Matt BlazeMar 29, 2023
Piece by @yaelwrites on how "Democracy Live", a peddler of discredited Internet voting systems, has attempted to buy credibility by laundering paid-for endorsements of its inherently untrustworthy products through universities.
https://cyberscoop.com/democracy-live-research-online-voting/
Online voting provider paid for academic research in attempt to sway U.S. lawmakers 

Democracy Live directed academic research to demonstrate its product's security and used that material in lobbying campaigns.

CyberScoop
Show threadMatt BlazeMar 29, 2023
Just to be clear, experts (who disagree about all sorts of things) are virtually unanimous that online voting is inherently too risky and untrustworthy for use in US civil elections. It is well beyond possible with the state of the art, and would require several fundamental breakthroughs in computer science before we could even try it. See, for a good discussion, the National Academies "Securing the Vote" consensus study, which is unequivocal about this. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25120/securing-the-vote-protecting-american-democracy
Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy

Read online, download a free PDF, or order a copy in print or as an eBook.

The National Academies Press
Show threadMatt Blaze

It would be great if we could safely vote online. Not only would it be convenient, it would also mean that a whole bunch of longstanding, very important, extremely difficult computer science problems had been solved. which would make all sorts of useful-but-currently-impossible things beyond voting possible, too.

But unfortunately, those problems haven't been solved (and may well never be). So we can't. Sorry.

Mar 29, 2023 at 8:34pmWeb
Show threadMichael A. SpecterMar 29, 2023
@mattblaze I really don’t know how to feel about the continued, ham fisted attempts by the vendors to discredit the work. If I was actually wrong, they wouldn’t need to pay someone to refute it; the security community isn’t exactly shy.
Show threadChuckMcAMar 29, 2023
@mattblaze have you considered blockchain??? Just kidding, I really needed a laugh this evening. I really appreciate your insights into securing the vote
Show threadRichard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️Mar 30, 2023
@mattblaze The most insurmountable problem I find with voting online is the sanctity of the secret ballot, especially in households where there may be one very controlling person.
Show threadRichard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️Mar 30, 2023

@mattblaze

This would be particularly troublesome amongst religious groups that believe the wife should be subservient to the husband and where as a matter of faith the husband would essentially vote for the wife .

Show threadJP EtcheberMar 30, 2023
@mattblaze But we just need a little more crypto to make it work! Just one more pull request oughta do it.
Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 30, 2023

@mattblaze

Octavia E. Butler wrote about the hazards of e-voting.

There's a scene in "Parable of the Sower" where the master of the house observes as his domestic servants all vote "correctly" online.

Postmaster DeJoy coerced employees into donating to the GOP.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/06/politics/dejoy-gop-fundraiser-contributions/index.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/what-we-know-about-louis-dejoys-campaign-finance-scandal.html

In an increasingly inequitous America coerced voting becomes more and more widespread.

Voter intimidation gets easier with e-voting.

https://medium.com/votem/voter-coercion-in-context-5c3df172e593

Show threadMatt BlazeMar 30, 2023

@Npars01 Indeed, and that's a risk of all forms of remote voting, whether via a computer or mail-in ballot. That risk is ultimately a tradeoff between accessibility and resistance to coercion, and that's ultimately a public policy question independent of the technology itself.

But submission of ballots over the internet also introduces technology problem that we don't know how to solve, even if we wanted to.

Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 30, 2023

@mattblaze

Using technology to vote may risk disenfranchisement of the homeless, the poor, seniors, immigrants, illiterate, dyslexic, blind etc.

Technical solutions assumes everyone has access and education to use it.

Not everyone has a phone or computer or internet access.

Not everyone reads English well enough to use technology.

My neighbor has an 80 year old Italian-immigrant grandmother with cataracts who votes regularly but balks at text messaging.

Show threadMatt BlazeMar 30, 2023
@Npars01 I don’t think that’s completely fair. We certainly need to make voting available and accessible to everyone. Computers can cut both ways here. Obviously requiring a smartphone and a net connection to vote disenfranchises a lot of people (among many other problems). But computerized assistive technology can also make voting more available and easy for voters with disabilities and language barriers. It all has to be done carefully, mindful of a lot of different equities.
Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 30, 2023

@mattblaze

Agreed.

There are technological solutions to election security that are available and worth pursuing.

Protecting election infrastructure becomes even more critical as Republican billionaire donors fund intimidation & attacks on election workers, drop boxes, the USPS, voting machines, voter registration, and ballot handling.