
Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election - perseusprime11
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/798126153/exclusive-seattle-area-voters-to-vote-by-smartphone-in-1st-for-u-s-elections
======
skue
This is for a voluntary county board position without regulatory power that by
statute needs to be elected by March when no one is paying attention. So
someone decided to try this out.

OTOH, the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security
concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent [1] and FWIW the Seattle
Times recently wrote an Editorial also opposing the practice. [2]

Bottom line, this hardly constitutes some trend that WA state is moving
towards, just something set up by a county office that is otherwise drawing
skepticism.

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/politics/secretary...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/politics/secretary-of-state-questions-online-mobile-voting-plan-in-king-
county-race/)

[2] [https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/resist-
push-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/resist-push-for-
online-ballot-box/)

~~~
jimmaswell
"the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security
concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent"

Sounds like nothing but a combination of thinly veiled voter suppression or
technophobia, either of which should disqualify someone from public office in
the eyes of an educated voter.

~~~
venantius
And this sounds like the opinion of someone who has spent literally zero time
investigating how universal the consensus is among voting security
professionals about how paper is still the best, most reliable, most secure
technology with which to run elections.

~~~
jimmaswell
In-person voter fraud isn't that difficult, and especially in Washington
people get packets in the mail they can vote with by returning in the mail
which would be pretty easy for someone to go swiping from mailboxes. Verifying
identity online is not an impossible challenge and we can't just avoid
improving anything forever.

~~~
bobthepanda
It's a lot easier to hijack online voting infrastructure than it is to start
digging through everyone's mailboxes at the correct time when they happen to
actually be sending a ballot out.

The voting period in Washington is 18 days. So someone would have to either be
constantly looking through my mail for the better part of three weeks, or have
the best luck when it comes to predicting when I would actually send it out,
and that's if they got the correct mailbox and I didn't, say, go to a post
office or the ballot dropoff boxes. It would be hard to do even for an
individual, and much harder to scale up.

~~~
alasdair_
To corrupt the vote, just offer some money for every empty ballot that gets
sent to you to fill in and mail. There are a lot of people who would trade
their ballot for a $20 bill.

~~~
catalogia
Good luck scaling that far enough to make a difference, without at the same
time broadcasting your intentions to everybody.

~~~
alasdair_
Just give a website address that displays a rotating physical address in
Russia or China. Rely on the free PR from all the news stories about how
terrible it is to scale with minimal "marketing" costs.

If you picked the right districts, it wouldn't even cost that much to tilt the
votes in your favor. At $50/ballot you'd almost certainly get 11,000 extra
votes in Michigan - enough to swing the state in the last election at a total
cost of just over half a million dollars.

This ease of abuse is one of the many, many reasons that I support a single,
national vote for president over per-state winner-take-all electoral college
voting.

------
legitster
I want to point out that voting in Washington state is incredibly easy. They
mail you a ballot, and a packet with detailed information on every single
candidate and issue, and then you can drop your ballot just about anywhere -
supermarket, mailbox, probably the street (who knows). It's probably the best
voting system, hands down.

I don't buy that a smartphone magically hits some convenience threshold that
turns out voters.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It 's probably the best voting system, hands down._

The disadvantage to this system is the erosion of the secret ballot. Someone (
_e.g._ an employer, spouse or friend) can now ask you for proof of your vote.

(I think absentee ballots should be voidable in person.)

~~~
alistairSH
I'm missing something... how does mailing your vote allow somebody to demand
that vote be exposed? If my employer asks me how or if I voted in VA (in-
person paper), I tell him to fuck off. If my employer asks me how or if I
voted in WA (mail-in paper), I tell him to fuck off.

~~~
Biganon
An abusive wife can force her husband to vote for X and mail the envelope in
front of her. She couldn't do that if the husband was voting alone in a booth.

~~~
Supermancho
The problem of spouses beating spouses into voting differently (or
parapalegics having their votes manipulated) is not on the same level of low
voter turnout. Mailing in WA ensures much higher participation than the
possible outlier manipulations that _might_ happen (the number of calls about
some ex-spouse having manipulated spousal votes is in the number of 0/yr for
King County, WA). You get a tracking stub, by which you could contact the
election board, if that was really an issue and...it's not.

------
mhh__
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)
hopefully they don't prove Tom Scott right.

------
tzs
> King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to
> a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan
> Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company
> providing the technology.

If they mean that there is a public URL you go to, and then on the site only
have to enter you birhdate and name to log in, and then you can vote--that
can't be right. There's gotta be more than that.

