Voting is one thing I don't think should ever be fully electronic. Hard to commit actions at scale with smaller paper ballots, in most places at least.
It might be theoretically possible to devise an electronic voting scheme that is reasonably secure against various threat models (possibly with slightly different tradeoffs than paper ballots), but so far, every scheme that has been used in practice seems to have been severely flawed.
Plus, even if such a "good" e-voting system existed, it would probably be almost impossible to explain to people how it works. With paper ballots, you can have people observe the process and verify that it was fair. With all the wild accusations of fraud that we have already, I don't want to know what the world would look like if people had to do operations on the blockchain or something to verify that votes were counted correctly.
In the US, we used to be able to tabulate votes in 1 day, fairly correctly, with little corruption. Where there were problems, we could manually audit quickly and effectively. Then we switched away from paper ballots to e-voting.
Let's also stop using electronic techonology for banking and do it manually because it's harder to commit actions at scale with physical bank notes.
This is a non sequitur, if we use it for banking (which is much more critical than voting), why is it a problem if we use electronic technology for voting?
Estonia has it and it's working well so far. Brazil has a complete different system and it's much more auditable and less prone to manipulation and vote output alteration from human error.
Edit: conclusion of the article is "lets switch back to paper because this system uses the internet". well, do you know that you can still have a 100% electronic voting system that - brace yourselves - don't use the internet? Take a look at Brazil's electronic ballots for example.
They aren't connected to the internet at all, everything is stored locally on a memory card that is collected by the authorities at the end of the voting period, then sent to Brasilia for counting at a special room where the machines that read the cards don't have access to the internet.
Unless you happen to own the company that makes the machines, or manages them, or operates a significant number of them, or counts the votes. And even if those people can't, the public opinion is that they can, and that's just as bad.
In the eternal words of DevOps Borat: "To make error is human. To propagate error to all server in automatic way is devops."[0]
Not everything in society has to be about maximum efficiency. Paper ballots aren't maximally efficient in terms of resources required to count, but has other desirable characteristics that we may prefer.
The Swiss e-voting system is currently being used in a trial in three (2.5 if you count the Swiss way) out of 20-odd cantons. It's real, but not deployed nationally yet. That doesn't change any of the arguments here, but it is context that I wish had been provided in the article.
They could also have mentioned that each time the system is tested, some serious security incident pops up, like [1]. Each vote counts and if a digital system cannot provide accuracy, then don't trust it at all. People wilm start with "but the system cannot lie" when in truth it did. The british postal office did that, and we know where that went...
Are there largely unsolved security issues with paper voting? Why can countries like Germany pull that normally off quite well (other than local ineptitude in Berlin, perhaps)?
Voting is a human trust problem. More people can understand voting with paper and pencil than computers. And this is mostly because everyone knows someone who's been ripped off online with no recourse. No one really trusts computers.
Pencil and paper solves the trust issue. And the issues of security around paper voting such as it's security, lots of guards, public counts etc, costing a bit more, are better understood than SSL, layer 1,2,3,4 securities, and verifiable systems.
The difference here is that they can do it with few people or alone, possibly hard do detect, and most importartly, at scale. Attacks on paper voting require many people in differet locations, can be re-counted, an they don't scale.
The idea with a "count" in a British election is that so many people from all the different parties are wandering around (both counting by hand and observing) that it's difficult to get up to any funny business.
There is obviously always a gap but I'm not aware of anything practical being pulled off with such a system
E-voting generally replaces tens of thousands of often randomly picked volunteers that watch both the containers with the votes and each other. Messing with that takes a lot more than just flipping a bit in software.
Considering my experience with anything digital made by (or for) Swiss government agencies, I can absolutely imagine that it's a horror show.
For example, we had a digital vaccination certificate application (before COVID, calm down tin foil hats). This application/website apparently had issues so bad that the government had no other option than to just close it down for good from one day to another. Essentially, f..d up beyond repair.
People couldn't even get their data out it anymore. It now seems that data rescue might be possible "soon"... 2.5 years after the platform has been taken down.
Basically, everything IT our government touches is doomed ;)
Yep, that pretty much mirrors my own experience as well, and I am also Swiss.
Sadly, IT companies in Switzerland aren't serious about security. Even big, reputable firms have been shown to be sub par when it comes to it... One of such incidents involved a highly reputable firm in Geneva that had many federal contracts. They got a data breach and their dirty laundry got aired out in the open: passwords to client networks/accounts/... were stored in clear text, contracts and other confidential information barely protected...
