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Ask Slashdot: Should I Fight Against Online Voting In Our Municipality?
RobinH writes: Our small-ish municipality (between 10,000 to 15,000 in population) has recently decided to switch to online voting. I should note that they were previously doing voting-by-mail. I have significant reservations about online voting, particularly the possibility of vote-selling and the general lack of voter secrecy, not to mention the possible lack of computer security. However, it's only a municipal election, and apparently a lot of municipalities around here are already doing online voting. I'm not sure if the rank-and-file citizens care, or if they would listen to my concerns. Should I bother speaking up, or should I ignore it since municipal elections are not that important anyway?
Yes
You should win the election and declare yourself Emperor. After that, the Imperial Senate will no longer be a concern for you.
its still hard just in a different way to exploit the system, and different people will do it.
i don't think the method used for the election will increase or decrease the likelihood of corruption. the corruption exists regardless
no secrecy? - check
i can sell my vote? - check
If you have any reservations, then speak up. Even if it gets implemented, you can give input an steer it towards some middle ground that cover some of your concerns.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Vote selling was already possible since you used voting by mail. So that's not a valid reason to oppose it.
... if y'all don't have one, then you need to make a page. If on line is how y'all are going to vote, then Facebook would be a great way to discuss the irrelevant issues that you have.
Plus y'all can all Friend-up for Farmville2.
I would add two concerns to yours:
- Does every eligible voter have an Internet connection
- What's the system cost vs current cost?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You're right, the municipal elections aren't as important as the presidential election, but the more systems out there doing online voting, the more people will try and hack them.
I'd rather someone discovers a mayor was fraudulently elected than a president.
Voter intimidation is easier when you don't have to get them to register for an absentee ballot ahead of time.
Instead of fighting it, fix it.
I've never understood the problem with vote selling. I mean, I think it poorly serves the people selling their votes, but if the most important issue to them is who will give them $10, why isn't that a valid choice? All sorts of people make voting decisions based on their expected personal economic outcomes, and this doesn't seem any different to me.
It's also unclear to me how putting the election online makes vote selling easier. If anything I'd expect that would make it harder, as you have to try harder to distribute the payouts.
But maybe I'm not understanding the process and harms of vote selling. Anyone want to disabuse me?
You have an opportunity to help make your town a case study for doing it rightâ"which might result in a decision to avoid online voting. You can advocate on security/vote integrity issues by raising awareness of the complexities. Make a strong push for requiring vendors that don't hide their products' inner workings from their customers. Talk about the importance of being able to audit the vote.
The big questions everyone should answer before making a decision are "what do we gain?" and "what do we lose?" I think people often forget the latter.
Ann election must be free, equal, and secure. To ensure equality, the count must be repeatable for everyone. Online voting vor any voting machine does not provide that feature. The German supreme court ruled that voting machines do not allow real democratic elections.
And it is not a good argument that voting machines or online voting is faster. Fast and convenient is not the core concerns for democracy. The above criteria are.
A bootable CD, what is this, 2004? The average person today is likely to want to person any network-based task from a device that doesn't have an optical media drive, such as a tablet or laptop.
Better yet, I'd write an app to vote against it 30,000 times.
Sorry, that should have read "...likely to want to perform any network-based task..."
Municipal elections aren't less important than the Presidential election. On a per-vote basis, they're much more important. Your vote makes much more difference in a local election. The choice you make are much more likely to have a real impact on your community.
The problem with municipal elections is that it's much harder to learn who to vote for. You have to do real work to figure out who the candidates are and what they stand for.
Note: I'm an elected municipal official, so my opinion is a bit biased here.
Your two primary worries are vote selling and voter secrecy, neither of which are guaranteed by mail in ballots. The real concern is wholesale fraud: no paper trail means a "miscount" is undetectable and untraceable. The fact that your municipality is almost certainly using COTS software is actually a plus in this case, even more so if the software is being operated by an outside third party; they're unlikely to have a horse in the race and be tempted to sway the results.
Most elections rely on citizens who run the election who aren't government employees. I say 'volunteer', but most municipaliies will pay you for your time (including any training time).
I was a 'Chief Judge' for 4 years of my town, and actually had a lot of say in how the election was run -- based on complaints about previous elections, I ended up designing the ballots, having them printed, considered if it was worth getting mechanical voting machines as hand-me-down from the county (would've done it, if we had the storage space ... those things are HUGE), and other stuff that I would've expected there to have been specific rules for.
