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Hey everyone! Sorry I've been quiet for so long.
The June 7th primary in California is rapidly approaching and I've been involved in a project to create an international standard for secure electronic voting. The design work is all done and our first application of the technology is to use it to detect and uncover fraud, specifically voting machine tampering. This project is happening in phases. The first phase happens June 7th. We will be conducting an audit of the primary, effectively a parallel election.
The main goal of phase one is actually to shake out the tech make sure it's as bug free as possible and also that the blockchain that supports this tech can scale to meet the demands of a real election.
If you're interested in novel ways of using technology to help secure elections we could really use your help, because it's crunch time now.
First of all, if you live in California, we could use boots on the ground. Some of our volunteers and probably a sizable fraction of the voters will be technically illiterate. We need people on hand who can quickly troubleshoot the hardware, reboot devices and even just demonstrate the tech and walk people through the process if needs be. We've tried to make it as simple as possible. Literally, scan a QR code and press 1 button corresponding to your choice of candidate. But as simple as we've made it the process could still be confusing to some especially in the heat of the moment. If you're interested in helping out by being boots on the ground for us go here... https://www.democracycounts.org or here https://www.facebook.com/notes/election-justice-usa/independent-citizens-election-audit-to-be-conducted-in-select-precincts-in-calif/889795561147138 You can contact Dawn on facebook to be put directly into the volunteer pipeline.
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Secondly, over the course of the weekend we will be conducting a "dry run" poll. The purpose of this is just to test the software on the widest range of devices possible. If you have an android or iOS phone, you just download the software and give it a try. Feedback on the install process, the UI, etc would all be very helpful. Details will be made available on our technical discussion page sometime in the next 24 to 48hrs. https://nxtforum.org/index.php?topic=11226.0;all
Thirdly, we are using the NXT blockchain for this. There are presently a lack of full nodes with open APIs. So even just downloading a full NXT node and running it for the duration of the primary (takes a few days to sync the blockchain), would be a huge help because it adds nodes to the network making it much harder to attack. You can download the software from here... https://nxt.org/ and if you want to you can get a recent blockchain snapshot (which speeds up the process of getting in sync with the network) from here... http://www.peerexplorer.com/#Download
Thank you everyone!
(Score: 1, Troll) by devlux on Saturday June 04 2016, @04:49AM
No we aren't trying to make water not wet.
You mistake the ability of allowing the voter to be assured that their vote was part of the official count as inviolable proof that this voter is the person who voted this way.
Only the voter knows that for sure and they have no proof of vote beyond a hand written number, they could just as easily have chosen any other random number since the information is made public in near real time.
We certainly do have a method of establishing how many ballots were inserted between your vote and mine. First there is a roll that is completely offline which needs to correspond 1:1 with cast votes in overall count. If it does not, then what we have is proof of fraud. Secondly the blockchain itself is timestamped. The contents are public and known. Someone stuffing ballots is going to first need to have access to the id numbers which is not an impossible task, but it is a damned hard one. Then they will also need to cast ballots, and these ballots are all timestamped by a series of independent witness nodes. So we know the rate because we can see it.
Think about what you're saying for a moment... I have attached to my home a watthour meter. Anyone standing in front of the meter can see the rate at which my house is drawing current. If that meter suddenly starts spinning faster, then you know for a fact that something is drawing more power. It might be MY air conditioner, or it might be that my neighbor has dropped a line between my house and his and is charging his tesla. But the fact is the meter is suddenly spinning faster and someone should investigate. There is no way to even know this with a paper ballot.
As for dead people voting etc, that isn't a problem that can be solved with technology. In fact the only way to solve it that I'm aware of is to make sure that precincts are small enough that the election judges know all the folks by name. If Grandpa Jones has been dead for 10 years but suddenly shows up in the election rolls whether he votes or not, it really ought to be something the election judge is able to catch or he can't be doing his job properly. I realize that is not how things are done right now. But it is the way things were intended to be by our founding fathers and it's inarguably the right way of doing things. Anything else such as "real id", "voter id" etc, is just to compensate for the fact that folks have forgotten how to be neighborly anymore. The real solution is to get to know all the folks who live nearby, then volunteer in your local voting precinct.
You state that we are somehow being "simple" and overly trusting.
In fact we are assuming at all times that the system is in enemy hands. However we also recognize that the only thing we can do is use good solid technology to fix problems introduced by the use of weak and flimsy tech. The fact that technology is being used at all is a reflection of the will of the people. May as well make it the best tech we possibly can.
All the other problems, are more or less down to the people.
Which brings up an important point.
Your low tech proposal actually introduces multiple points of failure and introduces untraceable absolute fraud.
The primary one is that of ballots disappearing or being changed, ex post facto.
Perhaps not in the original count, but if anyone disputes the results of the initial count and triggers a recount then there is ample opportunity for an enterprising individual to obtain any result that they desire, simply by hauling in a (p)re-stuffed ballot box.
Secondly, your system can fail even in the original count because you are relying on people reading paper, if they cannot establish the marks on the paper then they could add a count to the wrong choice, or maybe discard what would otherwise be a legitimate vote.
That's also assuming that all vote counters are good actors. If you have a bad actor then they can simply write down whatever option they wish on the tally, there is no way to say one way or the other.
Ok so let's add multiple eyes. What's to stop the multiple eyes colluding? Or even worse whats to stop multiple opposed sets of eyes from deriving different information from the same ballot. Truthfully speaking people are deeply flawed, they see only what they want to see, no more, no less. This is a very mechanical task and by that virtue it is one best left up to machines.
