E-voting

[jack]

Via emperor http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30976610

I wish articles wouldn't conflate every sort of e-voting. I have very different views of:

1. MPs allowed to vote in absentia -- since the votes aren't private, risk of shenanigans seem a lot lot lower, basically a good idea.

2. Jumping straight to allowing remote electronic voting without even a cursory look-over by a security expert -- I have no idea why anyone even contemplates this it seems criminally irresponsible. We have a pretty good voting system, let's not destroy it on a whim?

(Likewise, using electronic voting machines in polling stations produced by partisan companies, with no oversight from all parties or election officials, that are trivially hackable, seemed an obviously bad idea, I don't know how it happened.)

(Although, I would be interested to see what the possible trade-offs were, if it were designed by somebody competent.)

3. Investigating ways of using electronic vote counting in polling stations -- extreme caution, but possibly worth investigating, because the convenience is definitely something people want, and it would be good to have actual pros and cons, not just "NO". I agree there are lots of risks and I'm not eager to explore it, especially if it's conflated with #2. But it seems like you could make machines which were sufficiently simple they couldn't boot off SD cards, and had oversight from representatives from all parties (as elections do currently), and it might be worth trying??

Comments

[ciphergoth]

If the votes are on paper, there are fairly secure ways to do the counting electronically, because it's easy to check random batches of 100 votes to confirm the count that the machines report.

[andrewducker]

Yup.

The current system works well.

And even things like STV, which we use machines to count in the local elections in Scotland, are filled in using pencil/paper, which makes recounts and checking really easy.

[jack]

Good point, thanks!

[seekingferret]

Depends on whether or not you feel we have a pretty good voting system or not. In America a lot of people are concerned that the current system is not fair to some historically disadvantaged groups, and so there is pressure to move quickly on some kinds of change to improve their access. Also, in America, there is a lot of money to be made selling election systems to politicians, so...

[jack]

Yeah, I meant in the UK, it seems better than average, not suffering from some of the horrible problems America has had (and in other places where things are even worse). I agree America's system needs improvement -- though as you say, it seems the improvements actually OFFERED usually make things worse :(

[(Anonymous)]

I have previously said I think that if you want votes to be counted automatically, you should feed ballot papers into mechanical collators. http://fanf.livejournal.com/120445.html

[ceb]

Oversight for electronic in polling stations could be a problem; at the moment all the votes are counted in one place so even if you're a lone independent you can be in that place and get a good idea of whether everything is going to plan. There are 30ish? polling stations in Cambridge though, it would be a much harder job to get appropriate oversight for them all, even if we could think of a way of doing it that didn't disrupt voters or identify individual votes.

[catyak]

Paper votes do provide a positive audit trail once the votes have been cast, although the lead-up is wide open to abuse, as observers from countries where vote-rigging is rife have pointed out. I am opposed to postal votes being freely available because I don't believe there are enough checks on the process - there have been a few low-level cases of fraudulent postal votes but no widespread conspiracy to corrupt the whole system.

The procedure for what happens if you turn up to vote and discover that you have apparently already voted is interesting. Given that minimal ID is required to vote, it is quite possible for someone to try this in some places. What happens is that you get to vote again, presumably after showing ID, but they seal your vote in a marked envelope. If the count is close enough, they will go through the pile of ballot papers and identify the original one assigned to you, then compare it to how you voted on the one in the envelope, and adjust the count accordingly. While the ballots exist, they can actually identify how people voted, which is why they then burn them once the legal challenge period has passed.

There is no easy way to do this purely electronically - if the machine knows your ID then how do you know they've erased all the information at the end, and if it doesn't know your ID, how do they handle the imposter scenario? A lot of machines use punched-card technology, which does provide the temporary link between ID and votes

The US uses machines because of the complexity of their ballots. UK elections are normally only for one thing, although occasionally there's two, which are done with separate bits of paper of different colours. In the US you can be voting for everyone from President to assistant dog-catcher at the same time, with many different ballots on the same form. I've seen ballots a foot long, where it is necessary to punch holes to vote for candidates (who remembers the hanging chads?) and clearly something that complex would take far too long to count by hand, especially if a recount is required. I believe some states do it electronically but give you a printed receipt showing how you voted, I'd say this is not nearly as secure as having a physical input that could be checked on another set of machines or by hand if required.