There are laws about how the election must be run, but the chief judge may have some latitute around how they actually run the election. If you're an election judge, and you find something in the laws that doesn't mesh with electronic voting, you might be able to get the whole thing halted.
As another option, volunteer to be a poll sitter for a candidate; if your area allows them, they're someone who sits in the polling area to observe that the election is being run correctly by the election judges. (and it's important to look into what your rights are as one; if they give you the right to examine the cast ballots, you can likely complain that there's no way to examine the electronic ballots, and get the whole election thrown out).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The best way to fight these things is on the local level. It's tough to convince 10 million people why it is wrong. Much easier to convince 10,000 neighbors. By the time a state or country wants to implement this, it is too late.
As with many other forms of voting where there's no physical ballot, the biggest problem is that there is no actual recount if there's been any problem.
You'll just get the same exact result with each recount.
Many years ago we had huge mechanical voting machines. It wasn't commonly known, but poll workers knew that those machines could lock up and lose all their totals with no way of recovering the lost votes. Rumor had it that this was more likely to occur in black neighborhoods.
BTW, the only elections that matter are local.
All in favour of him fighting online voting post Yea. All against post Nae.
This story is useless without a Cowboy Neal option.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You want us to decide whether or not you should oppose on-line voting in an election where you don't feel the results matter? Seriously? How bored and easily swayed are you? If you don't think the local election matters, then why would you care how the vote is counted? Do everyone a favour and don't vote, you obviously can't think for yourself.
I hate it when people try to vote against something that makes life easier, out of privacy concern and security...
If you have viruses on your machine, that's your own darn fault, why penalize everybody for your stupidity?
The second half has already been responded to, so I'll tackle this bit.
If you have malware on your machine, that's likely your own fault (most likely through ignorance). Unfortunately, everyone on your network, on your social network, and on the malware's distribution chain is penalized for your stupidity.
So let's back up one level...
Online voting makes life easier, agreed.
Unfortunately, abuse of online voting doesn't just affect the person not using it to vote, but also affects everyone in the municipality.
You can't have it both ways: either the upstream has to think of the privacy and security concerns, or the end operator (citizen) does.
As "online" implies global, it means that unlike mail-in, where abuse is likely limited to people who are actually a part of the municipality plus a few external interested parties, suddenly abuse is open to the entire world, where statistics indicate that a 0.001% of the 7 billion population = 70,000 actors likely to attempt to abuse the system for reason X instead of the 0.15 of a person who is likely to abuse the system for reason X locally.
The main way to ensure best security is to limit scope: only expose a function to the actors that need to access it. "On the Internet" does the inverse.
And that's just one reason it's a bad idea; there are plenty of others. All of them have solutions, but all the solutions are going to run afoul of statistics when you move a system that's been exposed to 15,000 people into an arena where it's exposed to 7 billion people.
Municipal elections are what most politicians use to launch their careers for state and federal offices. They're generally pretty cheap, so ambitious wannabes use them to build name recognition. Then when they run for those more powerful positions, the donors and voters say "oh yeah, that guy" and give them money/votes. It's how the moral-majority types took over the Republican Party in the 1980s, and it's how the libertea-baggers are trying to take it over from them today. So in that sense, local elections are very important. (To say nothing of the fact that the matters decided by local government have a greater impact on the day-to-day lives of people than those made at the state or federal level.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Have it be as an Opt-In program then, where they send you a CD, containing a Live version of a modified Linux distro, putting it in your PC
Is it even possible to make one bootable distro that will allow internet access on every different kind of personal computer out there?
Local politics can be a lot of fun. Get in touch with a couple of the elected officials and tell them you want to volunteer some time on this initiative. Present yourself as neutral but interested in the idea. If you didn't grow up in the community they won't trust you, but stay with it and get to know them.
One advantage of vote-by-mail is that any large-scale fraud (enough to tip an election) takes quite a bit resources and people
One advantage of on-line voting is that minimal resource and people (e.g., as small as one person) can likely perpetrate such an action.
Two people can keep a secret (if one of them is dead). This is the difference.
