Comments on: Why You Can’t Vote Online Tomorrow

by: ASM826

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:00:12 +0000

They’re voting by e-mail in New Jersey this time.

by: Braden Lynch

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:39:50 +0000

@Roger, I’ll up your suggestion and recommend making it a capital offense. Vote twice and you become a “hanging chad” for real.

by: Sigivald

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:18:04 +0000

(The REAL problem, by the way, with “online voting”, as opposed to in-person electronic voting with an internet connection to the central tabulator, which my previous post applies to more, is authentication.

How do you prove to it that you’re you?

A central account and password? Problem is nobody’s going to remember theirs if there’s a strong-password requirement, and if there isn’t, there’s rampant fraud right there.

And of course to solve the initial “prove that this account is YOU, Mr. Registered Voter” problem you’d have to set it up in person, with a human being checking your ID against your face…

And have a mechanism for testing before the election for “mismatches” such that nobody tries to log in on election day and gets told “You? You already voted.” or “You? No such voter.” because someone already “registered” as you…)

by: Sigivald

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:31:19 +0000

Mostly solvable by having the code be public - that way every party can look for problems in it - and verify the machines before and after, much like election auditors from the various parties handle paper vote counting.

The transmission layer should be quite secure; when commercial websites get “hacked” it’s not because the hacker broke SSL, any time I’ve ever seen. And of course a voting system could trivially be required to use an IPSEC VPN on top of that; I’d trust my vote to that at the technological level.

The key, I think, is to require that electronic vote systems produce a paper record of the vote made, and let the voter audit that themselves.

(Do it right and a second independent system can automatically scan the audit trail from the first system, and if the totals don’t match [more than say .05% variance, because optical scanners and the like aren’t perfect] that would reveal any cheating worth doing in the first place.

Or just do paper ballots in the first place, like we do here in Oregon. Simple scannable oval-filling is both easy to audit and easy to read via electronics.)

by: Roger

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:05:54 +0000

My solution to the problem of voter fraud is quite simple.
Anyone caught and convicted of voter fraud of any type and any kind of participation or silently allowing it to happen will receive a mandatory 10 year prison term. No possibility of parole, no time off for good behavior, serve the entire sentence.
I think they call it in schools, ZERO TOLERANCE.

I also think that any politician caught with his hands in the public till will also get the same zero tolerance 10 year mandatory sentence. Plus forfeiture of ALL benefits, all pensions & all of his or her personal property & wealth.