HcInfosecAug 20, 2023
@jeroen @mattblaze In general voting by going to a specific place inside the town where you live is cumbersome. If we can get a good system to mostly get rid of that that will likely increase voting turnout. Having elections with 40% turnup is much more dangerous to #democracy than it security risks, of course unless these lasts once are huge (which is possible)
Show threadMatt BlazeAug 20, 2023

@HcInfosec @jeroen Yes, and every technical expert who has seriously studied online voting as come to the same conclusion about the risks, because there are fundamental problems and requirements that preclude building an Internet voting system sufficient for civil elections.

It's not that scientists don't think Internet voting would be nice. Just as physicists don't think perpetual motion machines wouldn't be terrific. It's just that they understand fundamental reasons we can't make them.

Show threadMatt BlazeAug 20, 2023

@HcInfosec @jeroen You want an Internet voting system? You have two choices. One is to relax some of the basic requirements and civil rights associated with voting (at least in the US), such as the secret ballot. The other option is to have elections where we can never be sure who actually won, and that are vulnerable to disruption by anyone connected to the Internet.

Neither option seems great.

Show threadSebastian SylvanAug 20, 2023
@mattblaze @HcInfosec @jeroen we already sacrifice secret ballots with mail in voting (anyone in your household could watch you vote and even force you to vote how they want). Seems like we decided the pros outweigh the cons on that one. So if we remove that one, online voting seems plausible.
Show threadSebastian SylvanAug 20, 2023
@mattblaze @HcInfosec @jeroen also mail in voting is secure in practice but not in theory. Nobody has even once checked my ID either to apply for mail ballot or to vote. It’s based on signature verification of whatever I used to sign up. I haven’t signed my signature the same way twice in my entire life. It wouldn’t be too hard to outdo that in terms of aithentification rigor.
Show threadMatt BlazeAug 20, 2023

@ssylvan @HcInfosec @jeroen Vote by mail represents a balancing of tradeoffs, because it involves unsupervised voting that could compromise ballot secrecy in individual cases. However, the protocols for processing ballots prevent wholesale compromise of ballot secrecy, in a way that electronic voting would not.

I discussed the protocols for mail-in ballots a bit here: https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/Emergencyvoting.pdf

Supervised voting at polling places is definitely more robust against individual coercion .

Show threadSebastian Sylvan
@mattblaze @HcInfosec @jeroen There are e-voting mechanisms where voters could verify their vote after the fact, so any changing of the vote would be detected. It does mean that anyone could force you to reveal your vote (at least before the election result is announced, since you'd presumably destroy your receipt at that point), but again we have that problem with mail-in votes already.
Aug 21, 2023 at 4:52amWeb