Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Jersey Residents Displaced By Storm Can Vote By Email

Posted by timothy on from the early-often-and-insecurely dept.

First time accepted submitter danbuter writes "In probably the most poorly thought-out reaction to allowing people displaced by Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey [to take part in the 2012 presidential election], residents will be allowed to vote by email. Of course, this will be completely secure and work perfectly!" Writes user Beryllium Sphere: "There's no mention of any protocol that might possibly make this acceptable. Perhaps the worst thing that could happen would be if it appears to work OK and gains acceptance." I know someone they should consult first.

50 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. I didn't know by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I didn't know New Jersey had over 5 billion residents.
    Or atleast that's my estimate of the amount of votes they'll be recieving.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    1. Re:I didn't know by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think the Swiss have been using online voting for a while now: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-645615.html

    2. Re:I didn't know by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, but they are Swiss. They make perfect watches, have an insane amount of automatic rifles in homes while not thinking twice about not committing crimes with those rifles while eating their famed chocolate, and are otherwise generally badass. Take that, New Jersey! Still think it could work there?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:I didn't know by Hentes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And that has nothing to do with email voting.

    4. Re:I didn't know by Albanach · · Score: 4, Informative

      There was a project sponsored by GNU to develop software that would permit online voting securely. Obviously this would be hugely useful if it were secure and freely available. http://www.gnu.org/software/free/

      Production stopped in 2002.

      Here's what they had to say, "From my experience of designing and developing GNU.FREE over the past three years it has become clear that creating an Internet Voting system sufficiently secure, reliable and anonymous is extremely difficult, if not impossible. As Bruce Schneier points out "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers.""

      Of course, it's possible the Swiss know something about secure software development that Schneier doesn't. Or perhaps they're just happy to accept the risks.

    5. Re:I didn't know by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even if an online voting system could be implemented in perfect security, I'm still bothered by the fact that the voting booth is supposed to be influence free.

      If you go vote, people pressuring you have to stay like 50 metres away from the polling place.

      There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up. Heck. There's a lot of concern about buying votes (personally I'm thinking if you think someone will stay bought for $100 against their conscience, eh, welcome to try). But that whole situation changes with online voting. Again, can have people vote right at their workstation for a bonus in the next paycheck.

      I'm sure there'd be proposals of laws against it, but, enforcement is still an issue. Esp since pressure can be as simple as peer pressure.

      BTW, on the buying votes front, supposedly each campaign is spending over $1000 per undecided voter in swing states, w/ actual impact of the ads being very hard to measure. Amusing.

      Reminds me of all the concern about rich people being able to self-fund campaigns. Should ask Meg Whitman how that worked out for her.

      --
      -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
    6. Re:I didn't know by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, but they are Swiss. They make perfect watches, have an insane amount of automatic rifles in homes while not thinking twice about not committing crimes with those rifles while eating their famed chocolate, and are otherwise generally badass. Take that, New Jersey! Still think it could work there?

      Of course they don't commit crimes with the rifles. They already have all the criminals' money.

    7. Re:I didn't know by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

      I live in New York. President Obama is going to get our electoral votes no matter which lever I pull in the booth, so if someone wants to pay me $100 to flip a particular switch, I'll gladly accept their money and pull whichever lever they ask of me - it boils down to literally whether I want $100 or not.

      As for pressure on a poll in a church, I'd assume that any non-personal venue that is stated to be a place where votes can be submitted fall under the 100-foot rule, enforcement could be incentive-based - you get 10% of the fine if you submit a photo of a designated polling place where there are Obama/Romney signs. Now if you're voting on your personal iPhone in Times Square, well then I'd assume it'd be your own damn fault for flipping the virtual lever there.

      Finally, there are four basic ways for politicians to receive money to run their campaigns:
      1.) lots of people with a little money pay for it.
      2.) small numbers of people with a lot of money pay for it.
      3.) the person running pays their own way.
      4.) the government pays for everyone's campaign.

