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The Computer Scientist Who Prefers Voting With Paper (theatlantic.com)
Geoffrey.landis writes: The Atlantic profiles a computer scientist: Barbara Simons, who has been on the forefront of the pushback against electronic voting as a technology susceptible to fraud and hacking. When she first started writing articles about the dangers of electronic voting with no paper trail, the idea that software could be manipulated to rig elections was considered a fringe preoccupation; but Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election have reversed Simons's fortunes. According to the Department of Homeland Security, those efforts included attempts to meddle with the electoral process in 21 states; while a series of highly publicized hacks -- at Sony, Equifax, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management -- has driven home the reality that very few computerized systems are truly secure. Simons is a former President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); and the group she helps run, Verified Voting, has been active in educating the public about the dangers of unverified voting since 2003.
Simons is one of the most prominent such, but definitely not the only one. This has been a vocal point being made by computer scientists and other security experts since at least the late 2000s.
Shouldn't it be "the overwhelming majority of computer scientists who've even casually looked at voting security" in favor of paper ballots over the current implementation of computerized voting? Hasn't this been the case for well over a decade?
Ryan Fenton
THIS ARTICLE IS POSTED AS THOUGH THIS WOULD SURPRISE US
We are well versed in these disciplines, none of this surprises us.
Sure, there are always kids around this site, many of whom probably think we can do this securely with blockchain or some other shit.
THOSE KIDS WILL GROW UP, GAIN EXPERIENCE, AND COME TO THE SAME REALISATION AS THE ADULTS
USE PAPER
Computer scientists know that there is no electronic voting system that satisfies all requirements.
One of the requirements for a proper voting system is that ordinary people can understand it and oversee its correct implementation, so that they don't need to take someone else's word for it. Computers are basically out by definition.
Computers have bugs, both software and hardware. They also may have backdoors installed by the company building these machines. By using these devices, you're handing over control over important events to a few people, the exact opposite of a democracy.
Votes should be and anonymous, hidden from everyone, including computers. Even if the machines don't tamper with the votes, there is a high possibility that they can make voting non-anonymous.
Paper voting is simple, transparent, anonymous, and hard to tamper with on a wide scale. Computer voting is complex, non-transparent, non-anonymous and subject to vote tampering on a wide scale.
I am a computer scientist, and I can confirm you are full of shit. Electronic voting only works in theory (and not even in a more complete theory that takes into accounts all actors involved in implementation & usage of such systems). In practice, you should only use technology to count physical ballots efficiently.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I have been trying to get people I know in my state to request an absentee paper ballot for each election and use it to cast their vote. The process here is very easy, with virtually no tests for actually needing to vote absentee. Perhaps this should be done nation wide as much as possible. If the VOTERS overwhelmed the ballot boxes with absentee paper ballots that might just send the message that computers should not be used for voting!
My state still uses the old Diebold DRE machines that CAN NOT be audited. I was on the evaluation group when they were chosen after the 2000 election and was a lone voice pointing out their lack of security and impossibility of being audited or having a valid recount.
Whatever actions you perform on the paper votes to optimise the security of the system can be done on digital records too.
A layman could inspect a polling station, and witness the paper ballot counting to confirm everything is done accurately. The same layman cannot inspect an electronic voting machine and confirm it has counted all the proper votes.
The ballots we use up here (and the system we use to count and track them) are amazing.
The voter goes to a table where the ballots are handed out by elections officials. The ballot has the candidate's names in alphabetical order and a removable counterfoil that has a serial number that matches against the book that the ballot was torn from. The official puts their initials on the ballot and hands it to the voter. The voter goes behind the screen and marks the ballot and folds it. The counterfoil and initials are still visible.
The voter hands the ballot back to the offical who checks both the signature and the serial number on the counterfoil (this ensures the voter has returned the ballot they got). The counterfoil is then removed and now the ballot is completely anonymous. The voter then gets the ballot back and she places it in the ballot box in front of the official.
When it comes time to count the votes, the elections officials count all of the ballots in the presence of other non-partisan officials as well as the candidates themselves or their representatives -- a vote isn't recorded until everyone has seen and verified the ballot. Once everything is counted and verified (does the number of ballots counted match the number given out and returned by voters, etc) the tally is made on paper and the ballots themselves are sealed up and passed up the chain. They are kept for 7 days in case a recount is needed.
The great thing about this system is that it scales to any population size since the ballots are counted right there at the polling station, box by box and verified on the spot.
It's certainly not perfect and there are some opportunities for tampering but nothing even in the same universe as the kind of wide-spread hacking that can occur with electronic systems.
more detail:
http://www.elections.ca/conten...
http://www.elections.ca/conten...