So I'd say, while in Switzerland we do some things right, IT ain't it.
They could simply advertise the instructions. Especially the correct server address. There's no need to panic. Sure a few voters would still be duped, but that's on par with the status quo. I don't see the issue.
[+] [-] _joel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tainnor|2 years ago|reply
Plus, even if such a "good" e-voting system existed, it would probably be almost impossible to explain to people how it works. With paper ballots, you can have people observe the process and verify that it was fair. With all the wild accusations of fraud that we have already, I don't want to know what the world would look like if people had to do operations on the blockchain or something to verify that votes were counted correctly.
[+] [-] artificialLimbs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xinayder|2 years ago|reply
This is a non sequitur, if we use it for banking (which is much more critical than voting), why is it a problem if we use electronic technology for voting?
Estonia has it and it's working well so far. Brazil has a complete different system and it's much more auditable and less prone to manipulation and vote output alteration from human error.
Edit: conclusion of the article is "lets switch back to paper because this system uses the internet". well, do you know that you can still have a 100% electronic voting system that - brace yourselves - don't use the internet? Take a look at Brazil's electronic ballots for example.
They aren't connected to the internet at all, everything is stored locally on a memory card that is collected by the authorities at the end of the voting period, then sent to Brasilia for counting at a special room where the machines that read the cards don't have access to the internet.
[+] [-] trimethylpurine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gottorf|2 years ago|reply
Not everything in society has to be about maximum efficiency. Paper ballots aren't maximally efficient in terms of resources required to count, but has other desirable characteristics that we may prefer.
[0]: https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/41587168870797312
[+] [-] ta1243|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] red_admiral|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisandchris|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://democracychronicles.org/swiss-post-e-voting-system/
[+] [-] viktorcode|2 years ago|reply
Starting like that the author saves our time by letting us know that
1. This is a biased take. 2. There will be no attempt to asses overall security, its weak and strong points.
But I still have read it to learn that the author says that paper voting solves security problems. Here’s the bonus point:
3. The author ignores security issues with paper voting.
[+] [-] RandomLensman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gonzo41|2 years ago|reply
Pencil and paper solves the trust issue. And the issues of security around paper voting such as it's security, lots of guards, public counts etc, costing a bit more, are better understood than SSL, layer 1,2,3,4 securities, and verifiable systems.
[+] [-] V__|2 years ago|reply
I don't think that is a biased take. An attack on paper voting is always going to be more complex thus making it more secure.
[+] [-] d-z-m|2 years ago|reply
Malicious insiders can always corrupt the vote count. This isn't unique to e-voting systems.
[+] [-] ortichic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|2 years ago|reply
There is obviously always a gap but I'm not aware of anything practical being pulled off with such a system
[+] [-] josefx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raincole|2 years ago|reply
One word: scale.
[+] [-] WelcomeShorty|2 years ago|reply
To all experts here: Give it a shot!
https://yeswehack.com/programs/swiss-post-evoting
https://gitlab.com/swisspost-evoting/e-voting/e-voting
[+] [-] steve1977|2 years ago|reply
For example, we had a digital vaccination certificate application (before COVID, calm down tin foil hats). This application/website apparently had issues so bad that the government had no other option than to just close it down for good from one day to another. Essentially, f..d up beyond repair.
People couldn't even get their data out it anymore. It now seems that data rescue might be possible "soon"... 2.5 years after the platform has been taken down.
Basically, everything IT our government touches is doomed ;)
Source: I'm Swiss
[+] [-] born2discover|2 years ago|reply
Sadly, IT companies in Switzerland aren't serious about security. Even big, reputable firms have been shown to be sub par when it comes to it... One of such incidents involved a highly reputable firm in Geneva that had many federal contracts. They got a data breach and their dirty laundry got aired out in the open: passwords to client networks/accounts/... were stored in clear text, contracts and other confidential information barely protected...
So I'd say, while in Switzerland we do some things right, IT ain't it.
[+] [-] Tainnor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trimethylpurine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happytiger|2 years ago|reply
The US is so hung up on “this is the one system that should never be fully electronic” that we end up with absolutely terrible systems.
[+] [-] xxiiiiiii|2 years ago|reply
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