confetti." versus "The bits flipped but we don't know because there's no trace of tampering.")
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm
Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.
These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The federal pay premium cut across all job categories — white-collar, blue-collar, management, professional, technical and low-skill. In all, 180 jobs paid better average salaries in the federal government; 36 paid better in the private sector.
State government employees had an average salary of $47,231 in 2008, about 5% less than comparable jobs in the private sector. City and county workers earned an average of $43,589, about 2% more than private workers in similar jobs. State and local workers have higher total compensation than private workers when the value of benefits is included.
Hundreds of elections in the US were selected by people who swapped ballot boxes. Swapping a few slips of paper is, as a practical matter, easier than swapping a few bits.
But electronic voting would allow vote verification to be much easier and secure than paper vote methods. That you can't conceive of those methods doesn't mean that they don't exist. I don't trust or believe arguments made on the basis of "I don't understand, therefore it must be impossible." It's silly statements like that which lead people to worship Apollo for dragging the sun across the sky.
Learn to love Alaska
OK, if we want to do away with anonymous voting. How likely do you think it would be that people would accept everyone being able to know how they voted?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
What's even worse is if you actually can determine someone's identity online, even if it's not 100% reliable. Because then someone somewhere can determine how people voted and all kind of shit will hit the fan.
But even a 100% perfect, secure, open source, pure gold, RMS-approved online voting system will have a fundamental flaw: people will be able to vote from a location (e.g. home) where others can see how they vote. This will enable criminal organizations to buy votes with money or threats and check that people actually vote the way they want.
The only way to prevent this is to force people to vote in only one location, the fucking voting booth, where they can and must cast their vote in secret. So even if criminals pay someone to vote for a certain candidate, they will never be certain that he/she actually voted for that candidate.
Any type of remote voting is fundamentally flawed. It's not about the implementation details, it's the basic concept that cannot work.
And, yes, this is an actual and real problem: when Italy tried remote voting by mail for Italians abroad in 2008, criminals literally went home-to-home to bribe and threaten people and collect votes. Everyone knows this, but still the Mafia got their candidate elected (Nicola Di Girolamo, for the record). Yes politics in Italy are shitty for a number of other reasons, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make life harder for criminals, here and elsewhere.
The people that cast 300% of the votes for Colbert with high-tech hacks are the least of anyone's problem. The criminals that move 1% of the votes with low-tech bribes to voters will destroy your democracy.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Vote buying is also possible, since you can now prove how you voted.
Bullshit. Vote buying is possible today. There are almost no places in the US where you can't vote by mail. So if someone wants to buy your vote, they can just print out your pre-written vote, walk it to you, have you sign it, then they'll mail it for you. So vote tracking wouldn't create a new vector for attack. It's there today. But tracking would fix a lot more problems than it would add.
Learn to love Alaska
AHAHAHAHAHAAA! This will fail. Low turn outs are good when you wan't to win elections legit. High turnouts are great if you wan't to stuff the ballet box, ie dead people, old people in retirement homes, kids that just turned 18. Oh! The list goes on.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Why not learn something about some of the proposed systems which you're certain you could subvert effortlessly?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting#Cryptographic_verification
Because, as with quantum cryptography and most other security measures, the measure is theoretically perfect and practically irrelevant. You may be able to verify that your vote matches your number, but the system can give several people the same number without any way for them to realise. You may be able to verify perfectly, but that can be used to indimidate you.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
It's precisely because Slashdotters know what can go wrong that we are so critical of electronic voting, it has nothing to do with being Luddites. Electronic voting is not at all transparent to regular people, the counting process is not even transparent to those of us with the technical knowledge.
For an election to be transparent and verifiable, there has to be a paper trail and the counting process has to be open for anyone to observe. A machine count alone doesn't cut it, if there is machine counting election night, there has to at least be a manual count overseen by any member of the public interested to verify the machine count for the official result.
Not very likely.
That's why all the serious proposals use cryptography to keep the "verifiability" property but keep the data selectively anonymous. Yes, cryptography can do that. A lot of people responding to this post can't seem to wrap their heads around this.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
"The bits flipped but we don't know because there's no trace of tampering."
Spoken like someone who has never heard of checksums.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
my state doesnt even check ID's, and it's one of the most important states for early "leanings" of major elections.
god love walking in, saying your name ONCE, taking a ballot, marking it, and sliding it into an electronic reader.
yeah, a paper trail means it's a better process........
Actually in Washington state, I believe what's holding up vote by mail is Pierce County rather than King.
Much (dare I say MOST?) of Washington state votes by mail. There are just a few hold-out counties, usually where some parties *cough* rely on a great deal of highly questionable voting practices.
The biggest single problem with the Vote by Mail system as used in Washington is the ability for unions to buy votes (watch while you vote at home, "lose" $40 bucks in your couch cushions on their way out the door). Some complain that it misses homeless voters as well, but there are provisions made for these in my county.
Other than that, I like the system, and it takes an army to game it unlike an electronic system where a couple clever guys in a basement could probably tip the balance.
With some form of digital ID, I suspect Electronic voting is going to one day take over. Given the level of graft and corruption with the current system, anything short of a totally compromised system might be an improvement.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
WA needs to try something. Democrat fraud is rampant. Dino Rossi has 2 elections stolen from him in a row by the Kings County democrat fraud machine. My guess is the left will continue to cheat the system, whatever it is.
an ill wind that blows no good
Some counties in WA vote exclusively by mail in ballots already
MOST counties in Washington vote by mail. 38 of Washington's 39 counties vote by mail. Pierce County still maintains poll sites.
http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/osos/en/voterinformation/Pages/VotebyMailFAQ.aspx
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Because there's no way you could modify the checksums ...
You probably also believe that if you download a file and a cryptographic hash for that file from the same server, a match between the downloaded and the newly computed hash proves that the file has not been tampered with?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It means only people who CARE about the election, and likely did actual research, are casting ballots
Not necessarily. I know plenty of regular voters who just vote party line without regard to the pros and cons of the individual candidates. One elderly woman I work with was very pleased when she found out she could just cast her vote automatically down party lines. I dare even say *most* of the people I know who vote always vote for one party or the other. Hardly informed votes.
:) To get the most accurate number for how many jelly beans are in a jar you ask as many people as you can. In general, no individual is going to get closer than the average of estimates from a large enough group.
I'm also inclined to think higher voter turnout is better because of jelly beans
Maybe ATMs never go wrong for the simple reason that it's vastly more easy to attack the card/PIN side of the system than the internal ATM side (note that the outside of ATMs does get manipulated by criminals), and therefore nobody cares to try the latter?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Oddly, 100% of everyone I ask states they voted. And our turnout is a little lower than that. I think that rather than being concerned about how they voted is confirmation that they didn't vote...