      No matter who pays for a campaign, people will complain:
      1.) Anyone who's going to put money towards a campaign is not going to put it towards a candidate they're not already voting for. It basically becomes an informal poll, plus it then turns campaigns into "we need your vote AND your money!". Begging for my vote is already painful enough, the amount of $100-or-less donations it'd require for a candidate to earn enough to run a useful campaign for anything larger than MAYBE a House representative is so high that if you've seen a commercial for them, they've likely already won, and then you have the kind of people who would give money to a politician buying them.
      2.) We call these small numbers of people either "The One Percent", "Corporations", "Billionaires", "Billionaires in the One Percent who own Corporations", or some loose variant of that. Effectively, it only becomes feasible to participate in government if you've already got the money to avoid any legislation you don't like anyway.
      3.) If a person can afford a campaign out of their own checking account, they're clearly both independently wealthy and bored enough to want a part time job behind a desk pushing paper, and are willing to gamble tens of millions of their own dollars to do it. On the bright side, they don't have much of anyone to answer to, so you won't find megacorps pulling strings to get their votes. Conversely, whatever megacorps they own or have significant ties to will likely be favored, as will bills that facilitate them keeping their own money.
      4.) Having the government give a set limit to every candidate seems like the fairest system, but even that has significant drawbacks. If the government gives, say, $100,000 to every aspiring senator, I'd be an 'aspiring senator' and run a bum campaign just to get my hands on the money. How do you filter that? Limit to five candidates? Who chooses them? The political parties? Which three minor parties get candidates? Would it not then be jockeying for the grants that is where the race is fought? Do you make the losing candidates pay the money back? Well then you won't have any candidates who don't have $100,000 in the bank running for office, and if they have that kind of cash to blow, then could already fit in category #3 and not waste taxpayer dollars in the process. Meanwhile, you then have the existing representatives deciding whether the amount goes up or down each year, and then there's reverse manipulation of that. ABC wants the Red candidate to win, his TV spots cost $100, while the Blue candidate has to cough up $5,000 for the same spot. NBC wants the Blue candidate, and the reverse is also true. Oh, they have to charge market value and prove it? Okay...ABC gives the Red candidate the best ad slot during Dancing with the Stars, while the Blue candidate can only get the Tuesday 1:33AM ad spot.

      Honestly, I've wondered if Slashdot has the right idea - everyone is a part of the voting process, each hav

    8. Re:I didn't know by neonKow · · Score: 2

      Seems to me that extra votes are the same as erasing or not counting legitimate votes.

    9. Re:I didn't know by uncqual · · Score: 2

      Every "extra vote" cancels a large portion of someone's legitimate vote. So, it's important to worry about both.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
    10. Re:I didn't know by h5inz · · Score: 2

      There is also an electronic voting system in Estonia that uses ID cards (a smart card) for secure authentication. There is also a short summary about the secrecy scheme of the voting process in the document referenced below.
      http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Internet_Voting_in_Estonia.pdf

    11. Re:I didn't know by Guppy06 · · Score: 2

      There is no such protection in online voting.

      This problem is not unique to online voting; it's also an argument against allowing voting by mail.

    12. Re:I didn't know by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 2

      Agreed. Not a fan of that either.

      I just feel that online voting expands the problem and simplifies the abuse.

      --
      -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
    13. Re:I didn't know by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

      There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up.

      There is no need to conjure a theoretical example when the real example of unions and "card check" exists, and is being repeatedly litigated.

      The National Labor Relations Board’s attack on the secret ballot

      . . . The National Labor Relations Act established the secret ballot election as the preferred method for determining employee free choice. Although the act has been interpreted to permit voluntary recognition by card check . . .

      . . . An employer does not have to acquiesce to a union’s demand (or its employees’ request) for recognition based on a card check; the employer can demand a secret ballot election. Similarly, if an employer voluntarily recognizes a union based on a showing of majority support by cards, its employees are given 45 days to demand a secret ballot election challenging the union’s majority claim.

