- the threat model of a startup with only 2M of funding managing an asset (election outcome) that is worth far more
- the lack of verifiable proofs for individuals to see that their vote was handled correctly
- systems with known issues being deployed.
The idea isn't awful, the execution is.
Not really sure about that.
The way I understand, most of the inefficiencies in paper-based voting are actually features, that make the process a) verifiable and trustworthy to anyone with most basic education, and b) prohibitively expensive to attack at scale. All voting machines seem to do is to reduce either of those. I obviously cannot prove it, but I strongly suspect that the paper implementation is overall cheaper than any alternative electronic implementation comparable in trustworthiness and security guarantees.
Maybe when we'll have a colony in the Alpha Centauri system, then we can revisit electronic voting. Right now, there's no need for it.
"Scan this paper with the Foo app or enter your secret number on the website to reveal your voting receipt." its harder, but not that much harder.
> prohibitively expensive to attack at scale
Not sure about that. The existing system often gets voter turn out above 100%.
[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...
> In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots,
That's a mix of paper of machines, as well as a host of other problems
Vote buying is an issue without receipts. See tax cuts for the high income earners (right), welface increases (left), etc. If someone pays you $200 to vote for them, is that substantially different from a $200 tax cut or benefit increase?
You want to change 1% of paper votes? That means you need to buy enough materials to even create those fake votes, you need to pay off enough people to cast them, you need to spread them out geographically, you need to ensure no random person decides to sit and watch the ballot box all day, you need to ensure that not a single one of these people ever talk, etc...
Paper ballots can be cast on anything, run out of paper? Go to the corner store and buy more. Not enough pencils because of extreme turnout? Same thing. No worries about cryptographic proof, you can personally watch your ballot go into the box, and then sit there until they are counted and not let the thing out of your sight.
It's expensive because it makes breaking it that much more expensive. The manpower, the money, the time, and the chances to get caught all make paper voting extremely reliable, and it's something we as society have had a LONG time to refine and get right.
Fundamentally, voting is a hard problem that looks like an easy problem precisely because the incentives to break it are so high.
How many people in the country can correctly audit complicated cryptographic protocols? How many can fully audit a codebase like this? And how many of those do you think would instantly shut up if threatened with a lifetime of jail or death?
Have you ever seen the underhanded C contest? It's nearly impossible for seasoned developers to find the problems with some of those, in a contest where they KNOW for a fact that there is an exploit, and even sometimes what that exploit is trying to achieve.
I can make a complete guess at the number of people capable of auditing this in the US being less than 1000, and the number of people in that position willing to sacrifice everything to tell the world about their discoveries being basically zero.
But let's even ignore that, let's say that there are tens of thousands of capable engineers chomping at the bit to review this. How do you prove that code is what is running on your voting machine? How do you know the hardware is secure? If you come up with steps to fullproof verify, how many people will check it? How many people will be capable of checking their cryptographic proof (if the scheme has one).
This is voting, 1-2% can make all the difference, and if a bad actor can modify 1-2% in some key areas, they can swing the whole election.
Stick with paper checkmarks thrown into a ballot box, written on with pencils. Then every single person that is able to count can help "verify", they can guard that box all election day if they want, 1 or 100's of people can all do it, old, young, english speaking or otherwise.
We have a nearly perfect system right now, but nobody wants to use it, and I can't for the life of me see why.
Humans are perfectly capable of counting, and they don't mistake a half-filled bubble for "no vote", and aren't susceptible to changing 1% of votes at random or at the final tally. And it's not nearly as possible to trick or force hundreds or thousands of humans to help rig an election, compared to a handful of people at the final assembly line of that counting machine factory.
The more contentious the voting is, the more people can gather around and count along. And there isn't really a limit to how many can be a part of it, if it grows to be too large, additional work can be done to accommodate the extra people. Counting will take longer, but it will be that much more secure.
Hell, go ahead and throw a counting machine on there as well, but don't rely on it, and don't have it be the single source of truth, or only use humans in case of a "recount" or something.
In the past various forms of "vote for X or I will shoot" have happened. By having anonymous votes we ensure that everybody can say "I voted for X", and nobody will know they voted for Y.