American politicians in general don't understand the meaning of democracy. The whole idea is that people with most votes are elected, no if's and no but's, it doesn't matter if you might not like them. Actually, American politicians are the most democracy hating crowd in the planet, they have a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments they don't like. As some Latin American leader once said: "The only reason there's never been a coup in the United States is because there's no US embassy in the United States".
Anyway, I'm happy that Obama won, but only because the republican party is full of crazy people. Romney, despite still being a bad choice, was the most moderate of the GOP, and could have beat Obama if he hadn't flipped on just about everything to please the most conservative members of his party. That's bad, since it shows the Republicans aren't willing to adjust their agenda to the 21st century.
American politicians in general don't understand the meaning of democracy. The whole idea is that people with most votes are elected, no if's and no but's, it doesn't matter if you might not like them. Actually, American politicians are the most democracy hating crowd in the planet, they have a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments they don't like. As some Latin American leader once said: "The only reason there's never been a coup in the United States is because there's no US embassy in the United States".
Anyway, I'm happy that Obama won, but only because the republican party is full of crazy people. Romney, despite still being a bad choice, was the most moderate of the GOP, and could have beat Obama if he hadn't flipped on just about everything to please the most conservative members of his party. That's bad, since it shows the Republicans aren't willing to adjust their agenda to the 21st century.
I suppose those jackasses (see: Democrats) in Congress are perfect beings who never lied in their lives? Democrats are no shining examples either. Ever heard of Nancy Pelosi? She's a freakin' whore who even gives other democrats nightmares.
I suppose those jackasses (see: Democrats) in Congress are perfect beings who never lied in their lives? Democrats are no shining examples either. Ever heard of Nancy Pelosi? She's a freakin' whore who even gives other democrats nightmares.
Some observations I made about this election...
1. Republicans should have walked this election, there was about 2-3 credible nominees (I would have gone with Ron Paul). Romney was an awful, awful candidate. Worse than John Kerry in 2004. He got nominated purely because he had the deepest pockets. He flip flopped on so many issues, I had no idea where he stood.
Absolutely agreed. I don't have a problem with a person who changes their stance (such as Obama on gay marriage) but a person who's constantly changing is not getting educated on the issue. That's a true flip-flopper.
2. UK elections are often criticized for being too negative (although in recent years they're becoming less so), but the US ones take it to a whole new level. Literally 90%+ ads are negative, often based on half-truths and outright lies about their opponents. Crucially, like last time Obama was able to out blitz his opponent.
Agreed again. I'm thankful I don't have cable anymore so I didn't have to listen to 95% of that drivel. State your views, what you'll do if elected, and then get the hell out of the way. That's how it should be done.
3. Way too much money spent on campaigning and a lot of it was evidently wasted by both sides. The amount spent could run the BBC for a year.
Or could have helped victims from Hurricane Sandy. I mean, I understand there's a lot of cost with campaigning but if it takes that much to win, how will #4 be fixed?
4. There seems to be enough disillusionment with both parties that a 3rd one is needed. However, it would most likely take 30-40 years before the party leader could realistically become president.
It will take a complete overhaul of the media, honestly. All that they focus on it seems is the big R and D. How many of the other candidates running for president did you hear about this year? Probably Rosanne Barr and that was about it. The last time they got MAJOR coverage was probably Ross Perot. This is not a case of Fox News or CNN or other similar stations being bad, but everybody as all media as a whole. However with the growing advent of things like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (and other technology to come), maybe this will be fixed in the next decade or so. Then again, probably not.
5. The style of campaigning by both sides is outdated. All I see is Nuremburg style rallies where a canditate will fire out propaganda unchalleged, and ads. There is debates, but they're very narrowly focused. Since the nominee's know what questions to expect. Its very easy to have a perfectly prepared answer, attack and rebuff.
The problem I see with fixing debates is that we know what issues are important by the hundreds of polls run all the time or by looking at the news to see what's going on. Debates are definitely outdated, but I honestly have no idea how to fix it. Maybe more focus on town hall style meetings where the general public is asking questions and not the moderator (whose job is basically to tell the speaker how much time they have and to cut them off or what not)?