      Unions prefer card check, however, for two main reasons. First, card check is less costly. Second, unions are more successful at securing an employee’s signature on a card than they are in earning the employee’s vote when it is cast in secret. The reasons are not hard to find. A card check subjects an employee’s vote to the scrutiny of third parties, peer pressure from fellow employees, and even coercion. Unions collect cards over time, often in secret and without the knowledge of the employer, and open workplace debate on the issue of unionization. A secret ballot election takes place after a campaign participated in by the union, the employees and the employer; it reflects employee sentiment, educated by the campaign’s debate, at one point in time.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    14. Re:I didn't know by Yvanhoe · · Score: 2

      The Swiss system relies on a trusted third party, something that secure network applications try to avoid.

      It works in Switzerland because they have put a trutable government in place and learned to trust it instead of wondering if it should not just be gone at each election.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  2. Official Directive by Robadob · · Score: 4, Informative

    This seems to be the official thing about it because there's some stuff going around twitter that it's a lie. http://nj.gov/state/elections/2012-results/directive-email-voting.pdf

  3. It's just absentee voting by Azathfeld · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't just send an email with your vote in it. They're allowing scanned copies of absentee ballots. It's no less secure than absentee voting in general; they'll check the names against the voter rolls just like they do when you vote in person.

    1. Re:It's just absentee voting by mysidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

      they'll check the names against the voter rolls just like they do when you vote in person.

      Unfortunately, the list of names on the voter roles is public.

      Will they be smart enough to check that for every ballot received by mail, there was actually an application for a ballot by that person?

    2. Re:It's just absentee voting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All voters in Oregon vote by mail. Each ballot is submitted with a signature on the outside envelope. That signature is matched against the voting rolls before the ballot is counted. The ballot is in a secrecy envelope so the person opening it during the counting process doesn't know whose vote it is.

      There are several problems with the process described here that make it different. The first is that an electronic signature can be a scanned copy obtained from a different document. The second, raised elsewhere, is that the ballot is not secret. The third is that someone could electronically modify the ballot during and stage of the process. This seems to be relying on a form of "security by obscurity". For a small number of ballots that is probably sufficient. But if you get a large number of ballots it will be an inviting target for someone trying to alter the outcome of the election.

    3. Re:It's just absentee voting by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      Will they be smart enough to check that for every ballot received by mail, there was actually an application for a ballot by that person?

      People all over the planet have been voting by snail mail throughout the 20th century, do you (and the mods) really think that your the first person "smart" enough to ask that question? Could it be that others have put more thought into running the election than you have put into your post?

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  4. Lol! don't expect a victory on by metaforest · · Score: 2

    Election Night.

    *starts making popcorn.

  5. So it's much worse... by thrill12 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ..as they ask for a "waiver of secrecy": they actually *realize* that the e-mail voting will need the removal of one of they key things in a democratic election: the secrecy of voting. Now an actual record of the vote is transmitted in the clear (when using e-mail) and if anyone coerced said voter they will have undisputable proof what that person voted. I gues the OSCE will write this down in their report...

    --
    Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
    1. Re:So it's much worse... by sribe · · Score: 3, Informative

      ..as they ask for a "waiver of secrecy": they actually *realize* that the e-mail voting will need the removal of one of they key things in a democratic election: the secrecy of voting.

      Since when is secrecy of voting key to a democracy? This democracy, for one example, was founded without it...

    2. Re:So it's much worse... by Sabriel · · Score: 2

      It's not the key, it's a key. Defense in depth, etcetera.

      Also, if by "this democracy" you are referring to the United States: the names of many of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence were initially kept secret, for fear of British reprisals.

    3. Re:So it's much worse... by sribe · · Score: 2

      It's not the key, it's a key. Defense in depth, etcetera.

      I agree that providing people with the option for secret voting is good; but I disagree that it is bad to allow a potentially non-secret method to those who prefer it.

      Also, if by "this democracy" you are referring to the United States: the names of many of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence were initially kept secret, for fear of British reprisals.

      I am indeed referring to the US, where *after* the establishment of the republic, most votes were town-hall style public votes. (The initial anonymity of the signers of the declaration is not at all relevant.)

