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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Ballot security is a solved problem (but, sadly, I think DARPA knows this, which makes me wonder what’s really motivating this work):

Use paper ballots. Scan them at the polling place for fast electronic tally.

Audit a significantly significant random sample of the paper ballots after the election, and do a full recount if any discrepancy is found.

Prosecute people that violate chain of custody for the ballot boxes. (Give this power to a non-partisan authority.)

There are open problems around tampering with voter rolls; this is done both by state governments and foreign powers. We still need a scheme to make this more detectable (and to invalidate the election when it happens).

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Occasionally we hear about “found” ballot boxes especially around recount time. How do they get lost. Or what does it mean when they say they lost them (and found them). I’d imagine it’s more prevalent than we hear as it seems rather odd if they only disappeared and reappeared in contested elections.

Each voting machine could tally the number of votes but not the vote itself. The count is encrypted and only the governor has the key.

Imagine a very large mostly volunteer-run event that only runs once a year or so and where some fraction of the volunteers are running the event for the first time.

At the end of the day all the important equipment gets packed up, shipped somewhere, and unpacked.

But sometimes -- rarely, but sometimes -- some really important piece of equipment gets left behind at the event site or unpacked incorrectly at its new location.

I just described marathons, carnivals, and... voting.

In Germany, we also have paper based voting and yet, we do not have the issue that ballot boxes disappear. Everything and I mean literally everything is accounted for and if the numbers do not match up (e.g. less boxes of ballot boxes than before, or n(valid votes)+n(invalid votes)!=n(total votes) there is an immediate recount. No one leaves until shit is done, and if it gets too late everything is packed up, sealed and boxes counted.

The horror stories of the US are a failure of their system, not of paper voting.

Exactly. If chain of custody is broken, it's not in the pile. People from all sides of the electorate should be able to observe every box at all times if they wish to follow it.

Mail in voting is similarly exceptionally easy to game. Oops, lost 1% of that zip code... bummer...

As a European, it boggles my mind how there isn’t any for of proper verification on voters identity in many US states.

This is a feature not a bug. Fraud is rare, but barriers to minorities and the poor having say are a real concern.

I don’t really buy this. This is more an artifact of the US (insanely) not having any form of national ID.

Plenty of countries have no national photo ID. UK, Norway and Denmark to name three in EU.

What's so great about a national ID except more government control?

It’s not for you to buy. This is a well studied, well analyzed area because the GOP wants voter ID laws to reduce minorities and the poor at the polls.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-vote...

Oh I know that.

To be clear what I don’t buy is voter ID having a suppressive effect iff we had an actual national ID

Why don't minorities and poor have IDs?

Cause there's sizable opposition to government issued IDs.

IMO, it's bloody retarded that this feature is still non-present in the US, resulting in all the pseudo ids like driver's licenses and SSNs.

Not everyone has a car, and if you don’t have a car, then you probably don’t have a passport, and if you don’t have a car or passport, then you likely don’t have a valid photo ID.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-vote...

That's normal in New Zealand as well. I can vote with no form of ID.

Requiring voter ID disenfranchises marginalised and poor voters, who may not be able to obtain ID easily. I know several people who have no form of government issued ID.

It's different in countries like Germany and France, where compulsory national ID is a thing.

Rates of fraud and abuse are low enough that this isn't an issue. Technically I could go and vote in somebody else's name, and hope they also didn't vote, and I most likely wouldn't get caught. But if they did vote as well, then the double-vote would be noticed (people have have been caught casting multiple votes in the past) and would be investigated.

Marginalised and poor voters exist in Europe and they have an ID card like anybody else. Having yours done could be free, if you're so inclined.

Just because ID is free does not make it universally accessible.

If the office that hands out ID cards is only open 9-5 Mon-Fri, for example, a voter who must work during this time and can't afford to miss work may not be able to get ID.

The problem is that the system would be run by racist state governments who would construct the system in the worst possible way.

(Not a conjecture, this was actually evidence in one of the various voter ID lawsuits; the state government had constructed a table with impact assessments of various approaches, then picked the one with the worst impact)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk

I'm not sure what the laws are in NZ, but can a non-citizen vote in a NZ election? If noone checks for any sort if ID, how do they ensure that there isn't any fraud? In a democracy, I'm honestly not convinced that 'its not that big of a problem yet' is a sufficient answer

We don't need ID in the UK, just turn up.