And as for the voting system, there's been a lot of debate on that and stories of mistakes, family buying stations, editing software on stations, etc. There has to be a way to fix it and possibly even allow online voting. While encryption isn't 100% foolproof and hacking can occur, there has to be a way to prevent easy tampering of votes. Look up the report "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine" and be shocked at how easy it is for stuff like that to be tampered with. It's really shocking (this type of polling station is used in places like Ohio). I've been thinking about stuff like that more partially from the late news stories that came out and partially because I'm having to deal with encryption in my own software that I'm programming right now.
It will take a complete overhaul of the media, honestly. All that they focus on it seems is the big R and D. How many of the other candidates running for president did you hear about this year? Probably Rosanne Barr and that was about it. The last time they got MAJOR coverage was probably Ross Perot. This is not a case of Fox News or CNN or other similar stations being bad, but everybody as all media as a whole. However with the growing advent of things like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (and other technology to come), maybe this will be fixed in the next decade or so. Then again, probably not.
The media in this election was looking for a good story to sell. If you looked at the polls, Obama consistently had a strategic lead over Romney (I don't know if you saw the New York Times' "paths to the White House" thing, but basically if every swing state had been a 50% tossup, then Obama was 80% likely to win). But the media were consistently calling it "neck and neck" and doing their best to make the election sound as undecided as possible. Why? Because close contests are more interesting, and sell more eyeballs. The media is not about news any more, but about entertainment, or at least anything that will get people to watch their advertising.
I do hope that less traditional ways of promulgating information will step up to fill in the gaps left by mainstream media, but they have a long ways to go; a huge number of people still get all their news from TV.
5. The style of campaigning by both sides is outdated. All I see is Nuremburg style rallies where a canditate will fire out propaganda unchalleged, and ads. There is debates, but they're very narrowly focused. Since the nominee's know what questions to expect. Its very easy to have a perfectly prepared answer, attack and rebuff.
We used to have more freeform debates. They absolutely terrified the candidates because they couldn't just parrot their talking points. So they agreed to fix the debates to stick to a very narrow focus; that way they can just safely talk past each other.
And as for the voting system, there's been a lot of debate on that and stories of mistakes, family buying stations, editing software on stations, etc. There has to be a way to fix it and possibly even allow online voting.
No. No online voting, not now, not ever.
You have two fundamental problems with online voting, and they have nothing to do with failures of implementation. The first is that someone can look over your shoulder and verify that you're voting the way you're supposed to (i.e. votes can be sold or coerced). This is already a big enough issue as to render online voting unacceptable (and voting by mail has similar issues, I must admit). But the second issue is that there's no paper trail. If someone does find a way to change your vote, then there's no record of what your vote was originally, no authoritative, trustworthy fallback option. Assuming that you can make a system secure enough that votes cannot be changed is absurdly overconfident; if nothing else, remember that people will have access to the physical machines the votes are stored on. With physical security compromised you've lost already.
Of course physical votes can be tampered with as well, but it's much harder to do that on a significant scale. You go from one guy logging onto a machine and running a script, to thousands of people going to each polling place and destroying/replacing ballots. The scale is big enough to render it infeasible.
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Derakon wrote:
But the second issue is that there's no paper trail. If someone does find a way to change your vote, then there's no record of what your vote was originally, no authoritative, trustworthy fallback option.
This problem has a simple solution; using digital signing. This would prove the identity of the person who submitted your vote was you, and it would be impossible for anyone to change the vote.
Besides, what makes a piece of paper authoritative but an unalterable, traceable computer record wouldn't be?
Derakon wrote:
Assuming that you can make a system secure enough that votes cannot be changed is absurdly overconfident;
I don't think it is. I think you could actually argue that this way would be more secure, because on paper there is no way of knowing if someone tampered with the ballot, while with digital signing a different vote could not be fabricated without access to the private key.
Pros:
Instant, complete and exact count of votes. No recounts needed.
Tamper resistance. A vote could not be changed after submission.
Most likely a lower overall cost because counting the votes would be easy.
Cons:
It is hard to convince people that don't understand or trust modern cryptography that the system is secure.
But the second issue is that there's no paper trail. If someone does find a way to change your vote, then there's no record of what your vote was originally, no authoritative, trustworthy fallback option.
This problem has a simple solution; using digital signing. This would prove the identity of the person who submitted your vote was you, and it would be impossible for anyone to change the vote.
I will admit to not being a crypto expert, but from what I understand you to be saying, the idea here would be that each voter would encode their vote with a private key, and the public key would be held by the government? I.e. the machine can count votes but cannot change them, because it would need the private key? Or of course sufficient computing power to crack the crypto, but we can assume enough bits are used to render the encryption uncrackable in the timeframe allowed.
So, two issues:
1) The machines running the voting are still subject to tampering and are functionally impossible to validate. The creators of voting machines are notoriously closemouthed (relying on security through obscurity to hide how bad a job they do in the design phase). Even assuming you could design an open-source voting machine, how do you prove that the software on the machine is the same software that passed review? An untrustworthy machine can cast votes however it pleases, and there's no way for the user to detect it; how are they supposed to know that the random string of hex the machine generated is the proper encryption of their vote? Are you expecting every voter to learn how to perform their own encryption?
2) Nothing stops a malevolent actor from scattering extra votes in. How do you prove the votes are fake? You'd have to decrypt them -- which requires the private key.
Besides, what makes a piece of paper authoritative but an unalterable, traceable computer record wouldn't be?
The fact that manipulation of data on a grand scale (as necessary to throw an election) is much harder if that data exists in the real world instead of as a bunch of bits. Like it or not, a lot of voting security relies on it simply being harder to undetectably do things in the real world than it is on a computer system. So no, paper ballot are not 100% authoritative -- they can be altered. But to do so on a large enough scale to steal an election, you need a massive number of people, spread over a huge area (so the tampered ballots aren't all obviously in one place) which makes it much harder to hide.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Derakon wrote:
So, two issues:
1) The machines running the voting are still subject to tampering and are functionally impossible to validate. The creators of voting machines are notoriously closemouthed (relying on security through obscurity to hide how bad a job they do in the design phase). Even assuming you could design an open-source voting machine, how do you prove that the software on the machine is the same software that passed review? An untrustworthy machine can cast votes however it pleases, and there's no way for the user to detect it; how are they supposed to know that the random string of hex the machine generated is the proper encryption of their vote? Are you expecting every voter to learn how to perform their own encryption?
A user can prove that the hex generated by the machine is their vote by decrypting it using the public key. Remember that in digital signing, the private key encrypts the message, and the public key is used to decrypt it.
This means that you need to be the voter to actually construct a vote, but anyone with the public key can read the vote.
Derakon wrote:
2) Nothing stops a malevolent actor from scattering extra votes in. How do you prove the votes are fake? You'd have to decrypt them -- which requires the private key.
Reading them only requires the public key. The only purpose the private key serves in a digital signing scheme is that it is needed to generate the encrypted form of the vote. The public key is all that is needed to read what the vote actually says.
And extra votes are probably better controlled in this system than the current one-- it would be easy to show that only one vote was cast per keypair. If a vote does not correspond to a valid key, it could be thrown out.
The fact that manipulation of data on a grand scale (as necessary to throw an election) is much harder if that data exists in the real world instead of as a bunch of bits.
This system would actually be able to prove the validity of every vote.
Like it or not, a lot of voting security relies on it simply being harder to undetectably do things in the real world than it is on a computer system. So no, paper ballot are not 100% authoritative -- they can be altered. But to do so on a large enough scale to steal an election, you need a massive number of people, spread over a huge area (so the tampered ballots aren't all obviously in one place) which makes it much harder to hide.
I agree it would be hard to hide the level of fraud needed to steal an election in the current system, but if every vote were digitally signed, it would become a physical impossibility.
In order to fake 1 vote, you would need someone's private key. To get a private key, you would either need to steal it from them in person (much harder than stealing a ballot because any idiot can open a mailbox), or calculate it from a public key.
Calculating them from the public keys would take between centuries and millennium (or longer if need be) depending on the key length used, and doing this for enough votes to steal an election would take long enough that our brightening sun would have turned earth into a waterless wasteland before you are done.
Good that Osama won, but both were so equal (50% vs 48%) that it would have been better to just flip a coin about the election, rather than have a complicated process with votes, and millions spent at advertisements that could have been better spent. A lot of money could have been used to help people if they had just flipped a coin...
nfq wrote:
Good that Osama won
nfq wrote:
Osama
I didn't know dead non-American born persons could even run for President of the United States.
(PS I don't know if it was intentional or a Freudian slip or an honest mixup or whatnot)
I suppose those jackasses (see: Democrats) in Congress are perfect beings who never lied in their lives? Democrats are no shining examples either. Ever heard of Nancy Pelosi? She's a freakin' whore who even gives other democrats nightmares.
You sound butthurt, my friend.
Rather be butthurt than praise Obama like a god. People act as thought he's going to magically reduce the debt and create real jobs.
I will admit to not being a crypto expert, but from what I understand you to be saying, the idea here would be that each voter would encode their vote with a private key, and the public key would be held by the government?
Public key encryption is not the same thing as digital signing.
In public key encryption you can encrypt data using the public key, but nobody can decrypt it unless they have the private key (at least not in any reasonable amount of time, as far as we know.) The direction of data transfer is from others to the person owning the private key.
Digital signing is kind of the opposite: The data can be decrypted with the public key, but only encrypted with the private one. The direction of data transfer is the opposite to the above, in other words from the owner of the private key to others. (This is of course a very simplified version of the whole technology, for example because the same data can be digitally signed by more than one person, etc, but let's keep it simple for clarity.)
The idea with the latter is that, as long as you know you have the correct public key, you can use it to read and verify the data and be sure that it has indeed been created by the person owning the private key. It cannot have been modified or tampered with by a third party.
Someone could fake the public key and use their own matching private key to send faked data, but in that case the actual person can come up and prove that the data has been faked (because the public key is different from the original, and does not match anything that the original person has published.)
In this particular case, however, the public key is in the government's archives, which would make it much harder to fake votes (because the government's computers would obviously check them against the public keys stored in their systems; in order to fake the votes one would have to hack into the government's computers and change those public keys.)
The major problem I see with this proposed solution is one of practicality and logistics: The government would have to provide each citizen with a private key and the means to use it. It would probably have to be a physical device (actual "keys", like those used in some companies, that use a technology very similar to this.) Then there has to be a framework for dealing with broken, lost and stolen keys, and so on. This is all quite expensive. Then there's the problem that happens if someone comes up to the voting booth without the key but with valid ID...
I suppose those jackasses (see: Democrats) in Congress are perfect beings who never lied in their lives? Democrats are no shining examples either. Ever heard of Nancy Pelosi? She's a freakin' whore who even gives other democrats nightmares.
Instead of throwing sexist ad hominem words like that around to try to make a political statement, make charges of actual substance. This post does nothing but embarrass yourself and discredit Democratic opposition.
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I've read before about CEO's basically telling their employees "vote Romney or get fired". After Obama's re-election, I suppose this is only a natural consequence. (Not that it makes any sense in the slightest.)
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I've read before about CEO's basically telling their employees "vote Romney or get fired".
That would be quite illegal here. (Both firing people for such a reason, and perhaps even making that threat.)
I think it's sad that I'm not surprised that it's not illegal in the US.
Okay, make some political opinions? All right, I will. Obamacare is ill-timed and unconstitutional, why? Granted, there are many like myself who have no insurance, but it should NOT be mandatory (see: coercion). It forces people to get health insurance when there are many who cannot afford it, but I guess it's good since one can choose a provider of their choice. What I refuse to agree with is the fact it's a "buy insurance or get heavy fines" mentality that pisses me off. That hardly sounds like freedom to me, it sounds more along the lines of *gasp* socialized medicine. It's not going to fix our already-broken economy, it will only damage it further.
Then we got the issue with massive unemployment and job creation. During his last four years of presidency, the number of people out of work barely improved at all. If people think he can magically fix the unemployment rate to what it was before it want to hell, and reduce the national debt to manageable levels, he's sorely mistaken. It didn't help that fact he went to Middle-eastern countries to apologize for America, all the while making us look like a bunch of pussies. Smooth move, Barack, smooth mover indeed. I guess he really did deserve that Nobel Peace Prize.
Since there's no way to confirm that the person voted the way you want them to, they're always free to vote as they like and then lie. Not that that justifies the initial threat, but it's a pretty toothless threat.
Regarding the crypto discussion we were having: thanks for the explanations. I admit that I can't see an obvious way to subvert individuals' votes under that regime. That doesn't allay my other concerns:
* I don't trust the creators of voting machines to actually make a verifiably secure design
* Paper trails are fundamentally harder to subvert than bits -- even if the paper trails just replicate the bits!
* I see no pressing need to have instant results (indeed arguably the current system is devaluing Alaska and Hawaii's votes as the election is largely called before their polls close!)
* Specifically for internet voting, there's no way to make it anonymous (someone could always be looking over your shoulder)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
This problem has a simple solution; using digital signing. This would prove the identity of the person who submitted your vote was you, and it would be impossible for anyone to change the vote.
Well, that's cute! Unfortunately, this solution introduces more logistical problems than it solves as explained by Warp, but most importantly it doesn't alleviate the main problems with voting that happen outside the actual voting process; i.e. the part where you go into a booth or its digital alternative. It's only a small step in a very long and insecure chain that can be compromised at every point. For instance, here in Russia our dearest president Putin ordered to install webcams at every polling station to ensure "fair elections". Now, despite already being in power for over 12 years and all the while failing to fulfill all of his major promises and plunging the country even deeper into the abyss of corruption and social inequality, he still won. Why? Because the outcome of elections can be manipulated by an interested party in tons of less obvious ways than directly tampering with every personal vote. Let's name a few...
1. Manipulation of pre-election information. Works several ways:
— having stake in media groups, thus having a direct say in what can or can't be told, and how it should be told. This takes advantage of people who, due to their habits, intelligence, and other factors, can't or aren't willing to take their political information from various unaffiliated or differently affiliated sources (read: most everybody aged 50+);
— having stake in telecom groups, thus having a degree of control over the geographical reach of unaffiliated or wrongly-affiliated media groups;
— various forms of general propaganda that may include anything from covering up important facts straight to outright lies;
— making friends with popular non-politicians and soft-bribing them into testimonials in favor of the interested party;
— rallying up meetings using huge numbers of affiliated attendants to create an illusion of universal support, even if the attendants themselves have little useful to say. "If so many people love this guy, he must be the better choice!"
2. Filtering opponents out and otherwise manipulating them. Again, works in several ways, but mainly for multi-party systems:
— manipulation of money, thus rendering unaffiliated candidates who aren't already wealthy unable to run promotional campaigns in order to attain the required number of support signatures;
— bureaucratic impediment for independent candidates that may be as simple as dragging the admission approval process out until past the deadline (for instance, nitpicking to make the candidate waste their time doing the major part of the paperwork anew, or other forms of paperwork manipulation);
— direct or indirect bribery (believe it or not, many people are in politics for the money and the power it provides; who cares if this power is employed in a different place or a different form?);
— constructing a dummy opponent designed to "join forces" (directly or otherwise) with the interested party after it's fulfilled their mission, or simply lose at some point, taking a percentage of voters from other candidates.