And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, yes and no. I've usually found that the reason that vote counts are low in certain elections is that the independent/undecided voters mostly stayed home. The hardline party voters mostly turn out every time.
Thus, elections with low vote counts in the U.S. tend to be basically party-line votes. The higher the voter turnout, the greater the percentage of voters who actually cared enough to study the issues.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The problem with non-anonymous voting isn't people being "embarrassed about [their] politics", but rather the prospect of intimidation. If anyone can see how you voted then your vote may be influenced by how others want you to vote, rather than by how you actually feel. For example, you may feel yourself to be immune to such pressure, but how do you think most people would react if their employer told them (off the record, without any actionable evidence) that those who don't vote for candidate A will receive lower scores at their next performance review, and probably lose their jobs? If there is no way to prove how you voted to others such threats are meaningless; there would be no way for the boss to know how anyone voted for sure.
Of course, there is a positive side to public voting: you would know exactly who to blame for that last tax hike, or the new regulation that put you out of work. Aggressors-by-proxy would be unable to hide within the anonymous "majority".
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Oddly, 100% of everyone I ask states they voted.
Then you ask odd people.
And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken.
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care that the cops can enter your home and search it without a warrant or permission? That's the argument you are making here.
I care. I know that one of the first things to happen were open published voting lists to become available is that the local political parties would launch massive calling campaigns. "We see you voted for X last time, here's why you shouldn't next time..."
I hate to point this out, but we don't need published public voting lists for people to find out if they've voted or not. All it takes is a call to the elections office. They keep a list. That's how they purge (or are supposed to) the voter list of dead etc. voters. You don't vote in X years, you are off the list.
But you can add up the votes yourself if the list is available! So? How do you know that every name on that list is valid? Dead people voting is a regular occurance in Chicago. Is the "George Smith" whos name you see on the list the same dead George Smith you used to know?
We can build one, the problem is we don't trust anyone to actually do the building. With ATMs the builders have a vested interest in making them secure, with voting systems the opposite is more likely to be true.
Online voting means no more secret ballot, unless you have ED-209 DRM hardware. "Please exit the room immediately while your spouse/employee/blackmailee votes. You have fifteen seconds to comply."
And that's a valid solution, but I don't want ED-209 DRM. Does that make me a luddite?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
All they are asking for is a registered voter's name and date of birth. Email addresses are no problem; use throw aways from foreign ISPs. Then start reading those obituaries.
In a major campaign lists generated by canvassing of voters who have moved would work also, although getting birth dates might be slightly harder.
I'm so pleased that Western Australia is going to try this. Nice globalisation, asshats.
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care that the cops can enter your home and search it without a warrant or permission? That's the argument you are making here.
No, it's not. And lying about what I'm saying will never make it true. I'm asserting that John Hancock was willing to put his neck on the line (literally) for his "vote." The first 50 years of this country ran just fine with open balloting. I'm asserting that the tried and tested method of open balloting has seen less vote tampering than closed ballots. Open discussion about politics is a better policy than hiding it away.
I hate to point this out, but we don't need published public voting lists for people to find out if they've voted or not.
I'd accuse you of lying here, but sadly, I think you believe what you are saying. So no matter how untrue, it isn't a lie. The voter lists are not tied to the ballots in any way. Within the past 10 years there have been cases of paper counts and electronic counts where the number of reported votes exceeded the number of registered voters. Because there is no verification, it can never be known who voted. The people who show up and place their unidentifiable and untrackable paper slip into a locked box where they assume it will be counted as a vote can be tracked. But that's not the official vote. The official tally is from the counted votes, which bears a surprisingly bad correlation with the votes cast, for a country which prides itself on its democracy. There are 3rd world dictatorships with more accurate voting. But no, we wouldn't want to actually fix the problem because the right to a private ballot is guaranteed in the Constitution. Oh wait. Most of the people who signed the Constitution never once voted via secret ballot and only ever used open balloting. I guess you'd need to make up some other excuse for your irrational fear of open ballots. All the valid sounding ones have been debunked.
Learn to love Alaska
how do you think most people would react if their employer told them (off the record, without any actionable evidence) that those who don't vote for candidate A will receive lower scores at their next performance review, and probably lose their jobs?
They'd turn them in, even without proof. Why, was that a trick question? If your employer ordered you to commit a felony, why would you comply and why would you continue to work there after being forced to commit a felony under thread of being fired?
I guess I just need to switch countries. The USA used to be about freedom and the American Way and all that. Now it's a bunch of people who sit on their couch and wouldn't turn in someone who confessed to illegal vote tampering while watching the people in power (who have no confirmation of their votes, and the vote error has been greater than the margin of victory more times than not in the past 20 years) continue to game the system. When people argue against accountability by an overwhelming majority, when people would rather roll over than fight for their rights, then the country is truly lost.
If there is no way to prove how you voted to others such threats are meaningless; there would be no way for the boss to know how anyone voted for sure.
Then it's a good thing that it's impossible for a boss to, say, tell all his employees that they have to vote absentee. And that they need to bring in their ballots to him, sign them in front of him, and leave them with him to mail in, or else they'll be fired. Oh wait. They exact same scenario exists today where a boss could see the actual ballot of their employees and make business decisions on their willingness to engage in felonious conspiracies to fix elections. And it doesn't happen now. But if we have open ballots like this country was founded on, then suddenly this practice that's possible now but unheard of would then become commonplace. Nah, I don't buy that.
Learn to love Alaska
In the current economy it would be easy to sell your vote, but only if you can prove you voted the right way. Any kind of receipt/proof means vote selling, and vote selling means the most corrupt politician owns the public office.
You are confusing mandatory voting with high voter turnout. Two different things entirely. Your argument is all over the place.
A voting system has 4 requirements: 1-secret ballot, so people can't force you to vote for them. 2-trustworthy/transparent. If you don't trust the system you won't use it. Generally the more complicated the system the less trustworthy (computer = bad). 3-no way to prove how you voted. The rich can't pay the poor huddled masses for votes if the poor can't prove how they voted (also see 1). 4-simple enough that most people can us it.
Checksums are just as easy to change as the original vote bits. A better method would be write once memory.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is. You say you have nothing to hide. There is no reason that people can't know how you voted because you don't care. Thus there can be no reason for anyone else to care, and it is perfectly acceptable to have published voting lists.
