Re: Voting and Free Software

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,

Am Freitag 15 November 2019 12:24:49 schrieb Harald Welte:
> I wholeheartedly agree with any criticism of so-called electronic (in
> fact rather: software defined) voting.

meanwhile there was another LWN article:

Cryptography and elections
https://lwn.net/Articles/810465/
By Jake Edge, January 28, 2020 

covering an LCA talk by Vanessa Teague with the take-away:

"Transparent and verifiable electronic elections are technically feasible, but 
for a variety of reasons, the techniques used are not actually viable for 
running most elections—and definitely not for remote voting." 

> In fact, I find it highly problematic not only in public elections, but
> I also find it very problematic for any kind of democratic voting even
> within "private" entities.

There is a company in Germany (sorry seems to be German only)
  https://www.polyas.de/online-wahlen/sicherheit
they claim to have a Common-Criteria certification from the German
Federal Office for Information Security, number BSI-CC-PP-0037-2008

From my experience the crypto expertise by the BSI is often
fine and transparent. (Disclosure: my company has won several public tenders 
from the BSI in the last years - only doing work on Free Software). 
I've never looked into this certification.

Did some independent researchers take a look at Polyas' approaches
already?

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Stephane Ascoet]

Le 10/12/2019 à 17:50, Paul Schaub a écrit :





Tom Scott did a video about why electronic voting is (still) a bad idea:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs


Hi, at the end he talks very quickly about the blockchain way, witch was 
the one explored in the conference 
 I told you before. There 
was at least two flaws, I don't remember the first one. The second one 
was the lack of knowledge about keys and computing in general in the 
average voter person.


The Cambridge museum where the video takes place seems to be very 
interesting...


RMS said:

We used to have a GNU package, GNU FREE, for holding elections.


Dear Richard, could you write more about the purpose of this (former) 
package?


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Sincerely, Stephane Ascoet

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Paul Schaub]

Hi Michel,

Yeah, its really a shame that its becoming more and more a trend to plug 
advertisements at the end of a video (at least on the platform where this video 
was originally uploaded).

I agree that it ruins lots of potential of the video. However I think one can 
still learn a lot from it.

Paul

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Michel Roche]

Le 10/12/2019 à 17:50, Paul Schaub a écrit :
> 
> Because it is so relevant:
> 
> Tom Scott did a video about why electronic voting is (still) a bad idea:
> https://invidio.us/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

Hello,
very interesting video indeed. The facts and questions are well explained.

But at the end I've been really surprised by the sort of integrated
advertisment. This kind of making sort of ruins the possibility to
widely share such a video, ending by promoting a not so free solution.
What do you think ?

Michel Roche
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Paul Schaub]

Because it is so relevant:

Tom Scott did a video about why electronic voting is (still) a bad idea:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

Happy Hacking
Paul

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Harald,

Thank you very much for the detailed and very nice summary of what
happened back then in Germany.  It was indeed an important victory for
democracy.


Harald Welte  writes:
> In fact, I find it highly problematic not only in public elections, but
> I also find it very problematic for any kind of democratic voting even
> within "private" entities.  I find it ridiculous that e.g. German political
> parties use electronic voting systems to elect their candidates.
[snip]
> But for political parties which nominate who will be on the
> list of people that I can then vote for in public elections? I would
> consider that quite problematic...

The party doesn't even have to vote on their candidates, they could just
nominate them if they wanted to, so I think whether or not they use
voting computers is an internal matter.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Timo Lindfors]

On Fri, 15 Nov 2019, Harald Welte wrote:

In Debian elections, everyone eligible for a vote (I presume Debian
developers) is a person highly skilled in information technology.  In
such an exceptional situation, a sufficiently simple and reasonably
well-designed/verifiable (and Free Software) electronic/computerized
voting system may be acceptable, as every voter can at least to some
extent be expected to understand and reproduce the system of couting the
votes.


Ironically the Debian voting system was used for years by very skilled IT 
people before a fatal flaw was found that completely broke the secrecy of 
the elections in 2012:


https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/04/msg00528.html

-Timo

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Harald Welte]

One short follow-up.

Some people in the discussion have brought up the topic of the Debian voting
mechanism.   While I'm not familiar with its details, I think the situation
here is extremely different:

In Debian elections, everyone eligible for a vote (I presume Debian
developers) is a person highly skilled in information technology.  In
such an exceptional situation, a sufficiently simple and reasonably
well-designed/verifiable (and Free Software) electronic/computerized
voting system may be acceptable, as every voter can at least to some
extent be expected to understand and reproduce the system of couting the
votes.

