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Canada To Adopt On-Line Voting?
belmolis writes "Here in Canada we have an old-fashioned paper ballot voting system that by all accounts works very well. We get results quickly and without fraud. Nonetheless, Elections Canada wants to test on-line voting. From the article: 'The head of the agency in charge of federal elections says it's time to modernize Canada's elections, including testing online voting and ending a ban on publishing early election results.' Is it worth trying to fix a system that isn't broken?"
Online voting will be conducted through Warcraft's Arathi Basin battleground. Users must authenticate through battle.net and choose horde or alliance. Whichever team holds the Blacksmith point will be able to vote once per minute until 9 PM. Live results will be posted in Ironforge and Orgrimmar as voting happens.
Please note there is a limit of 3.78x10^19 voters allowed in each instance.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I have worked on the software including in depth code reviews for 7 makers of the voting machine software. It stinks to the high heavens of means and methods to provide vote fraud. Canada should retain a paper ballot. It is OK to count them electronically but the count should be validated and it should be recounted by independent agency of the original count. It should be electronically transmitted to 3 different locations for totalling at the same time. It should be locally counted as well. Clearly the process must also be open source for the software whereby citizens and groups like "Black Hat" can take a crack at it making sure it is secure. Bluntly modern technology can easily become a modern means of theft and we need to make sure it isn't such. Considerable data indicates that in the USA such systems have produced fraud. These include the flipping of primary results from Hillary Clinto to Barak Obama in the last election there for president. They include questionable results in at least 2 US states. Wake up Canada, the time had come to trust but verify!
Is it worth trying to fix a system that isn't broken?"
If it means less transparency for the system, then I say yes, lets fix the system. Because more transparency generally means that corporations make less money, and the less money corporations make the less well off society is in general.
Malicious code is the least of the problems with online voting.
It becomes almost trivial to buy/extort votes.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Is it worth trying to fix a system that isn't broken?"
It is to the people who sell electronic voting systems. And they apparently have better lobbyists than the average voter.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Surely you mean nack?
And there's a whole new area for malware creators. Ever wanted to reach a 110% voter turnout? Even Albania could only dream of this in its heydays.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The real problem with elections is voter turnout.
There are 2 reasons why people don't go vote:
1- The parties all suck and the voter doesn't feel that one winning over another would make any difference, and;
2- People are too lazy to drive down to the polls and wait in line to vote.
For problem 1, not much we can do except start a new party. For problem 2 however, a system where you can vote online might be able to help. For identification, perhaps combining your SIN number and passport number or last year's taxable income would be sufficient.
~Syberz
Yes, our election system here in Canada works pretty well. No, it's not perfect. In particular the ban on publishing results is a running joke that was easily circumvented by a ton of people on election night. It's so easy to get around it these days (particularly thanks to helpful foreigners willing to lend a hand by reposting results) that even trying to enforce it just wastes time and makes the government look stupid.
As for online voting... I'm against it. There's a number of reasons why, including that the paper ballots work really well (and are much harder to hack then a website). But I don't see a lot of harm in doing a test. That's the best way to get some real data on how it's going to work. Elections Canada is pretty good at this stuff, so I'm not surprised they want to try it out and gather some first hand data on how it works. There certainly are some cases where it would be helpful, such as far north rural areas where ridings are HUGE and it's a real burden to get to vote. We saw that turnout up north was the lowest in the country and 20% below PEI/New Brunswick (small areas with high turnout). That's worth trying to fix. It's also an option for special ballots instead of mailing out paper forms.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Even if you can check the code, how can you be sure it's the one that has been executed?
Why couldn't it just be the result of
?
Oh that's from the distant past where they were worried that those poor voters in BC would just fall all over themselves to support whoever people in Ontario voted for if they only they knew who that was. It's a law from before daily tracking polls or the Internet (or even timeshifted TV channels from other regions). Today it's archaic. Threatening jail time for talking about Election Results on Twitter (where there was an active group of people like me circumventing the law with the help of friendly foreigners) is so absurd that even trying to enforce it just brings the law into disrepute.
They try to justify it by saying that people in BC will still be influenced by knowing who Ontario voted for, while ignoring the fact that the gap in poll closing times is so short that very few people are even affected. That number is greater in the Atlantic provinces, but those are so small that nobody really cares who they voted for anyway.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
You can vote online. Direct democracy!
Hell, didn't anyone learn anything from online banking? It can NOT be made secure. Why? Inherently. Because you would have to trust a machine that is not under your control, as the voting agency: The user's computer. And there is no way to verify that his vote is actually his decision. And I'm not even talking about the guy with the gun pointing at his head telling him how to vote.
Here's a scenario that happened in reality a while ago with online banking. Anyone with half a brain should be easily able to tell how to apply it to online voting. We might have to get someone to explain it to a politician, though.