I have been complaining for many years, ever since my State ditched the simple and effective "punch cards" and went to horrible touch-screen computer voting. It removed every trace of auditing capability and introduced a system that not only could be horribly abused or hacked, but also made it easy to track the identity of who voted- clearly violating the principles of confidentiality of voting.
Finally, this November, my State switched to paper ballots. The voter is registered as usual, then given a generic paper ballot, and just marks on the paper what they want, and the voter inserts it into a machine that reads it and stores the sheet of paper securely. Cheap, simple, easy-to-use, 100% verifiable, and anonymous. I only hope that every State follows such an example.
The next challenge is to get ranked/IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). Then things can really start to change for the positive.
http://fairvote.org/
My vote is my vote. It should be counted without duplication. That's kind of one of the principles of voting.
Backuping/redundance isn't duplication, but a safety measurement. What if there is a fire in the room where you voted and everything is lost? How do you think that most of big websites work such that no matter what happens to their computers your data is always accessible? You can have 5, 10, 100 copies of the same record, always verifying some basic constraints like all of them always having the same value, without that affecting the uniqueness of your vote.
If you think you're good enough to build electronic voting systems: you probably are not. Sorry.
I guess that I cannot always win. At least, I know that I did all what I could to get one of those juicy contracts. LOL.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
In every election, there are opposing sides (naturally) and people from opposing sides who can and will oversee the election and each other. A paper ballot vote can easily be performed in a way that does not give any single actor a way to manipulate the voting, counting or tallying process. This is not the case with electronic voting.
People seem to praise paper ballots like they are flawless but they forget that ballot box stuffing and corrupt vote counters existed before we invented the computer.
What we need is a hybrid system of human readable votes and computerized automation. While generally hyped as a technology a information for a blockchain could be stored both on the paper ballot and voting machine memory to ensure no votes had been inserted, erased or altered. Using this methodology with a series of isolated single microcontroller systems not just air-gapped but lacking the basic hardware needed for network communication would combined with signed binaries and radiation-hardened software (yes, that's a thing) would radically improve security.
We have the technology to fix this problem and remove all single points of failure but have yet to do it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Do I have this right? We have "progressive" organizations (called such in the article) that fought hard for electronic voting machines. Trump gets elected. Now they want paper.
There's been suspicions among "right wing" groups that these "progressives" have been using absentee voting and electronic voting machines to make vote fraud easier. The progressive candidates get their head handed to them on a platter in an election a year ago and NOW they think electronic voting is a bad idea?
There's a part of me that thinks these people that have been participating in voter fraud realized that the opposition could in fact be also participating in fraud. To actually prove there was fraud though requires a paper trail. Electronic voting means no paper trail.
Regardless of why these "progressive" groups got the message I'm just glad they did.
I'm not saying any fraud has in fact happened, only that everyone seems to be accusing the other of participating in fraud.
(What makes these people so "progressive" anyway? What are they progressing towards? Progress implies a path to take, or some goal to achieve, I'm not sure what that is though.)
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
All computer scientists worthy of the name prefer paper voting.
It's really "information theory and practice". If people whose first idea usually is to use a computer tell you not to use a computer for an information gathering and processing job, you should take heed. You know they have tried everything to make it work with their favorite tool, but they still ended up recommending against it.
And what if that layman wants to unfairly affect the results?
The layman is only allowed to watch, not touch.
At the end you have to trust in something/someone
No, because you can go to the polling station yourself, and be that layman.
a properly designed electronic system can perform lots of checks, backups, logs, perfectly-understood-by-laymen reports, etc.
How can you tell it's actually properly designed ? You have to assume the worst, namely that it was purposely designed to rig the election, and fake the checks, backups, and logs.
Or how do you think that virtually everything works in the world?
We do what we can. Elections have some unique aspects that make it necessary to be extra vigilant. The anonymity of the process makes a proper audit very difficult, and the stakes are huge.
You might even come up with alternatives to compensate the lack of trust; for example, automatically generating printed copies of all the votes such that people interested in crosschecking the results might count all of them manually. There are many possible alternatives and no need to abandon a format with many more advantages because of unreasonable fears. A computer is as hackable as a paper vote might be removed/added.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
However ballots have to be machine countable.
No, they don't. Manual counting works quite well.
Observers who oversee (but cannot inferfere with) the counting and double counting works great in many countries. And they even get their results quicker than the US, both for small and large districts.
automatically generating printed copies of all the votes such that people interested in crosschecking the results might count all of them manually
And what are you going to do if the voter claims that the printed vote is wrong ?
a format with many more advantages
There's only one advantage: it's faster. The whole election circus takes months. We can wait another day for the votes to be counted.
because of unreasonable fears
There's nothing unreasonable about fearing tampering with elections.
yet people still insist electronic voting is better.