That's the same as saying you don't have anything to hide from the police so you don't care if warrant-less searches are taking place. If you don't care, why should others? If you have something to be embarrassed about in how you are living your life ... well, live a better life. That's the argument.
And lying about what I'm saying will never make it true.
What? I quoted you VERBATIM.
I'm asserting that John Hancock was willing to put his neck on the line (literally) for his "vote." The first 50 years of this country ran just fine with open balloting. I'm asserting that the tried and tested method of open balloting has seen less vote tampering than closed ballots. Open discussion about politics is a better policy than hiding it away.
You said nothing about John Hancock in what I replied to. Zip. Your comments about Hancock are in a different part of the discussion. If I was replying to those, then I would have replied there. I quoted what I was replying to: "And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken."
Well, sir, if you have some objection to a cop searching your house because you are embarrassed about something, your life is broken. That is the same argument you are using to support publishing the votes. If you are embarrassed...
Calling someone a liar and then claiming you said something you did not is not a productive discussion mechanism.
I'd accuse you of lying here, but sadly, I think you believe what you are saying. So no matter how untrue, it isn't a lie.
It isn't a lie BECAUSE I HAVE DONE IT. I have called the elections office to see if my ballot got there and was counted. They MUST keep the lists of who voted for the reason I already specified: cleaning the registration lists of dead and those who moved away without registering elsewhere. In this county, in fact, they suggest you call them if you have any doubt that your ballot was counted -- it is the only way to know they didn't discard it for a bad signature.
The voter lists are not tied to the ballots in any way.
That is a lie, and I will not hesitate to call you on it because you certainly know better. Every ballot in Oregon is returned in a "secrecy envelope" contained in a SIGNED envelope with the name of the voter. Before the ballots are separated from the signed envelopes, the name of the voter is recorded and the signatures compared. Then the ballots go into the tub.
Even prior to this vote by mail, when we voted at the polling place we showed up at the registration book where our presence was recorded. We were handed a ballot or two, each with an identification tag attached, and the number was recorded. When we turned the ballots in, the last step prior to the ballot entering the box was the removal of the tags. The poll workers checked the tags to make sure they matched what you were given.
So, yes, sir, at least in THIS jurisdiction, the ballots have ALWAYS been tied to the voter up until they entered the ballot box. That's a far cry from "never".
And it has been that way in every place I ever voted. I know of NO time when ballots were not tied to the voter to the point that who voted could easily be recorded.
Because there is no verification, it can never be known who voted.
Since there is verification, yes, it can be known. The verification often fails when a signature is forged, but it also fails in the opposite direction (when a valid signature is rejected), and THAT is why the local elections office suggests that people who have any question about it call them. They DO know whose votes were accepted and whose were not, despite your silly claims to the contrary.
But tracking would fix a lot more problems than it would add.
Tracking fixes problems that don't exist.
I can already find out if someone voted using my name. I can already find out if my vote wasn't counted.
People who don't vote and don't care aren't going to scan the list looking for their name, so there is nothing solved there. People who do care and do scan the list aren't going to catch all the dead people on the list, so that problem isn't solved.
The only problem that is solved is what is already possible: did I vote without knowing it or did my vote get discarded? No need to release the full list.
What I can't find out is how my neighbor voted, which is the only "problem" that tracking really solves, and I don't think it is any of my business, nor is it any of his business how I voted. YOU don't care if people know how you voted, but that doesn't impress me as an argument for why I shouldn't.
I wasn't asking what you would do, or even what you think others should do; the question was "how would most people respond?", and if you think that sort of pressure (a) would be punished without hard evidence or (b) wouldn't have at least some effect on the result of the vote, I'd really like to know what color the sky is in your world, because it clearly isn't the same as mine. Right now being unemployed is a Big Deal, and it's not hard to see why short-term political expression could easily take a distant second to providing for one's family.
Regarding absentee ballots, your example is one of the main reasons most places don't allow one to vote absentee without a reasonable excuse for not voting in person on election day—and even for those places where anyone can vote absentee, every employee of a certain business voting absentee would set off major red flags.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The higher the voter turnout, the greater the percentage of voters who actually cared enough to study the issues.
The higher the voter turnout, the greater the percentage of voters who actually cared enough to form an opinion about an issue.
Whether they formed that opinion through study or some other means, and whether it is a single issue or many issues, is not evident. But yeah, they cared enough to form opinions and act on them...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Not that I'm a fan of tracking, but it does fix one other problem...
The people arguing for tracking are claiming that tampering is possible by people who will gladly accept the fact that you voted, but ignore who you voted for (by switching ballot papers, discarding your vote as "invalid", etc...)
Now, there are other ways of solving that problem, which do not require public voting lists, but the argument is that they are more complicated so people won't understand them.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
A paper trail does not contain the voter's name along with their vote. The names are tallied, and the votes are counted, but not together. That is for the essential purpose of keeping votes anonymous.
Votes are kept anonymous for the same reason that anonymous speech is protected: to ensure that people can make their wishes known without fear of repercussions.
Bollocks. There is no way to "do it right" online, without, at the very minimum, assigning each voter their own public and private key that are 512 bits or larger...
Hmmm. Wait. That still leaves each voter's private key accessible to some government employee before it is distributed. And if distributed by mail, it goes through the post office, where other people have access to it. And wait again... somebody, or some program, has to verify the key when the vote is counted. And somebody has to code the back-end of the webpage that accepts the vote.
The fact is that any online method of voting is going to be vulnerable to one or another kind of attack. Thinking that it could be "secure", with today's level of technology, is a total fantasy.
And that brings us back to my original point, how many people are capable of understanding the cryptography well enough to know that the system is secure and the votes are not being gamed? Nowhere near the majority. With traditional paper ballots, most people are capable of watching to see that the system is honest. They probably won't, but they can.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Voting by mail seems like a big problem since as you say it can have all the problems as a non-secret ballot plus seems much easier to game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You still have the problem that a person is associated with the vote. Further, if you know the person's login, it is almost trivial these days to find the other 15 characters that are hashed to find the MD5 sum. That's only 120 bits. Even less, if you assume they are only ASCII characters. Then it's only 105 bits.
Further, as I pointed out in another post, any time you use keys in such a manner -- even if it uses DES with a 512-bit key -- there would be too many people involved in the process of assigning and distributing keys to make it very "secure". And again, it associates a voter with their vote... which by itself is a problem. That is a definite no-no when it comes to elections in the US. Votes are guaranteed to be anonymous. For very good reasons.
A paper trail does not contain the voter's name along with their vote. The names are tallied, and the votes are counted, but not together.