But in pretty much any other election/vote, where voters aren't
only reasonably skilled software developers I would argue it's
impossible that every voter is able to understand the voting process and
hence doesn't simply have to blindly trust the creators [or professional
auditors] of the system.

Regards,
Harald

-- 
- Harald Welte http://laforge.gnumonks.org/

"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
  (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Harald Welte]

Hi Matthias,

sorry for being late to the party.

On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 08:55:31AM +0100, Matthias Kirschner wrote:

> Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic? 

I wholeheartedly agree with any criticism of so-called electronic (in
fact rather: software defined) voting.

In fact, I find it highly problematic not only in public elections, but
I also find it very problematic for any kind of democratic voting even
within "private" entities.  I find it ridiculous that e.g. German political
parties use electronic voting systems to elect their candidates.  They
even do that with "rented" equipment from service providers, including
systems that uses insecure wireless protocols.  What a nightmare.

Similar systems are used quite frequently for general assembly of NGOs
as well as shareholder meetings up to the largest publicly traded
companies.

Of course the question of how much of a problem computerized voting in
private entities is depends on the type of entity.  For some kind of
company of whom I'm not a share holder, it may be less of (at least my)
problem.  But for political parties which nominate who will be on the
list of people that I can then vote for in public elections? I would
consider that quite problematic...

Luckily, in Germany we at least don't have to worry about voting
computers in government / public elections anymore.

Some historical background, for those outside of Germany or who didn't
witness the events ~ 10 years ago.

More than a decade ago, I was (an insignificant) part of a group at CCC
that learned that in fact several German states had passed regulation to
use "voting machines" (voting computers) in public elections.  We then
went to observe several elections and documented the way how the (back
then NEDAP) voting computers were stored in insecure facilities (with
tilted window overnight at the city council room where they were
stored), etc.

Some other folks at CCC at the time then went on to port a chess program
to the voting computer to defeat the argument by the manufacturer that
this device is not a general-purpose computer but can only be used for
counting votes.

The Dutch [hacker] initiative "wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet"
(http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English) had just done
groundbreaking technical research against the same Nedap voting machines
a year or so before.

At some point in a conversation with Till Jaeger (whom I met frequently
around that time related to gpl-violations.org) that subject came up,
and to him (like me) it was big news that this was actually already
legal in Germany.

The rest of the story is history: The matter went to the German
constitutional court.  And much to the surprise of many (myself
included) that constitutional court actually requested the CCC to
prepare and provide (one of several) subject matter expert opinions.

In March 2009, the German constitutional court ruled that the use of
voting machines in the 2005 federal German elections was
unconstitutional.  See
https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2009/bvg09-019.html
and an English press release of the court at
https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2009/bvg09-019.html
as well as an English translation of the court order at
https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2009/03/cs20090303_2bvc000307en.html

That case made by Ulrich Wieser (http://ulrichwiesner.de/index.html)
represented by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Karpen and "our" Dr. Till Jaeger,
de-facto removed the use of electronic/computerized voting from Germany,
as the rules for federal elections propagate implicitly or explicitly
down to other public elections.

Please note that the court didn't rule that computerized voting is
outlawed.  It just raised the bar extremely high, making it so hard that
I see it practically impossible to ever build voting computers that
comply with that high bar.  The court basically states that the common
voter must be able to reliably determine if his vote has been counted
unfalsified alongside the entire chain of counting.  The court stresses
that this assessment/determination must be possible *without* the voter
having special subject matter expertise.  The court also states it is
not possible for the voter to "delegate" that trust to some kind of
government type approval of voting computers.

I perceived this ruling as an incredible victory int the continued fight
for freedom of the German society, and I'll use this opportunity to
thank everyone involved back then, from the many individual at the CCC
to Ulrich Wiesner, Till Jaeger and last but not least the judges at the
German federal constitutional court at that time.

Regards,
Harald

-- 
- Harald Weltehttp://laforge.gnumonks.org/

"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
  

Re: Voting and Free Software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I only found this one
  > https://www.en24.news/news/2019/11/10/a-technical-problem-delays-the.html

Thanks.  I will look.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Meanwhile in Switzerland... (Text in German)
  > 
https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/informatikpanne-in-freiburg-lieber-etwas-weniger-40-und-dafuer-wieder-mehr-exakt-ld.1521039

  > Short summary: Computer chaos at elections with e-voting in Freiburg, 
Switzerland

I would be very glad to know of an article in English that I could link to.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Gian-Maria Daffré]

Hello,

Matthias Kirschner  writes:

> * Richard Stallman [2019-11-06 04:33 +0100]:
>> I am against using computers to enter votes.
>> See stallman.org/evoting.html.
>
> Thank you for the pointer. I did not know about that page. 

Meanwhile in Switzerland... (Text in German)
https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/informatikpanne-in-freiburg-lieber-etwas-weniger-40-und-dafuer-wieder-mehr-exakt-ld.1521039

Short summary: Computer chaos at elections with e-voting in Freiburg, 
Switzerland

According to the timetable of the State Chancellery, the final results
should have been published in the early afternoon. But then suddenly
nothing worked any more, in at least two districts there were problems
with the transmission of the voting results. The journalists began to
add up the results from the municipalities themselves. The problem
lasted more than 8 hours (apparently from 13 to 21:15).

Even before all the municipalities had been counted, the CVP party
leadership announced that it would appeal "in view of the confusion" if
the final result was close. In other words, it no longer had absolute
confidence that the result communicated would actually meet the will of
the voters.



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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Matthias Kirschner]

* Richard Stallman [2019-11-06 04:33 +0100]:
> I am against using computers to enter votes.
> See stallman.org/evoting.html.

Thank you for the pointer. I did not know about that page. 

Best regards,
Matthias 

-- 
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Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030  |(fsfe.org/support)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)   Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[bruno]

I agree: understandability of e-voting is nonexistent respect to paper ballots___
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I think such a tool could be useful for within organizations or in case
  > where the stakes are lower than in a political election.

I agree.  However, in those cases the job may be easy.  Votes wihtin a
fairly small organization don't need the same sort of care that public
elections require.  Indeed, a secret ballot may not be needed,
The secret ballow is what makes the public elections difficult.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Bruno,


br...@tracciabi.li writes:
> For all the rest, it depends on the threat model: "cui prodest?" Who
> could have enough of an incentive to spend time, money and effort in
> manipulating any specific vote? For real political election the answer
> is always "a lot of people", so there is no reason to ever allow
> electronic voting for those.

I agree that manipulation is a real threat that should also rule out
voting machines.  However, manipulation is not the only issue with
voting machines and one important question around election systems is
always "How difficult is it for voter to understand?".  That can be a
reason not to use a voting system, even on paper, that avoids certain
defects, but most people may not understand properly.  The same is true
for electronic voting: While anyone can check if a ballot box is empty
in the morning, is sealed properly, and can then watch the vote count,
only a few experts can understand what a voting machine does and even
they need access to the hardware, and ideally to the source code.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) - lists]

I am spending most of my activistic time between free software and the 
fighst against attempt to introduce e-voting in Italy.


I'm definitively against e-voting and free software can't really help.

For anyone willing to join our Italian group fighting by policy 
lobbying, media monitoring and participation, lecturing to fight any 
politician proposal (happening every 6-9 months), please join us at 
https://crvd.org .


Fabio

On 05/11/2019 08:55, Matthias Kirschner wrote:

There is an interesting article on LWN about Free Software and voting:
https://lwn.net/Articles/797557/

Several commenters argued that electronic voting itself should not be
done. E.g. one of the first commenters (Roberto) wrote that:

   It is indeed pretty sad to see that in 2019 we still need to explain,
   again and again, why electronic voting is not feasible.  I have been
   involved in public debate about electronic voting since the early
   2000, when it was unfortunately introduced in France.  Here is a
   recent summary of the key points, in English, that should make a nice
   reading.

   
http://www.dicosmo.org/MyOpinions/index.php?post/2016/02/25/A-rule-of-thumb-for-assessing-electronic-voting-systems

Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic?

Best regards,
Matthias

PS: Btw. there was also a good episode of John Oliver explaining this to
a broader audience: $youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0


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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Michael Kesper]

Hi Richard,

On 06.11.19 04:33, Richard Stallman wrote:
> I am against using computers to enter votes.
> See stallman.org/evoting.html.
> 
> We used to have a GNU package, GNU FREE, for holding elections.
> We decided, the developer and I, to withdraw it because software
> should not be used for that purpose.

