"Ronaldson refused to table any documents relating to the case, stating that publishing the source code could lead to the EasyCount software being hacked. "In relation to the source code for the Senate counting system, I am advised that publication of the software could leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation," he said. "In addition, I am advised that the AEC classifies the relevant software as commercial-in-confidence as it also underpins the industrial and fee-for-service election counting systems."" [1]
Australia's federal senate vote count software is a Visual Basic application. It was developed when an upgrade to Windows 2000 broke the previous COBOL application. [2]
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/government-blocks-aec-source-co...
[2] http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-tech-behind-was-senate-rec...
Where they are wrong is in the assumption that keeping the source closed makes them safe from an attack.
However I do suspect that they engineered the VB application terribly. But them using VB should not automatically disqualify them from writing good code.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
[2] https://evoting.bismark.se/verifiable-electronic-voting/
We have hundreds of years of experience learning how to secure paper ballots. Complexity creates attack surface, and usually fails to provide all of the security features provided by a simple paper ballot that is hand counted in view of all parties.
And even if such a verification is impossible, I don't think we should reject incremental improvements just because the result is not yet perfect.
- A ridiculous example of "electronic voting" is presented - voters download ballot papers, fill them, then email or fax them back. This obviously sucks in multiple ways. Therefore, all kinds of "electronic voting" must be broken.
- Physical voting is very old, therefore it must have become solid and tamper-proof by now. This is not true. Physical voting is vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations, and they do happen on large scales.
The wrong claims continue forward. Just because that dude sounds smart doesn't mean his clip has any value.
The guy explicitly says physical voting can be compromised easily too, but it requires much more people and it will exhibit patterns such as location stats, violence or outbursts of whistleblowers and it is more or less contained unless the whole country is on it in which case - good for them anyway. While with e-voting, you could technically be a very small group of people and you can model your fake results to be statistically plausible much better with no patterns.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...
Even the simplest verifiable voting system is so complicated normal people will be confused how to use it and take advantage of it.
When people talk about electronic voting, typically this means the US-type of voting. And when someone talks about verifiable electronic voting, then they should start by making it clear that this is orders of magnitude more ambitious, it hasn't been deployed anywhere and Bulgaria will be the first country in the world to do it. This is a project of historical scale including the known practical difficulties with the current methods. It should not be advertised like a proven system working in EU and US like it is now. And like I said even if Bulgaria really adopts any sort of verifiable voting there will be so many confused people due to the nature of the process it will skew the results.
Finally, again as the video explains paper vote counting may not be perfect, but it does require more people to involved in the fraud. This is a very important point. Results are available per area and each party makes sure the sum makes sense at least from a small sample.
The election counting software is as open as it can be, without having open source. There is a clear specification that is published online on the actual mechanics of the voting process(e.g. how votes are translated into representatives). Records detailing the actual paper vote tallies, signed off by regional vote organizers and managers, are accessible in electronic and paper format. The committee handling the voting process encourages independent verification of the software's calculations.
It's far more likely(and often documented by journalists) that a party would commit voting fraud by purchasing votes or bribing vote organizers, rather than hacking the election software.
[1] http://www.mediapool.bg/mihail-konstantinov-podade-ostavka-k...