    4. Re:So it's much worse... by plover · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Allowing non-secret voting creates the conditions under which coercion can take place.

      How do we know Tony Soprano hasn't threatened everyone in the neighborhood to vote for his candidate? Let's say one of Tony's associates is at the polling place, "observing" the election as his right. If he is watching you vote, he can be sure you voted his way. If you have the "choice" of a secret ballot or a non-secret ballot, he could tell you up front "don't be choosing the secret ballot, I need to see your vote. Or else."

      If the voter is not given the choice of non-secrecy, that vote can't be subverted. In a secret ballot, the voter can always make their own free-will choice. And only through enforcing ballot secrecy can the election judges be certain that the vote was impartial.

      --
      John
    5. Re:So it's much worse... by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      Not really a big distinction. Fax lines can be tapped just as easily as email. What's important is that somewhere in the voting process, an official will see the person's name (or phone number) and could see how they voted, too. For election purposes, that means the ballot isn't secret, so the waiver is necessary.

      Similarly, in posting your comment, you agreed to waive the exclusivity of your right to copy your comment, so Slashdot (and its parent company) can function. Don't like giving up your rights? Go somewhere else to post your comment, go to a physical polling location, or mail in your ballot as you would if this email allowance weren't made.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  6. The next day.... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is amazing! New Jersey had 100% voter turnout and that ALL voted for Romney! It is awesome to see that this state in the face of disaster can turn out a voting percentage that no other state has EVER turned out!

    Pundits point at this as an effect of how the TV show Jersey Shore has given NJ residents that the new president will pass a law to get it taken off the air and the cast exiled.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:The next day.... by VanessaE · · Score: 2

      Surely they are referring to the calibration of the touch surface relative to the display screen. I've seen this being done on video slot machines for example. When in calibration mode, the machine asks the tech to touch a few specific spots on the screen, notes where the tech appeared to actually touch at, and adjusts a few variables in the math it uses so that future users' inputs will register correctly. I've done the same myself on a touch pad for an old computer once or twice.

      In other words, any surface that sends discrete position information to the computer has the potential to need such calibration.

      All of that said, there's absolutely no excuse for allowing a machine to continue operating if it is registering votes other than those being requested (not that I mind a few extra votes for Obama over rMoney, but that's a different matter).

    2. Re:The next day.... by Shadowmist · · Score: 2

      The discrepencies so far have been in favor of Obama. I've seen two distinct stories about voting machines registering Obama when people tried to vote for Romney. Poll workers blame it on "bad calibration". How the hell does that happen? I can write program in about 10 minutes for something as simple as "choose A or B".

      I don't trust electronic voting of any kind. As long as a loosly-knit crew like Anonymous can hack the DOD, I prefer paper ballots whether it be in person or by US Mail.

      You ever use a kiosk? Touchscreens can and DO go out of calibration which means that the virtual pointer does no match the position your finger touches on the screen. In my line of work, fixing touchscreen calibrations on Wal-Mart, Sams Club and Rite Aid photo kiosks are a common call.

    3. Re:The next day.... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would trust them IF the politicians out there had any balls at all and DEMAND that the source code be 100% open. That way they can hire a 3rd party to compile the source code and test, then seal the units. But Diebold refuses to release the source code because they are hiding something.

      If the company that makes the machine will not release the source code, you must assume they are crooked and hiding something.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  7. This has been in place... by bmo · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... already. They are merely letting people be treated like overseas military.

    FTFA

    "Officials say electronic voting is also an option for emergency workers. The option is already open to New Jersey voters overseas and in the military."

    It's not like someone just came up with an idea yesterday.

    --
    BMO

    1. Re:This has been in place... by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      Getting all the ballots out and back (ok, they have until the 19th for that part) in such a short time could be an issue. Phone lines and the tubes could get clogged with all the traffic.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:This has been in place... by TheGavster · · Score: 2

      The "From" field of an SMTP transaction isn't authenticated, it's just something that the sender supplies. It works the same way, and has the same reliability as the return address area of a snail mail envelope. Yes, the mail carrier (or SMTP server) could check it against the mailbox it is collected from, but practically that doesn't happen (and in fact for email, as it may have been relayed through intermediate servers, there's situations where the @ clause of the from field wouldn't match the RDNS of the connection). You can send mail that appears to be from your boss, a .mil address, even "marvin@olympus.mars" if you want.

