In an age of superfast computers and interconnected everything, the only sure way to protect the integrity of election results is to return to paper and pen. That is the view of Sijmen Ruwhof, an ethical or "white hat" hacker, who last month revealed that the Dutch election's commission computer software was riddled with vulnerabilities.
In a shock announcement just weeks before the March 15 elections—seen as a bellwether of the rise of far-right and populist parties across Europe—Dutch officials announced they were abandoning the computer system in use since 2009 to return to counting ballots by hand. It was Ruwhof who discovered the problem. At the request of Dutch broadcaster RTL he spent just one evening examining the OSV software, developed for the Dutch government by a German company, via an online YouTube explanatory video, finding 25 weak points.
[...] "If you want to protect your system against state sponsored hacking, ditch your computer. You cannot trust it," he said. Computers are "highly sophisticated spy devices" and they "are everywhere in our society"—with more and more devices from our cars to our coffee machines becoming interconnected.
Countries who want to use computers for vote counting should build their own system from scratch. And they can't use existing operating systems for fear someone could have written a backdoor into millions of lines of code. "You have to write your own operating system, you have to design your own hardware and you must understand that the election process is of the utmost high integrity. So you really have to have the highest standards for security," said Ruwhof.
Ruwhof's original blog post: How to hack the upcoming Dutch elections – and how hackers could have hacked all Dutch elections since 2009
[Video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ofvgCk8fPQ (in Dutch)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday March 04 2017, @06:42AM (1 child)
"Ditch Computers to Save Electrons"
I'll just go back and parse that title again...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 04 2017, @10:19AM
"Dutch Computers to Save Electrons: Says Dick Ethical Hacker"
FTFY - you know it makes sense now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @06:46AM
Computers are vulnerable. Intel, AMD, it doesn't matter. Windows, *nix, Apple, they may not be the same in all respects, but they are the same in that they have vulnerabilities. Multiuser, single user, embedded, they can all be broken. The wisest heads have resisted electronic voting for a reason. They are all vulnerable.
EVEN IF you had an invulnerable computer, which could be checked and doublechecked every way known to man, how can you trust the people who administer the computer, unless you are the administrator? And, if YOU are the administrator, then how can I trust YOU?
FFS, let's have a paper trail. Paper trails haven't malfunctioned in all of history, unless it malfunctioned at the point of a gun. And, paper trails have even managed to survive violent assaults. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5ut6yPrObw [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by FakeBeldin on Saturday March 04 2017, @07:26AM
At the precinct level, votes were counted by hand last elections as well. Before that, horrendously insecure voting computers were used and counting at precinct level consisted of pushing a button. No extra software needed for either case
What this is about: aggregating the precincts. Since Dutch elections do not have districts, every ballot across the whole nation midday be part of this aggregation. Moreover, Dutch elections have a lot of candidates: +-20 parties with between 2 and~40 candidates each. Ballpark: around 600 candidates. Parties cannot be voted for, each voter can only view for once candidate.
Finally, thereare 150 seats in the house. These seats are assigned to candidates as follows:
- if you get 1 / 150th of the total # of votes, you get a seat.
That part is easy! Over/under votes default to the party, and are assigned to the party's candidates in order the candidates appear on the ballot.
Skipping of course any candidate who got 1/ 150th of the vote on their own merits. So a party that gets 8 / 150th of the vote will have 8 seats in the house.
Finally, usually this procedure doesn't end up assigning all seats. Then stuff gets more complicated.
Tldr:
1. the software was used for aggregating precinct counts, not counting in precincts.
2. Aggregation is a bitch
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @09:22AM
The Dutch voting law is constructed in such way that in any point of the voting process nobody is trusted. By using these computers you'll overrule this precaution measure regarding trust on many levels. As a Dutch voter I don't have to trust anyone during the voting process, but with these computers I suddenly have to trust multiple parties that they respect my vote.
We had elections with voting computers in the past, but they were abandoned because the vote was broadcasted into the air, which would violate the voting secret. Yet politicians keep pushing voting machines (yes, they changed the term into machines, instead of computers) because they want faster results.
(Score: 1) by garrulus on Saturday March 04 2017, @09:52AM
nt
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheLink on Saturday March 04 2017, @10:40AM (4 children)
One of the most important objectives of an election system should be to convince enough of the losers that they lost. If the elections aren't convincing they're a big waste of time and resources (or a way to soothe a Dictator's ego).
Computer-based/black box systems aren't good at this, there's no transparency. In contrast it's fairly convincing when your side's own observers see that all votes are put in transparent boxes that aren't touched by anyone else, the votes are counted in front of everyone and each ballot paper is shown to all observers. And... most of the votes aren't for your side...
Skilful magicians might be able to tamper with the results but you'd need magicians at every polling station. Whereas with computers you don't need as many "magicians" to rig stuff.
