Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?
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Let's talk about voting.
What are the two key problems in designing an election system:
Antifraud (tamper detection)
AccuracyBack 12 years ago, my jurisdiction switched to touchscreens. Very accurate, but absolutely fuckall antifraud because there's no audit trail outside the electronic system.
This year, we "switched back to paper ballots" to much fanfare. You hand mark a ballot and feed it to a scanner, which, with the aid of computer vision algorithms, records your vote.
You have no idea what the computer actually recorded, but at least there's a paper trail this time.
But let's back up: Image analysis algorithms, even for simple stuff like "is there a black bubble at these coordinates" is fucking hard.
You can audit the source code all day long, but if the template the scanner is using at runtime doesn't actually match the printed ballot, whee, fraud! And you have to audit every template for every bumfuck local jurisdiction. Basically impossible.
The touchscreen systems are still there for the disabled (they have audio cues and shit) but now print a filled paper ballot for you to feed to the scanner.
A better technique here would have been to retain the touchscreens across the board, have them tabulate directly. Have them print a paper receipt that allegedly matches what they tabulated, and the voter physically places it in a ballot box.
This would retain the ease of use, the source code auditability, and paper audit trail and in the absence of fraud, be quite accurate.
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@Weng Wasn't there some research that identified that it was impossible to get all desirable properties in a voting system? Not the research about the high-level properties, but rather about fraud prevention and accuracy and something else (that I can't remember right now).
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@dkf Anonymity?
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What if you would vote by computer and then refuse to drop the receipt in the ballot box? You'd have a discrepancy then. I guess there is no other way than that the computerized counting takes place exactly at the moment of putting the paper trail into the ballot box.
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@dkf There is.
But the point is, we can get closer to ideal than we're doing.
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@Weng
Last voting cycle in Belgium:
Enter polling station, get voting 'card' a bankcard sized thing
Cast your vote with a touch screen machine.
Thing spews out a piece of paper like you just did grocery shopping. It contains your voting info for confirmation.
A different scrap of paper is your ballot. Fold it in half so only the upper barcode is visible. It is scanned for validation before you can enter it into the urn.
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@Luhmann yeah basically. The real question is at what point in the ceremony is the official digital record of your vote accumulated. At the touchscreen, ballot box/urn, with scanners downstream, or do they actually directly tabulate the paper copies with mk1 eyeball?
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@Weng said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
downstream
there. Urns are physically transported and only then the votes are digitally 'added'. This is because previous electronic voting systems used Belgiuming floppy disks.
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@Weng My county is entirely vote-by-mail. So much better.
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@Weng said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
A better technique here would have been to retain the touchscreens across the board, have them tabulate directly. Have them print a paper receipt that allegedly matches what they tabulated, and the voter physically places it in a ballot box.
That's basically how it works here (SW OH). We put in the votes, press buttons, and it prints out a ballot. Just, skip the "physically place it in a ballot box" because that happens automatically - you never actually touch the printed ballot. You can see it though.
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@sloosecannon said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
You can see it though.
Can I also get a picture of it on a wooden table?
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@thegoryone said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Welcome to Northern Ireland
Readers in Northern Ireland have their own century.
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@dkf I think you're talking about the mathematical system, i.e. the part where you pick a candidate out of people's choices. Not the physical part of voting. You can always solve that part by manually counting votes, since you can't reprogram people's brains (yet).
Ideally, you'd want a remote voting system that was verifiable. I.e. all the votes get added to a public "file", that you can then download and read to make sure your vote is the same one you cast. All without compromising your identity.
I don't know if it's possible. But the people developing cryptocurrencies have done a lot of things that look suspiciously similar, so I still hope it happens some day.
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@Weng said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
A better technique here would have been to retain the touchscreens across the board, have them tabulate directly. Have them print a paper receipt that allegedly matches what they tabulated, and the voter physically places it in a ballot box.
"Congratulations. You've just invented the world's most expensive pencil."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI&t=3m44s
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@thegoryone said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Around 1690 to be exact.
I guess those Irish drunks don't care for exact years.
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@Weng The only point of having an electronic system is so people could vote online. And you can kiss security goodbye in that case.
If I have to put on my pants and haul ass to some crappy school to vote, then give me a fucking piece of paper. Touch screen doesn't help me then.
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@cartman82 said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
give me a fucking piece of paper.
It's not because your job is done after casting a vote that all work is done.
Having a sensible vote counting system is important, even if it's manual monkey work.
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@Luhmann said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Having a sensible vote counting system is important, even if it's manual monkey work.
No no no, that's ape work, you elect monkeys. Apes throw feces at each other, that at least accomplishes something. Monkeys, on the other hand, just scream at each other ineffectually and call it a day.