I am not defending electronic voting, but electronic records in general; at least, its reliability and traceability. Paper is almost part of our past already. The fact that, due to the peculiarities of voting like mistrust among parties as highlighted by other comments, some electronic voting approaches haven't been too good doesn't invalidate what is applicable everywhere else. You might even create a mixed system if you prefer. But for all what is related to (huge amounts of) data, the electronic version will always have tons of advantages with respect to any other one.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
You can rig a computer system as much as you wish, but there will always be a clear track of actions and actors.
That's not helpful if there's no way to audit that track.
You are kind of implying that computers are obscure and unpredictable, but they are right the contrary. People are obscure and unpredictable.
Agreed. If people programmed the computer to rig the votes, that's exactly what's it going to do.
And what are you going to do if the voter claims that the printed vote is wrong ?
Press the rigged-election alarm button, put the person developing that system in jail and immediately hire me as you should have done the first time? LOL. See, it seems clear that neither of us are willing to change our ideas, so I hope that you don't mind if I cut the chat here.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Uh, you simply have one layman for each interested party attend. And there be buck and "what if" stop, because if the party has people in it trying to change the election to the party's disadvantage, the issue is no longer an election system. It may affect the correctness of the election, but it doesn't really break its usefulness as a democratic tool.
> Or how do you think that virtually everything works in the world?
By either keeping everyone happy enough (but in elections someone has to lose, so not an option) or by having the courts and police step in and decide and enforce what is "correct" (this would badly erode the legitimacy of elections).
Also a lot of systems in the real world get hacked and fully compromised, and remain so undetected for years. That is a worse track record than any kind of election in the world ever had, those that are bought or manipulated usually everyone at least knew they were, and usually even before they got started.
So I am not sure where you were going, you seem to have rather argued the opposite of your point...
> but about some unreasonable fears regarding digital systems being more vulnerable than conventional ones.
If we were to take some average person on the street, who in addition believes you are a liar and full of shit (but is generally reasonable), how would you envision would a digital voting system to look like that would make it easier to convince him that the election result is valid, compared to a paper one?
I feel fairly confident about the paper one, with the main arguments
- it's been in use since a really long time
- each significant party has someone present at the polling station, checking they are not disadvantaged, and they can do so by looking at every step as it happens. You surely do generally trust the people in party X you are voting for?
- the voting results in each district are printed e.g. in the paper, so these people from the polling station can and will check that everything was reported and added up correctly.
Specific concerns with vote buying, ballot stuffing etc. can be addressed fairly easily as well (though it should be noted that some places have rules that are a rather bad idea and do allow for much easier vote buying, e.g. if you cannot get a replacement ballot or you are not allowed to correct your vote and worse things for some digital systems).
I've used plenty of paper ballots in previous elections. The only reason you can't catch the voter's intent is because it's a coarse first-past-the-post system where the person with the most votes wins. This prevents telling the difference between someone voting for a the best candidate or someone doing strategic voting to prevent a bad candidate from being elected. Likewise, a vote for a kook candidate because someone believes them, or because they're dissatisfied with the other candidates.
Changing from paper ballots only helps if you have some complex system where it becomes difficult to count various combinations.
Okay, so paper ballots are the worst at recording voter's intent, yet you recommend some form of paper ballot to record the voter's intent? Might as well get a political opinion from a pinball machine.
Paper ballots already match what you described as ideal. A device known as a pencil is used to record a voter's choice, and the voter can review it for errors before putting it in the ballot box and/or counting machine.
All of the arguments against electronic voting are hypothetical at best.
there's nothing hypothetical about saying "there is no known way to verify the results"
that there were Al Gore presidential election style shenanigans going on in at least Wisconsin. The only real question was why Hilary didn't push for a recount. The theory is she was so shocked by losing that it demoralized her. I could see that. She never for a moment thought she'd lose even with shenanigans. The dumb ass actually believed in that 'blue firewall' and 'Changing demographics' crap. That's not being in a bubble, that's being in a lead lined box at the bottom of the ocean.
Basically if you're even a _little_ tiny bit progressive in this country you have to win by at least 5 points or risk having electronic voting snatch the election from you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And no way to disprove it, either. The system is designed to prevent audits.
Votes burning does not matter when they are counted.
Whatever you prefer. The fact of not wanting to maximise one of the multiple advantages of an evidently superior format doesn't represent a reason to use the inferior one. I see many apparently-computer-savvy people in this thread complaining about similar "unsolvable problems" and defending the perfect solution of paper + manual counting (which BTW I guess that, in many scenarios, is fed into a computerised system to aggregate all the city/regional results)!! I would have understood punctual critics to specific aspects of certain implementations or people without too much knowledge being somehow afraid of what they don't fully understand, but seeing a so unanimous and apparently-knowledgeable position is kind of surprising.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The editors seem to think a computer scientist would be expected to think digital only voting is a good idea.
