Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea

40 thoughts on “Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea”

1. 1:28 I watched a documentary about French politics the other day and it appears that they don't seal their ballot boxes.

2. Paper voting has all of these problems

3. Brazil.

4. I'm honestly a little hesitant even if the future technology offers fool-proof, absolutely trust-worthy system.
   I mean, look at 4chan

5. These are very weak arguments, and several are straw men. Uniquely bad is that because a system is not understood by the public that nobody will trust it. Almost everything we have trust in is not understood by the public, paper ballot voting included, so that's just a priori a terrible argument. There are good arguments, you should focus on those, but there are also very good arguments for building an electronic system that has these two properties and a third key property: verifiable results. The existence of bad solutions does not mean a good one can't be built. The ignorance of people about how such a system would work is not a justification for not pursuing it. You don't address any of the good arguments in favor of it, and you don't present any good arguments against it. I fail to understand the point of this video unless it's misinformation, but I won't ascribe malice where incompetence can explain it. Do a better job.

6. I am studying cs in germany and maybe it is weird for me to say this, but I think modern computer technology does get to much hype and far too few serious critics. It seems to me like everybody is on a hype train and while that is good for us computer freaks to keep being motivated, no average consumer should jump immediately on that train. Instead we need to accept a no at somepoint. We need to discuss things and I don't mean just one meetup. In big topics like AI I am thinking about let's say 20 years of discussing, debating and just talking and speculating before we even remotely start building roboters, but look at us. Germany isn't even able to keep up with the pace the internet develops, but we are already planning ai. And the topic of electronic voting is another one of these. It feels to me that this topic is only popular because everyone is on a hype train and not because they think it is the best idea.
   So thank you for giving a lil contra, I needed that 🙂

7. anonymity + trust.. well, "trust" is demonstrated in the global financial systems which now electronically transact billions if not more dollars every day/week/month/quarter. So, electronic voting systems can definitely be kept at-par with these financial systems as far as "trust" goes.

   Next, anonymity. If the govt is able to deploy a pseudo-anonymous ID mechanism by which systems can mark the user as valid/approved/legit but not have any personally-identifiable-info on the user, then this problem has a potential solution.

   Yes, paper voting mechanisms have been around for decades (or centuries in some nations); however, if we remain with the same backward-technology, will we ever progress to electronic voting. There are a number of other factors, statistics, etc today which can help gauge if an electronic voting system has been compromised. For example: pre-election surveys, post-election surveys, etc.

   Fear of modern technology must not be a driving factor that holds us back to using the same tools our ancestors employed.

8. To have reliable electronic voting, you have to give up either anonymity or trust. Can't have both.

9. If you are "techie" enough to watch this video to the end, there are open source password managers that are completely free, and you don't have to trust a corporation with your passwords 😉

10. What about using Blockchain for voting?

11. So electronics are good enough to keep medical information safe as well our financial information/records accurate, but not good enough for voting? I'm skeptical. Anonymity to external parties isn't the same as anonymity in its entirety, which Tom mentioned is broken anyways (UK can verify votes with a court order.) In US, you sign and/or print name so it's not entirely anonymous, but information should be guarded and kept secret to prevent threats and tampering which is what happens now. Fear of what might happen shouldn't make it so we just accept what is happening and call it good enough. I'm more worried about the people implementing and watching the votes than the technology used to implement it, but again the people are there and already exercising in manipulation. Implement a flawed solution, and you make that manipulation easier. But I think technology can offer a much better solution than paper ballots.

12. Here after Pelosi calls for mail voting to be implemented. In person voting, or no trust.

13. Not anonymous transparent online vote with a person's uniqueness check. With displaying the results on some site at once that can be processed by anyone. I think this is not a bad idea.

14. Rather like Voting by Telephone, PV only works well on paper.

    >irony meter explodes<

15. Let’s not forget that each vote must be authorized. That too competes with anonymity.

16. I'm sorry but for most trust and understanding are not the same. For most trust is a feeling… it's how many scams work.

    As long as you deploy a well operating block chain system that has only small scale vulnerabilities like the ones you say paper voting have, people will trust it.

