Voting should be done online. No more conspiracy theories.

[YouDig]

Last edited Sat May 21, 2016, 12:59 PM - Edit history (1)

The software that runs the vote server(s) is open source. People from the press and any campaign can examine the server to make sure that the right software is running.

The internet traffic to the server is all logged, the press and all candidates can get tech people to examine every packet.

You still have voting booths, but those are just computers hooked up to the internet. But you can also vote from home or from your phone or whatever.

Yeah there are blanks to be filled in, but how about it?

[libtodeath]

1. No.

I want verifiable paper ballots.

[JaneyVee]

2. Lets invent a voting app and become billionaires.

[Cheese Sandwich]

3. No because the process can't be verified by the common people without specialist knowledge.

[YouDig]

4. Common people can't verify 100 million ballots no matter what.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Yes you can. Your idea is full of holes for no good reason, Oregon just conducted a primary by

mail, as we always do, smooth and verifiable with great ease of participation. We don't have polling places to speak of. We want paper ballots not your pixels floating about.

[YouDig]

7. There's got to be a way to do it.

I'm not saying my little post has all the answers. But, you know, in Iraq when they voted they dyed peoples fingers to make sure they didn't vote twice. We don't do that here.

There's got to be a way to make it easier to vote, where anyone can do it from anywhere.

Right now there are voting machines and there's not any real way to know what software is running on them. With mail-in ballots you have to trust the people opening the envelopes, and the couriers and all that. With paper ballots hand-counted, a human has to count them, and we all know humans.

One thing about computers, everything gets logged. And also, if something is running linux instead of a proprietary voting machine, you can tell what program is actually running.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Why does there have to be a way? And what's Iraq have to do with it?

Easier to vote is not served by the need for technology in order to vote. The internet is not in the hands of everyone nor is it present everywhere. We don't use any voting machines. And you don't simply trust the elections officials who handle the ballots, you use security protocols, observation, random checks and recounts. We don't use human hand counts as first method of counting because it is not the best but the worst method for a secure and accurate count. The primary method is not really what matters most, it's the protocols for checking the counts that keep the counts true. One method verifies the other, rolling recounts, all sorts of things.
Computers are just tools made by humans. And we all know humans. Everything gets logged, but we still wind up with endless months of persons looking for emails and things found and not found. The word 'glitch' has not become so popular for nothing.

No matter what, the votes have to be counted. Any and all methods of counting can invite both error and cheating. There is no method that is fully secure, there are methods that are more secure and processes around those methods which increase that security. A computer method just takes all that is problematic about electronic voting and makes it universal.

Talk to me again a decade after the very last hack ever. When cyber security is not a idea but a fact.

[YouDig]

15. Not Iraq specifically, the point is that technology advances.

Coloring people's fingers is a brilliant idea to prevent re-voting, but we don't need that here because we have voter rolls. And, contrary to what you say, that is a very good example of technology helping the voting effort.

Internet voting would definitely make it easier to vote. And let's be honest, I'm for Hillary, but this would have helped Bernie in this primary, and would help more Bernie-type candidates in the future. College students could vote from their dorms.

Computers are tools made by humans, and so are punch-cards. Remember the hanging chads?

It's not a question of computer voting versus 100% perfect, it's computer voting versus voting by other means which are far from perfect. I'm for whatever makes it easier to vote and is the most verifiable. To me, that's computers running open source, and all traffic to the servers logged and made open to the public.

[Cheese Sandwich]

6. Yes we can because the votes are counted at each polling station and

the polling stations are arranged in a hierarchy.

It's not a problem of technology. It's a problem of organization.

[YouDig]

8. Then you have to trust every person in the hierarchy.

[Cheese Sandwich]

9. No because everything can be open and transparent

Adding layers of technology is when people have to start trusting experts and specialists.

[YouDig]

16. Do you think it has been? Are you a big fan of the current voting system?

[Cheese Sandwich]

18. I want hand counted paper ballots.

[YouDig]

23. OK. This isn't a partisan issue. Like you, I want the vote to be fair and the

most people possible to be able to participate without it being a pain for them. Right now we see the long lines and all that. But I see your point. I think that it could be made easier with computers and the internet, but maybe not.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. It's not the methods but the protocols that create security in counting. You are correct.

The process and protocols are the key.

[Cheese Sandwich]

13. Yes that's right. Also we should have a process that if need be can be completed by candlelight.

You never know when there could be a massive electrical blackout.

[YouDig]

24. Candles were the cutting edge of technology at one point.

[TheBlackAdder]

12. I am curious how these brain farts manifest, is it in the shower? Where do you pull them from?

.


Non-stop OPs with zero nuance or thought applied, just spurts of miscellaneous ramblings.


Please journal the inception of this thought process from your waking inspiration to its posting.


.

[firebrand80]

14. Some 13 year old hacker would throw the election

to deez nuts

[workinclasszero]

17. No kidding

Online voting...what could possibly go wrong?

[yuiyoshida]

19. This is like saying

The POTUS should be picked by HACKERS!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. I'm happy with vote by mail. I don't even mind the postage.

[KingFlorez]

21. Sanders supporters would love that

They could really give the election to Sanders then. To them, it's already considered disenfranchisement that they can only vote once.

[SMC22307]

28. Keep going...

what more nonsense you can pull outta yer ass?

Signed,
A Sanders Supporter Who Loves the *Ritual* of In-person Voting

[bobthedrummer]

22. Thanks for gifting me with my first laugh of the day YouDig-long live Big Sister!

[Baobab]

25. The best voting systems are hybrids between traditional paper ballots and computers-optical scanners

Then use clear (molded) one piece lucite locked and sealed ballot boxes. They have numbers but are randomized and they are human readable and are kept after being optically scanned. the boxes are marked black and unambiguously.

the computers and the code that is used to read the optical scanner is public, is loaded onto the computers which are the simplest single board computer (open hardware) running a generic linux and it has no networking at all and no physical connectivity to the outside world

A system so simple that a smart six or seven year old could understand it.

numbered paper ballots are much harder to hack than computers.

That way there is also always a physical record of votes cast.

[deaniac21]

26. I think we should use clay tablets for ballots.

Leave a trail.

[jeff47]

27. Oh dear god no.

There is absolutely no way to make this sufficiently secure.

Paper ballots. Sure, you can use an optical scan machine as a tabulator, but that has to be backed by manual hand-counts.

[YouDig]

30. OK, but how are paper ballots more secure? Any person can destroy one at any time.

[jeff47]

33. I can break your Internet proposal in about 5 minutes from anywhere on the planet.

And I can easily destroy or modify hundreds of millions of votes from a random Starbucks.

Destroying those paper ballots requires being in the presence of those paper ballots. So scaling up the attack to be effective is far more difficult. Additionally, it's really not that hard to come up with procedures to protect those ballots, or at least make it trivial to catch the person who tampers with them.

For example, you don't let any poll workers be alone with the ballots. They get to bring along observers from every party in the election, and/or the public.

[reformist2]

29. Just the opposite. All paper. Archive every ballot.

[YouDig]

31. What do you mean "archive"? What if a poll worker looks at ballots and throws away some.

There will never be any record.

[jeff47]

34. You don't let the ballots be in the possession of a single poll worker.

You wanna move the ballots? Great. Here's the observers from every party in the election who will watch you do it.

[Rex]

32. Keep digging.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. No snark read into black box voting