Do you know anyone with expertise in computer science or engineering who thinks paperless voting is a good idea? I mean excluding people who work for companies that make the machines? Can you name even a single respected independent computer security expert who favors the damn things?
The overwhelming consensus among people who know anything is that paperless voting is a terrible idea.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The underlying idea to your post is similar to the ones of many other posts here (a bit surprising, IMO): digital records being less trustworthy than manually-written ones or being felt as such by laymen (you should either educate them or ignore their opinions, but why seriously considering the by-definition-unreliable concerns of those not knowing about the specific matter?). That might make kind of sense under very specific conditions but, in absolute terms, seems evidently wrong (or are we planning to start replacing most of our current computer dependence with paper and manual counting?); at least, for a knowledgeable and objective enough person willing and able to come up with the best solution for the problem.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Well yes, OF COURSE, a system where it is easy to make massive fraudulent changes to all of the data has tons of advantages over a system where it is extremely difficult and expensive to commit fraud in a significant way.
But how are you supposed to do such a thing in an even partially properly built system? Tell me, why all the banks have their own online versions (and, as said above, I am NOT defending online voting, because this would be much more difficult) and, consequently, all the money being electronically-accessible? Are you saying that changing some votes is way much more important than stealing millions of millions from anywhere, any time? Because once you have everything on a computer you can change it as you want, right? What about defense systems, nuclear plants, internet itself, etc.? How all that is working at all, when the only trustworthy thing we know is paper and manual counting?! LOL. We are talking about simply keeping track of relatively small amounts of data which are offline!!!! This is a low-level problem in today's programming world and many people here are showing it as an unsolvable nightmare, it is not! And additionally, you insult me!! You, the paper and manual-counting person! LOL. You are a very stupid "person".
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
First, machine counting is more accurate than hand counting.
No, it is not. With hand-counting, the votes are always counted multiple times by different people. That gives greater accuracy than a machine that will make the same errors over and over again.
Your comparisons to other countries are not valid (you didn't even cite a single example to compare).
That's deliberate. If I did mention a single country, someone would jump in and say "oh, but country X is different because it has [fewer people|more people|bigger districts|smaller districts]".
It won't take you long to find countries where machine voting is illegal, and election results are still available the same night.
And the onus should be on those who claim that machine voting increases speed to provide evidence for that, because not counting with a machine is the baseline.
Look at the time needed just to hand count a few counties in Florida in Bush v. Gore.
That was hand counting machine votes, you dolt. "Dimpled chads" or misplaced optically readable stamp marks is not a problem where the votes are designed for human and not machine parsing.
Errrm, and your point being?
Everyone with 2+ braincells to rub together prefers voting with paper. Every computer expert on the entire planet says computer driven voting is generally a notably stupid idea. It's only dimwits and people who want power and have a solid interest in controlling elections that want computers as a middle man for votes.
This is news from more than 2 decades ago.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"911, what is your emergency?"
"WAAAAHHHH I am a 50 year old football player and someone made fun of me on the INTERNEEEEEEEEEET!"
"Oh my God sir, I'm patching you through to the FBI Cybercrimes division immediately!"
"Snif snif thanks..."
YES YOU ARE:
I cannot say too much against a so brilliant defense of your originally quite sensible random insult. You are repeating the same and putting everything in caps, you have to be right! LOL. You are soooo stupid that even writing it seems redundant.
you are making statements IN DEFENSE of online voting
No. Electronic voting (actually, electronic records). You know? You can do things on computers without dealing with internet at all. Well... I guess that all these are too complex ideas for you, sorry about having provoking you a headache with all these new ideas. LOL.
russian troll!
Out of all the stupidities you have written so far, this is the only one which I find slightly relevant. See, some random idiots like you have called me troll at different points and for different (no) reasons. As far as these pathetic idiots were ACs like you with extremely limited understanding and just coming in to randomly insult and then disappeared, I never had the chance to understand why they were saying that. I mean, you people seem crazily stupid so I don't expect you making too much sense but well...
