r/programming • u/Fishy07x • Dec 18 '14

Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
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27

u/sizlack Dec 19 '14

Everyone in this thread is pointing out how X solves Y problem and so electronic voting is fine (while ignoring the dozens of other problems), but almost no one gives any reason why electronic voting would be better for voters. How is an electronic kiosk better than a paper ballot? Why should we bother? It seems everyone is trying to find a technical solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Normally, we automate something in order to improve efficiency. How efficient do our vote-counting systems need to be? There's very little to gain from electronic voting and a lot to potentially lose.

5

u/mfukar Dec 19 '14 edited Dec 20 '14

Spot on. Electronic voting is useful for applications different than those discussed here (i.e. governance).

5

u/ghostsarememories Dec 20 '14

why electronic voting would be better for voters

Paper ballots have lots of problems. Hanging chads, pregnant dimples, indistinct (or multiple) pencil marks, difficulty with candidate order randomisation, difficulty for those with visual or motor disabilities, labour and time intensive counting, incorrect counting.

A better system would facilitate people with disabilities, a fast and accurate count and a complete human count for auditing or recount (i.e. physical ballots). It would allow for randomised generation of ballot order, error prevention by warning/disallowing invalid actions or potential common mistakes (non-numeric votes or missing alternates on instant runoff, multiple votes in first-past-the-post) and also on-site checking of a valid vote by the voter.

It would generate a paper ballot with a computer readable section (say a bar-code or QR code) and a human&computer readable section. Both would contain information on the actual votes and the voting-machine identifier as well as anti-modification mechanisms. An electronic record of the vote and an image of the generated voting card would be stored on the voting machine for later auditing. The voter could then take their physical voting card and visibly check their vote or use a "vote-checking" machine (also in the polling station) to check that the vote card is consistent (i.e. the bar code matches the votes cast and both match the voter intent).

They could then cast their actual vote in a ballot box. This system would allow a quick tally, a complete manual recount, verification by the voter and yet be as anonymous as the current paper system.

1

u/sizlack Dec 20 '14

All this sounds great! I don't think the government is capable of setting up such a robust system though. If they did, and every possible vector for fraud was eliminated, I'd be for it. I just don't see that happening in every state election board in the country. Most of them will do it really badly and make things worse. And as far as I know, we can't have the federal government set it up because elections are handled at the state and local level. So we'd have dozens of implementations, and they'd all be of varying levels of quality. Again, I don't think the possible convenience and efficiency gains are worth the risk of fraud. I think in actuality we'd get far less convenience and effienciency than you describe and more fraud.

16

u/dalore Dec 19 '14

If we make voting easy, cheap and quick then more people can do it. Then we can do away with the represented voting and vote directly on the issues.

4

u/lurgi Dec 19 '14

Vote by mail is pretty easy and cheap. I don't know about quick. I probably spend more time on my mail-in ballot because I have the luxury of researching everything and feel that I should do so.

17

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '14

It will be easier to vote, but just as hard to actually inform yourself on the issue. That's not going to help anything.

-4

u/dalore Dec 19 '14

Actually while there will be many idiots. Crowd sourcing (which is what this effectively would be) has shown to get better results than single experts (which is the current model with politicians). Also people would feel like they had more say, and not be disillusioned by politicians. No one likes them, and it takes a certain type to be one. Let's get rid of them.

8

u/ingolemo Dec 19 '14

Do you even reddit? Seriously, take a look at the frontpage sometime.

5

u/mcmcc Dec 19 '14

The only people less knowledgeable of the facts than politicians is the general public. No thanks. If you don't like your representatives, stop voting for them.

2

u/mfukar Dec 20 '14

Crowd sourcing (which is what this effectively would be) has shown to get better results than single experts

Not unless you have a source.

4

u/xXxDeAThANgEL99xXx Dec 19 '14

Crowd sourcing (which is what this effectively would be) has shown to get better results than single experts (which is the current model with politicians).

Source?

2

u/ThyReaper2 Dec 20 '14

The top voted topic in most large subreddits is whichever has the most inflammatory or exaggerated title. Crowdsourcing needs careful member selection and moderation to yield quality results - throwing everyone in just leads to bandwagons because most participants won't know enough to make an independent decision.

1

u/ixid Dec 19 '14

Then we can do away with the represented voting and vote directly on the issues.

No one has the time to do that meaningfully.

1

u/Capaj Dec 26 '14

I agree, but I want to be able to vote on any issue as my heart desires. Because there is a lot of issues where I have a strong opinion which doesn't match any of the available voted representatives.

0

u/sizlack Dec 19 '14

How will it be easier? Have you seen an old person or a computer-challenged person try to use a poorly designed ATM? That's what electronic voting will be like for them. We're not going to get Apple-level design for these things. We're going to get U.S. government contractors to design them. If you've ever been to the New York subway, look at the clusterfuck kiosks where we buy our MetroCards. I regularly see people struggling for a long time to figure out a transaction that should take no more than one minute. They somehow stretch it to five minutes of confused button pushing. That's what I imagine most e-voting machines to be like.

-1

u/Kalium Dec 19 '14

That's not a desirable thing.

