Comment by specialist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by specialist | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm utterly opposed to electronic ballots. No touchcreens, no email voting, no internet voting. Elections with electronic ballots (records) cannot be audited. Nor can the voter's privacy be protected. [1]

That said, in my opinion, Clint Curtis is not a credible witness. What he claims is certainly plausible. But he doesn't have the technical chops to pull it off.

For something more reality-based, check out voteraction's lawsuit in New Mexico. http://voteraction.org/legalaction

VoterAction proved that Kerry won NM in 2004. What happened in NM certainly happened elsewhere. Especially Ohio, which had so much going on in so many directions, there's no way to summarize other than to say "death by a thousand cuts".

Briefly, in NM, spanish language touchscreens did not count votes cast for Kerry. Further, "faulty" storage devices (memory cards) were sent to back vendor HQ to be fixed, totally mooting the chain of custody, etc.

The whole election integrity thing is like a jumping down the rabbit hole. Things are so ridiculous, it's hard to believe. And when you try to explain to people what's happened, you're dismissed as a "sweaty paranoid kook" (that's a quote).

Speaking for myself, I used to think that I mail my ballot and it gets counted, what could be more simple? The more I learned, the more my confidence was shaken.

I could go on and on and on about this topic...

[1] Yes, I've studied the crypto proposals. They're included. Briefly, crypto schemes rely on a secure one-way hash to hide your ballot in the herd of ballots. Alas, US elections are administered per precincts (1-1000 voters) and typically have a dozen or more issues per ballots. Meaning combinatorially there's no way to hide an individual's ballot. Crypto works for simple ballots with thousands of voters.

Electronic ballots, well implemented (in the open) and well administered would actually be the absolutely most secure and tamper-proof system at the local level, because the computer has no inherent reason to miscount, unlike the people who volunteer to be poll workers who are often the most partisan voters of all.

Of course such a system will never be implemented because doing so requires the cooperation of those in power including those who stand to lose from such a change, so it is in the pile of things like real lobby reform that just about every citizen (who isn't a lobbyist or directly benefiting from the corruption) can agree should happen but never will.

In Russia, there are ballot boxes that automatically count ballots. No fancy technology here - they just scan ballot, detect mark position, and after the end of the election day these ballot boxes just print resulting report.

These ballot boxes are installed on some small percent of polling stations(like 5% or 10% - I don't remember the exact number). But statistical analysis shows that electoral fraud is commited considerably less often on such polling stations. I don't know, whether it is actually more difficult to cheat on such stations(at least there is a physical limitation - you can't put more than one ballot at a time, because it is needed to be scanned, - as opposed to normal ballot box where you can easily put 10-20 ballots at once), or whether they decided to install such automated boxes on polling stations where they had no intention to commit fraud. But my point is: 1) "Paper-voting" is no guarantee of fair elections. 2) Sometimes "hi-tech" may even help you, if you use it properly.

You make a fair point about electronic voting(and I wholeheartedly agree with you), but it looks like you overestimate the reliability of old-fashioned methods.

To summarize, I'm calling you "not-enough-paranoid kook". :)

I believe you're describing the mark sense style ballot scanners. Because you still have a paper ballot, they are not electronic ballots. (Apologies for not being more clear.)

http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/optical/

I agree with your point, and only would add that the consensus among the election integrity experts is that poll-based ballot scanners which tally onsite immediately after the polls close are the most correct answer. This system has the lowest error rate. It is the easiest to audit (eg conduct a manual recount). Tampering with the results would be the most difficult (largest attack surface area).

The crucial trait of paper ballots cast and tabulated at poll sites is that such as system CAN be done correctly. Meaning enable the public vote count while ensuring the secret ballot. No electronic ballot system can make those guarantees, under any circumstances.

PS- I worked as a poll judge and poll inspector for a handful of elections. The jurisdiction where I reside had the same system as you described. It worked fabulously well. It was cheap. We've since moved to all postal ballots (vote by mail). Central count is a sausage factory. I fought against the transition, lost but was able to get some concessions, such as improved accounting (ballot processing) procedures.

There are cryptographic voting protocols that don't use combinatorial approaches like the one you describe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com