So, you are saying that the fact of being Spaniard (born and currently living there and from 100% Spanish family up to no idea what generation), being called Alvaro (a very Russian name! LOL), not knowing anything about Russia (never been there, don't speak Russian, almost never met people from that country), not showing any kind of agreement with Russia or what it represents, being a remotely-working programmer whose main channel is precisely internet (e.g., what I am writing right now here can be read by a potential client), etc. All that means nothing to you, right? Because I wrote something which you don't like, consequently, I deserve to be insulted and, right after that, being called troll + from Russia (because currently you don't like this country)! Because anyone saying something which you don't consider right deserves to be insulted and be called troll (from Russia). LOL. Seriously, don't you understand that this (= talking to me) is not your place? Please, stop making a fool of yourself.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
A small detail which I forgot to include in my previous reply: I usually refer to ACs (Anonymous Cowards in Slashdot) as "other AC" because I am also an AC, but not like you, a coward anonymously insulting others (as clearly highlighted in my profile, I never post anonymously here), but because of my name + first family name (Alvaro Carballo). As far as you seem specially stupid, I preferred to not confuse you more and just called you "AC". Hopefully, the words and the concepts in this post are simple enough for you to understand it. LOL
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The idea of totally electronic voting tells me that people care about their vote about as much as they care about their privacy. We see how poorly secured and hackable all of our systems are everyday. If someone wants a computer screen to facilitate the creation of a paper ballot and (Maybe) to provide an alternate count to check against I think most IT professionals would support that.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Not too difficult. Whatever the UI is, let the ballot be generated, and then a paper receipt printed for me to compare with the on-screen tally. If I approve, I click 'Accept' and take my receipt to the counters, where it is scanned and returned to me.
Later I can go to the web site and validate that my vote was counted as expected, either with the scancode or GUID.
Counting is immediate, accuracy is within my hands, and I can even self-select to be part of a QA process that audits the blockchain and confirms my vote was accepted, counted, stored, and part of the final results - accurately.
And the miscreants that would claim later 'that's not my vote' can be dealt with, somehow, or admonished that clicking 'Accept' was a binding agreement. There is only so much we can do.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Please define "secure". The anonymity of voting goes against normal computer security, where A to B and B to A are always traceable.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There's plenty of evidence they influenced the election. You'd have been on-topic and accurate if you'd just left your blanket statement at "hacked".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Never met one who thought it was a great idea. Computers are tools we use to manipulate data. That's the last thing you want to able to do easily when you're talking about votes. Anyone who really understands what a computer is should understand it's the wrong tool for the job.
They are not a panacea. Instead they have been hacked in the past many many times.
I work as a casual election official in Australia, and believe me we know. For every hack that has been tried in the past (and quite a few that haven't), there is an anal-retentive procedure which combats it.
It's not a panacea, but Australia has some of the cleanest elections in the world. Nobody seriously disputes the results of our elections.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Another not-related-to-your-comment clarification (but, not sure why, I feel like this is a good place to write it): as clearly stated in my profile, I am poor what I always correct with "kind of poor" because I am not a hypocritical, detached-from-reality asshole unable to understand his tremendous luck for having been born in a relatively-rich country. I am poor from my country (Spain) perspective, but not from the world perspective. Poor means that I (or my family) have no goods, assets, properties, money, etc. but I do have quite a few debts; additionally, my only income source (= my salary; better: clients as far as a self-employed worker) is currently very low because I prefer to put my focus on long-term/quality, on doing things properly and on not caring about the ridiculous expectations of in-unreasonable-hurry idiots only provoking problems to everyone caring about their nonsense. On the other hand, I am very rich in application of "the less you need the richer you are". I am also quite rich in clear ideas, principles, knowledge, freedom, respecting others, humour (although you might not get most of it), objectivity and taking full responsibility for each of my actions (BTW, I expect everyone, regardless of their fanaticism/stupidity, to do exactly the same :)).
:)
In summary, I consider that I have much more than people like you, cluelessly attacking others, perhaps manipulated, perhaps randomly, perhaps out of blind fear, frustration or hate. A ridiculous joke, with ridiculous expectations performing ridiculous actions, nonetheless. Also all my references to having a private jet or a butler are logically meant to be understood as jokes; firstly, because I don't (didn't and, mostly likely, will never) have anything even close to enough money for something like that, neither interest in having it; and mainly, because my attitude is extremely incompatible with the kind of spoiled, egoist and narcissistic personalities usually associated with this kind of expenses. All this should be evident for any non-extremely-stupid person after having read any of the multiple texts about my personality and expectations which you can find in many places (precisely a reaction to some interactions with idiots like you, unable to understand anything properly and spontaneously coming up with ridiculous interpretations for anything), but probably not for you. Again, I am not sure why, but I have the feeling that you (and others like you) will read this post
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Minnesota had a gubernatorial election in 1962 that wasn't decided until May. Paper ballots were used, but there were still many ambiguous ballots that were disputed by the two sides.
That's a legislative problem, not a voting counting problem.
Instead of allowing party observers to hold up an election, they should be observers only.
The count should be done at least twice - one at the polling station, and one at a central location by different people who won't know the origin of the urn. If the two counts for any urn match, the urn is approved. If they don't match, it's sent to a third location for a recount, and if that result matches any of the two preceding results, the urn is approved.
