

San Francisco Request for Information – New Voting System - stonesixone
http://sfgov2.org/index.aspx?page=4892

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stonesixone
Topic submitter here (and current President of the SF Elections Commission).

As a software developer and open source contributor myself, I'd really like to
see open source happen. But if no vendors respond to the RFI / RFP with a
credible open source proposal, it will make things a lot harder.

Basically, SF would have to contract to build its own system. I made this
point at last week's Commission meeting here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOOoXSOtR-s&t=1h04m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOOoXSOtR-s&t=1h04m55s)

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slasaus
Although I'm not a fan of it [0], there has been a commission to research the
feasibility of electronic voting in the Netherlands. Outcome was it would not
be cheaper than the current paper voting system and some fundamental parts
still have to be on paper [1].

Currently they are researching the costs of implementing the proposed voting
and counting machines (with human readable paper separating both machines).
Also there was a preference for the software to be open source.

You could get in contact with some people of the commission:

[https://twitter.com/cryptoron](https://twitter.com/cryptoron) (part of the
commission, now leads the costs investigation of the new proposed machines and
software)

[https://twitter.com/ArjenKamphuis](https://twitter.com/ArjenKamphuis) (part
of the commission and part of the hacker movement that got eVoting machines
banned in the Netherlands in 2007 [2]).

[0] I don't think electronics outweigh the security of a paper based voting
system anytime soon. Because of it's simplicity and transparency it's publicly
verifiable in practice. Professor Halderman, who did a lot of research in
electronic voting, won't expect secure electronic voting systems that can be
used at large scale within the next 10 years, if ever:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os#t=58m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os#t=58m55s)

[1] Unofficial abstract of the commission:
[https://www.kiesraad.nl/sites/default/files/every-vote-
count...](https://www.kiesraad.nl/sites/default/files/every-vote-counts-
conclusions-and-recommendations.pdf)

[2]
[http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English](http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English)

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slasaus
Interesting. Good to see they seek information about systems that "are based
on voters marking _paper_ ballots".

Contrary to popular belief, in state or nation-wide elections paper is a safer
way to vote than electronics because the former is simpler and thus easier to
verify by the general public.

Most people don't realize how hard it is to beat the transparency and
simplicity of a physical ballot box. It can be inspected by the public at the
start of the day so anyone interested can verify it's empty and people can
keep an eye on it during the day and see if anyone tampers with it. Then at
the end of the day it's important the votes are manually tallied right after
the ballot box is opened. This makes the process transparent to most people in
society and assures the highest level of scrutiny and confidence that the vote
and vote count are legit.

It's hard to replace this with anything more complex i.e. electronics.

For a recent discussion see:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076919)

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spacecowboy_lon
and the Candidates/parties can see and audit the process

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bhauer
Is this a chance for Score Voting or Approval Voting [1]?

Edit: It looks like they are going with instant-runoff, which is more
complicated and has higher levels of regret. Does anyone know why they have
selected this versus the easier Score Voting option?

[1] [http://www.electology.org/#!approval-
voting/cc04](http://www.electology.org/#!approval-voting/cc04)

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stonesixone
> Does anyone know why they have selected this versus the easier Score Voting
> option?

Instant-runoff voting (aka ranked-choice voting) is the law in San Francisco.
It was passed by the voters back in 2002.

By the way, systems like approval and score voting suffer from the problem of
voters having to vote against their favorite candidate to support a "lesser of
two evils."

Think of an approval election with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and
Elizabeth Warren (where Warren is your favorite and Clinton is the lesser of
two evils). Do you "approve" of Clinton, which would help defeat Warren? Or do
you "approve" only Warren, at the risk of getting Trump?

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hanniabu
Wow, great to hear and a great opportunity for improvement. If a sensible
solution comes to light then hopefully it will have a domino effect on other
states. Bonus points for wanting transparency and a system that's open source.
Let's just see what actually happens though.

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slasaus
"Bonus points for wanting transparency and a system that's open source."

Transparency is not a bonus, publicly verifiable elections are a requirement
for a healthy democracy to ensure power is legit. Open source does not really
matter. Even if it's open source, it's hard to assure the public that "that
open source software you downloaded from github" was actually running in a
counting machine _and nothing else_ (i.e. a custom made virus) at the moment
of counting.

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hadeharian
BitCongress anyone?

