How will internet voting affect the 2004 election?

I know for sure that Michigan will be allowing internet voting for their 2004 caucus, but what about the '04 general election? I could see internet voting literally put EVERY state in play for Dean (considering his massive grass roots campaign).

For the general election? That's the first I heard of that. I doubt very much that it's planned in ANY state. And I do disagree with your implication that internet voting is a good thing.

I think Michigan residents can actually start voting Jan 1 or something.

It is quite possible that a majority if MI votes will be cast BEFORE the Iowa Caucus. So much for any bounce candidates hope to recieve from IA, NH, and SC.

way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much danger in that

Allowing internet voting will ensure that the Republicans win every election.

If you allow internet voting, then the wealthy will be able to vote from the comfort of their homes and the rest will have to go to the polls. Once people start voting online there will be fewer polling places because it would appear to waste money. The end result will be the people who have the least access to transportation (the poor, minorities, and the elderly) will have further to travel and will be less likely to vote. Dems. always have trouble when there is bad weather on election day and this will compound it. Bottom line is there would be special voting privileges for people who are internet savvy.

I don't know enough about computers to describe possible fraud problems, but I'm sure they exist.

I agree that internet voting would help Dean in the primary, but his online numbers are actually minute compared to the number of people who do not have a computer. The cost of winning a primary is not worth the cost to the country.

I was told that by a computer expert.

The Internet is not a secure medium, was never designed to be that.

Too many ways to corrupt the process.

The whole world can participate (sarcasm) in our elections.

But due to the ignorance of some states, the military and overseas voters will have the chance to vote by Internet. Those votes will go to servers in the Pentagon.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?

http://www.wheresthepaper.com/

Shows exactly what could happen over the Internet, and the voter will be oblivious to the problems. There is no voter verifiable paper ballot, just a click and a hope that your vote gets cast correctly.

I knew internet voting would be bad, but I had no idea that the Pentagon would have any involvement. I am the last person to wear a tinfoil hat, but that is just plain scary.

Who prevents the Pentagon from fiddling with the results ? There are many military people abroad. Those votes COULD change a close election. They typically vote Republian, but don't you think that many of those people in Iraq might votes against GW this time ?

<sarcasm> Of course not, all of the military supports their commander in chimp </sarcasm> *gag*

This is the problem with Internet voting.

If Internet voting comes into play, it will be done at a clearinghouse of sorts. The company that is running the election will handle the (in)security aspects as well as any "auditing" all in a central location. This takes the elections out of the hands of our Secretary's of State. our Auditors and Elections officials, most of whom where elected by the people for representation. Unacceptable.

It will allow more voters to vote who could not otherwise get to the polls.

Democracy at its finest.

Having said that, Internet voting be a very very minor factor in 2004. However in 20012 or possibly 2008 it will be a major, positive force in Democracy.

Sorry...

>>
However in 20012 ..
>>

Internet voting requires total faith in the honesty of the company which
says what the results were.

Bad idea.

But no more or less faith than we put into our current ballot system now.

It can be made secure, despite popular uninformed opinion to the contrary. However Im not satisfied the current system proposed meet that standard.

It cannot be made secure. If so it would be the *FIRST* program to be made secure on the Internet. There are simply too many factors when you put a local election on a world platform.

Nothing is ever 100% secure. The current paper system isnt secure as evidenced by the 2000 election.

The trick in security (of any sort) is to raise the bar high enough that compromising it isnt worth the cost of compromising it. All encyption today is breakable, however the cost of breaking the best encryption isnt affordable except by government, and even then they must "budget" what they break.

While Internet voting (or any system) can never be totally secure, it can be made more secure than paper ballots in a box is now. (which is trivial to defraud with a few insiders)

I see fighting Internet voting very similiar to how the RIAA fights Internet music. Either we can ahead of it and lead it to a secure, trustworthy system, or we can ran over by it. Either way its going to happen.

Security of your vote over the internet cannot. Please reconsider your view on this. If you don't like the counting/monitoring process your state applies to their paper ballots, then press them to fix that. Once you go to electronic voting you have eliminated all chance to ensure that your vote is counted.

My sig line sums up how to do elections with paper ballots. It isn't hard.

There is no reason why you cannot observe Internet voting, keep it anonymous, keep it auditable, and honest.

Combine aspects of current absentee votes, a paper token system, and an escrow system and it'll be secure than a swapable ballot box.

Real brief example:

Mail to each registered voter a "ballot" (aka paper token). On this ballot is a 32 digit code. This code is unique, but not tied to any person..Its a token.

The voter logs onto his voting place web site. Enter your token digit code. Enter your candidate vote. Your selection is sent to the polling place, and to an escrow system (i.e. server) ran by a different entity.

Optionally, the voter records his vote on the paper token and drops it into the mail. This is sent to 3rd party.