As I did see no mention of it on your page, did you consider the
Debian voting process?

Best
Michael




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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Michael Kesper]

Hi Stephane,

On 06.11.19 09:50, Stephane Ascoet wrote:
> Le 05/11/2019 à 08:55, Matthias Kirschner a écrit :
>> Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic?
> 
> Hi, this is Roberto Di Cosmo, one of the oldest and most important free 
> computing activists in Europe. I'd like to read its book « Technologie et 
> Marché : journal d'un consommateur insatisfait ».
> 
> A few months ago, I attended . 
> The activist presented us a solution that could almost work. It would need 
> that every voter had a couple of public/private key and a very specific 
> workflow.
> 
> But anyway, another problem is: should we still act like if elections had the 
> effects our dictators say they have?

Please, that is another discussion entirely.

Michael



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Re: Voting and Free Software

[bruno]

For "real" political elections, the increased risk of manipulation (and the 
increased ease in hiding it), will always  overcome any advantage which 
electronic voting might provide.
For all the rest, it depends on the threat model: "cui prodest?" Who could have 
enough of an incentive to spend time, money and effort in manipulating any 
specific vote? For real political election the answer is always "a lot of 
people", so there is no reason to ever allow electronic voting for those.___
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Richard,


Richard Stallman  writes:
> I am against using computers to enter votes.
> See stallman.org/evoting.html.

I agree completely.  Voting computers violate basic principles of
elections by making vote counting completely intransparent.  That is
something that John Oliver (as much as I like him) fails to mention
altogether.  I am glad voting machines have been deemed unconstitutional
in Germany.  I hope other countries will follow suit.  It also makes
financial sense because counting paper votes is way cheaper than
machines that need to be replaced every couple of years.


> We used to have a GNU package, GNU FREE, for holding elections.
> We decided, the developer and I, to withdraw it because software
> should not be used for that purpose.

I think such a tool could be useful for within organizations or in case
where the stakes are lower than in a political election.  There may be
cases where the convenience of voting online may be more important than
complete transparency.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Stephane Ascoet]

Le 05/11/2019 à 08:55, Matthias Kirschner a écrit :

Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic?


Hi, this is Roberto Di Cosmo, one of the oldest and most important free 
computing activists in Europe. I'd like to read its book « Technologie 
et Marché : journal d'un consommateur insatisfait ».


A few months ago, I attended 
. The activist presented us 
a solution that could almost work. It would need that every voter had a 
couple of public/private key and a very specific workflow.


But anyway, another problem is: should we still act like if elections 
had the effects our dictators say they have? In the same family of 
events in Paris area, the subject is more and more on the table, 
especially around the question of the liberty deputies really have, or, 
more realistically, don't have.
One of the main talk is, in french: 



I attend another talk from her(she's a former deputy and disgusted) two 
days ago, she said that telling people that voting has effect is a lie.


I'd like to make a Webpage with all these talks in chronological order, 
to show the growing of the reflexions on the subject as time runs(and 
why not an offline archive in the same order). And for a lot of others 
things but have so much other things to do... and it's very much data to 
store...


One of the argument in the event 19086 was that electronic voting would 
improve democracy by enabling others types of votes counts, better than 
the "majority in two turns" one.

--
Cordialement, Stephane Ascoet

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I am against using computers to enter votes.
See stallman.org/evoting.html.

We used to have a GNU package, GNU FREE, for holding elections.
We decided, the developer and I, to withdraw it because software
should not be used for that purpose.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


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Voting and Free Software

[Matthias Kirschner]

There is an interesting article on LWN about Free Software and voting:
https://lwn.net/Articles/797557/

Several commenters argued that electronic voting itself should not be
done. E.g. one of the first commenters (Roberto) wrote that:

  It is indeed pretty sad to see that in 2019 we still need to explain,
  again and again, why electronic voting is not feasible.  I have been
  involved in public debate about electronic voting since the early
  2000, when it was unfortunately introduced in France.  Here is a
  recent summary of the key points, in English, that should make a nice
  reading.

  
http://www.dicosmo.org/MyOpinions/index.php?post/2016/02/25/A-rule-of-thumb-for-assessing-electronic-voting-systems

Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic? 

Best regards,
Matthias 

PS: Btw. there was also a good episode of John Oliver explaining this to
a broader audience: $youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0

-- 
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030  |(fsfe.org/support)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)   Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html
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