The minute the the number of approved urns are enough that the remaining urns don't affect the results, the election result are officially declared.
Only if the three results are different, will there be a delay from the streamlined process, and then only for those urns.
The observers can use their collected evidence to sue for change in the voting process and re-election, but not the election result itself. The voting process must be free from political interference.
And even another completely-unrelated clarification (just to have all the ideally-not-necessary-but-required-by-idiots-like-you-unreasonably-attacking-others stuff together): as clearly highlighted in the current version of my profile and signature here (which might be changed in the future, but this post will always remain), Custom Solvers 2.0 is the same than varocarbas and than me (Alvaro Carballo Garcia). Despite all the plurals, there is only one person here: myself, a 39-yo man, Spaniard, mechanical engineer by education (my relevant university degree, but not my only one) but programmer by career, heterosexual, single (and, at the moment, just caring about work), not too much into politics but leftist, honest, fair, adaptable, reasonable and objective; extremely allergic to fanaticism, people not able to understand humour, invasive/imposing personalities and anyone thinking that there is any chance that they can affect others without consequences. Although you will not find many references about that, I am a white man, slim and tall, with glasses, but I have replaced most of my public pictures with the Custom Solvers 2.0 logo to highlight that my appearance doesn't matter for my work (and internet is basically work for me).
Varocarbas has been my personal nickname since a quite long time ago (short-form of my name and first family name: alVARO + CARBAllo + S because sounds kind of better), but why choosing a so weird commercial name (because, as self-employed, the real name of my company is my own name) as Custom Solvers 2.0 you might wonder? This is my second self-employment attempt and, in the first one, Custom Solvers made much more sense. I only wanted to somehow relate my new activity (= still programming & numerical/engineering analysis, but by being much more patient, individual, self-made and looking for much fairer and properly-appreciating-clients than ever before) to that old one, even though my expectations now are completely different. To know more about my evolution as a self-employed programmer, you can visit the corresponding pages of my main site (customsolvers.com). You might also want to do that to know anything else about me, my knowledge/expertise, expectations, etc. There are lots of information in that main site, in my R&D site (varocarbas.com) and in all my public profiles linked from any of those. You might also ask me anything, call me or send me an email. You know? Performing any action allowing you to know even a bit about the person who you are defining, as opposed to what you did (= putting together the first two random words coming to your).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
There's been a lot of work in non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs recently that can help with the anonymity issue.It's nowhere near ready for prime-time in an election, but good enough for a second-tier cryptocurrency.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Then exchange the readable receipt/ballot for a QR code based receipt. Losing the chain. Potentially failed. And if you give in the QR code, you have to keep the PIN with it, and I'm just smart enough to figure out that faking a PIN is no risk to me if the collector has dozens, and can't keep track of the owner.
But even this fails, since such an effort would be hard to disguise, even in Philadelphia.
True, pay for vote or pure extortion is a risk, but this is already a risk.And already being practiced. Perhaps the lesson here is that all electronic voting is intended to speed counting or reduce costs, and neither is sufficient to justify the risks.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I have 2 computer science degrees.
Given that it is public record the FEC tried to hack into our voting systems (forget Russian meddling!), we should absolutely not have votes sent digitally anywhere.
There is so much corruption in this process. Thankfully it is mostly local corruption at this point (exhibit A: Al Franken, exhibit B: Harry Reid with the SEIU), but we are not far from this at the federal level.
Definitely pass an amendment to keep the FEC out of states voting systems. If a state wanted to do this I'd allow it, but it would probably be a blue state and it would be their D votes to lose.
The thing about machine politics is it has never yielded anything good since its inception under Van Buren. It forced HRC on a party that didn't want her.
You left out the possibility of manipulating the voting rolls by various means, so the "right" people have a significant advantage over the "wrong" people. I've read of absentee ballots facing different degrees of rigor depending on the candidate, removing voters from the rolls without sound reason, making it easy for the "right" precincts to vote compared to the "wrong" precincts, etc.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're proposing something that I'd have to spend a little time on just to understand, and I'd have to carefully consider the implementation, and I do know something about software and proofs. The average person won't understand. There is a tremendous advantage in having a system that's obviously fair, rather than one with no obvious unfairness.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, it's a physical problem. Some ballots won't be perfectly filled out, but the law (at least here) says that ballots that show a definite selection of one candidate should be counted.
It's particularly important for voting by mail. If I fill out a ballot at my voting place, and stick it into the machine, it will reject it if it can't read it, and I can get another ballot, so there's some check there that doesn't exist with a mail-in. There are also things like the 2008 Minnesota Senatorial election, in which it turned out that the printed instructions for absentee ballots didn't match what the law said. I'm not at all sure my mother's vote was counted, due to filling things out according to the printed instructions. That was remedied by the next election.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Digital records are less reliable than properly processed paper records. There's different ways to attack digital security, and it's a lot easier to have an untraceable attempt with digital than paper.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's particularly important for voting by mail.
