Re: Voting Security (was: The Next Genaration)

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

On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 16:38 Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 06:20 Kathleen Moriarty <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my mobile device
>>
>> On Sep 14, 2019, at 1:19 PM, Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> (I've had this argument dozens maybe hundreds of times, not going to do
>> that here.)
>>
>>
>> Since you cited yourself and EKR as experts that could work on this,
>> where would you like to have the conversation?  A draft perhaps as a
>> starting point as the IETF likes to do things on list, so maybe timing was
>> bad?  A collection of problems with reasoned responses could be useful if
>> this was taken on as work. Or do you have a paper reference with your
>> thoughts/a response?
>>
>>
> There is a vast literature here. I would be happy to talk more about it
> with anyone interested in a more synchronous medium (I'll be in SIN for
> 106). It doesn't seem to have a lot of relevance to issues at IETF, unless
> I'm missing something.
>
> Until then, here is a bit:
>
> The first chapter of my PhD thesis talks about the necessity of
> mechanization (and now computerization) of elections in the United States,
> good cites there to a handful of books:
> https://josephhall.org/papers/jhall-phd.pdf
>
> Doug Jones and Barbara Simons' book has since come out and it is marvelous
> on this, I recommend the whole thing:
>

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo13383590.html


> Here are some good, deep popular articles:
>
> Ronnie Dugger, "Counting Votes" New Yorker (October 30, 1988),
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/11/07/counting-votes
>
> Jill Lapore, "Rock, Paper, Scissors; How we used to vote" New Yorker
> (October 6, 2008),
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/13/rock-paper-scissors
>
> Rebecca Onion, "How did they count all those balls before voting machines"
> Slate (November, 8 2016)
> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/11/how-did-they-count-ballots-before-voting-machines.html
>
>
> Best regards,
>> Kathleen
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 3:28 AM <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> >
>>> > 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.
>>>
>>> Hand counted paper ballots are the only way, IMHO.
>>>
>>> > 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.
>>>
>>> This depends on what we consider reasonable.  If it takes a month, it
>>> takes a month, just like the good old days.  The wait is a small price
>>> to
>>> pay in order to ensure the correct functioning of this critical
>>> component
>>> of democracy, difficult or not.
>>>
>>> >
>>> > 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.
>>>
>>> I, for one, am not really willing to risk optical scan machines having
>>> hardware backdoors in the processor, as has been demonstrated, or easily
>>> manipulated firmware, particularly in the name of expediency.  Further,
>>> this does nothing to address the vectors of vulnerability that lie in
>>> the
>>> central tabulators, or the route the data takes from collection point to
>>> tabulation point. The latter is potentially an IETF matter, and if so,
>>> should be addressed with no less fervor than BGP security.
>>>
>>> I would cite Bush v Gore, 2000; specifially -19000 votes for Gore in
>>> Volusia County, FL.  Was the vector the optical scan ballot system, the
>>> tabulation system, or a routing MITM?  Tough to know, although the
>>> localization and sneakernet transport system from balloting to
>>> tabulation
>>> in FL generally would rule out a routing problem in this instance.
>>> IIRC,
>>> there was a questionable route involved in the Ohio, 2004 discrepancy,
>>> although this could have been manual routing through tunnels that caused
>>> the issue.  Would publicly hand counted paper ballots have prevented
>>> these
>>> attacks, potentially 18 years of war, falling behind on climate
>>> adaptation, and a host of other wrongs?  Quite possibly.  This much, I
>>> know for sure:  without legitimate elections in a democracy, there can
>>> be
>>> no legitimate government.
>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > 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 <https://www.cdt.org>]
>>
>>
>> 1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005
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>>
>> --
> Joseph Lorenzo Hall
> Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org
> ]
> 1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
> e: [e-mail], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
> Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10  1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871
>
-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
e: [e-mail], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10  1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871