Voting over the net?

Alistair Cunningham writes "The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that the British government is planning to allow voters to vote online at the next general election, in 2001. They hope to use this to overcome voter apathy. I wonder how secure this will be? " I can't wait for this to happen in the US. Voting is a pain- I want to click my way through the election and not have to wait in lines.

Comments

In theory, easier is better... In practice...?

[Sun Tzu]

To make it easier to vote is clearly more "democratic" than to make it harder. However, a side effect of having to go to some trouble to vote is that voters tend to be those most interested, and, possibly, most informed.

Of course, this point ignores the possible negative aspects of a system that tends to favor the fanatical over the disinterested.

It will be interesting to see how this experiment plays itself out... A well-publicized security problem could set the concept back a decade. I can imagine scenarios where the Internet itself comes away with a diminished image that could damage electronic commerce as well.

Follow the logic here...

[Imperator]

Any such system in the US would have to be extremely secure. That includes strong crypto of some sort. That's a munition. So, the government would be arming its citizens with the intent of them replacing the government.

-Imperator

"true" e-voting vs. slapping elections on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

I did my Master's research on electronic voting. If you do web searches on electronic voting, you can eventually find a lot of good resources (however, I don't want to point out a particular site for everyone to crash :) ).

The current state of the art isn't quite adequate to the task in a "true" sense. Voting over the web the way it is implemented now is probably trustworthy only for a year or two (if that). There are many problems, the most important of which is the absence of a public key infrastructure (PKI) that relates individuals to their public keys in an "official" sense.

Without a PKI, I suspect that the voting systems being put on the web involve the voter registering a password in person at some center of authority. The voter must then trust that the people who tally votes are not correlating votes to passwords to individuals. Additionally, voters must trust that the people running the election do not create bogus votes, nor delete/ignore "undesired" votes, nor issue passwords to people who should not be allowed to vote, nor issue more than one password to anybody, nor allow more than one vote to be associated with any password.

Even if one trusts the motivations of election officials, one might well not trust their abilities in a scheme with so many weaknesses. Conventional voting schemes were simply not designed to withstand the ease with which computers manipulate information. They are "adequately" trustworthy with voting machines or punchcards (and the like), but are not perfect even then. The Kennedy-Nixon election caused a lot of stir, especially in Chicago ("vote early, vote often").

There are encryption tools that show some promise (e.g. do a web search on "blind signatures"). However, schemes that use them are still not perfect (not even my Master's work :) ), and again, the proper infrastructure is not in place (and is not likely to be in place anytime soon).

Even after there is a PKI and an adequate electronic voting scheme, there are still potential problems. What if you vote from a machine that has been infected by a snooping program (e.g. Back Orifice)? What if the kneecappers insist upon looking over your shoulder while you vote? Letting people vote from anywhere on the web poses problems. Of course, voting booths will be little better (do you trust the manufacturers of the booths?).

This is an important topic to understand, given the growing importance of the Internet in everyday life. Most slashdot readers will probably live to see electronic voting implemented, either well or poorly; it would be best for them to understand the difference between trust that is well distributed, and trust that is not.

IMHO, the experiments that you see on the web now are as much an attempt by election administrators to come to terms with the logistics, benefits, and risks of e-voting as anything else. I wouldn't get too excited about them yet -- unless they start to be commonly and widely adopted, in which case I would get *very* excited about stopping them until the underlying security, privacy, and crypto issues are resolved.

Unconstitutional in parts of US

[coyote-san]

A local "expert" (who makes his living walking a slackrope on the mall!) proposed a "vote-by-phone" experiment in Boulder, Colorado a few years back.

Besides the technical issues, someone identified a Constitutional issue with the entire idea of electronic ballots.

In Colorado, and probably other states, the state constitution requires that ballots be anonymous. It is required that ballots be impossible to tie to any particular voter.

This is not simply a requirement that the state (or anyone else) can't determine how a person voted. The voter himself can't prove how he voted! The reason for this is simple: it prevents vote-selling and coerced votes. That's also the reason why it's a criminal offense for anyone other than the voter to be in the voting booth.

David Chaum's ideas can be used to prevent the state from proving a ballot is mine... but since I know my own "blinding" factor (at least for a while, even if the software immediately discards it) I can prove how I voted. I suspect all cryptographic protocols will have the same problem.

Outside of the question about cryptographic protocols, this also suggests that any off-site voting, with the possible exception of official "floating" precincts which visit the invalid, may be unconstitutional. With electronic ballots it is certainly within the realm of possibility that some organizations will have "election parties" with incredible social pressure for everyone to publicly vote in the "correct" manner.

Imagine voting parties at churches. Vote for Smith or go to Hell!

Or voting parties at your office. Vote for Jones or clean out your desk!

Even if this doesn't happen, the possibility could cripple the electoral system. You voted for Smith but Jones won? Claim that you were coerced to vote for Jones at such an election party! Contested elections today are decided by the legislature (at the state level) or the House (at the national level), but what happens when over half of the elections are contested?

Obviously, this is a dystopic perspective. But the way we handle elections is critical, since it is the only way (short of armed rebellion) to get rid of a corrupt government. We must tread very carefully when changing it.

I'm reminded of Robert Heinlein's "Revolt in 2100." I don't have the book handy at the moment, but it opened with something like

By 2012 80% of the American population couldn't be bothered to vote. Rev. Shuller won the Presidential election with the support of only 12% of the people.

There was no election of 2016.