Ah, so there is no paper trail. If someone slips in a false vote, no one would know. If someone takes yours out, you'd never know. That's a paper trail like sifting through the toilet paper in the sewers verifies that you took a shit today. You do lots of work, you get dirty, and you still have no clue, even if it makes you feel a little better.
Votes are kept anonymous for the same reason that anonymous speech is protected: to ensure that people can make their wishes known without fear of repercussions.
Yes. That's why the Declaration of Independence was signed by a bunch of people as "anonymous." Oh wait, you mean the first guy signing on there signed his name as large as he could to make sure that his name would be known, even though he did suspect that he could die for that action? Surely then there's the right to secret ballot in the Constitution then? No? Well, then I'm sure that the Founding Fathers who wrote the First Amendment went back to their home states and argued strongly for secret ballots. Oh wait, you mean that it's likely that not a single Founding Father ever cast a secret ballot in their life, and they only ever cast open ballots?
Nope, I can't see how a country founded on open signatures and open ballots that praised openness would think that secret ballots, open to massive fraud like removing any or all ballots and replacing them or stuffing them would be a better solution than just taking pride in your civic duty. Or do you think we live in a 3rd world country where Qaddafi will execute you for voting for Ross Perot?
Learn to love Alaska
I wasn't asking what you would do, or even what you think others should do; the question was "how would most people respond?"
Oh, but your answer here doesn't address how most people would respond, but instead how you'd like them to respond in order for you to win an argument. But rather than a "we'll agree to disagree" you stepped into "I have nothing to support my opinion, and you have nothing to support your opinion, so I'll assert that my opinion is more valid than your opinion. I win." I respect your opinion and disagree.
I think that if a boss ordered people to vote one way or be fired, that the boss would be reported and people would vote how they like. Anyone voting the other way who was fired without really really good cause within a year of that would have a great case for discrimination suit and the boss would be under investigation for voter fraud.
Regarding absentee ballots, your example is one of the main reasons most places don't allow one to vote absentee without a reasonable excuse for not voting in person on election day
I don't believe you. Everywhere I've voted (only two states, but the two largest states) allowed absentee voting for any reason. So I'd like to know where you are so that I can look up your absentee regulations to verify your statement. From my experience, I don't believe it to be true. The AK in my username is Alaska. Feel free to look up the absentee rules for Alaska and post them here if they agree with your statement. I don't have them in front of me, and I doubt you'll be posting them as supporting your statement.
At least that's easier than your hypothetical guess about voter fraud. Just name your state, and I'll do the rest. Factual statements are so much easier to check out.
Learn to love Alaska
Tracking adds one problem that can't be fixed: the essential necessity of having the ability of voting anonymously.
This need has been established many times in history. It is necessary because any time you have votes that are not anonymous, people can be threatened and intimidated into voting certain ways... or even persecuted later for having voted one way or another.
Tracking is a non-starter. It won't fly, Orville.
"the ability to vote..."
I'm not a grammar Nazi but I hate making mistakes like that...
I can already find out if my vote wasn't counted.
Really? So if you punched one of the infamous chads in Florida, they can track back every ballot to every voter so that the voter can see if their chad was counted and counted in the way they desired? That would have saved heaps of trouble, but it wasn't done. It's a shame they didn't ask you. But then, I'm curious how you can verify that your smudge next to "Kang" was counted as a vote and not a smudge? How do you actually know it was counted, and if it wasn't, do they send you an email so you can revote?
People who don't vote and don't care aren't going to scan the list looking for their name, so there is nothing solved there.
You are wrong. If there's a close vote, if there's a time when fraud is hinted at, the fraud squad can go and track down registered voters and ask them who they voted for. "Kodos," "Kang," none, or threw their vote away. Then that can be verified. And by people other than the lazy guy who doesn't care. And if you can actually verify your vote, someone else can verify it as well, even if it requires theft of your token. So your system isn't any more secure, other than security by obscurity because it's presumed difficult to know everyone's token, but with them comes complete openness of the voting system.
Learn to love Alaska
But ATMs do go wrong, and have been hacked. Just last year, a graduate student in the UK wrote his doctoral thesis on how to use the debit card of a major UK bank without knowing its PIN. And that is hardly the first time something like that has happened. There is not a major bank or credit card in existence that does not have known flaws.
The bank tried to get the University to suppress the paper. The University replied, politely, "Not a chance." And good for them.
No, none of them have to understand the cryptography themselves. All they have to do is take the leap of faith that mathematicians know what they're talking about. I don't have to read the entire Linux kernel source to trust that it doesn't contain a backdoor. All I have to know is that sufficiently many people who are qualified to spot one, and who wouldn't profit from concealing one, are looking. Even among the coders, I suspect that most Slashdotters are like me in this respect.
Though I suppose in the nation which could manufacture a scientific "controversy" about the risks of smoking or pollution, even symbolic mathematical proofs would be met with armchair-expert skepticism. Sigh.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Checksums are just as easy to change as the original vote bits
Sure, if they're stored along with the data that they're checksumming.
Seriously. Look up some crypto voting proposals. Pick one at random and research it for 2 minutes. They all account for this. The point is to put the checksums out of "tampering" reach when they're generated. Sometimes this means putting them into a database which is readable by the whole world. Sometimes this means printing it on a receipt for the voter. The people coming up with these proposals do have a clue about how crypto works, you know.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Because there's no way you could modify the checksums ...
Sure, if they're stored along with the data that they're checksumming.
Seriously. Look up some crypto voting proposals. Pick one at random and research it for 2 minutes. They all account for this. The point is to put the checksums out of "tampering" reach when they're generated. Sometimes this means putting them into a database which is readable by the whole world. Sometimes this means printing it on a receipt for the voter. The people coming up with these proposals do have a clue about how crypto works, you know.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
pardon the double reply, readers. I seem to have web browser schizophrenia.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Or people can be free to generate their own key, by whatever method they like. Any number of freeware, commercial, or opensource methods could make this a simple and autonomous process, so that people could do as much or as little as they liked to ensure that their own key was securely generated. The free market's built-in 'reputability' mechanisms would go a long way toward ensuring security in these, and people would mostly end up converging around a few very popularly "trustworthy" solutions. For the people who REALLY NEED TO BE CERTAIN, the government could provide a boot-disk image with source which was guaranteed by the White House to be malware-free, a fact which could be guaranteed independently by private actors, and the President could go on TV and recite a checksum/hash of that CD image to vouch for its integrity.
Of course, this makes the question of desktop machines running botnets a much bigger deal. But that's kind of a problem we need to deal with anyway; people already bank online.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
"Ah, so there is no paper trail."