While this is true, it's a little disingenuous with regards to safe elections.

In the UK you must pre-register for a single voting location, and then when you turn up to vote they cross your name off so you can't come in again.

Sure but getting on the electoral register (to my knowledge) requires no ID either. I think this is a big part as to why postal voting fraud happens.

It doesn't require ID but is verified against other records and against the electoral register in other regions, i.e. you can't register in two different places. When housemates have moved out I have received letters asking me to re-confirm who is living in the house for the electoral register.

> I think this is a big part as to why postal voting fraud happens.

It might happen, but it is exceptionally rare. The impact of introducing voter ID laws would cause a far larger decrease in election validity due to voter suppression than postal voting fraud causes.

You're really close.

Don't audit a sample. Audit all of the votes.

Sounds good, just get rid of the ballot box problems by scanning the paper ballot right after it's cast. Voting would go like this: wait in line, confirm your address, vote on paper, watch the person upload your vote, take your printed receipt confirmed the upload was received, leave. Security problem solved.

Uploading vote counts after each individual vote removes the secrecy of the vote.

Blockchain all the votes with layered encryption...

Top Level) General population can only verify their own votes

Mid Level) Counties can tally their county only

Low Level) States can tally up their states only

Ground Level) Federal government can tally up all votes.

The blockchain ledger will allow everyone to see votes without knowing individuals. To get name and location and other data, you need to be at a lower level.

Individuals can see their own vote, and who they voted for, right?

If that's the case, it would be evidence that an individual voted for a specific candidate. This is, essentially, proof for anyone who'd want to purchase votes.

If they can't see who they voted for, they'd need some alternative way to verify that their vote counted for the candidate they wanted to vote for, without actually disclosing who that candidate is. Which would add some complexity to the solution.

If the chain were public, individuals could look up their vote by the hash but would have no way of proving the hash was their vote.

You could also add a second layer of security here pretty easily. People would probably need to be given a printout with their hash on it. To avoid this receipt being proof, that receipt would include a large number of hashes with various voting combinations also shown. The voter knows which hash is his, but nobody else does. And he's free to claim whichever one he likes for himself.

To solve the issue of first voters (when there would be no other valid hashes for their printout) simply seed all candidates with a billion votes to start. Which hash is real and which is 'fake' is irrelevant since all that matters is the sum total of which we know 1 billion are to be removed.

How would that work? If they would get any hash that is not bound to them in any verifiable way, how does that prove to THEM that they are verifying their own vote?

Another complexity is ensuring there aren't superfluous votes. Everyone can verify their own, but what if there were several million "hacked" extra votes.

You'd want a system where each citizen receives an ID/key, and there is no way to who a particular ID/key voted for, but if you know your ID/key, you can look up whether you voted. This should deter anyone from voting in anyone else's name, since they'd be likely to be exposed if they did it at an impactful scale.

The only other way to forge votes would be to invent new people that don't really exist, or maybe piggyback on recently deceased people. These are both problems that should be fairly straightforward to address if you have decently efficient administrations keeping track of things.

The issue is verifying whether the system is broken or hacked, otherwise you wouldn't even need to verify your own vote.

> The only other way to forge votes would be to invent new people that don't really exist

Exactly.

> straightforward to address

The question is how? I don't think it's considered that straightforward in blockchain voting circles.

A simple way would be to use a public key ID that can be used to check if that key voted, and a private signing key. The list of all legitimate IDs is public (though not linked to identities). Anyone can see the total number of legitimate keys, and anyone can check to see how many of those keys voted, and verify that the number of voting keys from the national list is in fact equal to the global vote total. That same total and be cross-checked with the census and other sources of voting age population data.

This is a pretty easy one to solve since the number of votes is not privileged information. Simply publicly record the number of votes as each person goes into vote. This can be verified/observed by whoever wishes to do so. You could even require a large public display at each station. Pair that with a camera record that can also be verified. One person enters, the display should go up by one. And from there you have simple math:

The sums of the polling stations should equal the district.

The sums of the districts should equal the state.

The sums of the states should equal the nation.

I have to say it also makes me wonder what in the world darpa is thinking. Modern technology possible, somewhat trivially, elections that would be nearly impossible to fake in any way, shape, or form. And I'm certain this isn't exactly a secret to darpa.

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