

Why E-Voting Will Always Be a Bad Idea - wmat
http://robinnixon.com/thejourney/why-electronic-voting-will-always-be-completely-unsafe

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Vadoff
Why not just vote from a website with your SSN + registered address? Then they
could mail you a letter with verification code to your physical address to
verify on the website.

~~~
krapp
>vote from a website \- you can't trust whatever computer you're using hasn't
been compromised.

\- you can't trust the network is secure.

\- you can't trust the site you're sending the vote to is secure.

\- you can't trust the people running the site.

\- you can't even trust that the data you sent is the data they receive,
assuming all of the above is true.

>with your SSN + registered address

\- it's not exactly difficult to forge someone's identity using those, and
then presumably I can cast a vote from anywhere, as anyone.

\- it is, however, incredibly easy to intimidate and extort someone based on
their vote by knowing exactly who they are and where they live, if these are
used as qualifiers.

\- let's ignore the temptation on the part of the government to suddenly
discover "glitches" regarding some people's SSN's or registered addresses
during an election, forcing them to jump through complex and arcane hoops to
'revalidate' their identity, in an attempt to disenfranchise voters.

>Then they could mail you a letter

\- Paper envelopes, passing through US Postal System offices, being handled by
government employees and the NSA, which can be easily opened and tampered
with, with which contain a code without which your vote is invalid? How many
paper ballots have simply _vanished_ in transit during close American
elections already?

> with verification code

\- Who generates this code? Who is responsible for mailing the codes? Where
are the codes stored? How are they verified, and by whom? The same entities
counting the votes? How easy are they to forge?

>to your physical address to verify on the website.

goto step 1.

~~~
cmdrfred
How is any of this less transparent than pulling a level on a black box and
hoping it gets counted?

~~~
krapp
The attack surface becomes much, much bigger. It literally takes everything
that's inherently insecure about elections to begin with and adds everything
that's insecure about the internet and the post office as well.

~~~
hga
It also allows coercion and vote buying, as does any remote system where
someone can be looking over your shoulder.

The "pulling a level on a black box" is so obviously a massive source of fraud
I wonder how the people pushing the systems can do so with a straight face.
The best system I've used has ballots on hard card stock where you draw lines
to indicate votes. 3 columns, 2 sides, it can cover a lot. You then personally
put the ballot into an optical reader, but critically the paper ballot remains
for recounts etc.

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honksillet
Yeah, but if you object on any of these grounds you'll be labelled a racist
who is trying to suppress the vote!