A piece of malware existed (and still exists), that was developed as a reply to the one time pad banks handed out. Since intercepting and using the user's credentials was useless in such an environment, what they did was to manipulate the user's browser to make the user do the malicious transaction himself. What happened was, essentially, this: The malware manipulated (through a BHO) the input and the reply from the bank. The user entered, e.g. that he wanted to transmit 100 bucks to pay his electricity bill. The malware sent that he wants to send 1000 bucks to a mule. The bank replied that those 1000 bucks will be sent to the mule, which the browser displayed as 100 bucks to electronic provider, asking for the OTP-key. The user, thinking he's paying his bill (and everything he saw reflected this) entered the key.
There is NO way the bank (or, in turn, the election committee) could somehow see that the input was manipulated. And in this case, at least it could be seen on the bank statement. How do you expect to at least NOTICE that your vote was altered in a secret ballot?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I cannot see how on-line voting can possibly stand up against the demand for a secret ballot.
If everyone is allowed to vote in their own home then there is no way to guaranty that the ballot is secret. How can you make sure that no one is shoulder-surfing? Or worse, shoulder-surfing with a big stick? With home (on-line) voting bribing and/or threatening voters becomes trivial and we don't want that!
On-line voting sounds like fun, but it doesn't work.
Malicious code is the least of the problems with online voting.
Even though there are more obvious problems, I believe that the freedom to study and test the system is essential to any democratic voting system.
It does not work for us, it was challenged in the Supreme Court, but the Justices did not rise to the height of the problem. They ruled that since to their knowledge there had been no actual election fraud, "theoretical" problems like software to modify the actual vote sent (which was created as a proof-of-concept) and spoof the one reported to you did not warrant new elections nor any updates to the system. There was also a discrepancy in vote allocation between votes cast by paper and cast over the Internet. That, however, might be explained with more tech-savvy people in the winners' camp. I am not saying it cannot be done, but Estonia should not be used as an example on how to do it.
For those who don't know, we just had a federal election up here in May. The conservatives, led by a radical right winger, took absolute power (a majority of seats in the house of commons) with only 39% of the vote. 61% of Canadians voted for more centrist or progressive parties that - for the most part - have a fair amount in common, but because the vote was split between the other parties, the conservatives cleaned up.
The system is utterly broken, but the decline in voting rates over recent decades (mostly in younger voters who recognise how appallingly unjust the system is and are disenfranchised by it) won't improve much with online voting techno-fixes. If you want people to engage in their democracy, we need a proportional representation (or at a minimum a ranked-ballot) voting system that makes people feel like their vote won't be wasted because depending on which party you vote for, or chance of where you live.
Why should people in BC have more information to vote with than those in the Atlantic provinces? No. No ballot box should be opened until all the polling locations have closed.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The short answer is no. E-Voting is a stupid idea. All electronic forms of voting are more open to error than traditional methods, not to mention manipulation. When it comes to elections I don't care how long it takes to count the votes. Even if it took a week, who cares? It's not like the new government will step in any faster.
When it comes to my elections what I care about is accuracy, reliability, verifiability. The paper method works because everything is done by hand, so there a no/few glitches. It reliable because, well paper is ancient. And finally it is verifiable because there exists a paper trail, which allows recount if there is a dispute.
The system we have right now has worked for a very long time, and it has worked quite well. We don't need anything new or fancy. I like new fancy stuff for somethings, that why I use Debian Testing on my desktop. But when I depend on something to work reliably I use Debian Stable, it may be outdated, but it has been thoroughly tested and has proven its trustworthiness.
In Canada ballot counting is done under the supervision of representatives from all of the candidates, The ballots themselves are also kept for possible later re-counting if there is any question at all about the validity of the results.
That is a far cry from an online system where that would be almost impossible.
That number is greater in the Atlantic provinces, but those are so small that nobody really cares who they voted for anyway.
You can stop wondering why no one in Canada likes people from Ontario. Your whole post, especially the last statement, make it painfully obvious. You managed to not only offend people from both coasts you left out all the provinces between Ontario and BC as well as Quebec and the northern provinces and territories. Ontario doesn't make up the whole country.
Well, no. It's pretty trivial to design a paper ballot system so that it's both fast to count and easy to monitor.
Open the voting place to public. Bring in the ballot box, open it, show that there's nothing inside, and seal it. Commence the voting. After voting ends, count the votes right there, in the voting place, in full view of everyone who wishes to watch - and, since this is the New Tens, also videotape it and upload the tape as well as the numbers. Next, tell the numbers to the regional center, which adds all the subtotals to get its own, again in full view of everyone and with the numbers uploaded on the Internet. Continue with as many layers of the hierarchy as needed, and you should get the final results overnight, and there is no part of this process which couldn't be watched over by anyone who wants.