      The way I read this was that what they were allowing was to obtain an absentee ballot by email (fill out a web form and they email you a generated PDF); the mechanism for returning the ballot wasn't clear (I assumed that you'd snail mail it back like a normal absentee ballot, but I could be wrong).

      --
      "Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
    3. Re:This has been in place... by mellon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How would that work? Suppose I get a ballot, and scan it, and that scan gets out. The "cryptographic signature" will be on every copy of the scan. How will they know which one is mine? I think in this case, if what you suggest were true, my vote would either not be counted, or would be swamped by all the hacked copies. Either way, I lose.

      Cryptography isn't a magic want that you can wave over a security problem to make it go away. It's a useful tool, but this is a _really_ hard problem, and what's been proposed here is not in any way secure.

    4. Re:This has been in place... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      Probably the same way they reconcile it if they get snailed mailed two ballots for the same person.

      Look, it's not hard people. This is vote-by-mail with the "Mailbox to Voter Office" part of the process replaced with "scan and fax or email from home to Voter Office." There is no way to commit fraud that wasn't already possible.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  8. Not so shocking as it seems by yelvington · · Score: 3, Informative

    Absentee voting already works this way pretty much everywhere in the United States:

    First, you have to already be registered, so the notion that nonexistent people are suddenly able to vote is nonsense.

    Second, you must file a request to get the absentee ballot. In most states you do not have to show any form of ID to do so, but your name is checked against the registration records before any ballot is provided.

    Third, you fill out the ballot form, sign it, and mail it in. Note that the signature means your ballot is not really "secret."

    Fourth, the forms are checked against the registration rolls again when they are counted, and signatures also may be checked (usually a sampling are spot-checked). In many places, absentee votes are counted AFTER the live votes and they may even be skipped if the number of absentee votes would not change the outcome of the election. If a voter has voted at his or her precinct, and an absentee ballot from the "same" voter shows up, that's an obvious case of fraud and the ballot is set aside.

    There is no reason to imagine that email makes this any less secure than the snail mail system.

    1. Re:Not so shocking as it seems by Aserrann · · Score: 2

      I voted absentee this year, and unless my state (New Hampshire) is the odd one out (always possible), you have the process wrong.
      I filled out a ballot, which had no identifying marks on it at all. No signature, name, or anything like that.
      Then, that was sealed inside an envelope with a statement I had to sign saying that I myself completed the ballot, and it was the only ballot I filled out.
      That envelope was then put inside another envelope that could be dropped in the mail or handed in at the town office.
      Once the envelopes were stripped out, there was no way to tell who had filled in the ballot.

  9. Re:If the USA was a true democracy by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the USA was a true democracy, it would defer the vote until after the clean-up,

    "For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?

    Democracy cannot be considered a luxury that one can "put off" when times are bad. Rather, the government needs to double down and make sure polling places and post offices are secure and accessible, no less so than food, water and shelter.

  10. Re:If the USA was a true democracy by Svartalf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ah, but we're not a Democracy. Democracy is MOB RULE.

    We're a Democratically Elected Republic- and you should learn the distinction and learn it well.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  11. Re:Fake cover for Republican voter fraud by mellon · · Score: 2, Informative

    The NAACP story looks manufactured. It's only about twelve hours old. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, is reported about it once it's been properly investigated. I suspect that there will be no followups on the several dozen right-wing blogs that are currently the _only_ source for this story.

  12. Re:Who'd have thought Obama could be twice as bad by mellon · · Score: 2

    Bush didn't count the war effort in the budget deficit, so when Obama updated the numbers to reflect reality, the hit showed up on his balance sheet. Similarly, Bush presided over the economy that created the need for deficit spending, but that shows up on Obama's balance sheet. You don't blame the CEO you hire to fix a failing company for the failures of his or her predecessor, even if it takes a while to turn the beast around.

