Nils

About the electronic vote, I found this when I was trying to find the source code of some of those voting machines. It is a Brazillian explaining in english the process of voting.
https://rl.bloat.cat/r/linux/comments/jth7tj/voting_machines_in_brazil_use_linux_uenux_and/gc7yqic

u/Marcos-Am Nov 14 '20

Some things for the parrots that are only able to repeat what Tom Scott said in his videos.

First, all the voting happens on a 10-hour period. Normally 8 hours but this year will be extended due to Covid.

On our election there is no easy way to do it. We vote on the public schools and each machine is on a separate classroom, about 20 machines per school where I live, each school is about a km of one another, these machines have their own battery and are not hooked to each other. Each one of those machines have a table with a number of rows equal that of all people that are expected to vote in that classroom, each vote is then written in a random row so you cannot trace it back to a vote order. Hacking machines singular machines is possible, but to make significant difference on the voting day you would need to focus on the biggest electoral colleges, in hundreds of schools in a limited period. After the election closes 17 PM GMT -3, all the voting machines have their "memory card" transported to the local electoral tribunal where they are transmitted through and intranet wired to the Superior Electoral Tribunal on Brasilia to count, as far I could understand they count locally as well to double check.

Now, the easiest place to rig votes in bulk is on the electoral tribunals, were you get a lot of party people and police monitoring the count.

Also, I believe no votes are accepted before the end of the voting period, but other person will need to attest this information, maybe you rataktaktaruken.

While all the steps of the voting process have visible insecurities, the scale of the election, the timeframe in which it occurs, and the compartmentalization of incoming votes bring higher reliability to the process.

This information's can be found here and here part of it was from personal experience as well.

(There are plenty of videos around showing how to vote, how the machine works, the "hackaton" that happens before every election to crack the machines, ...)

It seems that this is a regular election in Belgium

https://www.democraticaudit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/euro-ballot-paper-belgium.jpg

The news might be best, I am not sure if they keep their database updated. I was checking some studios websites, and they seem very dated, some do not offer HTTPS.

This might help with your list. https://canadiangamedevs.com/

From what I read, it appears that the problem is:

imagine how many more people would vote if you could just open your phone and do it”

It seems that a lot of decisions in Canada about voting, who can vote, where they can vote, riding size and shape, ... are to get the right outcome from elections.

Maybe after PR passes those will change, but who knows.

I deeply disagree. Except for the trust issue.

First, PR is definitely more important at the moment. I will explain why disagree with the other points.

Addressing first the videos I finally had time to watch.

By the dates of those videos, there were plenty of examples of countries using electronic voting for at least 15 years. That person could easily use proper data to make their arguments, but they chose to engage in fearmongering, appeal to emotion, those videos are full of red flags highlighted in the Canadian campaign against disinformation. https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/online-disinformation.html

For example, the example of USB being available for people had to be addresses in many of those countries, right-wing populists associated with Russia were using to create chaos during elections. https://www.tre-ap.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2022/Maio/e-fato-urnas-eletronicas-tem-portas-usb-mas-so-funcionam-dispositivos-especificos-da-justica-eleitoral (not sure how to share a deepl translation link)

With electronic systems, we’d need to trust not just the code (which most citizens can’t verify), but also the entire chain of custody of both hardware and software.

In some of the examples I saw, the code is open source, or at least auditable, so is the hardware. And the entire chain of custody is recorded, and escorted.

They are even more transparent than paper voting.

Computer scientists and security experts have consistently warned about these vulnerabilities.

Not really, the video you shared I already mentioned above.

Countries leading in technology are already using some sort of electronic vote. Estonia is the leader in cybersecurity in Europe, most countries go there to learn and improve their systems.

https://ccdcoe.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHiq5UfxePA

Security experts and computer scientists learn, tests and probe for vulnerabilities so they can prevent problems when implementing systems that will help people.

Not to foment fear and panic, and discourage people from voting.

