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Azerbaijan Election Results Released Before Voting Had Even Started

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-the-winner-is dept.

Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Florida's hanging chads ain't going nothing on Azerbaijan. Fully a day before the polls were to open, election results were accidentally released via an official smartphone app, confirming what everybody already knew — the election was rigged from the beginning. The official story is that the app's developer had mistakenly sent out the 2008 election results as part of a test. But that's a bit flimsy, given that the released totals show the candidates from this week, not from 2008."

8 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Cryptographically signed elections? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is there a reason why developed countries haven't let users vote with a public/private key pair, and signing your own votes, in a method that can be cryptographically checked and counted by any reasearcher?

    This can even be done anonymously, just identify voters from anonymously issued keys...

    Certainly problems like this would go away

    1. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by mosb1000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It seems like as long as there's anonymity, it's going to be possible to rig it.

    2. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... you still need to devise a system by which an eligible voter can obtain (without some absurd hassle) one and only one anonymous key, without it being covertly linked back to them, or them being able to sign up for ten, ...

      It doesn't solve all the problems, but blinded signatures can take care of this part. The essence of it is that a server can sign a "blinded" token such that, given the unblinded version at a later time, it can tell that it generated the signature but can't trace it back to the blinded version which was signed.

      In this scenario, the voter would present their credentials and be issued a single blinded token. The server would then add them to a list so that they can't come back and ask for additional tokens later. To vote, they present the unblinded token along with their choices. The server knows that they're authorized to vote, but not who they are. The token is added to another list to make sure it can't be reused.

      Obviously you'd need to take precautions (like using Tor) to avoid leaking any personally identifiable information to the server along with the ballot and unblinded token.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
    3. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even if it's your employer? That might put your manager behind bars, but yourself out of a job...

    4. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by ygslash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Only a handful of mathematicians would trust that.

      Paper ballots with independents actually conducting the election taking ballots and counting them, etc, with overseers from all political parties welcome to watch the entire proceedings, from start to finish.

      Simple and transparent.

      No, even the mathematicians wouldn't trust it. See Bruce Schneier's 2006 essay that explains why.

      Use paper ballots. Period.

      However, crypto can still add value - it can go a long way towards preventing fraud and errors even in a paper ballot election. Scantegrity is an open-source system, invented by Rivest (the "R" in RSA), Chaum, and other researchers, that helps secure a paper ballot election by supplying each voter with a simple verification code that can be written down. The codes in no way compromise the anonymity of the voters, and cannot be used to determine what vote was cast. But they can be used by individual voters to verify that their votes have been counted correctly, and by election officials to verify that ballots have not been tampered with and that the results have been tallied correctly. The overhead cost of the system is low.

      Scantegrity has been used successfully in two real elections - municipal elections in the Takoma Park, Maryland in the U.S. But so far it doesn't seem to be catching on very much. I guess it doesn't quite suit the needs of the big money electronic voting industry.

  2. Testing perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe the app developers are testing this year's app with old data? It should be easy enough to tell if the dataset used is from a previous election.

  3. Re:The new expendables by steelfood · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That it was done by a developer, I have no doubt. Absolutely an accident. Like putting an assignment in a conditional.

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  4. Irony by Justpin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A little side story. The great irony is, that Azerbaijani people are incredibly corrupt thus they get the government they deserve. I travelled from Tbilisi to Baku a few years ago. Right from the onset from the Azerbaijan border it was ALL about corruption. I had a visa and letter of invitation before hand. Right from the border it began, you had to pay a fee to 'park' in the border area, no pay fee? Your vehicle got trashed, the bloke in front had most of his windows smashed. Then you went from one building to another each time there happened to be forms with a hand written $5 price on each corner. At which a fat oaf with a stamp would refuse to stamp your entry documents unless you gave him $20. I had a buddy tried not to pay and was not allowed into the country. Then 20 metres from the border was a check point where the official would grab your passport and ransom it for $20. Refusing to pay got a bayonet in your tyre. Binoculars came out and there were MANY MANY such check points. So we went off road instead, but now and again had to stop for gas, it said something like .25 for a litre of gas. (it was cheap) except when it came to pay it was not .25 it was 25 a litre. Buying food and stuff the decimal place got moved to the left 2 places. Even when we got to Baku nobody would give us directions without payment. Similar situation with hotels, big sign saying $x per night PRIVATE ROOMS! No, this is wrong, old sign! price was doubled or tripled. Tired we paid and found it was a dorm with beds stacked 5 high. Morning we came out and somebody had stolen our front wheels, $150 if we wanted them back. Just driving to the port we were stopped and 'fined' many many times... We couldn't wait to get out of there, heading to the port there was a port tax. Except we had to go back and forth to a building outside the port to pick up forms and get them stamped inside the port. Each time you entered incurred a $5 fee. There were MANY forms. We got onto the ferry and were happy to be out of there.