  13. Re:Who'd have thought Obama could be twice as bad by meglon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For example, Obama more than doubled the budget deficit.

    It's too bad more people don't have a basic grasp of reality. The day Obama took office, the deficit was projected at over a trillion dollars for that year... a deficit on a budget put forward by: Bush.

    Lets get to the heart of the matter though. Bush kept his budget deficits low (if you consider half a trillion low) by keeping both wars and homeland security entirely off budget. There's a minimum 300 billion a year that wasn't applied to the deficit as it should have been. I know, fucking idiot republicans believe all the bullshit their told, but reality is reality.

    In addition to that, Obama's budget last year added in the interest on the national debt, something that hadn't been done. There's another 250 billion that was going directly to the national debt that wasn't in Bush's budgets (to be fair, it wasn't in anyone's budgets until Obama put it in there... which is why Clinton had budget surpluses, yet the national debt still went up).

    Obama's deficit now contains Bush's wars, homeland security spending, and the interest on the national debt. If those numbers were added to Bush's "budgets," his deficits would have run 650 billion to over a trillion EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

    Now lets talk about where else our debt came from. The day Bush Jr entered office, the 10 year projected SURPLUS was ~5.3 trillion. The national debt at that time was ~5.7 trillion. So, did republicans step up and make the "hard" choice of leaving in place policy that was projected to pay off almost the entire national debt in 10 years? Fuck no, they're too big of fucking hypocrites, and completely incapable of governing EVERY time they get into power. Those fucks voted in a tax cut that sent massive mounts of your grand children's money to the wealthiest people in this country.

    Add in two wars put directly onto the credit card, the drug medicare/medicaid give away of taxpayer money to pharmaceutical companies, and you have MASSIVE DEBT SPENDING that anyone other than a totally fucked in the head conservative ideologue could spot from another galaxy.

    ...and the worthless republican fucks want to blame Obama for everything. Take a quarter, and go buy a fucking clue... you need one, desperately.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  14. Re:Plan old absentee mail in voting. by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    There are always edge cases, but I can see ways in which postal votes would be less accurate, and emailed votes would be more accurate.

    Mail in the US is normally left in householder's unsecured mailboxes for a mailman to pick up during the day and put into the postal system. Checking the mailboxes of homes displaying "Vote {My candidate's opponent}" signs and "disappearing" the easily identified mailed votes before the mailman gets there is certainly a practical concept. You wouldn't get all the votes that way, but you'd get enough to make a difference.

    Can the same be done with email? Yes, kinda, but these days there's an expectation that your email is not going to go through, and quite honestly if you don't get an acknowledgement that your ballot was delivered in a reasonable period of time, then you're going to investigate. And acknowledgements themselves are going to be suspected by the more paranoid users who will follow up with phone calls and other contact methods. If someone gets an "acknowledgement", and then calls the polling office and finds it's forged, then - whoops!

    Now, you're talking tampering, but actually tampering a scan is relatively hard to do in a way that cannot be detected. Moreover, it takes time, time that would make it uneconomical for most entities to do it. If a rogue sysadmin at Google's GMail department seriously wants to f-ck with emailed ballots, they could easily drop a few thousand with a "misconfiguring" of their MTA, but it would get progressively harder to do in a way that detects votes against their favored candidate, and it would get impossibly hard to do without an army of photoshop experts to intercept, modify, and send, a few thousand ballots (enough to make a difference.)

    Also bear that in mind - that the fraud would have to be from someone at Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, or AOL, to stand a serious chance of swaying the vote. A sysadmin at an ISP with a few thousand users or less is highly unlikely to be able to intercept enough votes to make any difference. For all of the faults of "big corporations", few would be in a position to secretly sway an election in this way without a whistleblower calling it, few would have employees in situations where they could sway an election without their employer finding out about it and firing them, and few would actually risk everything in order to change whether tweedledum or tweedledee actually wins.