And that's a big problem in itself. It opens up for buying and coercing votes, as the person can be observed when voting.
Other countries solve this by having voting booths for early voting at police stations, town halls, hospitals, military bases and embassies in foreign countries. That allows for verifying that the voter has privacy when picking and casting the ballot, and assists with counting given that the ballots are handled like any other ballots, with an actual sealed urn being sent for counting, and not individual letters.
When humans read the votes, and each ballot box needs a 2 out of 3 agreement by different counters before being approved, you avoid a lot of the problems with determining intent.
Allowing party representatives to challenge votes is perhaps the worst hold-up in American politics. It seems almost self-evident that a requirement for a fair election is to ban interference by those who run in the election during the voting process itself. The only thing that should be allowed is observing, not interfering.
I don't agree with your statements and even think that a programming/computer-experienced person shouldn't think in that way (i.e., software you are building and managing being more obscure than people+paper!). That's why I don't think that we should continue with this chat.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The big difference between most transactions and voting is that bank transactions are traceable and reversible. If there's a $2K transfer between my account and someone else's, I can find exactly why that transaction took place and how it was authorized. If it turns out to be erroneous and/or fraudulent, the bank can transfer the money back. If Joe gets 2100 votes and Moe gets 2200 votes, we can't attribute those totals to any individual or individuals. We have no records of who voted for whom, by design. If Fred is convinced that he voted for Joe but he was tallied for Moe, there's no recourse. There's no way to investigate beyond the evidence immediately present.
Physical evidence is bulky, heavy, and inconvenient. It presents few attack surfaces, and those are fairly obvious. It's easy for people to understand. We have large amounts of pieces of paper, individually unimportant. Electronic storage can be corrupted in different ways, not all of which will be obvious. We have a small set of numbers, and the set as a whole is very important.
The Internet is not safe or secure by any definition. Defense and nuclear systems have multiple layers of defense, and are not normally connected to the Internet, except possibly by very limited firewalls. A voting system will have to connect tens or hundreds of thousands of locations, some very far-flung, and be accessible in some sense to every voter in the country. It's much more like the Internet than a defense system.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If I can confirm that my ballot was counted for Joe rather than Moe, then someone else can compel me to reveal how I voted. Right now, someone else can't confirm who I voted for, so if I agree to vote for Joe, and then vote for Moe, and claim later I voted for Joe, who's going to know?
Verifiable voting is a really dangerous idea. There's reasons why we've used the secret ballot for a long time now.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The big difference between most transactions and voting is that bank transactions are traceable and reversible. If there's a $2K transfer between my account and someone else's, I can find exactly why that transaction took place and how it was authorized. If it turns out to be erroneous and/or fraudulent, the bank can transfer the money back. If Joe gets 2100 votes and Moe gets 2200 votes, we can't attribute those totals to any individual or individuals. We have no records of who voted for whom, by design. If Fred is convinced that he voted for Joe but he was tallied for Moe, there's no recourse. There's no way to investigate beyond the evidence immediately present.
That example doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter whether the voter is anonymous, the vote is well defined (= click on the button = perfectly recorded). From the point of view of the banks, the system doesn't care about dealing with two different persons or not. Even actions within the same account will be recorded. Even actions on the records on that account performed by bank staff will be recorded. Your example might seem only logical for a random person with no computer knowledge only roughly understanding what happens after they click on the button. As said in my previous comment, I don't think that a somehow knowledgeable person (+ with intention of bringing that knowledge into picture, rather than having an almost fanatical behaviour whose goal is to prove whatever has to be proven) could seriously think that electronic records are even slightly unsafe in a generic way.
We had some chats in the past and all of them followed a similar pattern where you kept insisting (respectfully and reasonably though) on trying to impose your views, mostly via repetition, by providing further quite-irrelevant additional data and without intending to understand my position/learn. I am a very experienced programmer who have developed lots of applications dealing with a huge number of different scenarios and you seriously think that you can change my mind about what I have a very good knowledge (= built over the years by learning, making errors, going further, etc.) via repeating a couple of generic (logically faulty) examples? I see... Seriously, I don't want to be disrespectful, but I will stop reading what you write in this chat and, in the future, I hope that you will make some effort to engage in more sensible conversations. If you aren't interested in learning, understanding others' (mine, in this case) views, getting a proper insight into whatever problem and you only want to impose whatever truth, conviction, fear or expectation you might have, you should try to avoid dealing with me because I might stop being so patient and understanding (nothing personal, just confirmed that being reasonable with certain people isn't always a good idea).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The Internet is not safe or secure by any definition.
