Re: Voting Security (was: The Next Genaration)

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]>]

We have a few resident experts in this area (like myself and EKR); happy to
lead a discussion on this or present as needed.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 14:21 Joe Abley <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 12 Sep 2019, at 11:56, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> [Changing the subject line because this is a change of topic.]
>
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 8:37 AM <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> IMHO, if the interest is in protecting the democratic process, the first
>> place we should look is the digital voting infrastructure, as that is the
>> vector most abused.  Knowing what I do about network and computer
>> security
>> in general, I have come to the conclusion that hand counted paper ballots
>> with a strong chain of custody are the only way to ensure a free and fair
>> election.
>>
>
> This is pretty off-topic for IETF, but might be interesting to people.
>
> I certainly agree that software independence (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_independence) is a good objective
> for voting systems, and hand-counted paper ballots are one good way to
> achieve that. However, there are voting environments where they are
> problematic. Specifically, because the time to hand-count ballots scales
> with both the number of ballots and the number of contests, in places like
> California where there a large number of contests per election it can be
> difficult to do a complete hand-count in a reasonable period of time.
>
> One good alternative is hand-marked optical scan ballots which are then
> verified via a risk limiting audit (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit). This can provide a
> much more efficient count that still has software independence up to a
> given risk level \alpha.
>
>
> The theory and practice of elections and the specific challenges with
> on-line voting is a whole ecosystem of its own with conferences, journals
> and an active community of academics, vendors and governments discussing a
> fairly broad spectrum from information theory, statistics and cryptography
> through to operational and platform security, software quality, public
> policy and law.
>
> I am no expert in any of this but I happen to have an academic supervisor
> who is. If anybody would like an introduction to that world e.g. as an
> alternative to trying to reinvent it at the IETF, I'd be happy to make one.
>
>
> Joe
>
-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
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