Your vote counts (Cryptographic Voting System)
wombat-voting.com
wombat-voting.com
Step one: Public list of every single polling location.
Step two: Communication to the public that observers are freely admitted. Post a notice that some extra women will be needed in some areas since some Muslim female voters only identify themselves to women.
Step three: Public voters list that show who in the county is eligible to vote.
Step four: Communicate the polling day well in advance. Hire people from the local community to handle the actual taking of ballots.
Step five: Polling day. Starts off with every observer verifying that the serial numbered ballot box is empty. This happens for every box. Person walks in. Every observer increments the number of total people coming in. Person identifies themselves at the registration table with government ID and as a backup, utility bills or statements of note from public members for the homeless (A priest could verify that a homeless person lives in the area, for example. In some places the homeless do not even need to be verified), every observer crosses that person off their own copy of the list. If the person is a female Muslim, only women observers get to verify the identity of the voter. The voter then gets a piece of paper with the options clearly printed in large print and goes to a private place that has a poster that shows how to fill out the ballot. The voter puts an X by the person they wish to vote for. Folds the ballot and brings it to the ballot box. The observers see that the voter put the vote in the ballot box. Once the box is full, it is sealed with a tape that matches the serial number of the box and is left in open view to observers until it is time to open them and count them.
It is now known that how many votes is in each box, how many people voted, and the total number of votes for each candidate all with open access to Observers from the public (but more usually, the political parties).
How fucking complicated is that? Paper, pens, ballots, observers meanwhile we satisfy the only possible complaint (Covered Muslim women) while never ever having allegations of ballot stuffing. The only allegation that comes every now and then is the homeless vote, but it really doesn't matter in the grand picture.
Do we have other problems? Sure, of course, yeah. But things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocall_scandal happen everywhere and if the public were more informed to our process then they wouldn't happen at all. You can always call elections Canada to verify a polling station relocation.
Keep computers out of voting. I want every vote counted by humans. Not just paper ballot receipts held to check in case of allegations of voter fraud. No. Observers and humans do the counting. I don't see the point of public encrypted votes.
Then you have to trust these humans to count accurately. Many people don't.
I will trust this system of humans counting any day over a sum function in a database implemented by a private company with their own agenda
How about over an open source one? I have occationally thought of starting a kickstarter for an open-source voting system. It would be completely open- even down to choosing an open-source processor, and completely and transparently audited.
Source code will never be transparent to anyone but programmers.
You don't have to trust a proprietary sum function. That is what crypto voting is about.
When the entire process is analog I (and everyone else) can transparently verify what is going on. From I submit my vote to it is counted so many people are involved from all political parties that cheating becomes virtually impossible.
Once you start to digitize the process you loose transparency completely. I can not see what is going on. The counting is computerized. I have to place trust in however implemented the algorithm. Also since I don't know much about crypto I even have to place trust in the guy telling me he did it right.
I loose my ability to verify that the process is running untampered...and I'm a clever guy. I know CS and math and what not. Imagine the alienation of common people without IT education
Voting is just one of those things that should not be computerized - there is no benefit. The current model is even costless since the people involved in the administration of votes and counting are volunteers (at least in DK).
Also when there are reports of voter fraud it's really difficult to figure out who cheated and in which regions/districts. You can't tell by the ballots (pieces of paper) if they got there legitimately.
Electronic voting, if done right, should be a lot safer than a paper ballot system.
This is because - among other things - that the system is transparent to everyone involved.
You are trying to fix a problem which don't exist - and you are fixing it the wrong way. E-voting opens up a huge amount of possibilities of cheating and worst of all it is going to be even more difficult to find out when it happens.
Worst of all the entire process will end to be transparent to the layman...
I suspect it might have the added benefit of putting some of the partisans in the same room and making them work together. It's hard to vilify someone to their face, and/or when you are working with them for the entire day.
As for the convenience factor. If we are truly to govern ourselves, surely that endeavor merits a bit of time and effort. To borrow an aphorism, "Penny wise, pound foolish".
We should be sure to make time for people to engage in the process, and to ensure to their satisfaction that it is fair.
1. I show up before the polls open, sign myself in, and have the opportunity to look inside each of the ballot boxes. Once I (and other people from other parties doing this) all agree they're empty, the boxes are taped up and the polls open.
2. Over the course of the day, people come and go and vote. At any time, I can continue to be sitting and walking around the room supervising things.
3. At the end of the day (when the polls close) the deputy returning officer closes the doors, leaving only the election workers and any observers inside the room. At that point we (the DRO and the scrutineers) go from table to table verifying that the tape is intact, cutting it open, dumping the pile of ballots on the table, and verifying that the box is empty.
4. The clerks for each poll count the ballots. It's rare for there to be disagreements on who a vote should count for (all ballots look like http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=yth..., with that circle on the right being about an inch in diameter), thought it happens. When it does, we (the representatives of the parties) discuss who we think the vote was for, but ultimately the poll clerk decides. Generally one of the partisan observers objects to this, which his noted in the log.
5. Once all the ballots are counted, the poll clerks fill out a mathematical worksheet to make sure all the numbers (ballots counted, electors checked off, unused ballots, and ballot stubs) match. About half the time these numbers don't, so we recount everything a few times until they do.
5. Each partisan representative gets a carbon copy of the official return form (specifying the result of the poll), and witnesses the DRO calling the results into the regional office.
6. Everything is packaged up on a per-poll basis (used and unused ballots, paperwork, etc.) into a nested series of plastic envelopes, which everyone signs along the seals. These are kept for a few years for auditing.