My guess is that what has been lost in the stories is how you get the URL. I'm
guessing that they either email you the URL or they send physical mail which
includes a QR code with the URL, and the URL contains some sort of unique per
voter identifier (hopefully randomly generated anew for each election). When
you go to vote the site knows who you are supposed to be from that identifier
in the URL, and the name/birthdate is just for a consistency check.

~~~
Spivak
> There's gotta be more than that.

I mean I agree but this is how in-person voting works right now. The only
"secret" information is my polling place but anyone who knows my name can
figure that out since the voter records are public and includes my address.

~~~
tzs
In Washington state it wouldn't be quite that easy. You either have to show an
acceptable photo ID to vote in person, or you have to sign a ballot
declaration and then cast a provisional ballot which will be accepted if the
signature on the declaration matches the signature on your registration record
[1].

[1]
[https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=29A.40.160](https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=29A.40.160)

------
deogeo
In related news, Saudi Arabia hacked Bezos' phone:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22122779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22122779)

Could a similar hack be done on a larger scale, and used to alter votes before
they are sent, without changing the electronic signature?

Lets assume no until proven otherwise. And if proven otherwise, lets assume it
was an isolated incident, and it won't happen again after a "commitment to do
better".

Lets also assume Mr. Tusk's firm can be trusted - after all, why _not_ put a
private middle-man between voters and elections? As Mr. Tusk correctly points
out, the only plausible explanation to resistance is wanting to suppress
voters.

~~~
flareback
This doesn't even need hacking. You just go on facebook and find someones name
and birthday and vote as them.

~~~
extrapickles
Actually the voter database is public record[0], and it includes birthdays.
This means that it would be easy to have 100% turnout in the first few seconds
of the polls being open.

[0]: [https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/vrdb/extract-
requests.aspx](https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/vrdb/extract-requests.aspx)

------
cwkoss
I hope someone hacks the vote to make Mickey Mouse or some other stupid name
win.

Phone voting is a cybersecurity nightmare.

~~~
filoleg
Why would someone need to do any "hacking", if the only thing needed to vote
is name and date of birth. Someone could easily aggregate all that data and
write a short python script to do all the voting on everyone else's behalf.

Not advocating for anyone to do so, as this is extremely illegal, but imo
whoever signed off on this kind of online voting system is an even bigger
criminal in my eyes.

EDIT: upon reading further comments, I discovered that voter registration
records in WA are officially public, and they include names and DOB (among
other things). I am speechless.

~~~
cwkoss
Under US law 'unauthorized access of a computer system' is hacking, so writing
someone elses name and DOB would qualify as 'hacking' in the legal sense.

~~~
filoleg
My bad, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying.

I was just trying to make a point that there is no usual "evil hackers trying
to break into our systems" kind of situation. It's like stealing someone's car
by simply entering the wide open door and turning the keys someone left in the
ignition.

------
cookie_monsta
Being that the main driver behind this seems to be voter turnout, I have some
suggestions:

1) Stop making all these penny ante jobs elected positions. These people are
bureaucrats. Let them apply for their jobs like every other bureaucrat. If 99%
of voters are saying they de facto don't care, maybe you should take the
message.

2) For jobs that _do_ matter, make voting compulsory.

Bonus point: have elections on the weekends when people actually have time to
vote. Very few people need two days to drive their buggy in from the farm
anymore ffs.

~~~
catalogia
Compulsory voting only makes sense if you allow _" I don't know"_ as an
answer. There's no value in demanding an answer for me when I know I don't
have an informed answer to give.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Compulsory voting tends to mean that you're required to put a ballot into a
box. You can fill it out properly, draw a smiley face on it or leave it blank.
Nobody's checking your work.

------
macspoofing
I like the pageantry and ceremony of paper ballots at specific voting
locations followed by manual paper ballot counting. I know in principle it's
easy to automate this away by introducing online voting and other things ... I
think those things will further alienate people from their local communities
and society at large.

Keep paper ballots because they are inefficient.

~~~
plopz
The problem is then what do you do with low voter turnout? The article says
that this election has in previous years resulted in <1% of eligible voters.
That is clearly untenable.

~~~
macspoofing
>The problem is then what do you do with low voter turnout?

What's the problem with low voter turnout? If someone doesn't feel like
voting, they should have that right. A non-vote is a vote of confidence that
you are OK with any choice.

In fact, high voter turnout is usually indicative of major societal divisions
or issues (case in point, the upcoming national election will probably have
HIGH voter turnout as anti-Trump and pro-Trump people will turn out in
droves).

> The article says that this election has in previous years resulted in <1% of
> eligible voters. That is clearly untenable.

Why is it untenable? What is the harm? The alternative is you force people to
vote, and they'll vote by choosing a name randomly from a list.

~~~
AcerbicZero
You're looking at it backwards. Democracy draws its power from the "consent of
the governed", not from the complacency of the subjects. Remember the whole
"taxation without representation" thing back when this democracy thing was
getting started? Government is a tool of the people, and if the people chose
to not engage in the process, the government has no legitimate claim by which
it can act on the people's behalf.

The government doesn't ask for your consent, it assumes it, and the only
method by which you can directly withhold consent is to refuse to participate
in their political process. Low voter turnout is an indicator of an
illegitimate government, which no longer has the consent of the people to
continue governing them (At least in a democracy).

*Edit: If people chose to not vote (or engage in other political actions) the question should be "do we need this part of the government" not "how do we get more people to vote in this part of the government"

~~~
macspoofing
>Democracy draws its power from the "consent of the governed"

OK. I believe I'm arguing for consent.

>not from the complacency of the subjects

That's a red-herring. It has nothing to do with anything.

>and if the people chose to not engage in the process, the government has no
legitimate claim by which it can act on the people's behalf.

If they choose to not engage because they don't trust the system .. then sure,
that's a problem. If they choose to not engage because they are fine with any
outcome - I don't see the problem.

> Low voter turnout is an indicator of an illegitimate government

You can't just say things. Sometimes that may be the case. And sometimes it
may not. Typically in western nations, low voter turnout stems from a
comfortable, prosperous life.

>If people chose to not vote (or engage in other political actions) the
question should be "do we need this part of the government" not "how do we get
more people to vote in this part of the government"

Sure. And I'm not against either.

------
choward
I still don't get what this has to do with smart phones. The article says you
log in through a web based portal. They made a mention of phone apps though. I
don't understand why voting would only be accessible by phone and not a normal
computer.

------
m0zg
This is idiotic beyond belief. Unless you have a verifiable, re-countable
paper trail, elections can be made to go whichever way the person running the
elections wants them to go. It's as simple as that.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. I vote in WA and most people on the
ballot seem profoundly unqualified for the positions they're running for. For
me it basically boils down to picking the person with the most robust
education credentials, unless they're a commie, in which case I pick the next
best thing. It's pretty bad. If I were hiring for myself, I wouldn't hire most
of these people.

------
unethical_ban
It sounded like a really silly verification system. Matching finger signatures
on a smartphone with previous records?

Perhaps the voters should get a set of one-time codes along with a PIN from
the voting office, and use that to validate their vote.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
Yeah the PIN would have been a smart choice. They already have mail-in ballots
which means they could just as easily be given a PIN on the ballot they
already receive.

------
joejerryronnie
Me and 10,000 of my bots would like to participate in this election.

~~~
fg6hr
I'm pretty sure there is a competing botnet that would be happy to override
votes of your botnet. If online votes are counted only once, then what matters
is which botnet is faster and has a better link to the voting servers. High
Frequency Voting, in other words.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Haha, you’re right! So, as always, it boils down to an arms race between the
two sides. So keep an eye on who's leasing office space near the voting server
data centers.

------
annoyingnoob
Vote is the new app that makes voting easy. No more paper booklets full of
legal mumbo jumbo. Just press the Vote button and Vote does the rest, done and
done.

Vote automates your votes by choosing the best candidates for you using
SocialAI technology.

~~~
dane-pgp
I guess you're being satirical, and maybe not everyone appreciates that, but
you raise an interesting idea. Could AI (or rather, some simplistic machine
learning algorithms) help to inform voters about which candidates share the
same values as them, or what position on a ballot proposition they should take
to be consistent with other views they have expressed?

Of course, that might end up putting a lot of power into the hands of the
people making the algorithms, but if the training data and source code were
transparent, and the output of the algorithm included a human-readable
explanation for its recommendation, then it might actually be a better system
than people voting the way they are told to by the only newspaper or TV
station that they read/watch. (People should still then go to a ballot box and
cast their vote on paper, though).