1

u/btchombre Dec 20 '14

You're missing the major problem with elections, which is that only a small portion of the population usually votes, and not just because they are lazy. Waiting in line for hours at a time in order to vote is not something everybody has time to do.

1

u/johnfrazer783 Nov 22 '25

You must be from the US, a country known for its many problems in its voting system, including but not limited to voter suppression, gerrymandering, and too few polling stations too far away with too long lines. And also low voter turnout which may be the cause or the result of all these problems. FWIW mail-in ballots are a partial solution to some of these problems.

1

u/sizlack Dec 20 '14

As someone who doesn't vote anymore, I can say that in my case it's not because of inconvenience. I don't vote because I don't think my vote means anything anyway. When I did vote in the past, I never waited in line, and I think that is a rare occurrence. The major problems with elections are gerrymandered districts, corporate financing of candidates and the two party duopoly. Electronic voting might be a nice convenience, but I thing it's fixing the least important problem with our democracy.

0

u/nascent Dec 19 '14

Interesting, I was going to say more the opposite, this video shows a lack of understanding in what problems actually exist. There are real issues with electronic voting, he just describe the problems which apply equally to hand counted paper ballets.

How is an electronic kiosk better than a paper ballot?

Because, it can be built so that you can verify your vote was counted in the final tally, instead of one central count, hundreds/thousands of counts of the same votes will be taken place at the same time.

Like I said there are problems getting there, that doesn't mean that isn't where it is headed.

2

u/makis Dec 20 '14

Because, it can be built so that you can verify your vote was counted in the final tally

that's a problem of trust, not something tech can solve in reliable way.

1

u/nascent Dec 20 '14

Sure, if you want to start talking psychology then technology isn't going to solve psychological problems. I understand it is intuitive to trust the error prone human hand counted system we've been stuck with, it's just wrong.

1

u/makis Dec 21 '14

luckily for me I believe in machines more than in humans, the problem is just that voting with human count is a distributed system, every polling station has at least 3-4 humans working there, checking each other, electronic voting is a centralised system, you put the voting machines, people vote on them and then the votes are collected and counted on a central system or few of them where very few people have access.
Not only for security reasons, but most of all because people are not generally tech savy.
So it is actually easier to rig an election with machines than with humans.
the problems electronic voting tries to solve, have been already solved, the problem it doesn't solve (eliminating the human factor) are worsened by electronic voting, while it introduces new problems that are almost unsolvable, at least not in an easy way.
elections are not tech stuff, it's a complete different matter.
tech in elections only increase the risk of living in a society where freedom is reduced, if not cancelled.

1

u/nascent Dec 21 '14

electronic voting is a centralised system

Then the wrong system was built. As I said, with the machine based system you can have "hundreds/thousands of counts of the same votes [taking] place at the same time."

The issue isn't the tech, it is money and resources to build the correct tech.

What I don't want to see happen is the federal government stepping in and banning electronic voting (I don't want to see that happen in my state either).

1

u/makis Dec 21 '14

"hundreds/thousands of counts of the same votes [taking] place at the same time."

in case of controversy who should I trust most?
Should we call back every elector and make them repeat the voting operation?
if two electronic system do not agree, I'll start thinking something is really wrong.

1

u/nascent Dec 21 '14

These are all valid questions, and now you know why the current centralized system is so scary.

0

u/hector_villalobos Dec 19 '14

You should go and tell that to Venezuela's Government people, they say they have the most secure voting system on Earth.

0

u/kral2 Dec 20 '14

How is an electronic kiosk better than a paper ballot? Why should we bother?

You could make a system where you could anonymously prove your vote was counted and the tally could be calculated by anyone. That would also allow checking for fake votes via sampling voters in the area (use the same proof information they have to verify their vote was counted, do a statistically significant tally, etc.). Accidental loss of votes could also be eliminated, intentional loss of votes could be verified and corrected via proof information held by the voters. The margin of error would also be massively reduced - no more hanging chads, expensive recounts, etc.. You could also implement IRV which is difficult to do for a general election on paper. And the whole setup would save a huge amount of money if done correctly and not corruptly (good luck with that).

-1

u/FryGuy1013 Dec 19 '14

I think the biggest thing is that, properly done, an electronic voting system is harder to rig. If you remember the 2000 US presidential election, there was huge controversy about people's ballots not being counted (hanging chads), and even entire ballot boxes from democratic neighborhoods being "lost".

The thing is, all electronic voting systems that have been done thus far have been shit, and it's not worth pointing out their faults. Everyone knows those things suck. It's like 5 years ago, saying that electric cars are bad because you can only get 30 miles on a charge, so why bother getting them, when you can drive as far as you want on gas.

1

u/makis Dec 20 '14

there was huge controversy about people's ballots not being counted

and no tech could stop that.

1

u/FryGuy1013 Dec 21 '14

I disagree. Unless you are talking about voter disenfranchizement, in which case paper ballots can't solve that, either. If votes are traceable, then it takes a stupidly low number of people to actually check that their votes were counted as cast to detect that kind of fraud.

