Matt BlazeJan 12, 2023

I often say that election security is by far the hardest technical problem I've ever encountered. Why? Four reasons:

1) Contradictory critical requirements, particularly vote secrecy vs. transparency.

2) No truly neutral trusted third parties.

3) Election do-overs are generally impossible, so the ability to merely detect problems is insufficient. You have to reliably prevent them.

4) Much of the technology than can manage the complexity of elections is inherently untrustworthy.

Show threadMatt BlazeJan 12, 2023

There are a few other problems out there that have *some* of these difficult properties, but elections seem to be almost unique in having all of them.

Add to that the high stakes and sophisticated state actors that are part of the threat model, and it can get really exciting.

Show threadMatt BlazeJan 13, 2023
I know you’ve thought about this for all of the 15 minutes required to qualify as an Official Internet Expert and all, but seriously, real-world election security isn’t simple, easy, or obvious.
Show threadCanageekJan 13, 2023

@mattblaze I'm fond of the Canadian approach of not allowing computers anywhere near the process and doing everything on paper and counting by hand.

I'm sure that there are still 8 million ways to screw it up, but at least none of them are quite as embarrassing as the computer ones

Show threadJoão BaptistaJan 13, 2023
@Canageek @mattblaze Now the problem is you have to trust hundreds or thousands of humans — which are way easier to corrupt and, even then, have their own political bias — to accurately compute the votes without consciously (or unconsciously) altering the results, or messing up with the count.
Show threadCanageekJan 13, 2023
@JoaoBapt @mattblaze I'm remembering back a lot of years here, but I believe each person running is allowed to appoint someone to verify all of the votes, they'll have to agree before the vote moves on. Systems being working for a long time and gets accurate results pretty quickly because you've distributed the accounting center so widely
Show threadJoão Baptista
@Canageek @mattblaze But honestly, counting equal items on a list of 5 million-ish items sounds like the perfect task for a computer 😁
Jan 13, 2023 at 6:07pmWeb
Show threadYetAnotherGeekGuy Jan 14, 2023
@Canageek @mattblaze @JoaoBapt Sure. Just as long as it can be audited afterwards.