Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballot?

MIT recently identified the states "at the greatest risk of having their voting process hacked". but added this week that "Maintaining the secrecy of ballots returned via the Internet is 'technologically impossible'..." Long-time Slashdot reader Presto Vivace quotes their article: That's according to a new report from Verified Voting, a group that advocates for transparency and accuracy in elections. A cornerstone of democracy, the secret ballot guards against voter coercion. But "because of current technical challenges and the unique challenge of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain the separation of voters' identities from their votes when Internet voting is used," concludes the report, which was written in collaboration with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the anticorruption advocacy group Common Cause.
32 states are already offering some form of online voting, apparently prompting the creation of Verified Voting's new site, SecretBallotAtRisk.org.

Comments

Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Computer based voting of any kind is a bad idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

ARE there any other questions?

A stupid idea made even worse

[treczoks]

Electronic voting is one of the most stupid ideas that politicians have croaked up so far. And that means a lot, even after gerrymandering, lobbyism, and two-party-systems.

Electronic voting is basically outright stupid. You cannot control if your vote was really counted, or if it was counted for the correct party or candidate. Votes can be manipulated by inside jobs or hacking, and with a political voting result being a very profitable target, and the voting machines safety and security record far from being unblemished, voting fraud is a very interesting goal for many, not only political, parties.

The problem is that electronic voting cannot fulfill the legal and philosophical demands for a democratic voting. This is not a failure of the planners, programmers, or hardware developers, this is system inherent, as many aspects cannot be implemented correctly without invalidating other important aspects of the same.

Now there is this totally broken idea and they want make it available online, opening the doors to fraud and abuse even wider.

Re:"Technologically impossible?"

[turbidostato]

"we'll probably figure out how create a system that uses authenticated electronic ledgers to prevent fraudulent tampering (blockchains, etc) while still preserving anonymity."

We'll probably not.

Authentication means "undoubfully identifying something's author (or owner)". Anonymity means "impossibility to identify something's author (or owner)".

See the problem?

I'm with you about distrusting "any blanket assertion", but in this case is an obvious logical impossibility, not even physical impossibility (i.e.: a perpetual motion device)

Now, remember this whenever somebody comes to sell you a "trustable e-voting system": it's even less credible than a guy trying to sell you a perpetual motion device.

You are missing the point

[Cigaes]

You are completely missing the point. All the cryptography and the blockchains and the secure protocols in the world can not detect if someone is standing behind the computer with a wad of cash (vote buying) or brass knuckles (coercion) and checking that you are voting right.

One of the core features of the secret ballot is the voting booth, where the voter is alone to do the final choice, with official oversight.

Of course, the privacy of the voting booth is not perfect, it is weakened by all sorts of features, from absentee voting to tolerating children in the booth with their parent. But it is still the norm for most voters and is way more solid than a situation where the norm would be to vote from home.

Re:You are missing the point

[arth1]

You are completely missing the point. All the cryptography and the blockchains and the secure protocols in the world can not detect if someone is standing behind the computer with a wad of cash (vote buying) or brass knuckles (coercion) and checking that you are voting right.

Indeed. Internet voting is in reality giving spousal abusers a double vote.

Re:You are missing the point

[C0R1D4N]

How about instead we just have voting booth machines available at every Town Hall/Police Station, go in, put in your information (or scan your driver's license for it to be quicker) it uses facial recognition like the new automated passport machines, and leave it open for an entire month. So anyone can go vote the 30 days up to the election and the results are tallied that night.

For those who think the "voter ID" requirements are prejudiced against poor people, just make state non-driving license IDs free. Problem solved.

Re: You are missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Attended voting booths do nothing to stop fraud. Democrats have blocked every law that requires a person have some form of identification at the polling place.

Not at all, they've challenged laws that were deliberately and purposefully engineered to restrict the electorate and cause harm to many voters.

This doesn't stop every law, just those that are poorly conceived.

They also point out the the level of fraud detected is very low. Ever stop to wonder why they don't want a process which would detect fraud?

Have you ever stopped to wonder why Republicans are so insistent that there is fraud, yet never bother to invalidate their own elections?

I mean really, they're the ones who are claiming that we can't trust the election system, yet they're in office, so thus why are we trusting them to decide the laws for the people?

I gotta ask

[93 Escort Wagon]

Why doesn't anyone trot out Betteridge's Law of Headlines when questions like this come up?

Re:"Technologically impossible?"

[Mr D from 63]

Secure voting is only part of the problem with internet voting. The only practical way to ensure a person does not have someone physically looking over their shoulder when voting is to have designated voting centers with private one person booths.

Re:Pah

[Anonymous Coward]

Open ballots are inherently fraudulent. They exist for the sole purpose of empowering the ruling party to direct violent retaliation against those who voted against them at their whim.

Re:As if current voting systems

[CanadianMacFan]

I show the person my registration card and some ID. They cross my name off a printed list of eligible voters and hand me my paper ballot. I then go behind a screen to make my selections, fold the ballot up, and then drop it into a box with all of the others. The system works in Canada and in many other places in the world.

Why do some people have to make it so difficult?

Re:What if we don't care?

[CanadianMacFan]

What about people who live or work in areas in which voting for the wrong person could have consequences? Someone working at a coal mine who wants to vote Democrat? A person with an abusive spouse who doesn't want to vote they way they were told to? Just because you are comfortable telling people who you vote for not everyone else has such luxury.

The subtleties can kill seemingly perfect voting.

[EmperorOfCanada]

Setting aside all the clear fraud, tampering, etc. There is also the possibility of fraud within the household. I can name piles of cultures where the man rules the house; full stop. Immigrants from these countries tend to congregate in communities in many countries. Thus the "man" of the house will do all the voting; can we guess where his voting will lay on the spectrum of women's rights, investigations into honour killings, curtailing of an oppressive religion, etc?

So in addition to all the wonderful possibilities for fraud and rigged elections, there is the simple disenfranchisement of entire groups.

Then we have bully voting. Quite simply an enforcer for some minor gang might show up at an apartment block and tell everyone that they vote in front of him and his men.

The above voting irregularities might not seem like much, except that so many elections are won by a percent or less. In the case of a local councillor or alderman a few hundred votes could easily flip the result of an election.

In a nation with a problem culture like one of the above. This could easily swing an election.

Re: Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballo

[JaredOfEuropa]

Laymen cannot audit this system, nor is the process of assuring anonymity and an accurate count transparent or comprehensible to laymen. That means they cannot trust this system... which is kind of an important aspect of a ballot.