Verified Voting New Mexoc was started in a Municipality of 17,000 people, and the first action was to persuade the town council that the vote they had taken months earlier to purchase electronic voting systems be rescinded. that's actually quite a difficult thing for a politician to do-- admit they made a poor decision. But it's easier to do if you are not a full time politician in a small municipality.
that decision let us take it state wide and persuade other County clerks to hesitate. It got us meetings with the secretary of state. Eventually the governor and in the end a state law to rescind electronic voting state wide.
so heck yes.
I'd agree with others who have said local elections are very important. My local fire, police, schools, roads, and job opportunities are more important to me than whatever Washington did today.
I think you've missed the largest difference that online voting might make. Retired people are over-represented in local elections because they take the time to vote, more often than working-age people do. Online voting might make that more balanced or even swing the other way. Retirement age people also have the majority of the money and therefore influence through political donations.
Along the same lines, traditional voting methods mean only people who care enough to take the time to vote do so. (Unless a politician has a pizza party on the voting bus and pays each voter $10 to get on board.) Online voting, if it takes just a few seconds, MIGHT increase the number of votes by people who can't be bothered to take a few minutes to get involved. That could be good or bad. Personally, I think that if you don't know the name of the incumbent, you probably aren't informed enough to make an informed vote and I'd prefer you choose not to vote that time around. I'd hope that everyone gets informed, but if someone isn't interested enough to know what's on the ballot ahead of time, I don't see a need to encourage them to vote anyway.
Don't forget the part where you have them figure out which BIOS they have and which key to hit and what to type/click to put the CD drive first in the boot sequence - perhaps because someone removed it to "keep grandpa's machine safe". No, that won't generate any support calls or anything like that.
It might not be so bad if the NSA would share the detailed information about voters' computer with the municipal government so each person gets "personalized" instructions ("If you run this on 'MomsOfficePC', press and type 3 at the first prompt; If you run this on 'DadsPornPC', press and type 2 at the first prompt; If you..."). However, I doubt the NSA will share the necessary data (although I don't doubt they might have it).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
"Should I bother speaking up...?"
If you are asking that question you have really misunderstood the point of elections.
The concern over vote selling with online voting ignores the fact One can sell One's vote right now with show-up-at-the-polls voting.
Local elections are the only ones that are important. The national system is so rigged that nothing individuals can do will make a difference.
However, be aware that local elections are the next target of corporate types. In the past two years, the Koch brothers have spent millions on school board elections, and not in the areas in which they live.
If you do get involved locally, be prepared to make a real fuss, and make sure you don't get busted for pot or beat your wife. In fact, don't even allow yourself to get into a situation where you can be framed for a pot bust. People have tried to get involved in local politics and have had their lives destroyed for their trouble.
And if you try to fight what has been cynically referred to as "election reform", be prepared for death threats.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So online votes can be bought?
Offline votes can't?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'd say no, no voting method is perfect but imo online voting has the most chance of getting more people to vote. There me be a slight increase in fraud, but as long as it can be kept to a minor level I'd say that its worth it to increase turnout
I am in Halifax, Nova Scotia and we have shockingly stupid online/phone voting. In our last election it didn't make or break any elections but my trust in it is exactly zero. The software used is not open to the public, in fact almost nothing is told to the public except for sanitized versions of how secure the software is and how thoroughly they have tested it. Even many of the discussions about it were secret.
I have read a few mumblings about the dangers online voting but nobody substantial has come out and said that online voting is a clear and present danger to democracy. In Canada we had someone (never conclusively identified) who robocalled a bunch of people who were probably going to vote for one of the parties and tell them that it was "Elections Canada calling and that their voting station had been moved to a location far far away." The result was that many voters either didn't bother to vote or went far far away only to find out that they were in the wrong place and had to go way back to vote, again presumably this reduced number of voters. This was a clear and presumably effective law breaking cheat. If the person(s) behind this could have hacked an online voting system I am 100% sure that they would have. As the robocall thing turned into an actual scandal whereas a harder to detect hack would not only reduce their risk but also increasetheir chances of success to basically 100%.
I can consider myself to be somewhat expert in computer security but my simple explanation is twofold. Facebook, Google, major banks, companies like target, etc have all been solidly hacked; so how can some proprietary publicly untested system be so magically secure? Secondly how would anyone know that an election had been "adjusted" unless someone's cat bob wins with 99% the election will have results that surprise some people; just like pretty much every election.
And most importantly, anyone who wins through some sort of hacking will pretty much have failed the good citizen test at that point.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia the two main reasons given for the online voting were: to increase voter participation, and to reduce costs. Participation was basically at the same anaemic levels of the past; and nobody in their right mind would sacrifice the security of our democracy to save a few bucks. On top of that the election results were unusually slow to come in anyway, and I don't understand the money saving as they have just as many traditional polling stations as ever. The electronic voting does cost a bundle, plus I really hope the city is spending money auditing it which should be some serious auditing thus costing even more. Plus the extensive education campaign couldn't have been free. So if it somehow magically cost less than it would just be accounting magic, not reality.
On a personal opinion level, the reason for the anaemic participation levels is that government doesn't listen to us. We throw one set of bums out and the next bunch act identically to the last. If they genuinely wanted participation we would have referendums to approve the council "decisions". The voting would be fast and furious on a fair number of issues.
Lastly from what I have read, ever single different electronic voting system that security researchers have ever gotten their hands on has easily and completely been hacked. Often in many many different ways. The voting technology companies almost always have a similar line. "That was a previous model and our present systems have been proven to be 100% secure." yet they said that the easily hacked system had been totally secure when it had been released.
So if you figure out a way to have a ground swell political movement that shuts down your local online voting please PM me and I will try that here.
Municipality the world over have a problem. People don't care. They don't see it as a local government but simply as a government department. This is an attempt to get people involved. So the fundamental question should not be "Online voting vs Ballot box" but "Online Votes Vs Ballot box votes".
Our small-ish municipality ... I have significant reservations about online voting ... Should I bother speaking up?
You should do the "right thing". Municipal elections (or at least local, to regional, to state, to federal) is how Bill Clinton got elected. If we (I'm in Arkansas) hadn't voted for him to start with to be the Guv, he never would have gotten his start. (Debateable, but go with me here.)
At best, you're informing them that the emperor has no clothes. They probably don't know; they believe all of the hype and wonderment of Web 3.0 and all. It's all glory and wonder, don't you know? Nothing bad ever happens here.
At best, you're dealing with caring people that don't know. At worst, you're dealing with caring people that do know. (Hopefully the latter isn't the case.) And really, on the surface it sounds wonderful: easy, fast, no hanging chads, etc. Also, a minor point: no real vote verification. (Now we can debate on what 'real' means; that's why I like actual, physical objects. And with arrows [see below], no hanging chads. Not quite connecting? They voted. Kid scribbled all over the page? Nope, they didn't. Connected the wrong ends? NOPE, they're stupid. (Dotted lines show how they connect. If YOU can't see the dotted lines then YOU should have gotten someone to help you.)
Try to inform them of all of the issues. And then let them inform you of their concerns and assumptions and issues Hell, maybe they're right! Maybe you (and I) are just paranoid. Lets all talk about it. That being said, nothing is perfect, so let's talk about all of the worries about ALL of the technology.
I personally like our old paper "connect the broken line with a pen" that is read, counted, and stored in a sealed box all at once. (Problems? It's rejected immediately while I'm right there, so I can redo. (I assume, it's never happened to me.)) So the computer counts the votes, and if there's any problem or just for random auditing purposes you open the sealed box with everyone around and verify the votes. As long as the machine matches the physical vote count, great. But the minute they don't, you start escalating the physical counts until you reach your "statistical insignificance" number. And if you don't, that's what the machines are for.
My vote had better count, even though it's drowned out into insignificance. Otherwise, why even bother voting to start with? Just do it to me and let's get it over with.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I came to say this as well - it is when the number of votes per office is small that your voice as a citizen can be heard loudest. And if the next level up in the hierarchy pays any attention to the municipal offices then, through those officials, an active citizen's voice can potentially be heard more easily on that stage as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This is something you ought to fight. Vehemently.
Online voting can be compromised from anywhere in the world. At least voting in person requires people at voting locations, thereby (plausibly) reducing the chance for wide-scale fraud. It's just not worth taking the chance. Open networks, no matter how secure they are designed, will always have vulnerabilities. Most of those vulnerabilities lie within the computer operators (PEBCAK, if you will).