Electronic systems create “single points of failure” that paper ballots distributed across thousands of polling stations don’t have.

Not really sure what you mean for single points of failure. Electronic voting varies from country to country, from having to visit electronic urns to voting on your phone.

There was a case in Belgium when there was a software error in their electronic urn that gave more points to one candidate. But because of the way that data is stored, and the security chain around it, it was easy to pinpoint the issue and fix the tally.

On the other hand, countries with electronic vote reported a decrease in corruption of the chain of custody, reduction in costs of compared with other voting ways. And of course, the reason I asked if it was part of the FairVote, increases of voters, increase in accessibility, and decrease in invalid votes (people commit fewer mistakes when voting).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country#Estonia (edit: I put the link for Estonia, but I meant the entire article, it shows the decisions of each country and why they are using or not electronic voting).

Sadly, I can only find contents in English from Estonia and the European Union.

But on youtube, you can auto-generate the subtitles, then change it to auto-translate. It might have some funny moments, like when the person pointed to a printer, and it translated it as "teacher". But it helps to understand.

This video shows instead an electronic urn, and how they set up it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wrMLzqgKEI This video shows is from their Elections organization explaining the security chain and audits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IOtrQhpKBE

The trust issue you’ve highlighted is crucial.

If the people do not trust or understand, it might make things hard. And it is even harder when they cannot trust their elected officials.

In my case, and probably where I am biased, I do not trust authoritarian regimes, and they are the ones trying to make people distrust elections, and technologies that can reduce corruption.

I think I get what you are saying.

I worked for a company that would generate electronic trails for every transaction, and we would know right away if a byte was wrong, with many details. It reduced corruption and complexity of the operation. While the information was there for anyone to understand, a lot of people just prefer to "trust the process".

When I was reading of the many ways of electronic voting, from internet voting to air gap electronic ballots, it was not different. They increased the participation of the public by simplifying the vote process, benefiting the least educated voters. They reduced the number of invalid votes (ballot not filled properly, damaged, ... ), reduced the time to vote, and reduced the number of votes lost.

In some countries, the electronic vote is similar to the paper. People go to a place, vote in an air gap computer they call electronic urn, everything follows the same process you mentioned, but instead of a box full of paper, it is this super secure urn.

It might be difficult to trust the process when people do not trust the decision makers.

Thank you so much, those information and links are great.

Focusing on PR makes sense, a lot of those countries already had some sort of PR going on when they implemented electronic ballot or internet voting, it also facilitated referendums a lot. The same goes with the voting age, some implemented as soon as they became a democracy, others took a bit longer.

I will look into getting involved and volunteering. Thank you.

They are great, most politicians just shove their papers under the door or in the mail. I like the door hanger better!

Sadly, I was not home when they came by. If you are in contact with the organizers, please send my thanks.

Be careful with where they store your data, they might be Canadian, but they might be storing your data in the USA and sharing it with USA companies. Read their terms.

I suggest using software that runs on your computer, like GenuTax, sadly it is windows only.

As far as I am aware, only a single online offer used to encrypt your data, but they removed it when they were bought by WealthSimple, so they could sell your data to third parties.

What a terrible way to organize the session.

“What journalists do is they line up to wait for a question — one English, one French,” Le Couteur explained. “A number of those so-called reporters essentially tried to stack the deck and be there in line well ahead of the finish of the debate, so about 20 to 30 minutes ahead of it.”

Win who brings a tent the day before next time, +10 friends.

Now I understand the Beaverton post about bringing in 35 journalists.

If my memory does not fail me, there was research associating some kinds of threat and anxiety with conservative voters.

The politicians' playbook seems to cater to that kind of voter.

The conservative candidate that knocked on my door started saying how dangerous is a street nearby I walk daily. Most of his arguments were based on fear, and the culprit is always "the liberals". So that is definitely in their playbook.

Sadly for him, most of that information is easily accessible, like a map of crimes in the city, and his arguments fell short.