PS: it would also be excellent if you could make an extra effort to at least understand what all this is about. AGAIN: I have expressly said various times that I am not defending internet-based voting (too dangerous on exchange of no relevant advantage). All my comments were about DIGITAL RECORDS as opposed to paper and manual counting. NOTHING TO DO WITH INTERNET. I was talking about an offline (or restricted/local network or offline + punctual connections to a central repository) system. The only people bringing internet into picture were those blindly attacking (+ anonymously insulting) me.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I agree. I happen to agree that paper ballots are superior for the foreseeable future, but the anonymity issue is not insurmountable in a technical sense. In principle.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
And we circle back to trusting the process.
In my home state, a recount was questioned because the room where the ballots were stored overnight was found to contain an ashtray and used cigarettes the next morning, despite none being there the evening before. State Police were stationed at the door from then on, but the questions began...
Trust. When that's gone, well, the system is gone.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You appear to have a lot more faith in that than most people. Those of us who are actually in the software field have a pretty good idea of things that could possibly go wrong, and we're not nearly as confident that we know all of them.
Digital records are fine in themselves, but they can frequently be altered untraceably. There are various ways to secure them better. Simple hardening of the system holding the records is useful. Other things that are useful are matching records. (For example, a record of each transaction affecting my checking account is good for assuring that my balance is what it should be.) Backups are useful, since it's more difficult to change a current result and the backups can reveal tampering.
What's really good here is large piles of paper ballots, counted by machine. Given proper physical security, which is a well understood field, they're hard to tamper with.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've been in software for something like forty-seven years now, in various capacities. You don't seem to be experienced enough to have learned humility yet. Until you accept that the software you are writing almost certainly has bugs, please don't tell your elders what they should think.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you've just removing the possibility of voting for immobile people. No system is perfect.
I agree that absentee ballots are trickier than in-person ballots, but there will be people who can vote in no other way.
Allowing party representatives to challenge the process at any time is vital to preserving trustworthiness. What's the use of an observer who can just watch fraud going on and can't interfere with it?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You appear to have a lot more faith in that than most people. Those of us who are actually in the software field have a pretty good idea
What are you talking about?! I have been full-time working as a programmer during over the last 8 years!! We were discussing about C/C++ advantages for various days?! Seriously, what is the matter with you? This is my last reply and will think twice before replying you the next time. Now I feel that I did lose my time in the past by being understanding (+ generous, although perhaps you didn't realise about that bit either) with you. Bye.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
have learned humility yet
I don't need working experience (in programming) to learn that. I am an extremely respectful, humble and sensible person always trying to properly understand others, having as less prejudices as possible and, at work, carefully analysing every situation. Currently, I am putting a tremendous effort into focusing my whole activity in its widest sense (including also the kind of clients/coworkers/expectations with whom I want to deal) on quality. So, what you are implying is even less applicable now. In any case, there are things which seem way too evident and, in our current society, saying that electronic records are unreliable in general doesn't make any sense.
You might have lots of experience and even much more knowledge than me on some aspects, but you have proven to have a pushy, trendy, unreasonable-expectations-driven behaviour various times and that's why I don't like what you represent and, honestly, you aren't proving yourself as a knowledgeable developer, not even as an objective person mostly interested in knowing more/improving. There are many things going wrong in the software development world, market, trends and, as for your behaviour so far, you seem to be the archetypal personality which explains why things are like this (abstract talking, trend-driven expectations, blind-trust-in-random-authorities, nepotism/arbitrariness, pushy behaviours, etc.). As said in my first comment yesterday, I don't see the point of continuing with this chat and, if your behaviour doesn't change in the future, I will not talk to you anymore. Now, say all what you want because I will write any other post in this thread.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Logically, with "because I will write any other post in this thread." I really meant "because I will NOT write any other post in this thread." (yes, the current post is quite ironic).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
And you've just removing the possibility of voting for immobile people.
That does not follow. In some countries with universal socialized healthcare, if you can't come to the voting booth, the voting booth comes to you. Ambulatory voting stations is also how votes are cast in hospitals and high security prisons (in most countries, disenfranchisement is illegal).
As long as there are at least two unrelated people somewhere, a voting enclosure can be erected, so the ballot can be cast in secrecy.
The only ones having a real problem are those who are abroad and without access to an embassy or consulate, or trekking alone through the wilderness. But presumably those are in that situation by choice, knowing that it would mean not being able to vote.
In at least some cases, people go places despite losing the ability to vote. There's real uses for voting in advance.
Couple the ability to vote in advance at appropriate locations, and the mobile voting booths you mention, and vote by mail isn't necessary.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes