The Electoral Reform Dream Paper
Posted by Jacques Chester on Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Electoral Reform Greenpaper has mostly received coverage for the two particularly stupid proposals that are raised: lowering the age of franchise and replacing the paper ballot with electronic or — much worse — internet voting.
Robert Merkel points out at LP that there is an almost universal condemnation of the latter idea by IT security professionals. Probably because creating a system that satisfies security, integrity and the secrecy of the ballot is impossible.
By “impossible” we don’t mean “expensive” or “highly impractical”. We mean impossible. It simply cannot be done. The requirements are mutually exclusive.
Of course the green paper covers much more than wishful thinking from non-security professionals, including voting systems, legal arrangements, AEC structure, enrolment arrangements and so forth. They’re asking for submissions up until 27 November. Here’s mine (PDF).
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:41 PM and filed under Economics and public policy, IT and Internet.
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[...] focuses especially on electronic and internet voting, which he thinks is a seriously bad idea.
Posted on 24-Sep-09 at 8:47 pm | PermalinkThe fact that it is “impossible” to satisfy security etc is not a good reason not to do something.
If it is more secure, more secret, and higher level of integrity than other methods surely it should be considered. Electronic voting implemented well is demonstrably more secure, more private and has a higher integrity than paper voting.
Of course IT security professionals will say it is impossible. It is their job to tell the truth – but that does not mean they condemn the idea.
Why not give people the choice of voting electronically or with paper. Why this desire for some commentators like Chester and Merkel to tell the rest of us what we can or cannot do. I would like to vote over the Internet and I am happy to trust the system. It is my vote after all.
Posted on 25-Sep-09 at 4:45 am | PermalinkBecause there is no guarantee that your vote will be counted correctly. Or at all. Or once. Or that it will be secret. Even if you don’t mind, many others do. Democratic legitimacy is an important pillar of our system of constitutional government.
Electronic voting has never been implemented well, and it is demonstrably false to say that it is more secure, private and robust than paper voting.
IT security professionals do condemn the idea. They understand how easy it would be to subvert any such system, compared to the present one. Internet voting just multiplies the scope for attack.
Posted on 25-Sep-09 at 11:48 am | PermalinkWith regard to electronic voting, I have wondered for years why we dont have a simple system where you attend the booth as we do now but you insert your voting slip in a printer, make your selections from a screen which shows a facsimile of the slip (using a mouse on an ordinary computer leave out the touch-screen complications) and after Are you sure? it prints your vote and you take it (look at it, check it) and you place it in the ballot box.
Seems to me that doesnt require any particularly special security (because a manual count will occur if scrutineers demand it), informal voting would vanish, and the result of the election would be known two minutes after the polls close.
Indeed, I wonder that Google hasnt developed this and offered it to developing countries.
On executive stability etc. What you say sounds plausible but there is more to it. The stuff about executive decisiveness is not supported. Arendt Lijphart spent his career on this and related questions. He has measures of everything. His 1999 book on democracy in 36 countries about sums it up and is a model of straightforward political science writing.
Briefly, my opinion is that majoritarian lower houses are superfluous they are kept in line by the other house except in Queensland which gets by because we can send 4 Corners up there to sort them out.
On age of voting. If I had my druthers Id set it at 23 for girls and 25 for boys. This is about when they begin to look like adults.
Given your evident interest, Jacques, I wonder you dont consider doing honours in political science and then a PhD. Years of work but you get about $25K a year as a PhD student. You probably will never get rich but you can make a living as an academic, or as a political functionary, or as a journalist, or as all three.
Posted on 05-Oct-09 at 11:00 am | PermalinkI’ll admit to liking the present-day Australian system. We could improve a lot of things in this country, but the AEC does a good job right now. It ain’t broke.
Some people want to vote informal and it seems reasonable that they make their statement, like anyone else. Is there any evidence that informal voting represents a problem?
Speed of counting has no practical value whatsoever. Gee-whiz factor, marketing crap, worthless.
Interesting that an information processing operation can be done with slips of paper that cannot be done with high speed processors and networks. Surely there’s a deeper principle which should bother every computer scientist?
I frankly don’t believe that it is impossible, and I’m yet to see any actual proof of this (although intuitively it is certainly a challenge). Dan Wallach’s effort is the closest I’ve seen to a workable system.
http://votebox.cs.rice.edu/
Jacques, if you know the job is impossible then put together a crack for VoteBox and get your name on the Comp-Sci map. Rip into it mate! They give you source code so how can you go wrong?
However, all of the plausible systems are also quite complex. Much more complex than the current paper system, and difficult for citizens to understand. Systems such as Benaloh’s voter challenge require the voters to have a darn good idea of what they are doing. That to me is the biggest problem, justice must be seen to be done. The voters must feel a part of the process.
And we can be completely sure that there are a huge number of wrong ways to do it:
http://votersunite.org/
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/tags/voting
The only real advantage of electronic voting is cheaper elections… but what is a good election worth? Is you ask R. J. Rummel, it’s worth your life (and mine too), which is not a place that I want to be skinflint. My advice is stick with paper; slow, simple, expensive and reliable.
I’m also tempted to point out that the international Finance and Banking industries are at least as big a threat to Democracy as dodgy ballots. Especially while they run on fiat money that no one can ever quite pin down (how many US dollars are in foreign hands again?) and as they move toward double-funny currency such as carbon indulgences, errr credits.
Posted on 06-Oct-09 at 8:18 pm | PermalinkThank you for the links, Tel. There is clearly no way with paperless electronic voting that justice can be seen to be done. The paper must be there.
I didn’t suggest informal voting be forbidden (that is a matter of the law). Informal votes would be pointed out by the computer and most people would take the opportunity to fix a mistake.
Speed could have meaning; it sometimes takes weeks for PR-STV (Senate etc) polls to be counted. Saving money is really the purpose and money saved is money that can go elsewhere.
Yes, the AEC ain’t broke; on the contrary it is world’s best practice. That comes not so much from using paper as its independence of the executive. Paper’s good but it isn’t the essence. Most of the world is not like this and even in Australia it was only in 1987 that WA politicians finally relinquished control of electoral boundaries. In some places a Google software election would have more credibility than the present arrangements.
I am not particularly advocating my simple proposal over the present Australian one but rather wondering why it isn’t tried instead of the controversial things that are done. Apart from the astonishing behaviour of the Americans, the Electoral Commission in Canberra experiments with paperless voting machines. I haven’t seen them but they have done this for a while I gather. Seems pointless to me for surely most people will think like Tel and all the time there is a really simple way to go about it.
Posted on 07-Oct-09 at 11:57 am | Permalink