Even cryptographically sound systems are inferior. Doesn't matter that you can verify online that your vote is still exactly what you voted, how do you prove the final total announced/displayed actually included your vote? It'll take even more fancy cleverness that's hard to explain to the average voter. And then there goes your "convincing" bit.
Pencil and paper scales well. The more voters you have the more volunteer vote counters you have. Unless your education system is that screwed up - in which case your "democracy" might be screwed anyway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @11:00AM
You should import Russian magicians, we've got plenty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @12:47PM (2 children)
There's still a problem with this approach - you're trusting the observers to be merely observers.
Back in the late 1800s, the US actually had a system similar to what you describe - if you wanted to vote R you put your ballot in one box, if you wanted to vote D you put your ballot in a different box. It was immediately obvious to each observer how you voted. The problem comes in when the observer reports back to other "interested parties" how you voted. For instance if you didn't vote the way your boss wanted you to vote, you might suddenly find yourself without a job. If you didn't vote the way your union representative wanted you to vote, you might have an "accident".
Fraud was rife. Rutherford B. Hayes was sometimes known as "Rutherfraud" B. Hayes because of all of the shenanigans that went on. The 1896 election is also another prime example of what can go wrong.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Saturday March 04 2017, @03:36PM
No, the voting and the counting is not done at the same time :-)
First they vote, and the anonymous (folded, or in an envelope) ballot is placed in the ballot box. There can be multiple ballot boxes if there are multiple different elections at the same time, e.g. local / national / Europarl.
AFTER the voting is officially over, the vote counter volunteers count them. Watched over by anyone (e.g. political party fanatics) who wants to ensure that every vote is counted correctly.
The protocol is designed in such a way that most people of average intelligence can understand the procedure. On purpose!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday March 04 2017, @10:04PM
That's a stupid system, and they must have been absolute reckless morons for going ahead with it (or be highly confident that they could twist numbers to their side).
Take a transparent urn. Put two to ten people who hate each other to watch it (better these days, put a couple webcams too). People put their paper vote in an envelope, which they drop in the box.
If all the hateful people declare that they didn't see anyone cheat, open the box and make them count the pieces of paper together, as many times as it takes to get them to agree on the numbers, in full view of cameras.
Publish results in newspapers and on the web so anyone can see that the reported numbers match the count.
Labor-intensive? Slow? Cost of democracy. Dictators are cheaper adn quick at telling you who won, if you prefer.
Didn't have to make anything up. That's how I vote in Backwards Western Europe.
(Score: 1) by DmT on Saturday March 04 2017, @10:49AM
"Countries who want to use computers for vote counting should build their own system from scratch."
Maybe they can use Mozilla OS, made from scratch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @11:27AM (1 child)
They'll poke and they'll rub at the wonderfully safe e-voting systems until there is a trump leading every european nation. This is the second wave of the attack that began with the Syrian refugee flood.
And nobody seems to care or notice.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday March 04 2017, @02:41PM
They'll poke and they'll rub "till it's YUUUUGE!!!"
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @01:02PM
Need more capitalism.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday March 04 2017, @05:44PM (2 children)
The U.S. Military showed everyone how an election can be run under even the most adverse conditions. Register everyone ahead of time, issue a photo ID. Allow enough time to get those details sorted out and settle disputes. Then on election day you put a clear plastic tub on a table in the middle of the room with a small hole cut in the top. ID is checked, ballots are handed out and marked secretly, then the voter puts the ballot into the tub and their finger is marked with the famous purple ink. When voting ends the tub is opened the ballots counted out in the open with any objections handled on the spot. Observers from all interested factions are permitted to be present from before the tub is put on the table until the final count is announced and are allowed to see everything except the actual marking of ballots by the voters.
We did this Iraq and Afghanistan. Note that we have never done anything so secure in the U.S. itself. We know how to do it, we still have too many Democrats in power to permit it here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @06:10PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/dog-registered-to-vote-thomas-tolbert_n_1314963.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/doggone-ridiculous-family-pet-in-california-is-sent-voter-registration-form_102016 [thedailysheeple.com]
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/dogs-and-the-dead-get-voter-registration-forms/ [seattletimes.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 05 2017, @05:54AM
Your method is good as long as the election officials, the military in your example, are impartial. The weak point is the ID part. The right wing government here was set on repressing votes from voters who might not vote the right way, which is the right wing way. They almost got my wife. She's always used her maiden name to vote, as her ID is in that name, along with some bills. We checked online that she was correctly registered and the report was that she was. On voting day it turned out that she was registered in her married name, with all her ID in her maiden name. Luckily it was quiet at the polling station and the returning officer was willing and after an hour of arguing on the phone to Ottawa, she got to vote.
Control the registration and ID requirements and you can repress voters such as my wife who is a minority who is more likely not to vote right.