Midterm Elections in West Virginia Will Feature Mobile Phone Voting

cageymaru

cageymaru

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In a day and age where hackers can run a port-out-scam and steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting cryptocurrency owners, the State of West Virginia (WV) has decided to be the first in the nation to allow its citizens to vote by smartphone app during an election. All you need is a smartphone and the proper app; not these apps that will steal all of your personal information, and you can vote by phone! It is hoped that a lot more US military, living in foreign lands, will be able to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. Facial recognition technology will be used to make sure that the vote is secure and Voatz, the company running the app, reassured voters that the votes cast are anonymous. A public digital ledger will be kept using blockchain technology.

"Mobile voting is a horrific idea," Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told CNN in an email. "It's internet voting on people's horribly secured devices, over our horrible networks, to servers that are very difficult to secure without a physical paper record of the vote."


No name calling allowed and follow the forum rules please. I'd like to be able to bring you exciting tech articles like this in the future. ;)
 
It's very simple even third world countries can get it right:

One person, put finger of choice in ink, put a mark on piece of paper with said inked finger, drop paper into box.

No double voting. No hacking. No dead people voting...

If it's too hard to get your ass down to a polling place... I do think election days should be national or state holidays to remove as many dumb ass excuses as possible.
 
I can see problems with this but I also recall when my vote in the military was too late. Didn't get our votes on time and though there were politicians who tried to push for FedEx or other to get our ballots, another politician jumped on the idea and caused a delay (Hillary of all people.) Won't go into that, posted about it before.

This app and using a smart phone IS aimed at military first, so I am glad someone is trying to do some thing about the military vote but the idea seems FLAWED from the beginning.
Im thinking an electronic vote by military members could roll out in a much better fashion than an APP. Approved eVoting booths could be setup on any ship or base overseas and electronically submit just as fast and the military should have had something to deal with it long ago.
 
DocNo said:
It's very simple even third world countries can get it right:

One person, put finger of choice in ink, put a mark on piece of paper with said inked finger, drop paper into box.

No double voting. No hacking. No dead people voting...

If it's too hard to get your ass down to a polling place... I do think election days should be national or state holidays to remove as many dumb ass excuses as possible.
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The article states it starts with military, very few dead soldiers vote as the overwhelming majority of military are Republican. :)
The paperwork for those votes and delivery back takes forever. Look up how many times military votes never get counted. It's a problem.
 
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griff30 said:
The paperwork for those votes and delivery back takes forever. Look up how many times military votes never get counted. It's a problem.
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I agree it's a problem. But you certainly don't need complicated and untested digital technology to solve what is literally a paper pushing problem.

Process, people. It doesn't have to be hard but it does take some thought. If the Romans could compel people to return to their home towns for a census surely we can figure out how to security mail some slips of paper around in a timely manner!
 
So, any illegal with a smart phone, legit or not can vote D? Sounds like not only a disaster for this country but a total circumvent of our constitution. Damn, wait, that is what the D's have wanted all along, got it.
 
HELL..... FUCKING..... NO......

They need to be moving away from electronic voting, and nothing involved in the vote casting/tallying process should be internet connected EVER..... That's how election tampering happens. Hell, I would much prefer going back to paper ballots than any proven unsecure electronic voting machine.

I also want a receipt for my vote with a unique generated scanable bar code so I can confirm that the vote I cast, was counted toward the candidate I voted for. No need to show any personal information, just the ability to confirm that the votes on my ballot #7194728472339843987324 were counted correctly and not altered.
 
ep0x73 said:
So, any illegal with a smart phone, legit or not can vote D? Sounds like not only a disaster for this country but a total circumvent of our constitution. Damn, wait, that is what the D's have wanted all along, got it.
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I see what you did there. Ignore the fact that WV is a RED state... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
This could go horribly, horribly wrong.

Done right, this is actually an excellent plan.

But this is government involved, so extreme care needs to be done to be sure it doesn't go horribly wrong.

That said, what they are doing for id verification is the right way to do this, if you are going to do this. There is good technology to validate that an id is real, especially if it just needs to be optimized for a single state's ids. They are then matching the live video face to the id. This is the right approach.

Why bother doing this?