At the end of the election cycle count up the votes. The polling place counts them. The Escrow agent counts them...they must match.

Once all the paper tokens are received, they are compared to the actual results. You compare the token code on the ballot, with the vote recorded for that ballot at both the escrow place and the polling place. Obviously you will not receive all the paper token back, but the subset will give you an audit and should match within an acceptable percentage the actual results.

I just described a skeleton of a secure, anonymous, auditable system.

I've talked to computer security experts on Internet voting and while you can do some things, IN THEORY, at a particular POINT in the program, the whole of the thing just doesn't hold up.

It is VERY susceptible to insider fraud. Can we completely eliminate fraud? No, that's unrealisitic. What we can do it mitigate it. Of the three scenarios- paper, paperless DRE's, and Internet, the one that is the least likely to perpetrate fraud on a massive scale is paper. It's just too hard to do the kind of damage that can be done with DRE's and Internet.


((There is no reason why you cannot observe Internet voting, keep it anonymous, keep it auditable, and honest.))

Almost anything can be traced on the Internet, if someone wants to. You cannot use a system to audit itself. If you can observe internet voting, you are violating one of the principles of voting in a democracy- the right to cast a secret ballot. What is not supposed to be secret, is vote counting. Counting is not transparent to anyone in DRE or Internet voting. Every citizen should be capable of witnessing vote counting. With DRE and Internet, only a very few who understand the system can possibly "witness" the count in any meaningful way. When you have a set of "very few," you have great potential for corruption. Even if the original, let's say, ten people, are upstanding and honest, they get fired or reassigned and another ten take their place, hand chosen for that position. The selectivity that can be employed doesn't work for democracy.


((Combine aspects of current absentee votes, a paper token system, and an escrow system and it'll be secure than a swapable ballot box.))

So, if you're still going to use paper, but subject massive amounts of paper ballots to the vagarities of people who may or may not send in their ballots, what have you accomplished? Why have you created an enormously expensive system to justify Internet voting? Now you have a situation where just the the audit of the number of votes cast vs the number of voters who registered, is never going to match up. And yes, you have to conduct that basic audit, because supposedly you can then catch ballot box stuffing, either on paper or vapor. Yes, you can maybe swap ONE ballot box. The amount of votes that can be swapped via a closed, unobservable system, the Internet, is far beyond what a ballot box can hold.

((Real brief example:

Mail to each registered voter a "ballot" (aka paper token). On this ballot is a 32 digit code. This code is unique, but not tied to any person..Its a token.

The voter logs onto his voting place web site. Enter your token digit code. Enter your candidate vote. Your selection is sent to the polling place, and to an escrow system (i.e. server) ran by a different entity.))

As with the WiFi scenario with DRE's, you really don't know where your vote went on it's journey to be counted. It can be rerouted and reconfigured numerous ways. But even if nothing nefarious happens, what about a power outage or sun flare that takes out a satellite? Could happen. What can be lost via the Internet vs what can be lost with paper ballots just simply isn't in the same ball park. And what IF someone wanted to tamper with US elections from outside? You just gave them one heck of a venue.

((Optionally, the voter records his vote on the paper token and drops it into the mail. This is sent to 3rd party.

At the end of the election cycle count up the votes. The polling place counts them. The Escrow agent counts them...they must match.))

Again, if the number of votes cast via Internet don't match the number of votes at the polling place and in Escrow, which do you believe? There is no real way in your system to determine which theoretical box you have created is the actual vote. Well, in theory, it will be the paper token, but then, that would behave just like a mail in vote scenario, so why jump through the hoops and headaches of Internet? The legal ballot in this case is going to be the most verifiable one, and that is the paper ballot. It is the LEAST likely to be tampered with. And you can code paper these days, and some voter-verified paper ballot producing DRE's do, to verify that paper as a valid vote.

((Once all the paper tokens are received, they are compared to the actual results. You compare the token code on the ballot, with the vote recorded for that ballot at both the escrow place and the polling place. Obviously you will not receive all the paper token back, but the subset will give you an audit and should match within an acceptable percentage the actual results.))

You will never get all the paper tokens back. And an acceptable percentage is enough to win elections. And what if, say, all the votes cast totals match, but all three systems produce different results? First Internet guys say their system checks out, escrow guys say their system checks out, and all of the ballots check out as valid, coded ballots. Well, it's going to be the paper, isn't it, because that was the witnessed vote.

((I just described a skeleton of a secure, anonymous, auditable system.))

The only aspect of this system that can be audited are the paper tokens. Democracy does not rest on systems that every person cannot understand and cannot witness. That's the current problem with paperless DRE's and more so with the Internet. Votes can be intecepted at any time on the Internet, tampered with, and sent on their way. Votes can be altered BEFORE encryption, so that the so-called mathematical proof looks just fine because it thinks it's dealing with the real vote. Votes can be altered AFTER encryption, because you go back to the system and what it sees looks OK, but can't safely audit what happens to the vote after it leaves.