Contrast this with computers, where it's just plain impossible to know what they're doing unless you already trust them, there are numerous examples of bugs going unnoticed in security-critical code for years, and actual real-life voting machines making complete mockery of security. Not to mention there's a huge incentive to hack them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That is presuming that a legitimate person is trying to access the legitimate site and perform the voting in a straightforward manner with good intent only voting once per election. There are so many other factors involved where identity can't be proven or other aspects that to me it boggles the mind that anybody would even consider on-line voting for anything critical.
Not if you're allowed to vote as many times as you like, but it only counts the last one. You can vote with someone watching, for the candidate that they want, take their money, and then vote again for the other candidate.
The real problem is the lack of transparency. In a democratic system, anyone should be able to verify the security and integrity of the electoral apparatus. With an online voting system, I doubt even 10% of the Slashdot audience could do it, let alone the general population. If you're trusting a magic black box to count your votes, then you may as well trust it to cast the votes in the first place.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I just wrote a long-ass comment explaining how the Canadian General Elections are monitored by candidates representatives, but the cert for yro.slashdot.org changed and I lost my work.
No, a digital system does NOT have potential to be more secure than the current system for General Elections in Canada. There is no counting office. Ballots are counted on the spot.
You have just almost described the Canadian system; except instead of letting in the public before voting, Elections Canada lets in candidates representatives, then the candidates representatives get to watch the count, and the tallying at the returning office.
Canada does not use fancy mechanical systems with chads. Voters are provided with pencils and put marks in a circle. It's simple and effective, and Canada gets voting results far faster than the US (and before you cite population size differences, the Elections Canada model would take the same amount of time even if you had 10x as many ridings). It's one single system and organization that handles federal voting for the entire country.
The premise behind the banning of early results is that voters who see the early results BEFORE they vote may be influenced by those early results. To say this anoher way, banning early publication is an attempt to place all voters on the same level playing field as they vote: that is, everyone uses the same information from which to decide who to vote for.
Actually, it was the other 49 states that had something to do with it. If you think Bush was really that bad, why did he get enough votes that a few hanging chads made any difference? And then, on top of that, everyone re-elected him! So, the route of the problem was the hanging and dimpled chads, it was the millions of other votes that were not miscounted.
"for the people" isn't socialistic at all. I suspect you have a severe lack of understanding of government. And that's without bothering with your rub on corporations and the rich.
The key metric in the credibility of an electoral system is what is the maximum amount of fraud that can be committed with a small number of people. The paper ballot system is a remarkable piece of engineering when you stop and think about it: you have to be physically present to vote and the physical ballot is accounted for at all times, making ballot stuffing difficult to pull off on a large scale by a small number of people. The observation and counting of votes is distributed, likewise limiting the scope of an fraud.
In any electronic system, the vote moves through countless devices that could be corrupted internally or externally. Any attempt to identify fraud using statistical deviation from polling numbers now trusts the pollsters (whose numbers were wildly skewed in the final days of the last election) as much as the actual vote.
In any centralized counting system, is going to be IT team that the nation has to have absolute trust in: their intregrity, their flawless execution and their ability to detect any tampering.
Note that tampering not only covers changing the results and ballot stuffing, but also removing the veil of annonymity. In an increasingly polarized environment, being flagged in party's database as an enemy voter could easily come to affect how your career prospects in government and how you are treated by a beaurocracy
Finally, its not enough that the election is not tampered with, it needs to be provably tamper-free. It's not enough for the chief electoral officer to be satisfied with the results, the public needs to be confident that for systematic tampering to have occurred that it required a conspiracy too large to realisticly remain secret.
That easily though? Exit polling is given credibility because it somewhat reflect what the results should be from that polling place.
At least with current situations, the loser can call for a recount and cite a number of reasons why it's necessary or their privilege to do so. This requires more then a simple printf, it requires actual stuffing of ballots and making sure you do not over stuff the system to create more ballots cast then voters or average voter turnout.
I guess the point is, even if it is going on right now, why make it easier to happen?
Many errors have been pointed out in the Florida election, but this one was the most startling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error
It shows that the electronic systems do not do even the simplest sanity checking.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Malicious code/malware can be technologically mitigated. Here in Europe my bank requires an authorization code for each action I make that is sent as a text message to my phone. With such system, both devices would have to be compromised (unless I use the same device for both internet and phoning)...
There are a couple of aspects of online voting that can never be solved with technology:
1) In order to be truly secure, each voter would have to receive a unique identifier. Voter anonymity would be lost.
2) When not in voting booth voter can be made to cast his vote under duress.
* Voting booths provide secure location where voter can cast his vote anonymously (answer to both)
If only there was a way to distribute a non-reusable token to every voter before the election.
No sig today...
So you're saying a central, single federal agency is more efficient than individual agencies using their own systems. Next you'll tell me that works for health care as well.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
And then I could check your vote, see you voted for the traitor, then send goons after your ass. That's why the vote has to be anonymous.