> If you want to take anything secure, and make it unsecure, simply transform it from paper, and put it on a computer. Bam!
In what way, exactly, do you think paper voting is 'secure'? Do you think pieces of paper cannot be forged? Do you think it's difficult to swap out election boxes or to alter ballots?
> But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization.
Sure, if you think about it for only about 1 second, the system you might come up with sucks. However, people have thought about it for more than 1 second on occasion, and come up with some pretty good designs:
Again, you're missing the key here. Process. And current paper process includes audibility, security, and more.
Done correctly, it is insanely difficult to swap out an election box. Where would you do it?
At the polling station, where members from ALL political parties are present? Volunteers are present too. All together watch the voting process, following through to opening the ballot box, and performing the initial count.
How, then, are election boxes to be secretly swapped?
On top of this, all ballots are serialized. Each voting station has multiple voting boxes. Voting boxes are sealed. How are you going to compromise them?
What I find astonishing, is how intensely some people seem to want to use computing for everything. Paper ballots, and the process used to employ them, are incredibly secure. Incredibly.
Its a problem that absolutely, positively does not need to be solved. At all.
Yet people are consistently working very diligently to do so, and the only real reason for that is one. Profit.
And we don't need that motive in an election counting process.
So, you believe that because a small group of people are kinda sorta overseeing this process over a long period of time, it is secure? Large groups of people watching intently are deceived extremely effectively and reliably by magicians all the time. I see no reason to think that the mere fact that some random citizens are "overseeing" the process makes it in any way secure.
The point is: a properly designed cryptographic voting system would make all of this provably secure. We wouldn't need to rely on witnesses paying attention, any citizen would be able to verify the integrity of the entire election on their home computer. That is why electronic voting is the best system.
Nope. You never can audit most of it. Especially the hardware and firmware at vote time.
And that's a false arg anyway, even if you could "audit" it (ask the hardware nicely to not lie to you:), it's still a (really) bad idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
I know why you think that is so. But I have already explained elsewhere in this thread why you're wrong. So why don't you look into it a little for yourself.
Of course pieces of paper can be forged... one at a time. To do so in volume requires a somewhat large operation.
I mean, sure, anyone with a laser printer can print 10,000 pieces of paper. 10,000 ballots, though... you'd have to get the right paper, the exact size, the exact font and layout. Then you'd have to move your printed ballots into the ballot stream, upstream of where they're counted. That could be done, but as I said, it's a somewhat large operation.
Compare that with changing a SIM card, where you can change multiple votes at once.
If all it takes to defeat your electronic voting system is changing a SIM card then you haven't designed a very good electronic voting system. There are cryptographic voting schemes that are much harder to defeat than that, and i've already linked them in this thread.
In what way, exactly, do you think paper voting is 'secure'? Do you think pieces of paper cannot be forged? Do you think it's difficult to swap out election boxes or to alter ballots?
> But, to pause and take a step back ... I'm not sure how you think adding a computer to the mix, improves auditing. The entire point of a voting system, is that your vote remains anonymous. Therefore, the device or method that records your vote? Must not ever ever be assigned to you. And this also includes any form of anonymization.
Sure, if you think about it for only about 1 second, the system you might come up with sucks. However, people have thought about it for more than 1 second on occasion, and come up with some pretty good designs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...