Swiss Town Holds First Internet Vote 277
felix.rauch writes "According to an article on Swissinfo, a small town near Geneva (Switzerland) held the first Internet-based vote this weekend. 44% of the voters (323) cast teir ballot over the Internet. Officials believe it may have been the first Internet-vote worldwide. While the Swiss media seem enthusiastic about the project, I see serious security and privacy concerns. The voters had to enter a 16-digit password, as well as their birthplace, date of birth and another number sent to them by post. Personally I think Internet-voting should be avoided until it's implemented by an open zero-knowledge protocol and checkable afterwards. Who can give a guarantee that nobody tampers with the results or creates a database with citizens voting information?"
This should be in the US. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This should be in the US. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This should be in the US. (Score:2)
Zero - knowledge (Score:4, Insightful)
The only issue is that voting implies that you are who you claim to be! Technically is seems difficult to break the link between identification and vote... especially if you want it to be checkable afterwards.
Re:Zero - knowledge (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Zero - knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
Take that system, bottle it, and you have just what you need for a network based voting system. You need a counter Y, and a head count of how many people cast the vote X. If X > Y you have a problem. Y can be less than X because some folks don't vote for every slot in the election.
Now the problem is such: you need to compartmentalize the counts into managable chunks. What is great about the present system is how you can only physically screw up a few thousand votes at a time. My idea: keep the present voting districts that we have presently, and keep the counters an logs seperate for each district.
Such a system, with a sufficient enough airgap between the finally tally and the auditing logs, could be done rather cheaply.
Re:Zero - knowledge (Score:2)
You can't be garunteed anonymity that needs to exist in the voting process.
You can't be garunteed that your vote gets anywhere, or is even counted.
Sure voting from home would be a lot easier, but it is fraught with so many problems.
And, yes, I realize that there are no real garuntees with the current system as to whether they actually count your vote, or they use stuffed ballot boxes. Having a bunch of people watching the boxes, and checking the people as they filter in is more anonymous, more trustworthy, and less likely to be widely abused. On the other hand, it is significantly less efficient.
Remember, someone has a list of all those numbers that they sent by post. Spoofing everyone that hadn't voted yet right before the end of the polls wouldn't be that far out of the question.
Academic Lab Solutions Exist (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, some protocols involve the goverment publishing a list of numbers after the election. The people can then perform some (non-invertible) operations on their private key and vote. If the number they obtain is listed, they can be sure their vote has been counted. The number of votes can also be checked to avoid stuffing.
For an overview of these protocols, pick up a copy of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" and look at the literature references in the "Esoteric Protocols" chapter.
This does not change the fact that electoral offices everywhere would NEVER allow this to happen. Imagine aunt Lydia's vote did not get counted for some reason (including her not clicking the SUBMIT button), would they really want to hold another election in the name of democracy?
Re:Zero - knowledge (Score:3, Informative)
Another problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that this can already be done now with existing paper-based voting (certainly in the UK and the US anyway), I don't see that it is any different.
I guess the best solution is to maintain the option for Internet or in-person voting, that way people can chose which way to vote as they please.
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:2, Informative)
They use a "town hall" style of voting, where they meet in the town square, debate and vote normaly by a show of hands.
Yo may think that is arcane. But at least the woman got the right to vote in the late 1980s.
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that the whole Appenzell affair is quite embarassing for Swiss democracy, your comment is a very broad and a gross generalisation. By this measure, the US is a dictatorship (well Bush was not elected democratically) with religious laws (sodomy laws).
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting (Score:2, Informative)
this is called "landsgemeinde" and is only used in two very small cantons. the rest of switzerland votes "normally" www.admin.ch [admin.ch]
Yo may think that is arcane. But at least the woman got the right to vote in the late 1980s
women can vote on national elections/referendums since 1971 (not much better)
on the other hand, the death penalty was abolished in 1944 (mmm... maybe that's arcane too)
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:5, Informative)
As a Swiss, I believe we have a pretty good voting system even though too few of us seem to bother with it. Thing is our system is such that we vote often on various objects. For more practicality, we vote on many objects at once, several times a year, whether they're local, state or federal.
Here in Geneva, we've been voting from home for a long time. It's a simple system: you get an envelope in you mailbox containing:
a card with your name and SS number on which you have to write down your birthdate and which you have to sign.
a booklet containing the texts of the laws being modified/added/canceled and a simplified explanation.
a booklet containing the opinions (explanations + voting recommendation) of the government AND various political parties represented.
the voting bulletins themselves with checkboxes, perfectly straightforward (if you're confused with them, you're either blind or shouldn't be allowed to vote).
an anonymous voting envelope in which you put your voting bulletins and then seal.
:). It's a small country divided and subdivided in tiny entities, with little overhead from the federal government or even the state itself. Makes the whole thing awfuly bureaucratic, but we also got e-government "booths" which makes it easier to accomplish many administrative procedures. This site [geneva.ch] will link you to most official resources.
:)
You return the card and the voting envelope in the envelope in which it all came in (it's a recyclable thing), drop it in a mailbox (no postage) in time (max 2 days before actual voting day") and that's it.
Now, with such an easy system and all the required information at hand, I wonder why sometimes less than 40% of us express our opinions. Hey, we have the chance to live in a super-democratic society in which we vote on every aspect of what's going on yet most of us don't make any use of it and then dare complaining about the "system" in which we're (supposedly) in control. Yup, we are in control from A to Z, unlike some other so-called "democracies" but this idea seems to be getting quite fuzzy in the general consensus, given that we're surrounded by much less democratic entities. Furthermore, our system isn't EU-compatible ; the people have too much control to allow the application of EU directives by a central government.
E-voting is only a natural evolution of our current system. It will allow instant and accurate results. I can only hope it will motivate people to vote a bit more, some great changes could come from having another 30% of the population casting votes. Regarding the anonymity of the system, I believe such concerns received great consideration given the fact we're far from being amateurs when it comes to anonymous stuff (Swiss private banking anyone?)... The security is similar to the the system used for e-banking, which has a proven record (we've had e-banking for at least 5 years with no known breach). OTOH, one of the companies behind such projects was the same responsible for digital satellite receivers cards, which have been cracked ages ago...
It's a great test-bed for e-voting systems, which are a great opportunity for newly democratic states to cheaply implement a safe voting infrastructure and other states to implement a proven, tested system at a lesser cost (Florida, you listenin'?).
Now as for the women voting status, they only got it on a federal scale in 1970, which is indeed embarrassing in a country so fundamentaly democratic. But it's getting better, we even had a female President the other year (changes each year, hard to follow!). Sure, when you come from countries where your "representatives" are as representative of your opinions than your tax declaration or party donation check, it's quite funny seeing your local shopkeeper vociferating his claims to the higher establishment on the local congress live tv feed
So, before dissing our electoral system with an old cliché, please get your facts straight ot you might once more make 7.5 million foes
Cheers,
max
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Similar concerns for normal voting. (Score:2)
Comparison to voting by mail (very common in CH) (Score:3, Informative)
- Tampering with results: With voting by mail, abuse is relatively easy, and some cases have been detected. In a neighbouring city, an employee of a home of elderly people filled out and sent the ballot papers of old people about whom he knew that they wouldn't miss them. It was detected because he filled out all of them with the same pen and sent them all together. If he had to enter all these additional data (birthplace, date of birth, password etc.), such abuse would have been much more difficult.
- Privacy: To make it a bit easier to detect such abuse of mail voting, the envelopes with which the voting forms have to be sent have unique codes (at least in Basle). People who choose to vote by mail have to trust, too, that the information on the envelopes isn't connected to the vote. I think that surveillance of the process and making sure that anonymity of the votes is guaranteed is even a bit easier with Internet voting than with voting by mail where local cases of vote tracking might be more difficult to detect.
- People being influenced: Of course, we do not know whether someone is in front of the computer alone. But that's the same when ballot papers are sent by mail.
On the whole I think that possibly, in-person voting offers a bit more security, but as soon as voting is facilitated - be it by mail or by Internet, there are some risks (in my view, they aren't too big), and then Internet voting is perhaps even one of the more secure methods.
The main reason why voting by mail was introduced was probably that there are so many votes (referendums, initiatives) in Switzerland because of the system of 'direct democracy', so there is the fear that turnout will be too low because people get tired of voting (even with the possibility of voting by mail, on average only about 40% of people participate).
In the US (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the US (Score:3, Funny)
Heck, even dead people get ELECTED sometimes.
Re:In the US (Score:3, Funny)
We need a new moderation: -1, I didn't get the joke, because I didn't realize that the american populace recently elected a dead senator.