Because done right, this is probably way more secure than absentee ballots. Anyone can get hold of a ballot and just mail it back in. People see stacks of them sitting around apartment buildings from people who have moved and the like.

Is this the right time and place for this? Probably not, not with all the noise about election hacking, etc.

Either way, it comes down to actual execution. I'd be very scared about this being done correctly. We should proceed with caution. If I knew more about what they were actually doing, I might feel better about it. But don't worry, they are from the government :)
 
Ha, I read this an did a double take. I didn't see the Z on Voatz, I thought Voat was somehow handling the app.

(For those that don't know, it was a legit Reddit clone founded on free speech/transparency who's community (tragically) turned it into a political dumpster fire).
 
xinco said:
This could go horribly, horribly wrong.

Done right, this is actually an excellent plan.

But this is government involved, so extreme care needs to be done to be sure it doesn't go horribly wrong.

That said, what they are doing for id verification is the right way to do this, if you are going to do this. There is good technology to validate that an id is real, especially if it just needs to be optimized for a single state's ids. They are then matching the live video face to the id. This is the right approach.

Why bother doing this?

Because done right, this is probably way more secure than absentee ballots. Anyone can get hold of a ballot and just mail it back in. People see stacks of them sitting around apartment buildings from people who have moved and the like.

Is this the right time and place for this? Probably not, not with all the noise about election hacking, etc.

Either way, it comes down to actual execution. I'd be very scared about this being done correctly. We should proceed with caution. If I knew more about what they were actually doing, I might feel better about it. But don't worry, they are from the government :)
Click to expand...
Click the link in the article that pertains to facial recognition. ;)
 
cageymaru said:
Click the link in the article that pertains to facial recognition. ;)
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Not the same thing at all.

The Amazon thing is 'does this person match any of these other people'.

For this election use case "Is this live video of this person this exact person;

And then it comes down to proper usage of the technology. As soon as the Amazon thing came out, I suspected it was using the technology in a way it wasn't intended. I didn't care enough to dive into it to find out more. There is always a 'match threshold' you are willing to accept. Likely it was set rather low. And as a screening tool, that likely makes sense. It might identify people that could possibly be the right person, and you due further verification to tell otherwise.

In the election case, you'll want a high level of correlation for a positive match.
 
The 2028 elections:

User: "Alexya, cast my vote for all the Republicans listed on my ballot."
Alexya: "Voice recognition and facial recognition confirmed. Casting your vote for all the Democrats listed on your ballot."
U: "That's not what I said!"
A: "Playing back command: 'Alexya, cast my vote for all the Rrr dem o crats listed on my ballot.'"
U: "Damn you, Jeff Bezos!!"
 
Look, I trust it my phone enough that I have my banks mobile app and I'm just fine transferring funds and handling my money on my phone - but I'd never fucking vote on the thing and I think it's a terrible idea. Am I worried about some hacker targeting MY shit (money and whatnot)? Not really.. But that's a big juicy target imo. Paper ballots + ID all the way.
 
xinco said:
This could go horribly, horribly wrong.

Done right, this is actually an excellent plan.

But this is government involved, so extreme care needs to be done to be sure it doesn't go horribly wrong.

That said, what they are doing for id verification is the right way to do this, if you are going to do this. There is good technology to validate that an id is real, especially if it just needs to be optimized for a single state's ids. They are then matching the live video face to the id. This is the right approach.

Why bother doing this?

Because done right, this is probably way more secure than absentee ballots. Anyone can get hold of a ballot and just mail it back in. People see stacks of them sitting around apartment buildings from people who have moved and the like.

Is this the right time and place for this? Probably not, not with all the noise about election hacking, etc.

Either way, it comes down to actual execution. I'd be very scared about this being done correctly. We should proceed with caution. If I knew more about what they were actually doing, I might feel better about it. But don't worry, they are from the government :)
Click to expand...

The idea is the sound, yes, but the platform is way too iffy IMO

Android in particular is just too porous to float. Even when your phone is clear of malware (and many are not), there are just too many ways your vote could leak out to a 3rd party... Not that Google/Facebook etc don't already know your political affiliation, but the principal of voter privacy still needs to be preserved.


