[pp.int.general] Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based on Web service standards

[Antonio Garcia]

Marco,

Being able to verify that ones own vote has been counted is only a VERY SMALL part of what is needed to guarantee the procedural integrity of an electoral process.

At the end of an election... those in charge can easily know who has really voted and who not. While those that have voted may or may not verify their vote integrity... one thing is sure... those that have not voted will not verify anything, nor have the codes to do so if they wanted. If someone fakes a vote on their behalf... all you can think about is that you expected the participation to be less.

When you vote phisically in a polling station... you vote surrounded by neighbours that know you, more or less, you have to show your ID Card and the picture on it should more or less match you actual facial look, if you are reduced as an identity to a digital hash code... anyone aware of that code can vote as if he were you, nobody checks anything.

It is far more difficult to get a group of people to a polling boot to cast the vote you want... than to collect voter ID hashes and have them all cast the vote you want, specially if you are in charge of running the computerized system. The one you wanted so badly because you knew it would allow you to cheat big scale.


Antonio.
PP-ES 

Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:12:23 +0200
From: marko.mitrovic at piratskapartija.com
To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based on Web service standards

Traditional voting systems are very easy to rig if ones in power have desire to do so. Digitalized system offers more protection, IMO.

I'll put aside hacking vulnerabilities from my example as they are the same as rigging traditional voting. But digital voting offers voter a chance to check was his vote stolen or not. How? Simple. When voting you get a secret code that is connected to your vote and you can at any time see is choice same in the central system. As everything is anonymous, having that code would not be able to show who voted what, but only give possibility to check regularity of single vote for one who knows what it should be.


Granted, this security system could also be implemented with traditional voting where you would get that code on paper and take it home with yourself, and everything would remain anonymous as no one knows who used which ballot. But this would probably take too much work and entering data into computers, so digital system would be better suited for this.


On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com> wrote:





Most important... for it to be verifiably tamperproof, not only technically, but also from the social engineering point of view.

If we can not have an easy way to verify the election has not been rigged, then we´d better stick to less ´practical´ways of voting that offer more guarantees or at least make tampering way more expensive.


Computers and computerised procedures are too easy to manipulate.


Antonio.
PP-ES

From: a.halsall at pirateparty.org.uk

To: rms at gnu.org; pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:48:02 +0100

Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based on	Web service standards

On Friday 13 July 2012 01:19:45 Richard Stallman wrote:
>     There is nothing "100% secure-proofed" in a world where we can't even

>     decide if we're living in the matrix.
> 
> The question is not whether it is "100% secure-proofed".
> The question is whether it is grossly rotten or not.
> 
> For traditional voting systems, we have some idea of how

> vulnerable they are -- from simple experience.  For new proposed
> computerized systems, we don't have experience to go by.
> They are surely less than 100% reliable, but are they
> less than 10% reliable?  We don't know, and actually using

> them gives us little information, since we cannot check
> the official results they give.
 
For me it has always been a question as to the benefits of computerised voting.
 
What problems are we trying to solve? Participation? Speed of getting a result? 

> 
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org

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>   Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
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