AND
-1: I didn't get the joke. (moron mods)
*grumble*
_Gangs of New York_ (Score:3, Informative)
One of the rare funny scenes in this movie is when an election for sheriff is being held. (This is the New York City of Tammany Hall, remember.) They show gang members raiding bars, workhouses, and tenements to round up anybody who can walk, and send them down to vote. Then they grab them on the way out of the voting hall, hustle them down the street to the barbershop, clean them up so they look different, and send them back to the voting hall.
One old guy complains how "they done already bought me out, and I already voted. Twice!" And Leo DiCaprio's character goes, "Twice? You call that doing your civic duty? Get back in there and keep voting!"
The next scene was rather insightful, I thought. Cut to Tammany Hall. A clerk walks up to "Boss" Tweed:
Sounds like a plan (Score:3, Interesting)
So, being able to make the decision making process finer grained is a seriously good idea. Of course people won't vote on everything, why should they, they'll vote on what interests them but then the same is true of MPs. I await the results of the experiment with interest.
Re:Sounds like a plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a plan (Score:2, Interesting)
Been done (Score:2)
Before we get all pedantic.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Before we get all pedantic.... (Score:2)
Re:Before we get all pedantic.... (Score:2)
Good point.
The claim that the Swiss had the first Internet vote is rather silly. I took part in quite a number of Internet votes back in the early 80's. The techniques were fairly well worked out in a number of newsgroups. A lot of mailing lists have held votes over the years.
Of course, there is little if any secrecy involved in these votes (and little need for it). The main concern has usually been with minimizing multiple votes and votes by "outsiders".
Some rather large-scale votes were held before the major reorg that produced the current newsgroup heirarchy.
But I suppose the political crowd can be expected to ignore such voting. It's just a bunch of silly geeks, after all. We don't need to give them credit for anything, do we now?
I thought he US had done internet voting too (Score:2)
I thought the US allowed some people (military personel?) to vote using internet. The project costs were high (millions) while the number of people served (a few thousand) was very small.
Re:I thought he US had done internet voting too (Score:3, Interesting)
As for costing millions to support few, that is the norm in government programs.
Re:I thought he US had done internet voting too (Score:2)
Hm. Must have been some other country. Reason to use internetvoting then was that these people were not in the country at the time they had to vote.
Re:I thought he US had done internet voting too (Score:2)
I know several people who had issues about that while over seas during the last elections. Alot of people were unable to vote, as they never got the paperwork, others recieved it late.
All part of human error.
Not in the USA (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we'd never be able to trust our government not to track how we voted. I would never enter information like that to vote, they'd add it to their "Total Information."
-- James Dornan
Trust (Score:2)
Who can garuntee that now with the papaer based systems? At some point you have to trust somebody.
Re:Trust (Score:2)
There's a major difference here. With paper voting, there's a limited number of people involved who are needed for the "trust" factor. It's much more difficult to tamper with the voting. If you put things onto the internet, it's like leaving all of the ballot boxes in a locked cabinet along a major interstate with nobody watching. There's just way too many people who could stop and pick that lock.
Given how much animosity there was over the results of our last presidential election (US), how much more comfortable do you think people will feel about the outcome of an internet-based election?
Re:Trust (Score:2)
I'd say it's the other way around. In paper voting, a lot of people are required to be trusted (all those people in the voting comittees).
In contrast, with a digital voting system, there are only few people responsible for the evaluation, and those few people have to be trusted.
But having a lot of people to trust is actually a good point, because the power those people have is antiproportional to the number the people to be trusted.
Not to mention, that people tempering with the results have the same problem. They have to trust the same number of people, that they don't make the whole thing public.
Re:Trust (Score:2)
Who can garuntee that now with the papaer based systems? At some point you have to trust somebody.
I don't know how it's done where You're at. But where I come from, I show my voters card, show my ID, then I get an envelope, I go behind a screen, put my vote in the envelope (no ID on either envelope or vote paper), and put the envelope in the ballot box with hundereds or thousand other envelopes.
Now, how can they identify MY envelope among all the others?
That kind of anonymity is much harder to do on the web. I'm sure there is a way, but its much harder and much more easy to abuse.
Take off your Tin Foil Hat and give it a rest (Score:5, Interesting)
How else to they send you voter registration cards, and political junk mail?
