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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."
The french U.M.P is no more than a band of thieves and a hate group. No good ever came out of them, all their attempts at democracy are utter failures.
Also consider the fact they generated some people such as Nicolas Sarkozy, the worst criminal this country has ever known.
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.
Adds a new meaning to "vote for me".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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!
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.
Maybe centre-right by American standards, but more like borderline far-right by French ones.
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.)
That journalists find and publish it is something that went right. The worst that could happen (or is happening actually) is that noone makes public their findings, or they are forbidden/punished by law if they try to see or warn if there any "weak" point. And of course, the people behind the election, both politicians and company.
> Metronews said that one of its journalists had managed to vote five times, paying with the same credit card, using names, including that of Nicolas Sarkozy.
> The discovery generated an explosion of name-calling within the party and calls by Mr Bournazel for the primary to be abandoned. After a three-hour crisis meeting on Saturday, the Paris federation of the UMP decided to press ahead
Dont need to read more than that. The PTBs dont care if the election is rigged or not. Likely broken by design.
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.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So you have to pay to vote? In other words, it is really just a party ballot, not a real election, that's why the journalists were able to test it and publicize the failure.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
A few facts :
OK, so electronic ballots are proved to be less "secure" than paper ballots, again. The UMP is proved to be technologically illiterate, again. Yawn.
Nobox: Only simple products.
it sounds like a voting fit for a reality show.
"To register their vote on-line, Parisians were supposed to make a credit-card payment of €3 and give the name and address of someone on the city’s electoral roll."
sounds to me it's just a scam to get 3 euros out of people.
1) have an election about an extremely heated issue to some groups.
2) provide them a means to vote multiple times by paying 3 euros per vote
3) get money from said groups.
it doesn't look to me like they're going to refund that money.
because eh, the whole concept of how it's done goes against ultra secure and quite frankly against any principles that goes with modern voting. the whole concept is anything but secure or fair. it doesn't matter how good the code behind the service is even.
couple of good ground rules:
a) voting is a right - it is to be provided gratis for every adult.
b) check identity somehow(pay id cards from social security or whatever).
c) default enforced(unless disabled etc) voting method should not be a process that is observable to people even if a voter "wants" it to be.
d) if you need to limit amount of candidates have them collect supporters lists(this is usually easily done for people serious about being a candidate, since the limit should be relatively low). these lists can be forged and people can sign the list for multiple candidates, but that only gets them to be a candidate.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Here in North Carolina, even without on-line voting, we have several unicorns and many people over 150 years of age who vote by Absentee ballot. Most of them seem to be Democrats.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Before rushing to adopt online voting, we really need to ask ourselves, what exactly is wrong with just voting normally that voting online solves.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
the deal with you tasK. Resear3h A BSD over other provide sodas, hobby. It was all parties, but here may do, may not
Now via the internet from the comfort of your home.
Nicholas Sarkozy (an obviously corrupt shill for the content industry) is ousted and what do you know .. there's a voting system brought to bare which can be easily manipulated to meet the required outcome of corrupt business.
Seriously, who really believes in voting anymore? As long as these supposedly democratic systems CAN be manipulated, they WILL be manipulated. It's long past time to recognise that the governments that were supposed to serve us are now imprisoning us. Our rights to do just about anything are being slowly curtailed and now even the false facad of democracy is falling over.
In the last few years, China has demonstrated what a large organization can do with cyber warfare. If China can hack the computer systems for designs of the F-35 and V-22 Osprey, wouldn't China also be able to hack some online, nation wide election system? Maybe Taiwan should try online voting systems, just to show the world it can be done.
on line vote = foreced to vote your bosses way at work.
Sir,
You forget a key point. If most of the populace doesn't understand, can't verify, and doesn't trust such a system, it's COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
Even I, with a far greater sophistication in understanding of cryptography than the standard, would have a very time feeling confidence in such a system--it's all in the implementation and there are SO MANY ways to screw up.
It's very hard to screw up a piece of paper.
Yes, I even agree that if implemented properly, your scheme is far better, except for the faith and trust issue.
Best,
--PeterM
Fake names voting was also used by the pro-gay-marriage mafia in the USA to put Barack Hussein Obama in power.
-- Jimtown Kelly
It means "...either conservative (Catholic, etc.) and/or supporting neoliberalism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Right-wing_parties_in_France
Not quite the same as the US right wing.
It's funny... Diebold/Evergreen make many of the ATMs you probably use. The ATM will never give you an extra $20, and yet the voting machines they design are shown to be 1-3% off....
And this is in-person electronic voting.... why would the internet, a wild-west pool of hackers and government agencies, seem like a safe place for clean democracy?
For me, counting the hand cast ballots with witnesses, no matter how laborious (exaggerated claim, btw) is the most superior and reliable way to ensure that democracy is indeed what is happening.
Remember this question..... what is the point of saving money if you're letting democracy slip away? Chances are, the people that will manipulate the electronic voting will strip money from you anyway...
UMP is not "centre-right". Their model is US Republicans, on the French political spectrum, they are clearly right wing, and trying to attract far-right voters. Even by US standard, they would be clearly Republicans.
This is not a French official election, this is an internal party vote, organized by the political party itself. There are no rules or law to regulate how they vote. The UMP has made itself ridicule already with their leaders' election, but the socialist party was not particularly better when they did the same (fraud in both camps, but they agreed to settle it down)
No one really expects UMP anymore to make a non-fraudulent election. The chief of UMP recently said " We are learning democracy at UMP, it is a bit new." Said this seriously. They were just in power for 10 years...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The main benefit of a workable electronic voting system is that we will be able to vote more regularly on a range of issues, taking some of the power away from the politicians. I think that this may be one of the primary reasons why Diebold, who can produce near perfect ATMS, cant/wont build an accurate voting system.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
http://www.paul-robinson.us/index.php/2008/10/25/the_robinson_method_a_really_simple_way_?blog=5
But somehow it appears to be too 'scary' for the Slashdot crowd.
If we can bank online, we can vote online.
I wouldn't buy into this anti-online voting bs.
Many have vested interests in keeping the corrupt paper vote system going.
Anyone really convinced that sticking a paper in a box that will be read by politically affiliated people can be more secure or less corrupt than voting online ?
If the system in France is insecure then the fault is in their system, not in online voting itself.
Projects providing the necessary software to make online voting get ignored: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/20176-friction-free-democracy
"...at the UMP we're learning about democracy, it's a pretty new idea for us" - Jean-François Copé, president of the UMP.
Nice. The people who ran France for the last 5 years or more "are learning about democracy".
Watch this Heartland Institute video
These systems have no other purpose but cheating.
The Canadians have a manual paper system with multi-party guarded counts. It scales, it works, it can be recounted.
E-voting was an idea slammed home in every case. It cannot be secured. No purpose but an invisible and unstoppable means to alter vote counts. The counts have been altered, the machines and systems compromised numerous times on investigation. And that's just outside cracking; anyone on the inside can change code, accumulated totals, and elections at will, if they aren't stupid enough to get greedy. Recounts recount altered votes, so they are useless. We can't analyze code; it can change on the fly. We can't look at the data, because all wee see is the altered datasets.
We need to shut these cheating boxes down and switch to paper before we can't actually cast a meaningful vote ever again.
What makes you think that the people who make the decisions to buy electronic voting systems want it to be truly secure?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Please change that subject asap. It's confusing. French who lives in North America voted online last weekend for a new deputy (a real one here) to represent them in France.
Also, a political party of France is not France (hopefully). I believe that the news should be better checked before publishing on SD... It's really disappointing.
they should just surrender?