Here is a TED talk which introduces this idea:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGWML6cI_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGWML6cI_k)

~~~
annoyingnoob
That sounds super scary to me. I mean where do you get the information that
informs expressions you might make on the internet? Is it those same
newspapers and TV stations? Other places where you self-selected to go? If so,
whats the difference between going with the source(s) vs going with your
expressions?

I'll agree that voting should be on paper. I'm not ready to boil it all down
to something like a dating app.

------
diebeforei485
I think that everything except federal elections should be done by smartphone
(or mail-in for those who don't have a smartphone).

There is minimal risk that Russia cares about who serves on your local school
board.

------
slipheen
Beyond the security implications (which are huge and ought to be a deal
breaker on their own), this seems to have a huge problem in that it's not
private.

Your abusive spouse/boss/dealer could tell you that they want to see you use
the app to vote their way, and there's not much to prevent it.

While going to a local precinct is inconvenient, no one knows what you do once
you walk in that booth. That's important to avoid coercion.

~~~
lukifer
While I'm in total agreement, and think that this is likely a bad idea,
doesn't the same problem exist with mail-in voting? An abusive party can hover
over your shoulder while filling it out, and then walk you to the mailbox.

~~~
anon463637
There's no solving infrequent social problems with technology, only socio-
politically. I'm sure it does happen to a few people, but it sounds extremely
rare.

At least a mail-in ballot usually has a "receipt," (that serial number thing
that's torn off at the top/bottom) although it does little to show or prove a
vote was counted, especially with the subjectiveness of interpreting
handwritten marks. The bigger problem is electronic voting has no real records
making it far easier to manipulate because there's nothing permanent to
recount.

I suggest that to solve the receipt issue, privacy, speed of counting and
accuracy to the best degree available, it's best to:

0\. Make voting day a national holiday.

1\. Mail every voter a durable, physical RFID token (signed by a closely-held
private key) that has an unique code that is not recorded who it is given to.
If they haven't received one before voting in-person, they can receive a
random token.

2\. The voter is first checked to make sure they haven't yet voted by keeping
a database of "has voted"... completely independent of actual votes.

3\. The voter either drops-off the RFID in a container in a booth for their
vote preference, or they mail it sealed in two envelopes (outer mailing info,
inner vote preference).

4\. Votes are counted both by weight and by RFID scanning (whole containers of
votes are scanned in batch) for redundancy.

5\. Voters can check online in real-time if their vote was counted by
searching for the RFID code they used.

6\. Recounts are a matter of mass-scanning large containers (with appropriate
chain-of-custody) of votes.

7\. Tokens are reused to reduce waste.

~~~
lukifer
+1 for election day as a national holiday; I'd even go so far as to make
voting mandatory (with support for blank protest ballots, health/circumstance
exemptions, etc).

That said, while the RFID system you describe seems achievable (and clearly an
improvement over closed-source easily-hackable voting machines), I think it
misses an important component of a democratic process: voter trust. Even if
the tech is fully auditable, requiring the average voter to trust an elite
technological caste does reduce trust, compared to pen and paper, which are
auditable by the vast majority of citizens.

Also, the RFID can't be the only mechanism; having a fixed address can be used
for authorizing identity (as with mail-in ballots), but is not and should not
be a requirement to vote.

At any rate, I agree that technology is no silver bullet; solutions should be
sociopolitical first, and technology is merely a tool to that end. I do think
there are worthwhile innovations to consider; if anything, I'd like to disrupt
polling moreso than voting, which I think has a surprising political influence
both during and between election cycles, and yet which we outsource to private
media companies with their own biases and incentives. If we could crack the
problem of distributed identity that is resistant to Sybil attacks, we could
have ongoing/persistent voting, liquid voting, public choice economics, etc,
enabling more fluid feedback loops with our representatives (and maybe
someday, even "pass-through" representative direct democracy).

------
Ohn0
Why is this an app? Why not web?

~~~
Biganon
Today I spent quite some time looking for the mobile app created by my town to
allow people to anonymously denounce street harassment and catcalling when
they see it. Then I found out it's just a website, and they call that "an app"
for some reason.

------
joshuaheard
I don't understand why a bank's website is secure enough to transfer hundreds
of thousands of dollars, but I can't cast a single vote online.

~~~
Klathmon
Because one can buy you a nice yacht, but the other can buy control over the
most powerful military in the world, the stakes are just significantly larger
for an election.

The reward provides a sort of ceiling on how much time and money can be spent
on trying to break a system. Even if you could get access to a few billion
dollars by somehow "hacking" a bank and get away with it, that means that
you'd only be spending up to a few billion to do it, and you may spend a few
years to plan, but not much more.

But trying to "hack an election"? I would be shocked if there weren't multiple
countries spending billions of dollars across literally decades of time trying
to find the best way to influence and hack elections in other countries.

Do you really think that ANY software is secure enough to withstand a team of
a few thousand of some of the most talented developers money can buy working
full time for decades on trying to break it? Because that's the kind of
threats that elections face. And if that election happens at all on the
internet, the adversaries can be literally anywhere in the world and still
attack it.

There are also auxiliary reasons why electronic voting isn't ideal. It removes
the ability for the average person to validate the security of their election
themselves without a software engineering degree (in a paper election anyone
can go watch the locked ballot box all day to ensure there is no tampering,
and they can count along with everyone else at the end of the day). It
introduces accessibility issues, it adds unnecessary bottlenecks and
dependencies (there have been countless stories of there not being enough
voting machines or them breaking down causing lines to get multiple hours long
and in many cases prevent people from being able to vote before polls close.
There's even evidence this has been done on purpose to sway elections by
preventing people in some areas from voting as much as people in others), and
it's really expensive!

And what are the benefits to electronic voting? slightly faster counting? (you
can get results in minutes instead of hours...)

~~~
joshuaheard
You have identified many problems that need to be addressed. I hope eventually
the security problems will be worked out. It seems to me that online voting is
a natural evolution and would certainly be more convenient for voters like
myself used to doing everything online.

------
_bxg1
[https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

------
lgleason
As a mobile developer I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the
security implications surrounding it.

~~~
sdmike1
As a security guy I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the security
implications surrounding it.

~~~
flareback
As a citizen I think this is a REALLY bad idea because of the security
implications surrounding it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
As a different citizen, I'm not too enthused about ballot secrecy. 100% of the
security issues with online voting come from the ballot secrecy requirement,
so it's hard to get worked up about this.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Um? if ballots aren't secret, then individual voters can be bribed to vote the
"right" way or punished for voting the "wrong" way. Ballot secrecy is an
absolute requirement.

------
aazaa
> King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to
> a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan
> Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company
> providing the technology.

Oh, really?

> Once voters have completed their ballots, they must verify their submissions
> and then submit a signature on the touch screen of their device.

Huh?

> Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature
> verification because the state votes entirely by mail. ...

Finney must have never had to sign on a phone screen with a finger while
driving before.

All of this digital theater of the absurd in a desperate attempt to engage
people in the political process:

> The board of supervisors election in the King Conservation District, for
> example, in past years has drawn less than 1% of the eligible population to
> the ballot box.

People don't vote because they don't care. Not because they can't make it to
the poling place. They don't care because they don't see anything at stake.

There's no app for that.

~~~
sornaensis
Wholeheartedly disagree-- if casting a ballot was as easy as sending a text
instead of receiving and then mailing a letter or going to a polling location,
I would predict much higher participation. People don't see it worth their
time because a single vote really isn't worth anyone's time. Votes only matter
as groups!

So obviously you have to make it as braindead simple to vote as we have made
everything else. What I do not see the purpose in, is complaining about or
nay-saying these attempts. You're never going to convince someone that one
vote is worth more than it is, which is what people really mean when they talk
about 'engagement', because your vote on its own really just doesn't matter
much and people intuitively get that.

Reducing the cost of voting to match the actual value of a single vote is the
best move we have IMO.

~~~
awb
> People don't see it worth their time because a single vote really isn't
> worth anyone's time.

If someone has that worldview I'm OK with them not voting.

I'm not sure that X% more participation would improve our collective decision
making. In essence we'd be diluting the vote of those who care the most with
those who think voting by mail is too hard.

~~~
lloyddobbler
This. The thing about "get out the vote" campaigns is, they're intended to
draw out the least-involved, least-informed members of the electorate. Which
in my book is a bad thing.

Voting is not the only civic duty - educating yourself on the issues at hand
is also part of that civic duty. If someone doesn't want to vote because
taking the legally-mandated time off to go to the polls or fill out their
mail-in ballot is "too much work," I'm not sure they're living up to their end
of the bargain as a citizen.

Exercising your right to vote doesn't mean you value it. Shouldn't we be
asking how we can get people to value their vote enough to be engaged?

Irrespective of that, haven't we already witnessed the mass security issues
that come with making voting machines digital? Do we really want to subject
that flawed scenario to even more flaws by putting it out on the web? Do we
never learn?