That information is required to verify that the vote was made by a person who is legally able to vote, This means the vote is for person is of age, proper citizenship, not dead.
Without tracking this information it would be near impossible to keep track of legal votes, Prevent someone from voting twice, or stealing another persons vote.
Before a person goes off and throws on there Tin hats they should take a close look at what has already been going on for years before they cry foul and call it a poke into there privacy rights.
Whats next? All toilets should have built in Radiation generators to ensure no DNS can be recovered after you take a dump, because god knows the goverment has DNS tracers in every toilet in the US And can track your movements by them..
Re:Take off your Tin Foil Hat and give it a rest (Score:5, Funny)
I don't go leaving my DNS in public toilets! The only place you can get my DNS is up my port 53!
Re:Take off your Tin Foil Hat and give it a rest (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Take off your Tin Foil Hat and give it a rest (Score:2)
At least here in PA, I go into a booth with a curtain all around it (so some little man can't look at the back of the machine) and make my selections, then hit a lever which records and clears the machine. Then I come out.
You could argue that they do know your political party and that many people vote straight tickets for their party. That's about as close as they can get, though.
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply put there is no way to protect from direct voter tampering. Whats to keep an abusive husband from forcing his wife to vote his way. Whats to stop Unions from setting up there own Internet connected voting places where they can stand over peoples shoulders. Or what if someone decides to vote from work and thier conservative boss walks up behind them and notices they are voting Democrat. Nope, bad idea.
Re:Bad idea - You can't be serious! (Score:5, Insightful)
As many people have already pointed out - There is "no way to protect from direct voter tampering" using traditional systems. I would accept the argument that any new system should be at least as secure as whatever system it is replacing/supplementing. However, to not implement a system until it is 100% gauranteed is foolish at best, especially when the result is more participation in the voting process, which is good for everyone (except perhaps the groups that depend on low-turnout.)
Whats to keep an abusive husband from forcing his wife to vote his way.
Nothing. Other than the laws designed to protect wives from abusive husbands in general. i.e. What's to protect her from being beat up nomatter how she votes?
Whats to stop Unions from setting up there own Internet connected voting places where they can stand over peoples shoulders.
Nothing. What's to stop unions from sending a couple of goons to stand outside the polls and remind you about the union stance and imply they might be checking your results?
Or what if someone decides to vote from work and thier conservative boss walks up behind them and notices they are voting Democrat.
This is just dumb. If you don't want to have a political argument at work, don't vote from the office. What's to stop your boss from checking the net logs and seeing that you regularly log into pro-abortion sites (or whatever)?
Nope, bad idea.
As far as I'm concerned, you gave no real reason why this is a "bad idea" - nothing unique to this implementation.
One real concern that I would have if this was implemented on a large scale, would be a proliferation of black-market votes. Certainly people sell their votes now, but as voting becomes easier, entering into the vote market also becomes more convinient. Whether or not this should be illegal is a completely different issue though.
Re:Bad idea - You can't be serious! (Score:3, Insightful)
>Nothing. Other than the laws designed to protect wives from abusive husbands in general. i.e. What's to protect her from being beat up nomatter how she votes?
>>Whats to stop Unions from setting up there own Internet connected voting places where they can stand over peoples shoulders.
>Nothing. What's to stop unions from sending a couple of goons to stand outside the polls and remind you about the union stance and imply they might be checking your results?
Lying. In both of these cases you can vote for Alice and tell the husband/union you picked Bob. The original poster makes the point that anyone can observe your vote with Internet voting.
Re:Bad idea - You can't be serious! (Score:2)
And I'm with you I think - I'm on the fence about vote selling. In theory, I think it should be legal, but I wonder if making every attempt to prevent it is a necessary evil. I would, however, be against it being classified as a major crime - this is just a legislative cop-out. Nothing that should be legal in principle, or in theory, should be criminal in practice - Difficult? OK. Expensive? Sure. But not criminal. How many people are already locked up for the stupidest of "crimes".
Re: You can't be serious! - have you ever voted? (Score:2)
True enough, but as you pointed out yourself, this is a problem with the current system as well. Nothing stops you from sending in absentee ballots for any/all those people. Assuming traditional polls remain available, I don't see how this introduces any really new complications. It is arguably more secure than standard snail mail voting, and the whole country could choose to vote by mail if they wanted, but they don't - probably the same with net voting.
