There’s a good article by Tim Lee at Ars Technica on the security issues in online elections. Here’s a snippet:
Take David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. He’s generally an advocate for the use of digital technology in elections. For example, he’s a staunch supporter of the controversial touchscreen ballot-marking devices used in Georgia elections. But like Adida, he argues we’re nowhere close to having technology to securely cast votes on the Internet. “I’ve not seen any evidence that we can do so verifiably, securely, and auditably,” Becker told Ars last month.
and
In June, we covered research by MIT computer scientist Michael Specter and the University of Michigan’s Alex Halderman that analyzed OmniBallot.
“We find that OmniBallot uses a simplistic approach to Internet voting that is vulnerable to vote manipulation by malware on the voter’s device and by insiders or other attackers who can compromise Democracy Live, Amazon, Google, or Cloudflare,” the researchers wrote. “Using OmniBallot for electronic ballot return represents a severe risk to election security and could allow attackers to alter election results without detection.”
The problem of software developers not knowing what they don’t know is not unique to software developers and it isn’t limited to online election security.
And don’t get me started on electronic voting machines.
Is there an actual desire for online elections?
Providing a scalable voting system is a really interesting engineering challenge.
The requirements are somewhat contradictory.
(a) Provide strong authentication for every person, and enforce authorization for eligible voters
(b) Provide anonymity for voters action — contradicting goal (a)
(c) Yet provide proof that the voters action in (b) followed a set of rules — contradicting goal (b)
(d) Keeping it simple for users
As a system design challenge, that is hard set of requirements.
Back in 2000 I was part of a team that produced an award-winning design and prototype for an electronic voting machine. It was never manufactured.
I have, however, noticed that some of the ideas we used are just now being picked up by people designing such machine.
‘Is there an actual desire for online elections?’
Certainly, among those who would like to fix elections.
Science Fiction may have gotten a lot of things wrong over the years. Interstellar travel being the most obvious. But the dangers of on-line elections were never made so clear as in Heinlein’s ‘Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, where the leaders of the rebel Lunar Colony use Mike the self-aware supercomputer to fix the voting to ensure the ‘right’ slate of candidates got elected to their Congress.
There is no reasonable excuse for not having voter ID if you have to be carded for who knows what else in life. There is no reasonable excuse to vote in person if people are willing to stand in line for hours in NYC for free food or in front of their favorite grocery store. There is no reasonable excuse not to clean up voter rolls. The only reason not to have any of these is to fix elections.
I had to chuckle at Tars’ comments. So true. Try getting a license and registration in SC.
We ask so little of people for their right to vote. It doesn’t seem too much to ask for them to show up or use an absentee ballot system……………….unless your goal is to commit fraud.
“There is no reasonable excuse for not having voter ID if you have to be carded for who knows what else in life.”
The fact that conservatives have looked for years to find the kind of fraud that would be stopped by ID and they cant find it is not a good excuse. Explain to me why I should spend a couple of hours of my time to acquire an ID card to fix a problem that exists only in your imagination. (Note that in just about every state that has tried to do voter ID cards they have not presented fraud cases because they cannot find any.)
There is no history of problems with mail in votes. The only reason to lie about it is to keep people from voting.
“We ask so little of people for their right to vote.”
Missing that poll tax arent you?
Steve
“There is no history of problems with mail in votes. The only reason to lie about it is to keep people from voting.”
It has never been tried on a massive scale. The states using it have worked out a number of issues. And apparently you forget NY………..this year. Speaking of a lie.
“Missing that poll tax aren’t you?”
The idiocy I’ve come to expect.
And it probably does not scale linearly. Very little does. I also see no reason there would be economies of scale.
5 states already do it. It will be done on a state by state basis. This is not a massive national system. Keeping people from voting is your primary goal. That is why you guys support voter ID cards. It’s all the same for you guys.
Steve
https://time.com/5688255/you-guys/
‘Missing that poll tax arent you?’
And which party was the one who instituted poll taxes and voting restrictions on blacks in the Deep South? It wasn’t the Republicans. BTW I made no mention of a poll tax or putting any other restriction on getting a card (including cost, I support it being free of charge) other than one be a bona fide citizen of this country, so don’t put words in my mouth.
‘Keeping people from voting is your primary goal. That is why you guys support voter ID cards. It’s all the same for you guys.’
I want to keep people who aren’t US citizens from voting. Including ones who don’t exist any more. Do you really want the dead and foreign nationals deciding our elections?
“And which party was the one who instituted poll taxes and voting restrictions on blacks in the Deep South? It wasn’t the Republicans.”
And the Deep South supports which party now? Same people, they just changed parties.
“I want to keep people who aren’t US citizens from voting. Including ones who don’t exist any more. Do you really want the dead and foreign nationals deciding our elections?”
Your party claims that millions of illegals are voting, but you cant find any. You have spent millions of our tax dollars looking and cant find any. I would hope that the name Kobach is familiar. Since they dont exist there must be another purpose for the ID cards. Dead people? Well studied. A spouse dies, usually the husband. The widow receives a ballot. She votes the way she knows how her husband would have voted. ID card would not stop that.
Steve