The military just needs an official tablet they could distribute among troops made just for voting. No user crap that could compromise you, just software to id you, cast your ballot, send it in, and nothing else.
 
brucethemoose said:
The military just needs an official tablet they could distribute among troops made just for voting. No user crap that could compromise you, just software to id you, cast your ballot, send it in, and nothing else.
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^This

And I every(? I know it is true for Army) military member has a card with a digital certificate the uniquely identifies them; that would definitely be used as well.
 
brucethemoose said:
Android in particular is just too porous to float. Even when your phone is clear of malware (and many are not), there are just too many ways your vote could leak out to a 3rd party... Not that Google/Facebook etc don't already know your political affiliation, but the principal of voter privacy still needs to be preserved.
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There are many, many things you can do to secure a mobile app, even on an Android device. It can actually be made very secure.

Full disclosure: One of the product lines provided by the company I work for provides a suite of products that secures mobile applications. I'm in a different division, and not involved in that part of the business.
 
xinco said:
^This

And I every(? I know it is true for Army) military member has a card with a digital certificate the uniquely identifies them; that would definitely be used as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah. In that case, you could just plug in an off-the-shelf credit card scanner, and use the face scan for 2-factor authentication.

A contract for, say, 1 tablet for every 80 overseas troops would cost the military nothing, relatively speaking.

xinco said:
There are many, many things you can do to secure a mobile app, even on an Android device. It can actually be made very secure.

Full disclosure: One of the product lines provided by the company I work for provides a suite of products that secures mobile applications. I'm in a different division, and not involved in that part of the business.
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That's good to know. I've recently dealt with more than one Android virus, but now that I think about it the affected apps were not written very well.
 
The lack of trust with online digital voting systems really does shine some truth about every other online system. The elephant in the room is .. who really has access to that database in future and how easy would it be to secretly flip an election.
 
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Having a company name as stupid as "Voatz" with that edgy "z" on the end should have them perma-banned from anything election related.
 
Today, I walked into my voting place wearing this T-Shirt here in Kansas City:

388b_fix_computer_fb.jpg


The pollster asked me if I wanted a paper ballot or to use the touchscreens. After a good laugh and wiping tears from my eyes, I said "hand me a paper ballot."
 
moldyviolinist said:
Also agree with Hall. Just an awful idea. I hope the Federal government intervenes to shut this nonsense down. Paper ballots and require voter ID.
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While I agree that any voting device that is connected to the internet is all sorts of stupid, paper ballots and requiring photo ID (I assume that is what you meant by voter ID, correct me if I am wrong) have their own issues.

Paper ballots have the hanging chad issue (or bubbling in issue if using pen ballots, does anyone still use these?) as well as being able to read someone's writing for write in fields. None of this is an issue with electronic ballots (other than typos for write-ins).

There are many types of voter fraud and requiring a photo ID only solves a small number of types of fraud. Plus you ever heard of fake IDs? Voter ID fraud is a non issue. Only 31 cases (out of over a billion votes cast) between 2000 and 2014 can be attributed to Voter ID fraud. I am fine with requiring some form of ID (like recent utility bill, but not photo ID, cause if many reasons I won't go into here, due to being soapbox worthy).

I would have voted today but since I moved just under 6 weeks ago, I would not have been able to register in my new location (different county) in time to vote and my old pooling place is 20 miles away (about 1 hour each way in traffic).
 
And a headline in whatever WV newspaper is the biggest, most circulated...

"EXTRA EXTRA! PUTIN VOTED IN FOR EVERY POSITION IN WV GOVERNMENT! RUSSIA DENIES RESPONSIBILITY.....In other news, rash of hundreds of thousands of West Virgians have lost access to their cell numbers stolen via port-out scam. Police are actively in pursuit of the criminal masterminds."
 
DocNo said:
It's very simple even third world countries can get it right:

One person, put finger of choice in ink, put a mark on piece of paper with said inked finger, drop paper into box.

No double voting. No hacking. No dead people voting...

If it's too hard to get your ass down to a polling place... I do think election days should be national or state holidays to remove as many dumb ass excuses as possible.
Click to expand...

In the US, businesses are required to give you paid time off to be able to go vote. Pretty sure it is universal here.

It is just a dumb excuse if you don't go vote.
 
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