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The joy of the internet is how you can access it from everywhere. If you felt the need, you could vote from a mobile phone in a public restroom 2 states away. (Just make sure you have your voter ID.)
You will always have the option to vote in the traditional manner for at least the next 50 years or so, because a lot of folks (young and old) don't have internet access. You will also have those tech savvy paranoid people who wear tinfoil over their heads too.
Do we need zero knowledge? (Score:2, Insightful)
With a paper ballot it isn't too hard to check the ballots for your fingerprints, get the person who gives you your ballot to mark them beforehand. Or do many other things to make sure you don't have zero knowledge. If someone really wanted to they could find out how you voted.
Re:Do we need zero knowledge? (Score:2)
In Virginia you go to a desk and you check in. They check off that you have checked in and they give you a ballot card. These cards are then taken to another line (in the same room, usually a gymnasium of a school) and when you get to the front they let you into a voting booth when you present them the card.
You vote "electronically" by pressing in a box next to the choice that you make. Your choice is illuminated by an LED from behind and recorded in a computer as well as on a printed piece of paper from the machine (for redundancy and accuracy).
Now then, the ballot cards are reused. All they are is a "hall pass" or "permission slip" to let you into the machine. They are not placed into the machine or anything. They are just a blue rectangle of paper with no identifying marks.
And there is nothing saying that you cannot wear gloves or push the buttons with your knuckles.
Re:Do we need zero knowledge? (Score:2)
The fact that we don't have a perfect low-tech solution (and have used this one for decades) doesn't mean that it's a good system. You already show the problems with current voting system. New technology (read up on mathematical papers around e-voting, they really are interesting) can achieve better privacy and correctness of elections.
I am sure that electronic voting has future, but I agree with the original submittor of the story. It needs to be completely open and verifiable. We might not be there yet, but we will eventually.
When ethic meet politic (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, privacy is important, but what is most important in voting? A fair and honest result.
I think Internet voting would be more secure for that matter...but maybe not for privacy.
computerised voting (Score:4, Interesting)
As opposed to the florida voting fiasco that made the US look incredibly stupid?
seriously there are always possibilities to cheat.
In Belgium everybody has to go to the voting office, you grab a blank credit card type card, insert it in the computer, you do your thing(you can still vote blank) you get the card back, and they insert it in a another computer to count your vote. a good fraction of the cards is kept apart to check them afterward, the others are reused.
the advantages of this scheme:
-you remain anonymous.
-they can still recheck the cards to see if the result is correct.
-votes do not have to be counted manually anymore.
in Soviet Russia, the vote counts you.
Dumb idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
Online voting protocols are interesting from an academic perspective, but useless in practice. No such protocol, however clever, can get around the forced vote problem. Only by physically seperating people in a controlled environment can we be sure that everyone is completely free to vote exactly as they please (and that they can't even sell their vote, since they can't prove how they voted). Trying to achieve this online is obviously intractable.
Democratic voting, as a concept, is intimately tied to the nature of the meat space: one person, one presence, one identity, one vote. The very beauty of cyberspace is that these properties do not hold, so the two ideas are fundamentally mismatched. Let's keep democracy where it belongs.
Not so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you can force someone to vote some particular way. "Vote Klopper or we'll kill your child". First of all this could be a very real threat and most people would rather lose their vote than risk anything, and secondly, with todays tech checking up on that vote wouldn't be too hard. (Think small camera, tampered voting cards (radioactive marking?), etc, etc.).
Anyone proclaiming the current systems to be tamper-proof, are of course in a state of sin.
Re:Dumb idea. (Score:3, Informative)
So there are more than four votations a year in Switzerland, each votation concerns itself with laws or elections of multiple levels (votations on six objects are common). All this requires a very streamlined process and people are not very willing to go to polling stations because of voting. Because of the system, people have a very different relationship to voting.
While internet voting certainly could be tampered with, believe me, the other system was not very secure. For instance in my canton, vote by mail is done in the following way:
- I get my voting papers by mail.
- I write my birthday on the card.
- I sign the card.
- I fill in my voting bullletins.
- Put everything back in the enveloppe.
- Send it back by mail.
There are many ways to cheat, but the truth is nobody cares. Swiss people are all in all quite honnest and trying to cheat would be political suicide - something like the last US election would probably mean a lot of manifestations and a full redo.Also the truth is, Swiss politics have little impact on the overall world...
