In France, a Showcase of What Can Go Wrong With Online Voting

Bruce66423 submits a report from The Independent, writing that "a French primary election is made the stuff of farce after journalists defeat the 'secure' election system." From the article: An 'online-primary,' claimed as 'fraud-proof' and 'ultra secure,' has turned out to be vulnerable to multiple and fake voting. The four-day election has also the exposed the poisonous divisions created within the centre-right Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) by the law permitting gay marriage which took effect last week. ... What was already shaping up as a tense and close election was thrown into utter confusion at the weekend. Journalists from the news site Metronews proved that it was easy to breach the allegedly strict security of the election and vote several times using different names."

Comments

Working as planned

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this system. Each vote costs €3 and you can vote as often as you like. In other countries money buys you access, influence and power but we pretend that everyone is equal. France sweeps away the hypocrisy and makes it explicit: mo' money, mo' votes.

Vive La France, Vive La Révolution!

Designed Poorly

[starworks5]

Clearly its not that internet voting cannot work, its that this was implemented poorly, credit cards are easy to get your hands on, what really matters is the vote verification. Nothing prevents a person from stealing vote by mail ballots, and using a fake signature to send in the vote, whether the vote is tallied is another matter.

Now if you used multi-factor verification, along with biometrics (webcam photo) and IP logging, you would be able to sample and defeat fake votes.

Re:Designed Poorly

[Sique]

Internet Voting can not work for a simple reason. Internet Voting has to both ensure that each person which votes is clearly identified to make sure the person is eligible to voting and at the same time can not be identified to make sure the voting is secret, at the same time clearly identify the vote to make sure it is counted only once and at the same time not making the individual vote identifyable to keep the voting secret.

Paper-and-pen voting solves this problem by first identifying the person, handing the person a non-identifyable sheet of paper, the ballot, let the person vote in secret and then keep the vote in a closed box until the counting. (And the problems surrounding pen-and-paper-voting like ballot stuffing can be managed by making everything of the voting box except the actual voting public.)

UMP centre-right!?

[loufoque]

Maybe centre-right by American standards, but more like borderline far-right by French ones.

Oxymoron?

[jasnw]

Is "safe online (PUT YOUR SERVICE HERE)" as much an oxymoron as the much-malinged "military intellegence" back in the '60s? I see lots of stories about both sides of online voting, but I've not seen an answer to the basic question of "is it possible to have a safe hack-proof online voting system." I don't mean an assessment of whether Siebold or any of the other idiots in this market have fool-proof systems, but whether or not voting can be done safely online even if Brother Stallman designed it. My own feeling is that it's like putting something critical such as access to power grids online - not a good idea unless there's no other way to get what you need. I don't really see what's so hard about schlepping down to your local school and voting once a year or so. If that's too hard for you, don't bother voting because the hard work of making an informed choice is likely beyond your capabilities as well. (Does not apply to people who can't get to a voting booth for several of many good reasons, and mail-in ballots has worked for these people for decades.)

Re:Oxymoron?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Replying as AC because I'm also moderating)

Even if the system is, in fact "perfect" - and even if you could somehow avoid the possibility of coercion - you've still got a HUGE problem: how do you convince the general public that the system IS actually secure? Most people aren't nearly technically savvy enough to figure it out for themselves, or even to really understand the difference between "secure crypto" and "insecure crypto" even if you carefully explain it to them. And telling them that it's all OK because a bunch of hackers designed and/or reviewed the system isn't going to cut it, no matter how much of a good idea that might be in theory or even in practice.

The fact is, if a non-trivial group of people think the system was hacked, you've got a credibility problem REGARDLESS of whether or not it was hacked. Unfortunately there are distressingly large numbers of people willing - even eager! - to believe all sorts of wacky conspiracy-theory shit (google "chemtrails"). With a traditional in-person paper system you can at least demonstrate that massive fraud is impractical. With an online system there's simply NO WAY to convince people that massive fraud DIDN'T occur.

The lesson that will be learned

[frovingslosh]

It is a crime to vote multiple times. That crime will not be prosecuted. It is a much bigger crime to expose that the system is corrupt and open to fraud. That crime will be prosecuted.

What's wrong with "normal" voting?

[Darkness404]

Before rushing to adopt online voting, we really need to ask ourselves, what exactly is wrong with just voting normally that voting online solves.

Re:What's wrong with "normal" voting?

[fredprado]

There is nothing wrong with voting normally as there is nothing wrong with travelling from east to west cost by foot. It is just a lot slower than the alternative and requires considerably more work.

The right question to make is not this one, though. It is: "Is there a way to achieve both anonymity and security"? The answer is unfortunately no. That is true for normal, paper voting as well, by the way.

The main difference is that electronic voting, and in special online voting, is easier to be tampered with in large scale, and paper voting is easier to be tampered with in smaller scale.