Yes, there is a paper trail. There are pieces of paper with all the names of those who voted, and there are pieces of paper with the votes. WHICH name goes with WHICH vote is not known, and it is not supposed to be. That is by design.
"Yes. That's why the Declaration of Independence was signed by a bunch of people as 'anonymous."'
Don't be an ass. The Declaration of Independence was not an election. Nor was the Constitution. (BTW, in case you didn't know, John Hancock wrote his name large so the British could read it "without spectacles".) But you are talking about very different things here. Those documents have nothing to do with elections... except for defining them, of course.
"Nope, I can't see how a country founded on open signatures and open ballots that praised openness would think that secret ballots, open to massive fraud like removing any or all ballots and replacing them or stuffing them would be a better solution than just taking pride in your civic duty."
You don't see it because obviously you don't know squat about the history of elections right here in the good ol' USA. Ballots that are not secret are subject to much more -- and worse -- tampering than ballots that are.
You have a list of the names of people who voted. You have a tally of the votes. Certain representatives of the citizenry (depends on the state) are allowed to oversee the processes of voting and the handling of the ballots. If you want to prove voting fraud of any real significance, that gives you sufficient information.
If you are so proud of your vote, then scream it to everybody on the street. I don't care. But that is not the same as requiring everybody to put their name to a vote. If you don't understand why that is so, pick up a history book.
"For the people who REALLY NEED TO BE CERTAIN, the government could provide a boot-disk image with source which was guaranteed by the White House to be malware-free, a fact which could be guaranteed independently by private actors, and the President could go on TV and recite a checksum/hash of that CD image to vouch for its integrity."
That simply isn't practical. For anything significant to be "certified malware free" it would have to be around for years, and looked at by thousands of people. Even then, there is no guarantee. People are still finding bugs in Linux code that has been around for years and thoroughly examined, tested, and used by many thousands of people.
And as far as I am concerned, that applies doubly for anything that comes out of the White House. Trusting Government to voluntarily come up with anything that could be considered "secure" by the citizenry is a joke. Christ... the Feds tried to put "back doors" in telephones, way back in '94. It just wouldn't work. Not at today's level of technology, and maybe never.
Further, if you leave people to come up with their own scheme for a "privacy code", 98% of them (that is my genuine best estimate) would screw it up, which is actually worse than none at all, because knowing the identity of a voter allows that voter to be coerced. History has shown that many times over. That's why we have private ballots in the first place.
Clarification: by "it just wouldn't work" I meant trusting Government to make something secure. Putting the back doors in phones would have worked, which is exactly why so many people screamed so loudly that the government didn't dare try it.
I'm glad I only have to give my name once. They always give me an odd look when I say I'm Fred Flintstone. Then the second time around as Clark Gable gets all the old ladies checking the books excited. Don't even get me started on the reaction when they hear Stewie Griffin...
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
WHICH name goes with WHICH vote is not known, and it is not supposed to be. That is by design.
And that's what makes it not a paper trail. If any one were falsified, the other is unknown. That's an audit tool akin to knowing how many eggs you made an omelet with and trying to tell if someone ate a bite. A pile of shattered shells will never tell you how many ounces of eggs you have, and thus if someone spit in your eggs or took a bite out of them can't be known. It might be designed to make simpletons feel better, but at the end of the day it's useless and *not* a paper trail.
Don't be an ass. The Declaration of Independence was not an election. Nor was the Constitution. (BTW, in case you didn't know, John Hancock wrote his name large so the British could read it "without spectacles".)
The signatories risked hanging for treason. And they were willing to show their "vote" for independence in the face of that. But you aren't willing to stand by your vote in case your neighbors think less of you.
You don't see it because obviously you don't know squat about the history of elections right here in the good ol' USA. Ballots that are not secret are subject to much more -- and worse -- tampering than ballots that are.
You are just making things up now. They worked better than the system we have now. But feel free to invent problems that didn't exist in order to justify your incorrect opinions you present as facts.
You have a list of the names of people who voted. You have a tally of the votes.
Great. So what do you do when, as happens in the USA, where there are more tallied votes than eligible voters, let alone people who voted? Count the number that match the number who voted and discard the rest? Throw them all out? Call another election and let the people who voted come back - but wait, some of them died or moved since the election and you'll never know what they'd vote or many of them would change their vote if they knew it would matter differently? Go ahead, tell me what the solution is when the tally doesn't match the number of voters. I'll be waiting...
Learn to love Alaska
Didn't happen for the first 50 years of the USA, so I assert you are wrong. It wasn't until there was a Civil War until there were issues bad enough to force the switch to the even worse secret ballot. And if we switched back, we'd be better off than we are now.
If it was an essential necessity, why is it not used in Congress? Why wasn't it used when any of the Founding Fathers were alive? It's as essential as salt in your milk. You might get used to it, but it doesn't make it better and most certainly not "essential."
Learn to love Alaska
Yes, and in practice, it's not a problem. As such, I assert that open ballots will be "just as bad as" vote by mail. And that's not bad enough to worry about.
Learn to love Alaska
As a WA State Citizen this worries me. I prefer a paper ballot with it's unique characteristics. Better yet, I prefer that those who care enough to actually go to a polling place get to vote. Anyone not willing to travel doesn't care enough to vote. Why should our laws be made by those who can't find the remote?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
How do you know it is not a problem?
And historically there were a lot of problems with open ballets, especially for the common person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You assert I am wrong because it didn't happen for the first 50 years?? What kind of an argument is that? I mean besides ridiculous. Even more: how do you really know it "didn't happen" during those 50 years?
I can't believe you are even asking the next question as though it were relevant to the discussion. But here goes anyway, since you asked:
Congress is made up of representatives of the people. Therefore, the people have a right to know what their representatives are voting for and against. If the votes were private, we would have no way to know and we probably could not have anything like "representative" government.
An individual citizen voting for or against someone running for office, however, is a completely different matter. That person is not representing anybody but him- or herself. There is no legitimate reason for anybody to know how that person voted that isn't more than made up for by the personal security afforded by the private vote.
In places and times where votes were not private, corruption, harassment, intimidation and persecution were rampant. I first learned about that in middle school history class, and re-learned it since in other history books. I have no reason to believe that people have changed in that respect.
Though I suppose in the nation which could manufacture a scientific "controversy" about the risks of smoking or pollution, even symbolic mathematical proofs would be met with armchair-expert skepticism. Sigh.