Same issues as traditional votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I would like to see this here in the UK as well. It has already been suggested here that voting by SMS might be on the cards for UK citizens, to encourage the 18-25's to be less apathetic. I can't see that being workable though, because it would involve the phone networks who can't necessarily be trusted.
2 points (Score:2, Informative)
I guess it's like using some nmber list for internet banking, which mean they shall use some SecurIDs some day which will make it quite secure.
Well, I also think it's better to move to the voting booth but not because of privacy matters, rather because I consider that it shouldn't be as easy to vote as watching tv.
In Switzerland ?
They've got some huge concerns about privacy there, they don't want people to feel harassed so I guess they have the will to make it safe.
BTW, as the Swiss president is elected for one year it doesn't make any sense to fake the vote as, on the other hand, the people will surely know how to turn him other in case he does some stupid things.
Now, they'll retain the possibility to vote in the booth so the Internet vote should rather seen as a possible other way to vote mean as as a replacement.
If anyone can deal with this... (Score:2)
Don't forget they have a very open democratic tradition, and a strong social fabric to back up the technological security. Incurring the severe displeasure of the usually well-informed Swiss police is also not something one risks lightly.
IMHO, Any big voting fraud would require a monumental social engineering hack before you got away with it there.
Arizona (Score:5, Interesting)
Only a primary... (Score:2)
Being an Arizonan myself, I wish I could agree, but I don't think that a primary election for a party is really the same thing as an actual election (or a referendum in the case of the Swiss).
Re:Only a primary... (Score:2)
"Officials believe it may have been the first Internet-vote worldwide"
This proves it false. Now you can say what you like about primaries or what have you, the Arizona vote was an offical political election that allowed for voting on the Internet.
Re:Only a primary... (Score:2)
I still beg to differ. There are tons of "votes" made on the internet all of the time. Now, are they official, political votes? No. The Arizona Democratic Primary was run by a private political party to choose their nominee. While the two big political parties get to have their primaries run by the states, I believe they still pay for them. It doesn't mean that it was some official government election. I could definately be wrong though.
Regardless, I still think that a real vote, on a real issue, not just picking someone to run in a primary, is what is at issue here.
Internet Voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Who can guarantee that doesn't happen with regular voting? When it all comes down you are trusting the people who count the votes, and the people who collect the votes, that nothing shady is happening from when you vote to when it's counted.
They had four points of authentication and if you want two more points have them authenticate both their MAC address and IP. Sure, both can be forged but to have all 6 points of data line up in a database would take a determined person.
The real concern I have with Internet voting is that to the general public, the security concerns it raises makes having identifier chips on electronic devices seem like a good idea. The answer lies in education. So long as you accept the fact that NO security is absolute then you can move into the grey areas of increased security.
Re:Internet Voting (Score:2)
Don't know in US/UK, other, but the french system is very transparent and public, and any voter arriving sufficiently early in sunday morning of the vote can be inscribed to be one of those who count the ballot. They are many others check and controls in the current process, permitting to garantee, even for a not mathematically inclined voter, that his vote is correctly counted.
Using a not transparent process is necessary to pass the message that the vote come from the voter, and not from a machine, or worst from a computer. Why not from God ?
Re:Internet Voting (Score:2)
like overactive husbands/wives/whatever forcing their partners to vote something & etc. obviously they can't really force their partners to mark something on paper they can't see.
it's a lot easier to stand behind their backs at computer in your own home("you have to vote for this feminist or you wont get sex").
when you know your vote doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:when you know your vote doesn't matter (Score:2)
So for the Swiss this technology is more interesting, as they could organize more of these direct polls.
What worries me though, is the possibility of someone writing viruses which would infect voters' PCs, and then tamper with the vote. These sort of programs are already in circulation, currently used to dial expensive phone numbers and the like. PCs are just not save enough for this sort of use.
The Results (Score:5, Funny)
The Result:
31% Pepperoni
26% Sausage
17% Mushroom
15% Cheese
6% Capers
5% CowboyNeal's BBQ'd Bits -o- Spam
Problems with this system (Score:2, Interesting)
Fortunately for Chad... (Score:2, Funny)
Now pregnant Chads... that I leave to science.
