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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."

22 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 ThatAblaze · · Score: 5, Funny

      This comment has been modded up to (Score: 5)

    3. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      while it makes impossible to "rig" the election it makes it totally easy to rig the election the other usual way: voter intimidation, peer pressure, pressure from family, employer requiring certain vote, buying of votes... voted for legalization of pot? goodbye job.

      this is why the pen & paper and a decent society to handle that is the only way to do them(enough volunteer vote counters from enough parties).

      if you can prove who you voted then you can be persecuted for voting certain way(or if you refuse to prove being "loyal").

      and if the vote organizers are crooked then they could crook the signed voting too, press vote and all you would get would be "thank you for your vote for power party 1." or just have everyones receipts show up as normal but the total tally being something wildly different..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    4. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I suspect that it's partially inertia/penny-pinching and partially because crypto only solves certain (quite specific) problems within the larger problem of 'run an election'.

      For instance, in those countries that have smartcard-or-equivalent national IDs, cryptographically signed votes would be trivial; but you'd be reusing keys explicitly designed to not be anonymous, indeed, designed to be identifying. That is an issue. Beats some 'SSN+Mother's maiden name' bullshit; because at least it verifies something; but it isn't what you are looking for.

      If you anonymously issue keys, now you've got a weak spot there that crypto can't help you with: the crypto makes it quite possible to ensure that Anon_Key_X was responsible for Vote_X, and only Vote_X; but 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, or the people running the system being able to generate 250,000(or simply keep a copy of the keys as they are issued, and 'win the race' to get a signed ballot into the pot with that key).

      If you have such a system, you also have a system that could trivially just hand the voter a ballot, since you have already satisfied anonymity, uniqueness, resistance to plural voting, etc. No need for the crypto at all.

      (Also, aside from that, a country with vote rigging tendencies is presumably going to use hierarchical PKI, not some web-of-trust cypherpunk wet dream, so what exactly will an election whose ballots are signed with keys that all descend from the 'Glorious Cryptographic Key for Make Benefit of People's Republic Motherland' prove? Hierarchical PKI schemes, as SSL has taught us, work OK if you are primarily concerned with criminals and frauds; but if the CA is the enemy, you are fucked. If you are the root, you can generate mathematically pristine child keys as fast as your little ASICs can carry you without the slightest trouble.)

    5. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    6. 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
    7. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by Smauler · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No... that's one of the problems with anonymity, it's easier to fake. However, it's very, very important, especially in places in which your vote is more likely to be coerced. The advantages of anonymity far outweigh the disadvantages.

    8. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by Smauler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Allowing people to check their vote from home would fuck up anyone whose vote was made under coercion. As it is, you can vote one way and say you voted another way.

      This is less of an issue in the US, but it is still an issue... your boss asks you which way you voted.... let's just check that.

    9. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Further proof that we need the mod option "Prophetic".

      As I've been repeating since at least 2014.

    10. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Problems? What problems?

      You seem to misunderstand the point of modern elections. They are not in place so that the people can choose their representatives. They are there to suppress revolt by displacing the responsibility of bad government into the people.

      Actually counting the votes is a pointless expense. The system works just as well by flipping a coin.

      Azerbaijan are ahead of their time in more ways than the obvious one.

    11. Re:Cryptographically signed elections? by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Their private key would allow them to prove to a third party how they voted... making them subject to pressure or bribery.

  2. Technology at its finest by russbutton · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who says America is the greatest nation in the world! Azerbaijan already has time travel! Now if only we could get that gizmo for some stock market analysis...

  3. We've Done It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    We have taught them American politics.

    SUCCESS!

  4. i swear baby this has never happened before! by fightinfilipino · · Score: 5, Funny

    "oh dear, i seem to have premature electorate all over my caucus!"

  5. couldnt be worse than america. by nimbius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    here we get to vote for one of two parties, but both are controlled by the same group of billionaires so they dont really represent normal people. its at least refreshing to see a government say, "well, yeah your vote is meaningless" as opposed to the United States, where people become upset if you dont believe voting is important. even if it were, and even if we all pitched in to vote for some third or fourth party, theyd get bought off just as quickly. it wouldnt change.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  6. BooYAhhh! by bugs2squash · · Score: 5, Funny

    Diebold deliver under budget and ahead of schedule...

    --
    Nullius in verba
  7. Just unprofessional. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is what makes me proud to be an American, at least we know how to properly rig an election.

  8. Wow, that's bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The system uses standard personal computers as voting terminals,"
    Geez, the NSA pawns PCs. Are you f**ing kidding me?

    "with voters using a barcode to authenticate their votes."
    Identifiable? i.e. you can be datamined on your voting choice?

    "Voting terminals are linked to a server in each polling location using a secure local area network. No votes are taken or transmitted over a public network like the Internet."

    FFS, there's no such thing as a 'secure local area network' now. You have a huge agency attacking every network it can. Networks not connected to public networks are hack physically, locally or via third party companies. If Belgacom can't keep its backoffice networks protected, what makes you think you can?

    Really in a post PRISM world, recognize that you cannot trust electronic elections, encryption is broken, the keys you send around by email, they're intercepted an read. The networks you create ad-hoc, they're broken into. If you don't want the NSA or GCHQ choosing your PM, you need a paper audit trail.

  9. 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."
  10. Elections don't work that way by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Signing a vote isn't going to help one bit because fake citizens can be created that can sign fake votes.

    You need anonymity to make certain people vote for whom they want, not whom they want others to think they should vote for.

    The only way to prevent rigging is to make certain people get to vote in anonymity, but to be able to see every individual vote go into the ballot and after the voting has ended, be counted by many (independent) eyes.You need to control/bribe a lot of people if you want to get away with rigging an election if that system is in place.

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
  11. The Onion by AlienSexist · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Onion had done a spoof of this before. The summary reads so much like the script I had to double check that it wasn't April Fools.