------
mslong
Absolutely amazing that almost all techies in this thread are against this. Of
course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be solved, but
it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would mean almost
100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level. What are we at
right now, 60% on average, maybe? Our nation's policies would change
immediately with such a massive swing in voter turnout, with adjustments
towards forward-thinking, liberal policies.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Of course there is major security risks, and problems that have to be
> solved, but it is MASSIVELY outweighed by the fact that mobile voting would
> mean almost 100% voter turn out overnight if done on a national level

Why not just allow everyone to vote online, with no registration? Just type in
your full name and select a candidate, no email or password required. It'd
guarantee 100% turnout - maybe even >100% turnout, if enough bots join the
fun!

The problem with digital voting is that it _cannot_ be made sufficiently
secure. It's not a matter of "there are problems we haven't solved yet", but
rather "there are problems that we provably cannot solve".

~~~
mslong
Sorry, but explain to me how I'm able to submit my taxes securely every year
online, or pay for my marketplace insurance securely every month, but voting
on our own digital devices is somehow beyond reach of what we can technically
fathom?

~~~
wool_gather
No one has an interest in impersonating you to pay your bills.

Someone _might_ have an interest in impersonating you to steal your tax refund
-- these scams do happen.

Impersonating a bunch of voters is potentially easier when you're just
presenting yourself as a computer with an internet connection rather than a
flesh-and-blood human body.

~~~
mslong
I'm not seeing how the verification process of making sure someone is "flesh
and blood" behind their mobile app would be appreciably different than
registering for a passport, for instance. A person would presumably have
multiple levels of identification (state id, ssn, birth certificate) that they
can send in electronically to register an account, that is then tied to a
username/password/device. A "vote" would need a checkout of not only an
existing account but also a new, untampered photo of your face with a piece of
id, just like a real-life vote would work.

------
anon463637
Voting by mobile is extremely problematic and shocking.

1\. No paper record.

2\. No privacy.

A better way would be to use anonymous physical RFID pebbles that are placed
in a container to indicate voting preference. Votes can be both weighed and
scanned for counting redundancy very quickly.

Mail-in voting would consist of mailing back the pebble chit in an outside
return envelope with an inner vote envelope designating the preference; the
outer envelope is removed and mixed with many others before sorting.

Then later, no matter how a vote was cast, it's possible to find how a vote
was counted (by the voter searching for the RFID code(s) they used) in real-
time because all votes were mass-scanned in RFID containers... that is, there
will be a number of large containers that contain all votes for a particular
preference in a particular election. Subsequent elections reuse the RFIDs to
eliminate waste. No hanging chads, no provisional ballots, no hacked voting
machines and no voting by mobile.

~~~
cwkoss
Inner envelope would need to block RFID signals or votes could be lost based
on preference.

------
mikece
Making a big case about voter turnout not being as great as other countries is
a red herring. We have it really, really good in this country. So good that,
practically speaking, it doesn't matter who gets elected because things will
continue to stay good. I read low voter turnout as an implicit vote of
confidence in the system as a whole. You can be sure that if [stuff] was
actually hitting the fan then everyone would show up to vote (and try to vote
twice) to fix the horrible mess the city/state/country is in (whether in
reality or perception).

While I would agree there are definite issues with security, I really don't
like the "print out the digital ballots" idea would rather see something
block-chain based which is public and easy to audit.

And I think it's unavoidable that some sort of biometric or other proof of
identity will be required (take a selfie in order to vote!) before "voting
with your phone" become commonly accepted.

~~~
deogeo
Turnout can also be improved by voting on Sundays instead of work days. Yet
they skipped that step and went right for electronic voting, that's nearly
unanimously opposed by experts.

~~~
mikece
Even better: 11 day window for voting window, starting on a Friday and ending
on a Monday. Two full weekends to vote, no excuses for not being able to make
it. Some states already do this with "early voting" which starts up to two
weeks before the actual election day.

And if you could pre-print your completed ballot to be scanned (once your
identity if verified per local requirements) then the process could be very,
very fast and efficient.

~~~
deogeo
> And if you could pre-print your completed ballot

Your printer will betray you by printing invisible identifying dots on your
ballot:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code)

~~~
swebs
How would that betray you? They're supposed to verify that this ballot belongs
to you in the first place.

~~~
deogeo
I'm confused - wouldn't that mean the vote isn't secret?

~~~
swebs
It won't go on record who you voted for, but someone at the office will have
to confirm that you voted and enter in the vote. If mail-in ballots were
completely anonymous, then someone could just print 10,000 copies and stuff
the polls.

~~~
deogeo
I thought we were talking about non-mail-in ballots, that you print at home,
but submit personally.