One of the main benefits of this system is that it's dead-simple, and the counting can be explained to anyone - which is something that many proponents of cryptographic voting don't sufficiently take into account. As for making ti difficult to trace back where fraud took place, I'd say that's almost a selling point. If you could work backwards to exactly where someone faked something, it seems like it would be only a small step further to be able to work out who people individually for.
It's an awfully sticky situation, because the A (availability) in the CIA principle is so critical in elections, where it typically is compromised the most in encryption schemes. (i.e. Quantum Key Distribution ensures that Eve can't listen in on communication, but doesn't do much to stop Eve from making communication impossible).
We don't "need" computers for preparing office documents either, but they sure come in handy. The system you are describing is not perfect and it's misguided to reject suggested improvements out of hand, just because they involve computers. An open, well-designed electronic system can offer mathematical certainty that votes are well formed and well counted (no uncertain marks on the ballot, no miscommunication and mistakes among tired workers at the end of a long day), while vastly reducing costs and human effort.
Large scale voting fraud on pen and paper systems is probably very hard, since you need to bribe a lot of people.
For a large scale attack on computer based voting, you would need to bribe way less people.
If you can proof to yourself after the election that your correct vote went into the system, you can proof this to other people too. "end-to-end verifiable" sounds good at the beginning but makes buying votes possible.
F*ups are just more likely while doing computer based voting.
While paper and pen voting is expensive, it is for sure something I am willing to pay for.
The receipt doesn't prove who you voted for, just that the associated vote was counted.
>every person is able to fully understand what is happening. Additionally you do not need to have a strong trust in the implementation of the cryptography
Are you sure you fully understand what is happening with paper based systems? You don't know which people looked at your vote, who they reported to, how the votes were summed up locally, how the information was transmitted to be centralized, who handled this info and how they made their decisions etc. It's actually much easier to understand and trust an open-source computer system than the mesh of social institutions, obscure regulations and personal idiosyncrasies that make the paper systems run. And you do trust your entire wealth to cryptography each time you make an online purchase, you know.
>For a large scale attack on computer based voting, you would need to bribe way less people
No amount of bribes will break cryptography, and proof that the system worked correctly is easy to supply by opening up the machines and software for public inspection. By contrast, we'll never know what, for instance, half a dozen election officials may have discussed in a tiny room (Florida 2000, Iowa 2012) and how they arrived at their decisions.
About understanding what is happening, I have to say: No, I do not know every detail on how we do it in Germany. But I would say that I have a pretty good overview and trust in the system. We had minor election related scandals, but never on a larger scale. Everything happens under the eyes of many. Those many consist of volunteer. When I go to vote, I know some of them personally. If somebody does not know how our system works, it is at least possible for him/her to find out and fully understand. There are some complains about our system, but none are about the risk of large scale fraud.
I don't know much about on how you do it in the US. I heard that it is more complicated than ours, and that using a computer would help a lot. But as I said, I would prefer to get the job done manually. It is possible. It worked before.
About online shopping. It is a trade-off.
I know I should not trust my computer. I know the current state of how we use ssl and our trust in different CAs is pretty bad. But I am still doing it, since I hate to go shopping in real live. For me it would be much more risky to get into my car and drive to a shop. I would not want to trust my computer and the current state of how we use crypto with everything in any case.
I was more about bribing people to make mistakes during the implementation. And do you know for sure that there is not yet a quantum computer in some kids basement? :)
In some cases like "xor" with a random key, you can proof that the crypto is unbreakable. But the way people use it is often faulty. There are certain requirements that apply to the key and without them, the method is not secure any more. In other cases like RSA, there is no real proof that it is working. It is hard to proof that nobody will figure out an highly efficient way to do prime factorization. All we know is that many people tried and failed.
Public inspection of those computers is not really possible. How do you trust the hardware? It is more easy to show that something does something. But it is hard to proof that something is not doing something. We would use computers to do the calculations that prove that our votes are ok.. so we need to trust those machines again..
If the plain text does not match the cipher-text on the ballot printed in Step 2, the inconsistency is revealed and the voting machine is disqualified.
Otherwise, the ballot is consistent. The voter goes back to Step 2 to vote with another ballot (because an audited ballot cannot be used for voting).
So... how do you know that your current vote was recorded correctly? If auditing destroys your vote, then you have to go back and do it again, trusting that this time it will be correct. Since you'd have to go vote again, I doubt very many people would actually audit the results, so you could probably still sneak bad machines into the smaller and less techy areas of a country.
edit:
>A simple statistical calculation shows that very few audits (of about 1-2% of the votes) suffice for catching a cheating (or bogus) machine.
Seriously? You think 1-2% of voters will press the audit button and perform their own side decryption process with a trusted device?
Fraudsters will leave big cities untouched so people's choice win by close margin and therefore they can't complain about the voting system, inflating ballots everywhere else, sometimes seeing statistically improbable 80% or 90% votes favoring the surprisingly elected incumbent candidate.
Happens in both sides of the pond...
Otherwise your Friendly Neighborhood Thug can drop by the day before the election and kindly ask everybody to vote B. He'll come back the day after the election to check the receipts and punish those who didn't vote the right way.
I think the key to something like this ever taking off at the national level is smaller progressive towns impelementing it locally and people eventually demanding it.
You don't get any receipt to check later (aside from the one that proves you voted, because voting is mandatory), and yet I don't remember the population ever distrusting the electronic system.
TV covers the election with up-to-the-minute results as the ballots are closed, and the winner is known on the same day, which is a nice plus.