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

[Justus Römeth]

How do you make sure in electronic, non-secret voting that people do not
get pressured to vote a certain way (think of Neighbourhood, religious
comunities, spouses, parents, employers, ...)? This alone makes it
impractical for me for binding decisions.

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Marko Mitrovic <
marko.mitrovic at piratskapartija.com> wrote:

> Good point about adding votes of people who haven't voted, that is big
> flaw in my idea. Some other failsafes would be needed to address that.
>
> Still, coming from country where fair share of elections in it's history
> have been rigged in one way or another, I simply point out that traditional
> systems are far and away from bulletproof if someone upstairs wants to
> influence vote.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  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
>>
>>
>> > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
>> >   Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
>> > ____________________________________________________
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>>
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>>
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Andy Halsall
>> Campaigns Officer
>> Pirate Party UK
>> +44 (0) 7505111705
>>
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