17. It's a bad idea, and that's exactly why they do it.

18. Hmm, interesting perspective on the issue of trust, this is not a point I've considered on thinking about it. Personally, I think the security is less of a concern, there are already lots of very secure transmission systems which are used in the financial sector which are very robust, and there are ways that you could manage the polling stations to give higher security.
    On the subject of trust though, I would wonder how many people actually have full confidence in the current system? There are many stories of huge bags of ballot papers which go missing, and okay, it's probably a few hundred votes not millions, but in the case of a hung parliament, that bag of votes could easily make all the difference in the world if it decides a marginal seat.

19. "Vote red or you'll regret it"
    Do you know what colour your shirt is?

20. Voting should not require trust, but electronic voting has so many potential holes that it requires trust.

    With paper voting, you can remove trust from the election by having multiple counting agencies that all have to agree on the vote. That way, you can know that your vote is counted correctly.
    For electronic voting, the only way to do this is to remove a layer of anonymity. If your vote was recorded, under a unique ID, on a publicly accessible database. Then you could have watchdog agencies that watch that database for massive voting changes, and individuals could check to make sure their vote was correctly recorded.

21. Voting records aren't anonymous in the USA. Some if not all of your points fall flat here.

22. Liberals seem to love the idea of online voting. Why?

23. … but in real life it's very kind of the banks, Paypal and other financial sites to honour our transactions if so many Tom <sorry, tin> hats are required for protection.

24. I didn't completed the video yet so I dunno if this addressed later, but the point of the hardware being vulnerable (Pendrive on a old computer, even possibly connected to the internet) makes absolutely no sense, custom, safe, hardware already exists that on countries that already use the system. Also, having to make sure the old people trust the system isn't a problem thats eletronic voting fault. And the custom hardware also solves the issue of transporting the votes, the machines are small, and in theory, easy to transport

25. Since everyone should only be held responsible for their own decision; therefore, voting should be changed to meet this principle accordingly. Instead of electric voting, we should consider electric voting are buying policy stocks with our ID card and taxing on the same time (e.g. you are voting for certain policy and taxing for it). Therefore, when we start to pay tax, the cheater will be caught immediately (since only the minority people will pay tax, or many people will find their tax forms doesn't match with their original decisions); due to the short of tax income, the cheater has no other choice but declare bankruptcy and leave the government.

26. V O T E R E D O R Y O U ‘ L L R E G R E T I T

27. All of the world's money is tied up electronically. Surely picking your preferred corporate puppet is less important than all of your life's savings.

    (Also, I think he's confusing anonymized with anonymous for his voting requirement)

28. A Great rule I have: "Anything that has software can be hacked"

    I have also heard: "Anything <<smart>> is vulnerable"

29. I like how I've randomly watched a few of your videos, and out of the blue, you mention Estonia 🙂

30. poggers
    i'm from estonia

31. But all this can happen with paper voting as well

32. looks around in Estonian

33. faaaaala Brazil

34. Blockchain makes this video invalid.

35. After the hanging chad issue in the American presidential election of 2000 I and many others thought is was more than time to get away from this old paper system that was both slow and very subject to interpretation. Flash forward 10 years and I learned several programming and markup languages as well as getting degrees in networking and cyber security. After much thought and figuring I am now set in that we can never count on computer voting to be secure and accurate. The beauty of computer programing is it ability to have constantly changing variables and attributes which in fact is the exact thing that makes it not safe for voting. I now can write programs to make a voting machine change votes or results as I desire and thats without even trying very hard and I focus more on networking than programming these days. If there is ever any doubt about this just look at any Facebook or Google owned programs. They are always tweaking algorithms back and forth to show content or adds they pick for you to see or not see.

36. Blockchain…

37. Imagine going into a voting booth and seeing the Doom title screen.

38. 0:33 Tell that to the US government. They keep public record of every voter. At least they don't track who you voted for…

39. Estonia especially should not be using electronic voting; there exists one resourceful country with many hackers on its payroll that may one day decide the Estonian elections should not belong to Estonians.

40. So much wrong with this take…

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