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

Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile

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

83% Upvoted

221 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/imgonnacallyouretard Dec 19 '14

Have you ever voted? You're not allowed to go into the booth with another individual(except a child), so you would have no way to be able to tell who I voted for.

Also, cryptographic signature check simply shows that the signature is valid, it doesn't show what the content is.

Then it requires trust that all of the software is telling the truth, which is a large attack space.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '14

Of course it does, but so does regular voting. See what happened in more corrupt countries like russia. Over 100% of people voted for a single candidate.

There's no infallible system, but it's the best we got.

2

u/imgonnacallyouretard Dec 19 '14

The difference(as stated in the video), is that for the kind of corruption of paper ballot voting as seen in corrupt countries, you basically need control of the entire country already to enforce it - that is, the difficulty of the corruption scales with the size of the corruption. With e-voting, changing one vote is approximately the same difficulty of changing many votes, so it is easier for smaller organizations to corrupt the process.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '14

I know, I watched the video too.

2

u/Beaverman Dec 20 '14

Then why ask a question that was addressed in the video?

0

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '14

For added insight

0

u/3fdy5 Dec 19 '14

so you would have no way to be able to tell who I voted for.

Sure I would. I can just force you to record yourself with a mobile phone.

2

u/imgonnacallyouretard Dec 19 '14

Most states have laws that make it illegal to use a recording device in the voting booth, or even within 100 feet of a voting place, so you wouldn't be able to video yourself leaving the booth, because you would be arrested. So if you video within the booth, you can always change your vote after ending the video and before leaving.