This is because you could have an entire table of people a mile long all doing hot potato and counting one ballot at a time. At some point, someone has to come along and certify the election results. There will never be complete agreement on a count with more than a small handful of counters, so who is the election certification person supposed to believe? Do we just do m of n, the greatest number of counters in agreement wins? What if all the counters in agreement are from the same political party? What if no one is in agreement, shall we just take an average?
Your solution is fails, because this is a complex problem and it's rare that there are simple solutions to complex problems especially when people are involved.
With the technical solution, you don't need a degree in math. You just need to understand that there are types of cryptography which can be used to verify signatures and there are math functions that will generate a completely unique number if the source material differs by even a single byte of information.
People do understand this intuitively.
You can sign for a purchase with a PIN, and the box you bought has a tamper proof seal. You can choose to keep the receipt or discard it. Nothing difficult to understand there at all. Also unlike current solutions which are all closed, in our case if you happen to have the background knowledge , or trust someone who does have the necessary background, you can easily verify every stage of the process. Doing that is not possible in any current system.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday June 04 2016, @05:53AM
In a paper election, you prevent pre-stuffing by checking that the ballot box is empty before use.
You prevent counting fraud by having two people count the ballots. Both partizan and non-partizan observers make sure things are counted correctly; and the ballots are not tampered with.
You prevent post-stuffing buy sealing the box and signing the seal.
Yes, you seal the box after counting.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Saturday June 04 2016, @06:19AM
Come on, you guys were mostly all around to remember the joy that was the 2000 Presidential Election, weren't you?
That system works ok until there is a recount, or a dispute as to what the marks on the paper actually mean, or someone cuts off your tamper proof seal, swaps the ballots inside with ballots for a friend, then sticks a new seal on, or the sealed ballot box disappears all together.
Any place you involve people in a mechanical process you introduce human fatigue and error unnecessarily.
Adding more people to a mechanical process just increases the chance for human errors to occur.
Show me a human who can count ballots more accurately than a well configured and maintained machine, let's not even worry about speed here, just accuracy.
Vote counting is a mechanical process. If you're worried about the counting machine being tampered with, you build better locks around it and perhaps consider building a tamper proof counter.
Yet if you can certify that cast ballots are authentic and counted correctly, then the only place left to munge the system is in allowing unauthorized voters to be voting and that's why we have to also push for voter registration rolls and smaller voting precincts.
As an aside, if you're dead set on using dead trees for this. There is a paper based audit available doing the same thing we are (auditing the primary).
It's in the facebook page I linked in the original article. So even if you want to be obstinate and not get involved in the Democracy Counts project, at least get involved in something. :)
I need to make this my last post on soylent for a few days, arguing the points ain't getting the work done. I hope I've shown you that there is a right way to do something and if not I hope I've showed that you can at least do something.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday June 04 2016, @06:36AM
Up in Canada we were flabbergasted that it took you guys a month to count ballots.
We don't have as many different votes going on at the same time, so are able to use simple paper ballots marked with a pencil. Except for close races, all of the ballots are counted within about 3 hours.
The voter is able to review the ballot and make sure it is properly marked (and free of stray marks). If there is a problem, they can request a new ballot.
My impression of the 2000 election fiasco is that voters were not able to verify that their ballot was properly cast. They were not able to request a new ballot if they only dimpled the paper.
Your electronic proposal has the same problem: the voter is not able to determine if the computer casts the correct vote. Sure they get a verification code; but the computer may have already broadcast that same code a minute ago, and instead broadcasts a different code. As far as I can tell, the only way to make sure the vote is cast correctly is a human-readable paper trail.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Saturday June 04 2016, @08:32AM
Question, why was my above comment modded troll?
I'm genuinely curious as to what was said there that warranted that mod?
I've never had a troll mod before and furthermore it's is one of the least troll like post I've ever made,
Would whomever made the mod please explain the thought process behind it?
Thanks!
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday June 04 2016, @05:11PM
I did not mod that post a Troll, but have studied trolling theory after being accused of being a troll myself.
Essentially, there is enough wrong with your post that somebody decided your were being deliberately obtuse.
-Trolling the web: a guide [urban75.com]
By Steve Spumante
(Score: 2) by devlux on Sunday June 05 2016, @12:41AM
Guess I just don't see anything wrong with the post. Care to clarify on what you see as being wrong or trollish so that I can watch out for it in the future?
Thanks!
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday June 05 2016, @01:29AM
I already responded to the part I had specific knowledge in (because I have worked in a previous election).
You mostly ignored the central point of the post you were responding to (simply saying they were wrong because they have to write down the code manually).
I am not sure if you are familiar with the Talk the DRM analogy [craphound.com] was referring to. (Note: I was thinking the receipt could give out several dummy codes...but then how does the voter know which one is the correct one?)
Then you start building strawmen with dead people voting, and claiming that counting is hard.
I am not sure you understand how many people actually count the ballots in Canada. Ridings are broken up into polls of less than about 500 people. Each poll gets 2 (paid) people to watch the box all day and count the votes before sealing it. When I was counting, two ballots got stuck together, and we still finished counting in less than 2 hours. (We knew 1 ballot was not counted because they have serial numbers (that are torn off when the ballot is given out).)
It may be expensive to employ that many people, but that is the price of democracy.