Can’t go back to the past – paper ballots

In David Dill’s article in the Stanford news, he believes that paper ballots is the gold standard we should stick to. But in reality, it’s not like we can go back to paper votes either, the amount of work of tabulating and counting the votes will only increase as the United States’ population increases.  The commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections during a panel about America’s voting technology crisis states: (46:30 in the video below)

Paper ballots also aren’t cheap. We have localities … Fairfax County, for example, they have scanning equipment and the ballots that they got printed. We are talking close to $100,000 just for ballot printing (…) It’s not realistic to expect hand counting after the election, it’s just an incredible task the amount of people and resources required. As Doug mentioned, it also isn’t just as accurate.

David Dill might be a successful computer scientist, but he would probably be a starving economist. The Country just can’t afford to spend $100,000 per county on 3,143 counties in the United States, that’s over 300 billion dollars per election.

The current systems just aren’t working

Dill also talked about how the voting systems can easily be hacked, and there is truth to the statement. The guardian reported in April 2015 that “Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report.” A computer scientist at tech research group SRI International stated that “The AVS WinVote machines, used in three presidential elections in Virginia, ‘would get an F-minus‘ in security.” With both our current system and past system realistically unusable, what do we do you might ask.

The Solution

The solution to this problem is end-to-end verifiable online voting. Follow My Vote hopes to be the lead innovator in this new technology. Through cryptographically secure voting, every machine has to be registered to a user who has been verified through a picture and government ID card along with an ID Key. Each user then has the ability to vote only once, but can change their vote until the poll closes. The blockchain technology allows an individual to audit their vote or the entire election if they wanted to.

About the author: David Brock is a Marketing Intern of Follow My Vote.

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Talk to most people about Bitcoin and several things come to mind: a secretive inventor, illicit marketplaces and the failure of one of its largest exchanges. Not exactly the kind of images most entrepreneurs want to be associated with.

But it turns out that currency might not be the most exciting thing to come out of the Bitcoin craze. Instead, it’s the technology that makes Bitcoin work, known as the blockchain, which will be truly revolutionary.

Before leaping ahead, a word on how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin, of course, is a digital currency that can be used like cash to pay for a growing number of goods and services. When someone uses Bitcoin to, say, buy a pizza, that transaction is recorded on a “block,” or a file of data. Once a block is full (determined by time — on average every 10 minutes — rather than quantity), the next block to be created incorporates computer code that refers to the preceding block — thereby building a permanent string of records known as the blockchain.
Read more at: forbes.com

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Recently, Tsipras decided to put the power directly in the hands of the people via a national Greek referendum.  Eurozone leaders watched impassively as 60% of Greeks voted against accepting the bailout proposal, and instead to send the negotiators back to the drawing board.  While the outcome of their vote isn’t surprising, how they voted is.

The video shows a group of what are presumed to be poll officials first dumping a box of votes onto a pair of side-by-side tables, and then gathering the votes by hand into ambiguous piles.  This methodology is troubling, as the economic crisis has polarized the Greek people and there are embittered advocates in both the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps.  Between the harsh austerity measures which Greeks have labored under for years, and Tsipras’ highly influential campaign for a ‘no’ vote in the Greek referendum, it is not unthinkable that a well-meaning poll worker abused his or her position to unduly influence the vote.  So while investors around the world waited nervously for the outcome of the referendum,  3,558,450 votes were cast and shoddily hand-counted.

This is just one of many situations in which online voting software, like Follow My Vote’s, would have delivered a faster, more trustworthy, and transparent election result and expedited a negotiation process which has been a cause of much anxiety for global investors and spiked volatility in European markets.  Put simply, the fact that such archaic voting methods were used in a decision as important as the Greek referendum underscores the need for more modern voting practices; especially in a globalized world where the decisions of a handful of Greeks affects not only the Greek economy but that of the entire world.

The post Questionable Voting Practices in the Greek Referendum? You Decide. appeared first on Follow My Vote.

At its most fundamental core, the ultimate goal of any true democracy is to best represent the will of the people. And it is of absolutely paramount importance to note that the democracy should not only represent the will of some people from a particular demographic or sub-set of the population; the democratic process should account for the views, opinions and desires of as many eligible citizens as possible.

And while this may sound like such an obvious truth, there has been a growing problem with voter apathy and dwindling voter turnout in many democracies all around the globe. This is all while so many other nations are desperately fighting for the opportunity to elect their own governments in a fair and transparent manner. For some, the reason why they choose not to vote is that they are not engaged with the political process, disenchanted with apathy and corruption. They do not feel that the political process is relevant to their everyday lives.

In the “Viral Voting” report issued by WebRoots Democracy, many of these issues are explored in the context of the United Kingdom, but they can be just as applicable in many other places around the globe. In particular, the report takes a look at the youth vote and what it will take to encourage more young people to visit the polls. This is not a new topic and it has been stated many times before that the future of democracy should embrace e-voting technology.

