The Netherlands Opts For Manual Vote-Count Amid Cyberattack Fears (independent.co.uk)

Bruce66423 writes: Following revelations about the lack of security of the software, the Dutch government has decided to abandon the use of it to count the ballots at the forthcoming election in March. The Independent reports: The decision was taken amidst fears that hackers could influence next month's elections after allegations by the U.S. intelligence agency that Russia hacked into Democrats' emails to help Donald Trump get elected. Russia denies any wrongdoing. Intelligence agencies have warned that three crucial elections in Europe this year in the Netherlands, France and Germany could be vulnerable to manipulation by outside actors. In a letter to the Dutch Parliament, Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk said that 'reports in recent days about vulnerabilities in our systems raise the question of whether the results could be manipulated' and that 'no shadow can be allowed to hang over the result.' In previous elections, the ballots were counted by hand locally but regional and national counts were done electronically. But this year, all ballots will be counted by hand after voters make their choice on 15 March. Dutch media have reported that the counting software may not only be insecure but also outdated. The counting software is reported to be distributed by CD-ROM to regional counting centers, where it is set-up on old computers that are internet connected."

Comments

I'll never vote over the net

[Anonymous Coward]

Paper ballots, either scanned or manually counted is the ONLY secure way to vote. If there isn't a hard-copy, it didn't happen.

Re:I'll never vote over the net

[Caesar Tjalbo]

The story is about the software used to send the results to a central place. So the voting was done by paper ballots but from there on it went digital. The "shocking" (probably not so much anymore) thing was that the particular vulnerability was known for years and pointed out by a student in 2011.

Re:I'll never vote over the net

[Jeremi]

I like the idea of posting all voting results publicly, where you are identified by something like a randomly generated UUID given to you at the time of voting (or some hash of your various personal information like name and SSN, etc.).

Although it doesn't address "extra" votes, you would at least be able to verify that your vote got counted as you intended, which is something...

The problem is that your boss (who has promised to fire you unless you vote for his candidate, and/or has offered to pay $20 to every employee who can prove they voted for his candidate) can also use this mechanism to verify that you voted the way he told you to.

Keeping peoples' votes private is important to avoid that sort of abuse, and I don't think there is any reliable way to allow a voter to verify his own vote without also allowing someone else to lean on that voter for evidence that they voted "correctly".

Re:I'll never vote over the net

[currently_awake]

The secret to Democracy is trust. The people must trust the voting system to be the will of the people. If you can't prove to the people the system is trustworthy then Democracy won't work. A black box computer system is not provable.

Democracy about People.

[rtb61]

Reality is democracy is all about people. People should make the votes and people should count the votes and real people should be voted for. Outside actors were never the problem, the corporations that make the devices and the current government in power that control the devices, they are the problem.

They are smart in the Netherlands

[surfdaddy]

IMHO we should never use voting machines unless technology gets to a place where we clearly are not at. No way to avoid the risks of mass tampering with machines.

Re:They are smart in the Netherlands

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not just safer. Manual voting, counting and the applicable oversight all consist of transparent processes that pretty much any idiot can understand and take part in, as voter, counter or auditor. And that makes people's confidence in the results that much greater. Which is pretty important. "No shadow can be allowed to hang over the result" means the entire process must be transparent and auditable by laymen, which pretty much precludes the use of computers.

Much Ado About Nothing

[93 Escort Wagon]

"The Independent reports: The decision was taken amidst fears that hackers could influence next month's elections after allegations by the U.S. intelligence agency that Russia hacked into Democrats' emails to help Donald Trump get elected."

You needn't worry, Netherlanders - if Donald Trump won your election, I'm pretty sure you'd figure out something went wrong pretty quickly.

Besides, I doubt it'd be legal for him to run four countries at once. He's not Putin.

The Dutch Trump

[Shane_Optima]

This is the 'Donald Trump' the Dutch are worried about, for those who are interested. They actually aren't terribly alike other than their tendency to not mince words about Islam, but I somehow suspect the comparison is being constantly made nonetheless.

Re:Thank you

[Fire_Wraith]

The "Russia hacked the vote" accusations didn't come from U.S. Intelligence, but rather, from a deliberate bit of confusion designed to act as a strawman to take away from the actual story. Nobody ever accused Russia of hacking VOTING MACHINES, and everyone official agrees that this didn't take place at all.

What did occur were several instances of politically motivated hacking that took place as part of a Russian campaign to find anything that seemed like dirty laundry on one side, and then dump that into the media. It was a digital Watergate operation, meant to influence who voted and how they voted, not one meant to stuff the ballot box or change votes that had already been cast.

That said, if this makes people paranoid enough to wake up to the dangers of unauditable electronic voting machines that Slashdot and others have been warning about for years, I'll certainly count that as a silver lining to the mess.