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I find it quite funny that so many slashdotters, arguably proponents of technology, turn into luddites when this topic rears up. Instead of saying no, fight for proper electronic voting technologies so we can turn this cesspool from a pseudo-republic into a real democracy and get rid of politicians altogether.
or should I ignore it since municipal elections are not that important anyway?
Municipal elections are to national elections as car accidents are to shark attacks: just because something is more "newsy" doesn't mean it's more important. Think about it: which election does your vote affect more, and which result will affect you more? (Hint: it's the one which can pass laws without dragging their mutilated corpses through the House and Senate pork acquisition specialists.) Bonus points: which election can someone accomplish half of a single item from their list of campaign promises (think mutilated but passed health care bill), yet be elected a second term? (Hint: it's the one which requires lying to^W^W convincing a larger and more diverse group of people.)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is a classic case of people valuing convenience over everything else:
* Responsibility
* Anonymity
* Security
* Reliability
* Accountability
* Accuracy
Electronic voting machines and on-line voting severely erode or completely disregard one or more of the above concepts. Voting is part of the democratic process, which equates to freedom. Freedom is neither free nor easy.... neither is security.
Yes, you should object.
Voters can't be sure that there's any evidence of their vote entering the system accurately reflecting their vote without a voter-verified paper ballot. Electronic ballots are easily lost, misrepresented, and useless in a recount. Electronic voting doesn't improve on the problems with voter-verified paper ballots and electronic ballots introduce problems all their own. So this is an area where traditional voter-verified paper ballots are better for the voter and well worth fighting for.
Braille printed ballots are extra nice to have (the braille can co-exist with the ink print on the same voter-verified paper ballot). But voters who can't read ink printed text without braille (illiterate and blind voters, to name a couple of examples) can get help from a computer to help them prepare a voter-verified paper ballot. These voters can feed in a voter-verified paper ballot into a machine that is essentially a scanner/printer combo that prints marks on a traditional voter-verified paper ballot filling in the blanks in accordance with user input to the computer. The user can get the voter-verified paper ballot out of the machine and check out its accuracy, either submit it to be counted or spoil it to get a new voter-verified paper ballot and mark it themselves, Such voters can also bring someone they trust to help them vote but this is obviously less preferred as this means divulging one's vote to someone else.
Digital Citizen
Nobody pays for votes with money. Not directly at least.
People are paid in deals, jobs, favors - which they get to enjoy AFTER they elect candidate X.
Supply contracts, appointments, sponsorships, various consulting positions... once elected X gets handed a whole ball of strings that can be pulled for people who've been good to X.
Your boss doesn't have to order you to vote for candidate X. Nor does candidate X have to bribe you to get your vote.
Your boss just needs to mention that he/she hopes candidate X will win cause that will mean a secure government contract for the company.
They are friends from back in your boss's goat fucking days, and you know how goat fuckers "stay tight".
And for a "small-ish municipality (between 10,000 to 15,000 in population)" one would probably only need to acquire a couple of hundred votes, one way or the other.
10000-15000 is about 7500-11250 eligible voters.
At about 60% turnout, that makes 4500-6750 votes, total.
At very worst, with a single opponent, you'd need 2250-3375 votes + 1 (or whatever is the necessary majority).
I.e. Not even a quarter of the population.
Now... how many of those people or their spouses and family (Remember, married people count as two votes each.) are already on the municipality payroll, one way or the other?
Police, fire department, utilities...
Those are the votes you buy directly from the budget.
You only need a couple of percent of "real" voters out of those 2250-3375.
I.e. People with influence over other voters.
And yes... The incumbent official has it much easier.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So run, hack it, win, and pass a law making them illegal then resign.
So apparently some crybaby "libertarian" modded this down for exercising free speech?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Ask to implement cryptographic voting. Everyone's votes are published publicly but each encrypted with their own public key so that anyone can download the entire voting results, type in their private key, and make sure that their vote went to the candidates they chose to vote for.
Online voting and vote by mail present essentially identical issues for vote selling. And if you have to sign your name on or inside the envelope containing the vote by mail then it presents exactly the same secret ballot issues as online voting as well. That leaves security. I'd guess your vote by mail system uses photocopies on easily procured papers, yes?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
We need to stop finding different mechanisms to all vote on one day and instead allow in-person voting over a longer period, such as a calendar week.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
If your online voting system is standardized and is a commonly used product then hackers will have stored programs and scripts to breach and compromise your system at will. I have no faith that your municipality will have taken reasonable security precautions.