In the WebRoots report, Head of Citizenship and Political Participation Programme at Demos Jonathan Birdwell indicates that only 44% of those aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2010 election, while 74% of those over 55 voted. This gap is incredibly significant. It’s not that young people don’t care about the future of their respective countries. They may not be voting in the same proportion as older generations, but many are actively poltical in more informal ways. The challenge is engaging this demographic so that the voting process can once again be relevant to them.

Read more here.

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Online voting requires independent accountability. Blockchain is the best available protocol to guarantee that accountability: a decentralized ledger that can certify any kind of event that happens online. Any user, without the need of requesting permission to an organization, can validate and count every interaction or vote that was made by an online application. Who votes remains anonymous but how many votes is verifiable. By combining this protocol with the open source application DemocracyOS (backed by Y Combinator) we could offer an online solution for voting that could guarantee transparency and openness. This is the key to online trust and a leap civic tech needs.

In one sentence, describe your idea as simply as possible.

Provide support to Open Source voting software DemocracyOS to register online votes in the Blockchain making them unchangeable and verifiable by third parties.

Briefly describe the need that you’re trying to address.

Online voting is still perceived as polling and registering votes in the blockchain can build trust in this process by making the counted votes verifiable by anyone (even if they don’t use or access DemocracyOS). Any implementation of electronic voting can benefit from this technology being available for free with its entire source code available, hopefully becoming a standard for such action. Online civic participation benefits from transparency (open source) and trust (blockchain) by having a robust combination of these technologies.

What progress have you made so far?

DemocracyOS is one of the most active open source efforts to deliver a debate and voting platform. The application has been under development for 3 years with a strong community that contributes daily to its source code (github.com/democracyos) and a hub platform for quick and easy setups. Blockchain use has grown exponentially in the quantity of transactions since 2010 (mostly for commercial applications that support Bitcoin) but as the technology matures new applications are developed. DemocracyOS development and designs team has been exploring it as a way to certify events in time (contracts, transactions and votes) as a side project. We now see it as a core feature of our software and a useful development for other civic tech apps that can benefit from it.

Read More Here: http://pi.vu/66aT.

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While Bitcoin has received the lion’s share of attention since its conception, recently the Blockchain — the distributed public database used to record Bitcoin transactions — has just begun entering the spotlight for enabling some important capabilities outside of Bitcoin.

“It’s my belief that Blockchain technology will be as important to the world as Gutenburg’s printing press,” Nic Cary, cofounder of Blockchain.info, told me recently. “For the first time in the history of the world we can reimagine how the world transacts without relying on an intermediary.”

One way the Blockchain might change the world is through Distributed Cloud Storage.

Distributed Cloud Storage

The Blockchain has already been manipulated to store information in unscaleable ways. A niche storage trick is sending small amounts of Bitcoin to addresses that represent information when converted into a Unicode format. For example, the above image of Nelson Mandela is recorded in this transaction.

Besides being a hobby for techies, Blockchain data storage could be disruptive. Current cloud storage services are centralized — thus users must place trust in a single storage provider. With the Blockchain, this can become decentralized. For instance, Storj is beta-testing cloud storage using a Blockchain-powered network to improve security and decrease dependency. Additionally users can rent out their excess storage capacity, Airbnb-style, creating new marketplaces.

Read More Here: venturebeat.com

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After a nearly 90-minute debate on the effectiveness of online voting, the Student Association Senate passed a bill, 20-12, that would allow students to vote online for the SA executive election.

Polling stations in DuSable Hall, the Holmes Student Center, Recreation Center, Founders Memorial Library and Barsema Hall will now have laptops where students can vote. Aside from the polling stations, students will be able to vote on their phones and electronic devices through the Huskie Link website, niu.collegiatelink.net, a social networking site for student organizations.

Senator Gregory Lezon, member of the SA board of elections, said he was concerned about the use of Huskie Link for voting as there could be bugs with the system. David White, SA election commissioner and the senator who proposed online voting, said he would run tests to ensure the website would work fine.

Senator Jordan Clayton-Taylor expressed concern with moving toward electronics as “someone could use another person’s [OneCard] to vote.”

White said the system for online voting would work the same way as the paper ballot voting as a OneCard is required to be swiped to vote and a person can only vote once.

Source: northernstar.info

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Ensuring that elections are fair and equitable is fundamental to democracy — yet easier said than done, as MIT students discovered this fall in a new class, co-listed as 6.S897 and 17.S952 (Elections and Voting Technology).

Taught jointly by Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, and Ronald Rivest, the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the class explored challenges embedded in election systems from both the technical and the political science perspective — providing students with new insights into the complexities of a system many thought they understood.

“I had this idea we could fix voting so easily by using electronic voting machines, but to learn there are huge security concerns was really interesting for me,” said Megan Goldberg, a PhD student in political science whose research focuses on political behavior.

“You come from the technical side and think you can just throw some standard piece of cryptography at the problem, and then you start to understand all the constraints,” said Ben Kraft ’15, a mathematics major. For example, votes need to be kept secret while being tracked in such a way that no one can vote twice; the system must be easy to use; and the technology must be robust enough that it will not fail on election day. “You add all of these things together and [the problem] becomes more interesting,” Kraft said.