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@Luhmann said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
It's not because your job is done after casting a vote that all work is done.
Having a sensible vote counting system is important, even if it's manual monkey work.Casting the vote is the most important part. It's also the only part where comfort and gizmos matter at all.
After that is done, it's all about security and transparency. Comfort and efficiency are distant 100ths. And having a bunch of people from conflicting parties and neutral organizations count pieces of papers one by one by hand is WAY more secure than manipulating invisible bytes inside hackable machines.
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@Luhmann said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
I guess those Irish drunks don't care for exact years.
No. It's a reference to the Battle of the Boyne, which nobody in Northern Ireland has got over for more than 300 years…
This post was brought to you by yet another crappy onebox from wikipedia!
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@dkf said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
No
Are you blocking me making jokes about how all Irish are pissed constantly?
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@Luhmann said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Are you blocking me making jokes about how all Irish are pissed constantly?
When it allows me to make a point about a different thing, I am indeed blocking you.
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@Luhmann pissed or "pissed"?
@dkf said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
I am indeed blocking you
We missed on the opportunity to call it @PJH -ing but now there's no blue balls any more... The mooning is nice and all but it doesn't have the same weight.
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@Onyx said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
it doesn't have the same weight.
I never gave the weight of PJH's blue balls any consideration
@thegoryone said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
it's pretty risky calling about 50% of Northern Ireland "Irish"
But they are still drunk aren't they?
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Ò_o
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@Onyx said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
No no no, that's ape work, you elect monkeys. Apes throw feces at each other, that at least accomplishes something. Monkeys, on the other hand, just scream at each other ineffectually and call it a day.
I wish screaming was the only thing they did. But they keep sneaking in stupid laws too.
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@Luhmann said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
making jokes about how all Irish are pissed constantly?
Isn't that constantly pissing?
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@Onyx Sure, but you have to take a picture of it and print that out first....
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@dcon
I would think one leads to the other
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@dcon said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
I wish screaming was the only thing they did. But they keep sneaking in stupid laws too.
Well, how can you know what's in them before they're passed?
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@cartman82 (Vote by mail.)
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@blakeyrat said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
@cartman82 (Vote by mail.)
How do you validate voters and votes?
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@cartman82 Signature comparison.
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@blakeyrat said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Signature comparison.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard.
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@cartman82 said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
That's the stupidest thing I've heard.
Really?
Man, I've got to try harder.
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@blakeyrat said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
@cartman82 (Vote by mail.)
If voting by mail becomes the dominant form, there are only very weak guarantees against voter coercion.
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@blakeyrat My signature is vague scribbles that sometimes lead with something they may be the first letter of my name.
It is never the same twice.
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@Weng I thought you are a software engineer, not an MD.
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@Onyx I think he's a code doctor
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@flabdablet said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
If voting by mail becomes the dominant form, there are
only very weak guaranteesno guarantees whatsoever against voter coercion.FTFY.
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Just issue ink pads and make people sign with their thumbprint.
I'm sure that will entirely eliminate all forms of identity theft and fraud. Thumbs are unremovable, after all....
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@Yamikuronue said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
Thumbs are unremovable, after all....
http://33hpwq10j9luq8gl43e62q4e.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/images/giveaway-wrong-turn-2.png
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All the arguments against electronic voting are identical to the arguments against the current system with "the vote counter might make a mistake" replaced with "the person who told the vote counter how to count votes might make a mistake".
In fact, let's get rid of the voting and run a simulation of each possible combination of elected officials to see who is the objective best candidate. The computer will pick mickey mouse every single time.
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@ben_lubar said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
All the arguments against electronic voting are identical to the arguments against the current system with "the vote counter might make a mistake" replaced with "the person who told the vote counter how to count votes might make a mistake".
Not quite.
The issue is that the person who told the vote counter how to count votes might well have a vested interest in rigging the election. And since the only demonstrably verifiable way to prove that a count of electronically recorded votes is accurate is to cross-check it against the paper audit trail, one might as well simply run a supervised count of the audit trail and not even bother with the electronics. Hence "world's most expensive pencil".
Electronics has its place: once a polling place's votes are counted, and the raw counts have been made public, then there's no harm in doing the adding-up with computers as long as all the results are also public. It's just that that place is not inside a polling booth.
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@ben_lubar said in Voting: How did you manage to make it worse!?:
The computer will pick mickey mouse every single time.
He'd be an improvement over anyone currently running, so he's got my vote.
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@Arantor Doctors make me look bad:
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@Weng Looks like a complete requirements document to me.
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@dcon Bonus if you guys can work out what my initials are from that.
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@Weng I'd guess
BZ
(making you a @boomzilla alt!) though there's a possibility ofRF
. :)