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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."
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!
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'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...
on line voteing can lead to you boss forcing you to vote his way and he can stand right over you as you vote.
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!
... 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.
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!
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
You obviously don't know anything about the issue. The problem is that the King Conservation District is in a sort of legal loophole. It has to be funded by the conservation district rather than the state, and isn't ever on the normal ballots that are sent out. Consequently, there's only one polling place for the issue and it's hidden in a back corner of a library.
Consequently, it's the only office I haven't had the chance to vote for since I gained the right well over a decade ago. This isn't about us being progressive or trying to get more voters per se, it's about the thoroughly undemocratic way in which the positions have been filled. In a county with a million or so eligible voters, the elections tend to draw only a few thousand voters in a typical election cycle.
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__()
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.