That, unfortunately, is always going to be a problem. Many have tried, and all have failed. The only ways to realistically combat the problem are highly discriminatory and exceedingly un-democratic (at least those that have been used or proposed to date).
Weird, I thought I replied to this and now Slashdot is notifying me every 5 minutes that you replied, 20 messages so far.
Anyways, it's hard to know if mail in ballots have caused problems or not.
And open ballots were shown to cause all kinds of problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Plus, those who wouldn't have voted would be voting randomly and skew the results.
If they vote uniformly randomly, then they vote for every option in equal amounts. For the whole body of indifferent people, it amounts to expressing no preference for any one particular option. So if all indifferent people truly vote randomly, their behavior perfectly expresses their viewpoint.
"And that's what makes it not a paper trail. If any one were falsified, the other is unknown."
If it happens for maybe 1 or 2 voters per precinct. But if it's done in any quantity -- say enough to really make much difference in an election -- it gets noticed. People didn't catch the false votes in Florida elections or failures of electronic voting machines by accident.
"The signatories risked hanging for treason. And they were willing to show their "vote" for independence in the face of that. But you aren't willing to stand by your vote in case your neighbors think less of you."
No, that's not it at all. And don't go accusing me. You don't know anything about me, and this has nothing to do with ME. This is about voting in general, and why the rules are the way they are.
As I stated before, that is a completely different situation. The signers of the Declaration were making a public statement, intended to gather support for the cause of independence. It's pretty hard to do something that is blatantly public like that and hide your vote, you know.
And as for the signers of the Constitution, they were elected or appointed by their respective States to represent them at the Constitutional Convention. Again: a public matter, involving people who each represent thousands of other people. Once more, it would be pretty impossible to keep your vote private. (Or feelings, for that matter... records of the meetings were kept.) So those are completely different situations from an individual voting to elect a representative, or for or against an initiative or levy or whatever.
Further, it isn't about somebody being embarrassed about how they voted... it is more about keeping organized gangs of thugs from threatening your family if you don't vote a certain way. How do we know that? Because it used to happen.
You are just making things up now. They worked better than the system we have now.
Making things up? Really? Have you ever read anything about the history of voting in this country? Or others? I am not even going to dignify that ridiculous statement with an argument.
"Great. So what do you do when, as happens in the USA, where there are more tallied votes than eligible voters, let alone people who voted?"
That depends on the state, and in some cases the individual jurisdiction. But all states, and smaller jurisdictions where applicable, do have rules about that. I can't give you a single answer because the rules vary from state to state... hell, the way votes themselves are tallied vary from state to state. But in most cases I am guessing that they would have to hold another election, as they would here.
As an observation: Even paper ballot systems can be gamed by "a couple clever guys" thanks to electronic tabulation. Sure it can't be done from a basement, but a corrupt elections official will still use electronic means of subterfuge. Just saying...
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
For those who missed the joke - Fix:
repair: restore by replacing a part or putting together what is torn or broken
set or place definitely
influence an event or its outcome by illegal means
(note that no illegal activity is required to "fix" a 2 party system. It is a natural consequence of plurality voting.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I have a much better alternative to online voting: just restrict the right to vote to software engineers. Must be much cheaper and is probably more democratic:P
Letting computers (read: the authors of the software and the system administrators) control the election will make it impossible to monitor the process, with the inevitable result that you cannot be sure whether you live in a democracy or not. In case of doubt: you're not in a democracy.
0x or or snor perron?!
But even a 100% perfect, secure, open source, pure gold, RMS-approved online voting system will have a fundamental flaw: people will be able to vote from a location (e.g. home) where others can see how they vote. This will enable criminal organizations to buy votes with money or threats and check that people actually vote the way they want.
The only way to prevent this is to force people to vote in only one location, the fucking voting booth, where they can and must cast their vote in secret. So even if criminals pay someone to vote for a certain candidate, they will never be certain that he/she actually voted for that candidate.
Any type of remote voting is fundamentally flawed. It's not about the implementation details, it's the basic concept that cannot work.
Modders: This quote is all that's needed in this thread. It gets to the crux of the matter and it amazes me that anyone would over look it. Any discussion of remote voting should end here.
Australian polling stations are manned by, electoral officials and members from leading political parties who all monitor the election process http://www.aec.gov.au/ (Federal, there are also state electoral commissions). Add to that elections do not take place on a weekday but on a Saturday ensuring the majority people have much easier access to polling stations not only to vote but also to remain their all day to promote their political party (hand out how to vote pamphlets) or to actively monitor the polling process.
Whilst online voting sounds neat and high tech, it rather defeats the whole process. Voting is all about people, who is seeking to be elected, those that support them and those willing to vote for them. It is the most important social act in a democracy, in fact it is the very seed from which the whole democratic forest grows.
In Australia voting is compulsory and you will be fined for failing to vote and failing to register to vote, logically, as it is the most basic elemental responsibility of every citizen of democracy. Being compulsory also places the onus upon government to ensure voting is fully accessible, whilst electronic voting facilitates this, it would however detract from the important social nature of the democratic contract.
This of course doesn't even touch the inherent risk of mass corruption of election by digital means is far easier, than a multi layered people and paper trail. Taking people from any part of the democratic process seems, well, pointless.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, let me know your old address in Oregon.. If your not going to be mailing your ballet in, I'll give you $20 and mail it in for you.
All these non-presential voting systems can be exploited this way. Mail or Internet. Don't know how often it happens in the US but in many places an Internet voting system would quickly lead to a vote-buying campaign, with your voting verified and paid by voting in a few regular unmarked houses, but which everyone knows. Lots of poor people sell their votes, happily, saying they don't care, nothing will change anyway. I know campaigners pay voters and threaten them with something if they don't fulfill the promise, even if the voting system is secret and works. People are afraid that they actually can verify the vote somehow. These voters are typically poor, uneducated, and afraid.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I agree that it should be statewide and not left up to the counties. .
If elections mattered, they would be standardized, inspected, secure, and convenient. Like getting money out of an ATM - that matters, apparently, because it works flawlessly, in any city around the world, 24 hours, no matter where your account is. Voting, reflecting it's importance as compared to money, only is possible in certain ways, is insecure, easy to fraud, and the results are always wrong and unverifiable.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
The minute the locked tubs leave your sight, you are relying on an army of other people to make sure they aren't unlocked while you aren't looking and the ballots switched, so no, you can't verify the paper trail when you vote.