Voting Technology Project

The fall class was an outgrowth of Stewart and Rivest’s long collaboration on the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, a research and policymaking initiative that emerged following the 2000 presidential election, which was plagued by charges that ballot and voting machine errors had upset results. The class covered many of the challenges presented by modern election systems — from the fairness of redistricting to the readability of ballots to the security of electronic voting.

Guest lecturers added depth by sharing their expertise on a wide variety of topics. For example, Philip B. Stark, chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, discussed machine auditing of vote tallies; Dan Wallach, professor of computer science at Rice University, spoke about the design of a new voting system, StarVote, to be used in Travis County, Texas; ballot designer Dana Chisnell explored issues related to usability; and David Jefferson, security researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, discussed the risks of voting over the Internet.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

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November’s midterm election meant grappling with new voter identification requirements, cutbacks to early voting and the elimination of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting in several states, but advocates are cautiously optimistic that 2015 could be an improvement for voting rights. Last cycle’s voter turnout, about 36 percent, was estimated to be the lowest since 1940, but changes that could make voting more convenient – like online registration – might help mitigate some of the barriers from laws that restrict access. Twenty states of varying political inclinations offered online registration as of December, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “This is a time where we should be reaching across the aisle looking for commonsense solutions,” said Myrna Pérez, the deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, which tracks voting legislation. “A lot of those involving technology and leveraging technology are very appealing – and it’s exciting because [electronic and online registration] both have the habit of making it simpler and easier to run elections correctly. They make the rolls cleaner and are cheaper, and we saw some bipartisan support for this last year.”

. Technological upgrades could also help ameliorate the emerging problem of aging voting machines. Chapin said that leading into the next presidential election, a focus for states will be figuring out how to upgrade or replace existing voting technology and expand the use of electronic poll-books.

“A lot of those machines are starting to wear out, and that federal money is gone, so you’re starting to see states like Florida, Virginia and Maryland considering or enacting funds to allow the states to buy or lease new voting technology,” Chapin said. “The challenge will be, where does that money come from? Does it get taken from other priorities or does it become yet another money fight that states have?”

Of course, the push to enhance voting technologies doesn’t mean that state legislators are giving up on their efforts to expand access. Democratic legislators in Pennsylvania have introduced legislation regarding election-day registration, electronic registration and early voting; Oregon’s Democratic Secretary of State wants to pass a universal voter registration law that would automatically register voters using DMV data; and Minnesota’s Democratic Secretary of State has voiced support for expanding early voting.

Read More Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/voter-registration-_n_6556064.html

Source: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/these-states-are-actually-considering-ways-to-make-voting-more-convenient-huffington-post/

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Voting.

To this day, in the United States, the vast majority of us are still using paper ballots or antiquated touchscreen systems to cast our votes. It’s embarrassing, to say the least, and we all know the issues with paper; namely ballot stuffing, hanging chads, scanning problems, the list is not small. That doesn’t mean that people haven’t been trying to fix the system…quite the contrary, really. Across the world, attempts have been made to usher in a new-age of voting, to varying degrees of success. I’m here today to share with you some of these attempts, and discuss what exactly has gone wrong, and what we can learn from their mistakes to ensure they don’t get made again.

Actually, to be completely honest, America does have an online voting system in place. In fact, nearly 3 million people were expected to have the ability to vote online for the midterm elections a month ago. These people were mostly members of the military, or overseas personnel currently abroad…or Alaskans. However, it must be pointed out, and I can not stress this enough, that while these people may be able to vote over the internet, they are doing so with the understand that they are waiving their rights to a secret ballot, and that faulty transmissions are not out of the question. Basically, the whole system is a crap shoot, no better than any systems that we have in place today. What is the point of even voting if there is no guarantee that it is going to be counted? This is only the most important of civic duties after all, and I’m pretty sure those who choose to engage in it would like to know that their vote counts.

In Alaska’s case, let’s just say that you’ve read, understood, and signed the waiver. The vote has been placed, submitted as a PDF, and sent back to the election commission representing your district. Along that path, though, cybersecurity experts were, in less than a day, able to develop a system that allowed the PDF to be temporarily intercepted, changed, and then sent along its merry way. Worst of all, this was all done while leaving the user in the dark and having them think that their intended vote was what made it through. Secure? No. Safe? Nope. Transparent? Absolutely not. While the effort must be applauded for merely just giving it a shot, this is a dart that didn’t even really hit the board.

Of course, this isn’t the only instance in which the United States has taken a crack at the online voting game. In 2010, Washington D.C., our lovely capital city, developed a pilot program intended to allow absentee voters the opportunity to vote online. It was then left open to the public to attempt to find any issues with the program, and lo and behold, in less than 24 hours, multiple groups had successfully hacked the system, changing votes and performing other various acts of prankish villainy (electing HAL 9000 as the council chairman). More frightening, though, was the noticing that multiple groups from China and Iran had gotten their way through some of the security protocols as well, turning this experiment into a problem of national security. Again, the ideals of safety, security, and transparency had been compromised, and the program was abandoned for the near future.

I think this is a good stopping point for today, please check back in later for a deeper look at some systems that have been tried outside of the United States, because some countries have actually found a semblance of success in their methods.

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