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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."

4 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
  2. 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."