With an end-to-end verifiable paper ballot protocol like punchscan and integrity, however, you (individually, without relying on an army of eyeballs to preserve chain-of-custody) can verify that the vote count is accurate because throughout the election (from the printing of the ballots to the scanning of the ballots to the final vote tallies) enough information is made public about the ballots and how they are marked that it is impossible for the election authority to steal more than a few votes without being caught. The probability of one vote being stolen without being detected is 1/2, 2 votes 1/4, 3 votes 1/8, and so on. At the same time, the information revealed is not enough to determine how any individual person voted, so anonymity is preserved.
At the heart of such protocols is the concept of a cryptographic commitment. Suppose you and I want to flip a coin fairly via an email exchange. If we were face-to-face, you would call heads or tails, I would then flip the coin, and we would see who won the toss.
How do you prevent cheating in a similar exchange over email?
The key is that I flip the coin first, generate a commitment and email it to you, then you call heads or tails, and then I reveal the key that unlocks the commitment, whereupon we both know who won the toss.
How do I generate a commitment that I can't modify later? Suppose I flip the coin and it comes up heads. I then generate a 128-bit random number, concatenate "heads" to it, and calculate the SHA256 hash of that string. I send you the hash. You call heads or tails. I then send you the 128 bit random number I used, and tell you it was heads. To check me, you take the random number, concatenate heads to it, and calculate the SHA256 hash. If it matches what I originally sent you, then you know I didn't cheat. If it doesn't, then you know I tried to pull a fast one.
How do you build a paper ballot election protocol out of that? That's a longer story. If you are interested, I wrote up my explanation of it here: http://seedsofgenerality.blogspot.com/2010/09/secure-voting-protocols.html
Now I grant you that not very many people will take the time to understand how a complicated protocol like that works. But it would only take a small minority of people to vet such a scheme so that the wider population would have confidence in it. Just as it only takes a small minority of people to understand how RSA works for the rest of us to use ssh with confidence.
Punchscan and Scantegrity both fulfill your requirements. The key is that each ballot is printed with a unique correspondence between the symbol marked and the candidate chosen, and the checksums for that mapping (and the ballot serial number) are published before any of the ballots are marked.
I have written up a description of how punchscan works here, if you are interested: http://seedsofgenerality.blogspot.com/
The only piece of cryptography you need to understand is what a hash function is, and how hard it is to reverse a hash. Everything else is about as hard to understand as, say, the quicksort algorithm is the first time you see it.
Now, that means that most people won't bother learning it in detail, but that doesn't mean the average voter should not trust such a system anymore than the fact that most people who use ssh don't understand the RSA algorithm in any depth should mean that they should not have any confidence in ssh.
It only takes a small minority of interested technical people to vet such a system.
Really now? Who mods these people up.
Someone can also kidnap your family and tell you if you don't go to the physical voting booth and vote their way they will kill your family.
If you are worried about your boss forcing you to vote his way, holy hell there is something wrong with you.
And historically there were a lot of problems with secret ballots. Vague generalizations aren't an argument.
Learn to love Alaska
And secret ballots were shown to cause all kinds of problems too. The question isn't about whether there are or are not problems. The question is which is worse. The question is not now and has never been whether the worst possible open balloting in an environment completely unlike the US's current environment could have problems. There have been very real problems with secret ballots and knowing there were errors but being unable to correct the errors. No one has addressed those errors and ways in which to minimize them. I'm still waiting for a single suggestion that would fix the problem of someone slipping in an extra vote or slipping out a single invalid one that wouldn't lead to the exact same result I've been advocating, namely open balloting.
Learn to love Alaska
If it happens for maybe 1 or 2 voters per precinct. But if it's done in any quantity -- say enough to really make much difference in an election -- it gets noticed. People didn't catch the false votes in Florida elections or failures of electronic voting machines by accident.
So the verified errors that secret ballots create are deemed by you to be inconsequential, but the ones for open balloting, you "just know" those problems will be massive. I can't argue with logic like that.
You don't know anything about me, and this has nothing to do with ME.
No, it does have lots to do with you. You are asserting your personal opinion as fact. You made it about you. I'm waiting still to hear an actual objective fact about the topic from you. But since you don't bother, I can only discuss you and your opinions, as that's all you are sharing. If you don't want it to be about you, then quit making it about you.
Have you ever read anything about the history of voting in this country?
Yeah. Open voting worked better up until a Civil War than secret voting has worked since. I'm curious if you've read anything about the history of the USA.
But in most cases I am guessing that they would have to hold another election, as they would here.
That's interesting. I'm curious where you are, because that's generally not what happens. Where are you so that I can try to find what the regulations are there and what's been done when it's happened in the past where you are?
Learn to love Alaska
Whilst online voting sounds neat and high tech, it rather defeats the whole process.
I thought the point was to express ones will. You make it sound like it's a social event. It might be that in Australia, but people in the US vote on Tuesdays, rush in, vote, and leave because they are headed to or from work and short on time, and show up with about 20% of eligible voters showing up.
This of course doesn't even touch the inherent risk of mass corruption of election by digital means is far easier, than a multi layered people and paper trail.
There is no place in the US with a verified paper trail. So eVoting done right would remove some anonymity and actually get verification that doesn't exist, resulting in more safe, rather than less safe, elections.
Learn to love Alaska
Even more: how do you really know it "didn't happen" during those 50 years?
How do you know it did?
In places and times where votes were not private, corruption, harassment, intimidation and persecution were rampant.
And in places and times where votes were private, corruption, harassment, intimidation and persecution were rampant. Again, you aren't arguing that open votes are *worse* than secret. You are just arguing that they have flaws. I don't dispute that. But pointing out flaws isn't a comparative statement. Prove it's better. Go on. You seem so sure it is, I can't believe how hard it is for you to come up with reasons why it's better. That makes me think that you have some emotional tie to it "I *feel* it's better" without having ever given it thought before this conversation or even during this conversation.
Learn to love Alaska
First you say that you don't need to support your own claim ("How do you know it did?"), then you demand that I prove mine.
Um, sorry to be the one to tell you, but that's not how it works. That's not an argument, that's just hypocrisy.
I am done with your silly arguments. If you want to know why ballots were made private, just go read your history. It was done for a reason. A number of very good reasons, in fact.
Does that statement prove I am right? Of course not. But that isn't going to happen in this discussion anyway. Obviously the only thing that would change your mind is getting the facts from reliable sources... and I have a suspicion that not even that would. But the only hope you have of getting at the truth is reading the history... of which you are obviously ignorant. That is not intended as an insult. Everybody is ignorant of some things. But why, for example, you seem to think that signing the Declaration of Independence is a situation that is even remotely equivalent to an individual voting for a political candidate is beyond me. They are two completely different situations.