This raises the frightening prospect of (Score:2, Offtopic)
Results (Score:3, Funny)
1.4% voted yes
.9% voted no
97.7% voted for Cindy Margolis
Also, 34% pressed 111 to indicate that they wanted to cyber.
So... (Score:3, Funny)
44% of the voters (323) cast teir ballot over .... (Score:2)
Is the internet good,
Not enough sweedish porn out there?
Too many popup adds.
Fraud and Convenience . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Distancing the voter from the booth serves those criminals who use absenteeism as an opportunity to stuff your ballots. There are cemetaries across the US that vote in record numbers. Forget that the voters have been dead for years--they vote in absentia. Now all I need to is set up a reasonably sophisticated script and *bang* 60k more votes for the good guys.
Distancing the voter also distances him from the importance of his decision. If you don't think it's important enough to take time off of work, freeze for an hour in a line with two feet of snow, buy a suitable magnifying glass so you can read the candidates' names and pay attention when selecting a candidate--then maybe your vote should not count. Making the effort to vote connotes seriousness to me. There are some people who sacrificed their lives so you could do all of the above.
As an aside, I recall an incident where I saw a 20-something young woman vote using an optical ballot--you know, fill in the bubble. You'd think that after x number of years seeing that sort of form that filling the bubble would be natural. The instructions were clear on the ballot, and there was a very large example displayed whilst in line. Yet, she managed to use checks instead.
Re:Fraud and Convenience . . . Aarrgg! (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting is a right. Period.
All citizens should be given equal access to vote. Currently city-dwellers have a much shorter trip to "Mecca" than those in rural areas. Internet voting, coupled with phone voting, and snail mail voting helps to balance the inequities in access. Not to mention, there are those who are physically disabled and may find it more than just "inconvenient" to go to a poll.
The purpose of a vote is not to challange the citizenry, or setup some kind of obstacle course were they "win" the right to vote, but to provide them with the oppurtunity to express their opinion. We should not loose sight of that end.
There are some people who sacrificed their lives so you could do all of the above.
This is exactly the reason we should enable as many people to vote as we can. That right was/has been/is being fought for and earned for everyone not just those who "take it seriously" and want to navigate some jungle so that the process coincides with their mental heroic fantasies.
Re:Fraud and Convenience . . . (Score:2)
Re:Fraud and Convenience . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that the elderly are the most consistent voters, I would think they would welcome NOT having to stand out in the cold.
And damn, why is an election always on Tuesday, and why November? November is damn cold in most parts of the US. I happen to live within walking distance to work, so I can pop out on my coffee break. But think of all those folks who commute for hours a day to NY. When do they find time to get back to NJ or CT to vote? They would have to take time off from work, or vote when they get home. And those lines get VERY long.
If they could vote at the office, or the local starbucks, I think they would appreciate that. Besides, there is nothing as comical as trying to figure out where they stuffed the voting machines THIS year.
Re:Fraud and Convenience . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Privilege? (Score:3, Insightful)
The current 'representative' model of democracy that most countries have, reflects the difficulty of organising an efficient democratic system. Instead of citizens directly deciding on laws and policies, which would be impractical with paper ballots and poll stations in most countries, these countries have people vote for somebody who they believe will be able to do decide laws and policies. They vote because they trust the candidate or at least trust him more than the other guy.
Switzerland is an exception with very democratic politics (mostly because the basic democratic deciding unit is very local level) and I think internet voting will make it even more so. The easier it is for a citizen to make their voice heard, the more the citizen will be able to say and decide on. This means that the role of professional politicians will decline. I don't have the time to sit in parliament and listen to debates and make deals and campaign and cast paper ballots and solicit financing but I do have the time to click yes/no on a tax rise/cut. And if I have the opportunity to do so, it means less horseplay opportunities for a professional politician and less justification for their existence. And I have more time to consider the issues than to spend freezing my feet off.
If you give people the facts and give them the tools to act upon them and create laws and policies, you give them democracy. Democracy is not freezing your feet off in the snow to put a cross on a piece of paper for somebody who will spend the next half of his term asking for you to freeze your feet off again.
In Soviet Russia the privilege votes you.
Re:Fraud and Convenience . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe in the US voting is considered a privilege. In my country, voting is considered a right, even a necessity to legitimize the democratic system. Low participation rates are considered a Bad Thing so if internet voting raises participation, this would be good.