And any and all closed systems, which is what DRE and Internet voting are, are susceptible to insider fraud. That fraud can be perpretrated on a scale that is off the chart compared to paper ballots. Paper ballots present a physical impediment to tampering. Bits and bytes, because they make up simulations and representations, can be altered quite easily.

They are trying to sell us on ease and speed. Watch the PR. When they market "accuracy," it's about the voter's ability to accurately vote, not so much an accurate count. And by the way, one of the problems in the last Calfornia election, I believe, was a confusing "butterly-type" ballot on the screen. No, eliminating punch cards does not eliminate the potential for confusing ballots.

We can certainly use technology. But using a tool wisely is very important. The Internet is not a tool for mission critical voting.

If you are thinking about credit card transactions done over the internet, that is a totally different beast. Because all financial transactions rely on having precise logs of WHO did WHAT. The privacy issue with voting makes it a very different and much more difficult problem than credit card transactions. Read the books by Bruce Schneier (e.g., Digital Security in a Networked World) for a good analyses of the issues and risks involved... -CV

and then come back with something substantive... Sorry, this is not a topic that can be discussed lightly, without knowing anything (like the "GWB looks like an idiot" threads) :)...

sigh...

if you say so ;)

But its not impossible as many seem to think it is either. And Im familiar with Bruce's work, he a sharp guy.

As I've said, Internet voting is coming anyway. We either lead it, or get ran over by it.

Internet voting is unproven and inherently insecure. Allowing Internet voting will be the end of democracy as we know it. If we fight for HR2239 which will require a VVPB, as well as other state legislation such as the mandate made by CA's SoS. Then Internet voting doesn't have a chance. That, Is a GOOD thing.

there's no way to tell who's actually voting, or if grandma is voing, there's no way to tell if Sonny isn't sitting next to her telling her how to vote. I don't like it.

PS - a college student friend of mine told me he can now take many of his exams from his dorm on the computer. I asked him how the professor could tell who was actually taking the test? After all, that's what Ted Kennedy got kicked out of college for.

He told me that's not even the problem. The bigger problem is you can have two people watching you take the test before they take their tests. What's goingon around here these days?

With Internet voting you're now prone to loss of privacy and a loss of secrecy. Who knows who is watching you, and you had to log into a server to vote, therefore you're not anonymous anymore. This is also VERY VERY succeptable to social engineering.

If you want better voter turn-out, go to absentee mail-in ballots. People can do then when they get a chance, they're made of paper so they're easily counted and recounted, and they're relatively secure.

But how does this differ from absentee votes?

Also, for every coereced vote for candidate A, you'll have a coerced vote for candidate B. Thus the coereced vote factor (which exists today already), is factored out.

I can't believe anyone could be okay with voter fraud. :eyes: You are missing a clear difference between absentee ballots and the internet. Many older people can vote by absentee themselves or with a little assistance. This isn't always true with the internet. My grandmother who is her mid-80s votes by absentee by herself. She has never used a computer and if I wanted to trick her into believing she voted for candidate A, it would be easy. And, there's no paper trail for her to see she was fooled.

The coerced votes will not be equal~ not even close. Wealthy grandson #1 has a computer and "helps" his grandmother vote Republican. Poor/minority grandson #2 doesn't have a computer, so he can't "help" his grandmother. This would be a huge gain for Republicans because it hurts our base of minority, poor, and elderly voters who own computers in far smaller numbers.

Unavoidable in any system yes, statistically significant? NO

Even If the coereced vote count isnt equal, its going to be negliable..Im just not convinced this going to be a huge factor.

And Im not buying the poor/old people computer theory either. Poor people cant afford cars or bus/cab fare to get to a voting station either....and if they can, they might hit one of Bush's roadblocks, or a poll worker might disqualify them (ala Florida) Folks on the ropes need ADDITIONAL tools to help them vote, not fewer. I know personally of people who cannot get out to vote, but do have a computer (and yes they are Democrats)

btw, I've been shocked at how computer literate many old folks are.

Like I said, fighting this is a loosing battle. Either we lead it in a secure, fair fashion, or we get ran over by it and the opposition sets it up.

Either way its going to happen.

I dont like the idea either honestly, and I can see why the benefacries would be the GOP.

with another vote against internet voting.

The token system described might sound good, but if they're mailed, what's to guarantee that they get to the voters in the first place? The opportunity to intercept the mail before it gets to the recipients is too great.

And to suggest that possible fraud or coercion would be in such small numbers as to be trivial, remember that the official vote count in Florida showed only a couple of hundred votes difference.

Yes, I know that the count was stopped illegally, I know that the butterly ballot tricked many people into voting for Buchanan, I know that thousands of likely Democrat voters were kept from voting illegally (funny how that word keeps cropping up), but my point is that in the end each and every vote really does count.