3. Manipulation of voting decision (usually done in favor of the current party in power). The least important thing these days, and oftentimes initiated by people possessing some kind of executive power but not directly affiliated with the interested party (i.e. not benefiting from the outcome directly, but having some kind of general agenda aligned with it, such as those CEOs in Las Vegas):
— various forms of workplace coercion, very effective on employees afraid to lose their current jobs (old, improperly educated, inefficient, poor, etc.), where a cost of one personal vote isn't worth the trouble; even more effective if the workplace is run by the state. Said trouble doesn't have to be the explicit "you'll be fired", a simple "you'll be very unwelcome" or "working conditions will worsen" usually suffices since nobody wants to deal with problems or a hostile atmosphere at one's workplace, and even if you choose to sue your way through you'll likely have to leave anyway;
— military service coercion, very hard to monitor and easy to do in virtually any country;
— general coercion in poorly monitored rural regions where residents' human rights are essentially ignored and any opposition can be dealt with or prevented using intimidation;
— bribery, even as simple as offering short-term benefits for those voting for the interested party.
4. Manipulation of post-election information. In many countries, only the Central Election Committee has the access to the voting data, and thus it can't be freely audited. At the same time, every registered citizen's demographic data and things such as their health status can be accessed. Works in these ways:
— perusing the names of non-attendants to cast votes for the interested party—they don't even have to be dead souls, just sick or lonely people, for instance;
— counting the existing votes wrong, or announcing the wrong number (risky, but if you can ensure that no unwanted people have the ability to check it, who cares).
I'm absolutely sure there are other ways to manipulate the outcome (I can't be smart enough to have come up with everything on the spot), but this is enough to show how insignificant and inconsequential are the digital signatures and all that. Now, of course not all of them would fly in the US, but many will and surely have. Actually, even if neither candidate employs any outright manipulative tactics per se, you should note that these people are hellishly wealthy. The amount of money they've chosen to pay to the media could have worked in their favor had it been spent to further their announced political goals, yet they chose against it. Why?
Warp wrote:
That would be quite illegal here. (Both firing people for such a reason, and perhaps even making that threat.)
Doesn't have to be a threat. In fact, the reason for mass layoffs at some enterprises might even be legitimate from the business standpoint. Changes in economy incurred by changes in political courses, or lack thereof, may force a reassignment of company budgets. If the only way for said company to survive is to lay off some employees, that's what it'll inevitably do. Keep in mind we don't know if the fired employees actually voted for Obama; they might as well haven't voted at all.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Moozooh, from what I'm aware of the votes in the recent Russian election were manipulated by allowing known Putin supporters to vote multiple times. This was done by traveling to different polling stations and showing I.D. with a special apple logo to the voting registerer.
That hardly sounds like freedom to me, it sounds more along the lines of *gasp* socialized medicine. It's not going to fix our already-broken economy, it will only damage it further.
The economy doesn't matter, only people matter, so if socialized medicine can improve health, it's good.
If people think he can magically fix the unemployment rate to what it was before it want to hell, and reduce the national debt to manageable levels, he's sorely mistaken.
The more unemployment, the better, because then we have more free time to do what we want. What needs fixing is the economic system, so that people can have everything they need, even without necessarily having a job.
National debt doesn't really matter either, because it's just something we invented, it's an imaginary problem. To fix the economy and all debts permanently, just shut down the banks and abolish money.
Moozooh, from what I'm aware of the votes in the recent Russian election were manipulated by allowing known Putin supporters to vote multiple times. This was done by traveling to different polling stations and showing I.D. with a special apple logo to the voting registerer.
Correct, that has been the case. However, evidently even if there were several million fake votes cast that way, and we had discounted those, Putin would still win with an absolute majority; i.e. over 50%, no second round. Arguably that is even more alarming than the fact of outright cheating. His grasp on the media is very well reflected by the ratio of anti-Putin votes in highly urbanized areas where people have inherently better access to information sources vs. rural and remote areas where such choice is technically limited to media sources run or supervised by the state. Even though the welfare in urban areas is inherently better—up to an order of magnitude in monetary terms! So what can possibly motivate people who have seen little—if any—tangible improvement in 12 years to vote for the same guy? They're afraid things will turn for the worse with the other candidates, as they never had a chance to prove otherwise.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