And yes, at least here, if election fraud can be demonstrated (showing that there are more votes than people who voted is pretty solid proof of fraud), then another election has to be held. If other jurisdictions have different rules dealing with election fraud, that's their business. But I would be surprised if demonstrated fraud did not require a new election. I am curious what those other systems you mention might do instead. But I am not going to wait for an answer. I am done with this thread.
Open balloting was abandoned because there was a Civil War. There isn't one now. As such, by your arguments, there is nothing wrong with open balloting now. If that wasn't your point, perhaps you should have made it clearer, because you did a good job of supporting open balloting.
Oh, and you can claim that things would be done one way "here" but it feels like a lie when you refuse to define "here." Tell me where "here" is for you and let me look. Otherwise, I'll just assume you are using anonymity to lie to prove a point and that, in fact, the truth is the opposite of what you say. Again this would support my position rather than weaken it. And you can easily prove me wrong. You are so sure there'd be another vote that you have to have an example or know the regulation, so just point me there. If you can't, then I'll just have to presume all your arguments are based in ignorance and lies.
I really do want you to prove me wrong. I'd love for someone to change my mind on this subject. For some reason, my current opinion turns anyone I'm talking to into a raving lying lunatic. Just please, prove me wrong. Tell me where "here" is and I'll research it myself, or point me to the regulations you are so certain of that require a revote every time a single fraudulent vote is proven to have been submitted but can't itself be identified and removed. I want to believe. Please, please prove me wrong. It should be so easy. But no one has, and I don't think you will either, so I'll have to persist in my notions that people cling to "secrecy" from irrational fears and general idiocy, as that's all anyone's ever given in response to it.
Learn to love Alaska
I'd claim the reverse. I never claimed that I don't need to support my claim (I just failed to do so when ordered to by someone over the Internet - ooh horrors), so that makes you a liar. Second, if you can't prove your claim, why are you demanding that I prove mine?
That makes you both a liar and a hypocrite. But since you apparently are the master of "how it works" why don't you tell me? Are you trying to convince me I'm wrong by just saying "nuh uh" over and over again in long posts? Because that never worked in kindergarten, and doesn't work now. You've not made a single argument against my point yet. You have just told me I'm wrong over and over again without addressing whether you are right. Since you have nothing you can say in support of your own position, I'll just treat you and your arguments with the respect you've shown. You are a liar and a hypocrite and haven't managed a single sentence in support of your own argument.
Prove me wrong. Say something, anything, that is fact-based and indicates that open balloting is *worse* than secret balloting (in the context of a mature democracy, such as present day USA). After all your posts, I'm still waiting.
Learn to love Alaska
"You've not made a single argument against my point yet. "
That's because you haven't made any points. All you have been doing is contradicting what I wrote ... and giving no real reasons for your contradictions.
You have made absolutely ridiculous arguments, like asking why an individual voter, voting to elect a politician, should be different from signing the Declaration of Independence! If you don't see the obvious differences between those two things, I am sure as hell not going to spend hours educating you here on Slashdot.
Goodbye.
And this is exactly why I am not going to reply to you anymore. You don't even recognize when you have been completely ridiculous and hypocritical.
Look at my name, fool. It's like that for a reason. Do you honestly think I would tell you where I live?
Last reply. Really. This has gone too far.
So there it is. I think you are lying, and you could prove me wrong and refuse to. That only confirms my statements that you are lying about how votes are handled where you are. The only people supporting secret ballots are liars who want to lie to everyone and try to not get caught. Anonymous cowards who wouldn't stand up for their opinions. Democracy won't work if good people stand idle, and that's what you require. So yes, a country full of lying spineless twerps like you should have secret ballots. Of course, the election will be stolen via fraud, but the spineless cowards like you wouldn't notice or care, other than to whine anonymously about how bad it is.
Learn to love Alaska
That's because you haven't made any points. All you have been doing is contradicting what I wrote
Liar. I responded to an AC who asserted that vote buying would be possible with open ballots, as if it wasn't possible today. I let him know that vote buying was possible today. You then made the first contradictions and you never supported them. You never addressed whether vote buying was possible today. You never addressed what happens when fraud is proven today (other than to say that they'd hold a reelection "here" but you refuse to define your statement, so it's unprovable - might as well assert that you pet pink elephants "here" and not define that either). You've never addressed anything I've said other than "nuh uh" and then when I get tired of your sophomoric hypocrisy, you accuse me of hypocrisy, again in direct contradiction to the facts.
At least your "you haven't made points" line is provably false. My point at the beginning was clear. Vote buying is possible today, but is essentially unheard of, so there's little risk it would be rampant with voting changes. You've continually contradicted what I wrote without making any points at all. You make up stuff about how it works where you live, then refuse to clarify a single place that operates under the rules you made up. When you quit lying about what I said, what you said, and address my points, I expect silence, since you'd see that I'm right.
Learn to love Alaska
It gets frustrating when a liar who asserts falsehoods about their voting system makes such provably false statements, then refuses to give enough information to prove them false. Go on, there are at least a few million people under your voting laws, right? So tell us where that is. No? That makes you the hypocrite.
Learn to love Alaska
"think you are lying, and you could prove me wrong and refuse to."
I am going to go against what I said and respond to you this one last time.
I don't give much of a damn what you think, because it is obvious you don't do it clearly.
I say again: look at my name. Understand that it is what it is for a reason. I would not tell you where I live even if hell did freeze over.
I see your name. So what? As if narrowing down who you are from 1/300,000,000 to 1/20,000,000 will make so much difference. No one cares who you are or where, other than just trying to find out what state you are talking about when you say "here" for the sole purpose of validating factual statements you made.
Nah, you are just a liar who won't back up your statements that change depending on where "here" is.
Learn to love Alaska
Sigh. It is on the left economically meaning centralized control over business and manufacturing. The government doesn't directly own all corporations, but they are control by it. In this case because it is an economic issue, then the policies (which are supported by the left) are indeed fascist; ie, pro-union.
Now let us consider what countries in the world have practiced fascism and who they associated with. By far the two most prominent are Italy and Germany. There have been some other revolutionary types around the world that try to implement it, but none as successful. What were WWII era Italy and Germany like? Hint, they were very similar to Soviet Russia. The only difference was in name. Stalin and Hitler were cut from the same cloth and the only reason they didn't like each other is the fact that they both wanted world domination in their own name.
Socialism and communism are virtually identical. The difference is in their approach, where socialism works through legislation, communism works by force. Fascism, whenever attempted, has led to social and economic conditions very similar to those under communism. Hence, fascism is nothing more than another flavor of communism.