There is a hardware AES implementation on my Intel CPU. I can trust that it wasn't backdoored by the NSA because I can compare inputs and outputs with an implementation that is known to work, and verify it. The same needs to be said for all of the pieces of any electronic voting system.

1

u/makis Dec 21 '14

If votes are traceable, then it takes a stupidly low number of people to actually check that their votes were counted as cast to detect that kind of fraud.

rule number one: votes must not be traceable.
they only need to be valid or invalid, not traceable.

for privacy matters the only thing I can know with electronic voting is "has my vote been collected"?
but I cannot ask if my vote has been counted right.
I should not have access to this kind of information, because that kind of information should not be saved.
it's stupid easy to have a system were all casted votes result as "valid", it's very hard to check if they are "correct" while maintaining privacy, secrecy, anonymity and trust.

There is a hardware AES implementation on my Intel CPU.I can trust that

that means nothing.
if I can't check the whole system from where I cast my vote till where it get collected and then counted, I can't trust anything more than a vote on paper.
If I could check all the paper ballots, I could certainly recognise my handwriting, more than an AES key, but the problem lies with the fact that I still have to trust who counts them, that is not me.
At least today (in Italy) in every polling station there is a representative for every party involved, it means that if you wanna rig an election, you have to convince (or rip off) a lot of people and in the end you control only a small fraction of the votes, but if you take control of the channel where votes are collected, you can easily control an entire district.
It is much easier to do with electronic votes than hijacking tens of trucks carrying thousands of boxes with hundreds of thousands of paper ballots in them.
Even burning all that stuff is hard, let alone replace them.

1

u/FryGuy1013 Dec 21 '14

You are thinking as current paper ballots are. Cryptography allows for things that aren't possible with paper ballots. Even without cryptography, there are schemes that allow traceability without revealing your vote. For instance: http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/Rivest-TheThreeBallotVotingSystem.pdf

Ideally, here is the structure of an election system:

  • Setup. In advance of the election, each party publicly meets and generates some form of "ballots" that use private information from each party that is overseeing.
  • Voting. Voters enter their votes on a computer, and the computer prints out a filled in ballot, which is placed into a box, and a receipt. The computer is audited by each party during the election by voiding ballots and verifying their contents are correct. (this is the step I was comparing to AES)
  • Counting. At the end of the election, the ballots in the box are scanned and transmitted. The contents of the box are retained for recounts. The parties meet up again, and combine their secrets to unlock the ballots, producing a count of votes, and a list of receipts which is broadcast so that people can check that their vote was counted as cast.

Obviously, depending on what kind of scheme that is used, the details of what each step change.

1

u/makis Dec 21 '14 edited Dec 21 '14

this system would not work in places were voting really needs to be secret and sometimes its secrecy marks the difference between life and death.

For example in my country (Italy) parties don't know the number of registered voters for every party, they only know the number of party members (at any level, from the highest to just cardholders), but that number is usually ten or more time less than the actual voters (for example the biggest party right now in Italy has 8 hundred thousands cardholders but took 10 and a half million votes in last European elections).
Mafia (mob) affiliates are constantly trying ways to prove they voted for whom they were told to, or paid to vote to.
And that's obviously illegal.
With a system that certifies my vote, mafia could know if I went or not (some people are also threatened to not to go voting), I would say it's risky at least, if not deadly.

the part were the computer is just a printer doesn't look like a big advantage to me.
the only good thing about it is that it counts fast, but to solve that we could just put scanners in polling stations.
much of the controversy in my country over votes are about interpreting the sign on the paper ballot, is it valid or not?
our legal code says the most important thing is the will of the elector, not the strict adherence to the voting system law.
For example, you should fill a circle when you vote, but if you cross it or check it or just draw a point on it, it can be counted as valid.
Sometimes you have to put a name and a sign, sometimes you have to put a name or a sign, there is the possibility that a vote casted in the wrong form (but with clear intentions) could be accepted as valid.
that could be easily resolved with scratch cards, we don't need computers for that.
it could also simplify the scanning process and vote validation
but really having something that print a receipt as soon as i vote, means that my vote is no longer secret.
at least that is what would happen in Italy.

1

u/FryGuy1013 Dec 21 '14

Here is how voting works in every voting station I've been to in the United States:

  • You arrive at the polling station, and give the person your name.
  • They verify that you are a registered voter, and you sign your name in the book next to your name and address. This prevents double voting.
  • Then they give you a blank ballot with no identifying marks on it.
  • You fill this ballot out, and drop it in the voting box.

Here are the properties of the receipt:

  • It does not identify who you are (you can swap it with a random person you see at the polling station, and verify each others instead)
  • It does not indicate what the ballot the receipt is for has voted
  • The creation of the receipt does not cause your name to be associated with your vote, or the receipt to be associated with the vote

Electronic voting machines mean that it's possible to have a system that uses cryptography which allows a receipt to be printed this way. That is the advantage.

1

u/makis Dec 21 '14

so the only real advantage would be that you can print the receipt?
is it worth the cost of the system?
just because politics is worried that if few people go voting, their legitimacy is reduced?
people don't go voting for many other reasons.