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BluCurry8 t1_istz5hj wrote

Reply to comment by psychcaptain in U.S. Supreme Court backs Republican in Pennsylvania ballots case by MandoFett123456

Ah. BS. Everything online is trackable. Just because you do not understand security does not mean it does not exist. 99% of all business is done on line. As far as a secret ballot, we’ll that is questionable. All paper ballots have your information assign and in person you are logged into the rolls at a specific time. I am not so sure why we need a supposed secret ballot. It makes integrity at the polls even trickier.

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PA_Irredentist t1_isu2gw8 wrote

We need a secret ballot because anything else opens the gates to corruption: your employer or landlord would coerce you to vote a certain way, or people would sell their votes. Those are the reasons we moved to a secret ballot in the first place.

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psychcaptain t1_isu7t9l wrote

Indeed. The paper ballot is a way for the person the verify how they voted when it's scanned into a machine (which should be air gapped) and allows for a recount. An online system would either have no way for you to verify your vote (so you can't verify that the vote went through correctly) or it would, be an open to tracking by others.

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BluCurry8 t1_isubddg wrote

Of course you could verify your vote. I can verified the amount of taxes I have paid on my quarterly estimates I have submitted. I can also download a receipt and get email notification.

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psychcaptain t1_isuf7ad wrote

Really? Who would you call to tell you who you voted for last election?

There are no records of who you voted for. None. There are only records that you voted.

And when you voted, you for a paper ballot, which you would verify is correct, and then it gets counted. That's it. It's a secret ballot. No one gets to know how you voted, except you. Which is, again the problem with online services. No air gap which means altering your vote would be possible in a way a paper ballot makes it impossible. You have no way of knowing what the machine at the other side received, or whether someone highjacked your vote.

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BluCurry8 t1_isu9pmh wrote

In this day and age, it is already determined if you are party affiliated. So, now tell me how a secret ballot stops someone from coercion? Even knowing a party affiliation how does that stop coercion? It doesn’t. Companies ask their employees to give to their PACs They do not require it, but they certainly try to influence their employees. Like I said, not seeing the benefits you seem to think we get with a secret ballot. It can still be private, just like your bank statements. You would then be able to confirm your ballot was counted and included in the final count with read only access after you submitted your ballot.

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PA_Irredentist t1_isuo2mv wrote

I think the discrepancy here are that there are very specific types of trust we want to discourage in voting: specifically, trust between bad actors or between bad actors and potential victims.

The secret ballot, by definition, just requires that no one except the voter can possibly know who they voted. It doesn't prevent coercion for party registration or PAC funding - those are separate issues which have their own ins and outs.

You argue in favor of a private - not secret - ballot. I hear you and understand the value you find in that. It would be great for cases when there are no bad actors AND when people don't trust their votes are being counted accurately.

However, a private ballot like you endorse is completely open to coercion and corruption, even with read-only access. Imagine that a random person honestly offered to refund me for a debit card purchase of $20 at Wal-Mart. In the private world you're describing, Wal-Mart, my bank, and I know that I did. However, I can still validate it by showing the random person my private bank account statement.

In the current, secret ballot system we have, no one would rationally offer money for my vote because there is no legal way of validating the transaction. Even if I do as they wish, they have no way of knowing that I'm not lying through my teeth. In your private ballot system, I can use my read-only access to show the candidate, a party leader, my boss, or landlord that I completed my end of the bargain. Now, they can establish trust: they can use my ability to access that data to confirm that I voted the way they wished. As a result, they can coerce or bribe you or I to vote the way they wish.

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reverendsteveii t1_isu3sc0 wrote

>Everything online is trackable

Explain how, and why online fraud is still in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year if the solution is simply "track it, everything online is trackable"

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psychcaptain t1_isu7z9v wrote

I mean, in theory, I think we could, but the cost would probably be far greater than returns.

That being said, happy to see us go after the larger fish when it's feasible.

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BluCurry8 t1_isubu28 wrote

How much do we spend on elections every years? Billions. We should put a tax on every political donation and PAC to pay for secure elections. We have the means, but of course why would we invest money on decent infrastructure!

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BluCurry8 t1_isu8pki wrote

Everything is trackable, that does not mean that companies investigate fraud all the way to putting a person in jail. Most of it is written off. That does not mean that they can’t track it, it means the chose not to pay for resources to do the investigations. They are making a decision to write off bad debt rather than pay the costs to track it down and have it prosecuted. Happens all the time, especially in insurance. They just pass the costs off to other customers. Most of these crimes require accountants and IT professionals. How many police departments hire accountants and IT professionals along with the computer equipment they need?

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reverendsteveii t1_isubtaq wrote

Ah, so you've no expertise at all and you're guessing based on how you think the world works. Okay, have a great day!

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BluCurry8 t1_isudpp7 wrote

????? I’ve worked in IT for the last 23 years and managed a infrastructure and Network Security program, but sure you do not like my easily verifiable answer and therefore try to tell me I do not know what I am talking about!!! Use Google and do some research.

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trs21219 t1_isufq04 wrote

You may be in IT, but I'm gonna guess you've never defended a mission critical distributed application / network against every major nation state attacker all at once.

If you implement a vote online system, that's exactly what you would have; China, Russia, Hell even some of our supposed allies all trying to hack their way in at the same time to skew the elections in their favor. And you may know after the fact that there was a hack, but good luck finding what they changed once they have root level access to your network.

Lastly the government is generally terrible at everything they implement technology wise. They couldn't even launch a healthcare website without months of issues and overrun budgets. I don't trust them to develop and secure un-auditable digital systems that determine who is in power.

Voting online is just an all around terrible idea.

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psychcaptain t1_isu84nn wrote

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ

Tom did a video on this a few years ago.

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BluCurry8 t1_isucmqc wrote

Are your passwords anonymous? Yes. They are converted to ******* when you input them, so Tom does not understand the basics of security. Like I said it can be done. And it probably will be someday. We still have a culture of people who do not understand technology they use everyday.

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