However, if your municipality uses a one off system then its less likely that a casual hack will compromise the system.
That said, generally online voting is to be avoided mostly because governments are incompetent and/or corrupt when it comes to such things with disturbing frequency.
For example, lets say there is a vote on whether to boost city worker wages or give the IT staff a bonus... while an ethical person wouldn't tamper with the votes if the money starts being good enough a lot of people will be sorely tempted to fudge the numbers if they think they can get away with it.
This is one of the reasons why poll workers should be volunteers and not city workers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Even better : go to the town hall and vote there. They should provide some (hopefully secured) PCs that can be used for voting?
Do you really believe that your vote matters?
Your vote does one thing and one thing alone. It legitimizes the current system.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Let me introduce you to Agora Voting [0], an open source internet voting system that is cryptographically secure, supports vote delegation, and scales well to massive elections, you can see the security scheme here [1]. It has been used for votings in the Spanish Congress and for big parties in Spain like Podemos (more than 80,000 votes).
There's no 100% secure system, but this is almost there. Also, votes buying is minimized because you can vote as many times as you want and only the last vote counts. I would suggest you contact the team, maybe you *can* get secure online voting in your municipality.
[0] https://agoravoting.com/
[1] https://blog.agoravoting.com/i...
totally agree.
besides, if implemented well online voting can be as secure and verifiable as any other method. the real problem is still corruption.
on a higher level, the system is already rigged: if you control the media you simply manipulate the elections as a whole, e.g. in the us there is no need to risk commiting electoral fraud: with things as fox and cbs and an ignorant and acritic majority of the population you can plant any sockpuppet you need.
also works on the local level, completely legal:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
i'd say OP could be a good example of this, having "reservations against online voting" and wanting to "fight" it just because it is "online", without any sensible description about the system and the suspected flaws. this nonsense is so common, our democratic societies systematically move focus away from every important aspect of political discussion. we absolutely love having red herrings jumping around us, voting ends up being just a ritual.
Voting at it's core is about people participating in their government, as such voting should be about the people not just about the votes. So work to make it more of a social activity.
Make sure voting occurs on the weekend.
Get anyone running for the election to provide volunteers to help run election booths and do the vote counting this of course in conjunction with paid neutral electoral officers.
Incorporate charity bake sales, cookie sales, sausage sizzles etc. at electoral booths as part of the social voting experience.
Promote and drive the social experience of voting, do the counting at larger social venues tied in with social night out.
The big change of course need to occur prior to the vote, work to require compulsory testing of all those seeking election, testing for IQ, knowledge, psychology and of course compulsory psychopathy testing. Test results should not exclude people from running for election but the electorate have a right to know some real facts about their potential representatives and not have it all just be about who can tell the most convincing lies.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Actually I would be opposed to online voting as well. Sure, it *could* be done securely. Theoretically at least. But it would be considerably more difficult to do so than to create a secure electronic voting booth, and the evidence suggests that the security on those is a joke. By extension I would assume any deployed online voting system would be laughably insecure.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I recommend reading some of the reports produced after the E-voting trials in Norway:
http://www.ifes.org/Content/Publications/News-in-Brief/2012/June/Speed-Efficiency-and-Compliance-an-Evaluation-of-E-Voting-in-Norway.aspx
As for my point of view (as a former sceptic), I was convinced during the process that the trials were held at a necessary level both with regards to voter and ballot security. The reason for not continuing the trials was "political" - not based on the results from the trials. We had a general election in Norway two years later, and the parties that are "against" E-voting in the first place won that election...
The source code and documentation from the trials are available (the web page is in Norwegian):
http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kmd/prosjekter/e-valg-2011-prosjektet/kildekode/tilgang-pa-kildekode.html?id=646007
-- Recursion n.: See Recursion. -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
If they use http://followmyvote.com/, that's a BitShares DAC. It uses open source software with a blockchain, similar to bitcoin, and cryptography to publicly ensure that votes are legitimate.
It would make it an experiment worth pursuing.
The kind of cryptography you would need to make this safe (as posted earlier) is Public Key. The big problem with that is teaching ALL the voters how to use it. And we aren't even talking about distributing the software or handing out keys: That's easy compared to the training...
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us