Right/duty to vote (Score:2)
I turned and replied, "It is not my duty, it is my right and privelege. No one has a duty to vote, and in fact, anyone who hasn't taken the time to study the candidates and issues needs to stay home and let those of us who have run their government for them."
Over the phone? (Score:2)
Switzerland & Referendums (Score:5, Informative)
Dependent on the community you live in you can vote by mail at no charge. In Zurich it works like this:
3 to 4 weeks prior to a referendum (there are 2-3 per year) you get an envelope, which contains the official information, the voting forms, a card and a small envelope. You fill out the forms, place them into the small envelope, on which you seal the flap (so voting confidentiality is guaranteed), sign the card, stick everything back into the envelope it came in, close it (it's supplied with a mechanism to do just that) and drop it into the next mail box at your convenience (no stamps required).
So there is really no excuse not to vote.
I really don't see e-voting as that much more convenient and loaded with a whole pile of potential problems.
You know what I'm waiting for....... (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, what would an online voting system be with out a few random trolls....
How do you know? (Score:2, Informative)
Because you see as a foreigner living in Switzerland I tend to think if they can do it via the Internet then I know it works.
Swiss are conservative cautious people, who oddly enough embrace technology. Hence if it works in Switzerland then I know it will work. Case in point is 100% attendless gas stations. They are all over Switzerland now. They were introduced in 1995, but caught on really quick. And let me tell you how nice it is to have a gas station that is open 100% percent of the time. Sure people in North America have 24x7 gas stations. But I live in the country and hence that is not always the case.
More serious concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Even with webcams,etc.,etc., there is NO way to ensure that internet voting is not coerced voting.
the first internet vote... (Score:3, Funny)
the worst danger. (Score:4, Interesting)
currently, in the us, you go into a curtained booth and no one knows what anyone voted for. there is no incentive for someone to try to buy your vote as your actions in the booth are unknown.
if you vote from home, a politician could be standing right behind you while you enter in your 2048 bit pasword with a $50 bill and defeat the integrity of the electoral process. this is a problem no matter how secure you make the computer transaction.
Re:the worst danger. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see that really as a problem in itself. After all, the person liked the candidate better because it got them $50. All voluntary.
It's no different from the current state of affairs, where some politician promises a tax cut, the net effect is the same, "Vote for me and I will give you $50". We saw that in Virginia with Gilmore and "No car tax!"... of course that translated into "Reduced car tax that is about to get put back to Full Car Tax!".
The root of the problem is not the potential to bribe voters, it's that voters are willing to sell out for such small amounts. I think there is little that can be done about that, it's an almost fundamental flaw in democracy.
Confidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone (well nearly everyone) can see and understand Xs, bit's of paper, security vans and vote counting.
Try explaining non-repudiation, PKI infrastructure and certification to one of your maiden aunts.
Will she be more or less convinced that the next President really won?
If people don't understand it they won't trust it. And if they don't trust it they won't use it.
VoterApathy*=2;
Re:Confidence? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly.
There's a recent article: Security Considerations for Remote Electronic Voting, Communications of the ACM, December 2002, Vol 45, No 12, pp 39-44
which concludes that we should steer well clear for the moment. Why?:
Turnout vs. Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Not the first (Score:2, Informative)
What's with the paranoia (Score:2)
The Swiss government already has all of the above on file anyway. To me, the methodology employed is simply a very serious attempt at making sure that every vote is cast by the indivudual who can prove who he is In Real Life(tm) (and votes are for real, remember)....
Which leads us to: on the Internet you never know what's behind the curtain, but in this case it seems that they do ! :-)
on the internet, no-one knows you're a woman (Score:2, Interesting)
In Switzerland, women were unable to vote on national issues until 1971, and voting on regional issues was restricted in some cantons of the country until 1990.
Perhaps, on the internet, no-one knows you're a woman.
Guarantees are us INC. (Score:2, Interesting)
Why - the same people who guarantee that a normal election is not rigged - these things are auditable, and so what if the techniques employed might have to change slightly, but certainly the methodology doesn't have to.
Or are we now making the mistake of saying the Internet introduces new things that havn't been around before - again - *sigh*.
Guarantees Are Not Good Enough (Score:2)
> the results or creates a database with citizens
> voting information?"
That isn't good enough. Not only must the system be provably secure, an ordinary citizen must be able to examine it and see that it is so.
13 towns in the UK already had e-voting last year (Score:3, Informative)