Great documentary on how electronic voting machines can be hacked.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Aeson
Like paper ballots can't possibly be manipulated...

There's a major difference between paper voting and electronic voting:

With paper voting, any person (except maybe babies and the mentally disabled) can watch and try to see if there's fraud or not. If there are observers from various political stripes, they'll distrust each other, which should neutralize each other's attempt to cheat. The observers call their political parties to give them the results, and the parties check if they add up. The principle against fraud is that of mutual defiance.

With electronic voting, nobody can check whether the votes are well accounted: on request of the govt, the makers of the machine could program it to skew the results, and nobody would be able to check.
As a result, the legitimacy of the vote is based on trust in the government. A trust that's made worse by the fact it can see nothing: a blind trust.
Obviously, those people who distrust the government won't trust it. They'll complaint about fraud, and if the feeling is broad enough, it can have seriously bad consequences, whether the fraud is true or not.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I'd like teh anti electronic voting crowd to volunteer to count paper ballots at teh next Indian general election

In the civilized world, teh amount of vote-counters is proportional to taht of voters

[Riesstiu IV]

There should only be one candidate on the ballot that way there is no chance of voter fraud.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Spiffor

In the civilized world, teh amount of vote-counters is proportional to taht of voters

Perhaps teh government should institute teh draft for vote-counters. All 18-year-olds must count votes

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Spiffor There's a major difference between paper voting and electronic voting:

It's not a necessary difference. It would be just as easy to allow 3rd (or 3rd-Xth) party monitoring of the process. And your trust in counting of paper ballots seems naive to me. Like the D's and R's are any more trustworthy than the government (which consists of D's and R's).

The best solution would be for people to get over their paranoia about having their voting records public, and then everyone could just log in and check to see that their vote is being counted correctly.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Aeson
It's not a necessary difference. It would be just as easy to allow 3rd (or 3rd-Xth) party monitoring of the process. And your trust in counting of paper ballots seems naive to me. Like the D's and R's are any more trustworthy than the government (which consists of D's and R's).

They aren't more trustworthy: they have different interests. The D don't want to lose to the R, and vice-versa. If the govt frauds his way into saying the R have won when they haven't, then the D can back their fraud accusations.

The best solution would be for people to get over their paranoia about having their voting records public, and then everyone could just log in and check to see that their vote is being counted correctly.

That's not the "best solution" by far. Anonymous voting is essential in a democracy, because the voters would otherwise suffer from a strong peer-pressure, or a pressure from local bosses.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by LordShiva


Perhaps teh government should institute teh draft for vote-counters. All 18-year-olds must count votes

Great plan. Get the people that can't count to count the votes.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Spiffor
They aren't more trustworthy: they have different interests. The D don't want to lose to the R, and vice-versa. If the govt frauds his way into saying the R have won when they haven't, then the D can back their fraud accusations.

It's just so much noise. Accusations of fraud happen just about every election. Not much is done about it. Ballot boxes get stuffed, dead people vote, voter suppression happens. Your "magic paper" ballots don't stop this, and actually contribute.

You're still ignoring that 3rd party verification is an option.

That's not the "best solution" by far. Anonymous voting is essential in a democracy, because the voters would otherwise suffer from a strong peer-pressure, or a pressure from local bosses.

Like I said... gotta get over the paranoia.

If people can't stand up and say they think X, Y, or whatever, we've already lost. Hiding what we think to stay "safe" or "fit in" can only lead to us losing more say in our government as time progresses.

Seeing as a great number of people are quite open about their political stance and way they will vote or have voted, it's not really an issue though.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Aeson
It's just so much noise. Accusations of fraud happen just about every election. Not much is done about it. Ballot boxes get stuffed, dead people vote, voter suppression happens. Your "magic paper" ballots don't stop this, and actually contribute.

QFT

[onodera]

Originally posted by Spiffor
With electronic voting, nobody can check whether the votes are well accounted: on request of the govt, the makers of the machine could program it to skew the results, and nobody would be able to check.

That's why I said it should be an open system.
Use paper ballots as a backup if you like, but the data should be available to the general public. They should be able to see the amount of votes cast in their local voting place for each party and check if they add up at every successive level.
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot
This can let people check even individual votes without compromising the secrecy of the vote.

[Imran Siddiqui]

While I think anonymous voting should be protected, there could be a number system. Your ballot (electronic or otherwise) has an 8 digit number on it, assigned randomly. You can, if you want, write that number down and see if it matches what you actually voted on a website where all the votes are made known by the random number.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by onodera

That's why I said it should be an open system.
Use paper ballots as a backup if you like, but the data should be available to the general public. They should be able to see the amount of votes cast in their local voting place for each party and check if they add up at every successive level.
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot
This can let people check even individual votes without compromising the secrecy of the vote.

http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/12/threeballot-tested-by-mit-students.html

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Aeson
It's just so much noise. Accusations of fraud happen just about every election.

Not over here. I haven't heard any accusation of fraud in a national election in a long time, and there weren't many such accusations in the recent local elections, despite the mayors' extended power of cronyism.

Not much is done about it. Ballot boxes get stuffed, dead people vote, voter suppression happens. Your "magic paper" ballots don't stop this, and actually contribute.

In countries that want it, maybe. Over here, we tend to have watchful courts, which have made the system increasingly safer for the past century. And we have a political consensus about letting the voter vote, which may also help.

You're still ignoring that 3rd party verification is an option.

Please tell me how it works. All the third-party verifications I saw either: 1. didn't adress the risk of the machines being purposefully programmed to skew the results, 2. went against vote privacy, or 3. were very unwieldy (ThreeBallot)

Like I said... gotta get over the paranoia.

If people can't stand up and say they think X, Y, or whatever, we've already lost.

It's a nice theoretical world you're living in
I was heavily involved in local elections recently. Being in the opposition, there are many people who required secrecy about their support: local civil cervants, obviously, but also people who were expecting a job as a city employee, or a public housing. Basically, as soon as a system allows for local cronyism, anonymous voting is the only thing that ensures voting freedom.
It's not only the authorities. There can be a strong peer pressure into voting for the "right" candidate (such pressure is frequent in families, less so in circle of friends). Finally, nosy employers might be interested into knowing if their employees vote well.

As a result, a great many people will simply abstain, or vote the "right" way, only to avoid the potential trouble (because the trouble doesn't have to be real: the potentiality is enough). You already have an abysmal voter turnout, but I guess there are always creative ideas in order to lower it

Hiding what we think to stay "safe" or "fit in" can only lead to us losing more say in our government as time progresses.

Seeing as a great number of people are quite open about their political stance and way they will vote or have voted, it's not really an issue though.

An even greater amount of people simply avoids talking about politics, not in order to stay "safe", but merely because it's a bore they rather avoid.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
What's a "hanging chad"?

Though electronic voting, with a paper backup may be the best of both worlds... vote electronically and then take your paper backup and put it in a box.

That's the first sensible suggestion I've heard on how to make electronic voting machines workable. Imran, you've done it again!

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
While I think anonymous voting should be protected, there could be a number system. Your ballot (electronic or otherwise) has an 8 digit number on it, assigned randomly. You can, if you want, write that number down and see if it matches what you actually voted on a website where all the votes are made known by the random number.

The random number generator has some problems, and the paper ballot backup would seem to be the best option.