    Given the time constraints with this, I don't see any legitimate reason to criticise NJ on this. If they'd given notice last year they were going to do it, or if they weren't requiring scans of presumably unique paper documents sent to each address, then yeah, there'd be a heavy probably of mass fraud that wouldn't otherwise exist, but I just don't see it here, and Slashdot should probably tone down their hysterical summary on this.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  15. Re:And a delay of voting... by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because the US constitution says the vote happens on Nov 6. You start making exceptions for hurricanes, do you extend those to nasty thunderstorms, or a little bit of snow on the ground, or below freezing temperatures, or global warming in general? Some things you just have to be a stickler for.

  16. Re:Estonia by plover · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The reporter is obviously confused about the meaning of 'freedom'. The real problems with online voting have less to do with the technology and more to do with the integrity of the process.

    Even if an online system worked perfectly, how do you know that when Joe cast his vote that Frank wasn't standing behind him with a gun in one hand and $100 in the other? You don't.

    Now, that's a problem with absentee ballots as well, you might say, and you would be right. But the effective difference is the difficulty of scaling fraud up in the physical world as opposed to scaling up fraud in an online world. I might be a rich gangster and hire 10 thugs to influence 10 votes. But as a crooked employer, I could monitor the voting of thousands of employees, and I'd know exactly who is on the short list to be promoted.

    Preventing coercion requires the act of moving a voter into a secluded voting booth, with a truly secret ballot.

    --
    John
  17. No worse than paper mail ballots by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me play devil's advocate here. While we all know that email is insecure, as a practical matter the security holes in this are roughly equal to vote-by-mail. Not that that's a good thing, but this doesn't introduce many new problems. The NJ elections directive recognizes this, and treats displaced voters as "overseas" for the purpose of election rules.

    Summary of the procedure:
    * Your voter registration is already on fiile.
    * You email a request for your ballot
    * The elections agency marks your ballot number in the registry, sends you a ballot with a unique ID, along with a waiver of secrecy.
    * You fill out the ballot and the waiver, and send them back.

    Can we spam the election with billions of votes? No. Well, you can send the emails, but they won't have the right ID numbers so they won't be counted.
    Can we hijack individuals' votes by voting for them, or by changing their vote via a man-in-the-middle attack? Yes, but you can do this by paper mail too, and it's a one-vote-at-a-time thing.
    Do we lose the secrecy of the ballot booth? Yes, but that's lost in vote-by-mail too, and voters choose whether they'd rather submit a non-secret ballot, or trudge through miles of floodwaters to cast their vote in person.

    The practical question you've got to ask yourself is not "could someone be disenfranchised by this?" but "will more people be disenfranchised by doing this than by *not* doing it?"

    In short, adding "e-" to a technology doesn't miraculously make it evil or cool. And in this case, the security holes are roughly equal to a system already in common use. As a mandatory universal voting system, email voting would be an abhorrent violation of civil rights. As a short-term, *optional* response to a major emergency, it's worth considering.

    1. Re:No worse than paper mail ballots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm surprised that postal votes are not secret. There's no reason for that.

      In Australia if you do a postal vote, you're given 2 envelopes. you put your vote inside the first unmarked envelope. Then you fill out all your voting details on the other envelope, and put the first envelope inside.

      When they receive, your vote. The details on the outer envelope are checked. Once they are happy that it's a valid vote, the unmarked envelope is thrown into the pile of other postal votes.

      Simple, low tech solution...

  18. Re:Estonia by greg1104 · · Score: 2

    The presumed first step is that employers require their employees vote while at work. Easy enough to do even with indirect threats right now, when so many people are un- and under-employed. Didn't vote at work? Not gonna look good on your next performance report...

  19. Re:If the USA was a true democracy by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

    "For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?

    And just as importantly, which "crisis?" I remember reading various people urging President Clinton to not step down, as if that was a possibility, at the end of his term following the 2000 elections and the disputes following it.

    "President for life" is not a title that goes well with democracy.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell