Concerns about maintaining election secrecy/integrity or "severing identity from the individual" are being overstated. We have systems in place today to securely allow private/secret transactions for everything from allowing banks to move billions around the world every day to allowing drug deals on Silk Road. Solutions to all of LaRose's claimed obstacles already exist; they just need to be applied to the particular problem of conducting elections. If this is a world where I can own Bitcoin, it's a world where I can vote on my phone.
(And bear in mind, "secret ballot" doesn't mean it's secret whether someone receives or casts a ballot. Information about which elections you and I vote in has never been secret — or even private.)
… [LaRose] said the most important aspect of an election is "public confidence," meaning that "every vote is counted fairly and free of fraud and shenanigans." LaRose added that maintaining public confidence is much harder than technology competence.
LaRose clearly thinks this system is sufficient to inspire voter confidence; it seems clear that a technological solution could do better.
… LaRose went on to say that he shared concerns that social media platforms and technology companies limit or censor content from conservatives.
"It is evident that there is a bias by a lot of these tech companies toward the left, and the whole cancel culture idea of censoring people whose opinions we disagree with is a really corrosive and dangerous thing," LaRose said. "Why would you want to allow those same individuals to have any control over the actual process of elections?"
Weird that LaRose feels natural making a partisan/ideological argument here. Does that make it seem more likely that he's opposed to giving evil, left-leaning technology bogeymen control over our sacred elections — or just to seeing his political party give it up?
I think we can all agree that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is an idiot, regardless of how you or I may feel about biometric-based electronic voting.
Certainly there could be some technological hurdles to cross, but ... um ... we use biometrics to access our bank account right now, and if we use Apple Pay then then the merchant gets no personal data about us; only the bank knows who bought something since they had to give the approval code. Haven't read anything about hacking Apple Pay, have you?
I can pretty much guarantee that this will happen in my lifetime, because some people in government -- and the vast majority of patriotic citizens of any country -- want to make it easier to vote, not harder. Mr. LaRose doesn't seem to be a member of that coalition.
Modifying the existing model of Apple Pay to work with voting is certainly possible and easily imaginable ... to people with imaginations, which Mr. LaRose clearly lacks. The on-device Face ID or Touch ID check could be required at each step of the voting process (rather than just once), but that verification is handled on-device and doesn't go anywhere. Then the verified vote is sent off -- encrypted -- to be counted by election officials with zero personal information attached to it. We do far more complex things with biometrics without compromising personal information every day.
I think we can all agree that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is an idiot, regardless of how you or I may feel about biometric-based electronic voting.
Certainly there could be some technological hurdles to cross, but ... um ... we use biometrics to access our bank account right now, and if we use Apple Pay then then the merchant gets no personal data about us; only the bank knows who bought something since they had to give the approval code. Haven't read anything about hacking Apple Pay, have you?
I can pretty much guarantee that this will happen in my lifetime, because some people in government -- and the vast majority of patriotic citizens of any country -- want to make it easier to vote, not harder. Mr. LaRose doesn't seem to be a member of that coalition.
Modifying the existing model of Apple Pay to work with voting is certainly possible and easily imaginable ... to people with imaginations, which Mr. LaRose clearly lacks. The on-device Face ID or Touch ID check could be required at each step of the voting process (rather than just once), but that verification is handled on-device and doesn't go anywhere. Then the verified vote is sent off -- encrypted -- to be counted by election officials with zero personal information attached to it. We do far more complex things with biometrics without compromising personal information every day.
Well, if you're an Apple user, anyway ...
No, we don't all agree that he is an idiot.
While you
raise valid points, I don't think that you addressed what he was talking
about: Insuring that the vote you cast does not get eliminated or
changed.
We , next door, in Pennsylvania just
escaped from such a system where your vote went into a very easily
hacked computer but, since there was (by design) no audit trail of any
kind, all we could do was hope and pray the tally that came out of that
potentially hacked computer was accurate. But, accurate or manipulated,
that's what we were forced to use since there was no alternative,
Every
voting system needs to emulate what a bank goes through to verify their
cash: audit trails that can be used to detect and correct any
manipulation of votes. Any computer system can be hacked -- and many
U.S. systems have been hacked by the Russians who left behind malware
that can be used to control those systems in the future. We simply
cannot put our votes into that kind of hackable system -- particularly without a paper trail to verify and correct any manipulation of the vote. We think that the scale of manipulation would have to be massive. That is not true. The 2000 election turned on a single county and the just completed election was decided by a few thousand of votes in a few states..
Well, the progressives are already okay with the idea of not having to prove your identity at the polling place. I mean they want to boycott Georgia for requiring it. And then there’s the absentee ballot, the mailed/emailed ballot, all of which can be falsified pretty easily. So I should be able to show up at a polling place, tell them who I am without proof of identity, and vote, right? So whats the problem with iPhone voting?
BS. I have been an Election Judge for over a decade and NO ID NO VOTE.
Well, the progressives are already okay with the idea of not having to prove your identity at the polling place. I mean they want to boycott Georgia for requiring it. And then there’s the absentee ballot, the mailed/emailed ballot, all of which can be falsified pretty easily. So I should be able to show up at a polling place, tell them who I am without proof of identity, and vote, right? So whats the problem with iPhone voting?
BS. I have been an Election Judge for over a decade and NO ID NO VOTE.
Same with getting absentee ballot RTFM
RTFM? And that too has been used for voter suppression (or should it be called 'voter selection') where politicians choose their voters because those who couldn't read couldn't vote.
Wow, like there isn’t enough hackings. Also i would never trust a big tech with my PI. Just saying.
I don't even fully know how to respond to this.
Whatever ISP you use already has it, which means that Google or Facebook either already have it, or can get it easily. If you read AppleInsider, odds are, Apple has it already. Or, if you're a veteran, it's been leaked six times by the feds in the last 20 years. Nearly every state DMV has had a data breach of some sort.
Hey Mike, Thanks for your point of view. There was no response requested. Just my personal opinion which hasn't changed. Thank you!
The Ohio official is correct. Votes need audit trails.
In banking the rule is: trust nobody and verify everything.
Without an audit trail (meaning a paper copy) that audit trail simply does not exist. That was the problem in Pennsylvania for a decade: it had voting machines that could easily be hacked but, by design, had no way to produce an audit trail! Whatever tally came out of that machine is what got used because there was simply no way to verify it -- By Design!
Voting via iPhone would produce a similar problem.
While Apple's systems are as secure as possible, every computer system can be hacked. For things like banking and voting systems one needs to expect that and institute policies and procedures to guard against it, detect it when it happens and correct any problems from it.
Another feature of having that audit trail is it enables one of the top safeguards in the banking system: random, unannounced audits. (Or course those audits would be controlled by an impartial body -- not politicians).
Audit trails and people using own tech to speed up voting process are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it requires a system to be designed with the aim of getting more people to vote and have those votes count. It's a political problem that some in politics see public voice as the enemy of a system that has told them they were born to rule.
Comments
Certainly there could be some technological hurdles to cross, but ... um ... we use biometrics to access our bank account right now, and if we use Apple Pay then then the merchant gets no personal data about us; only the bank knows who bought something since they had to give the approval code. Haven't read anything about hacking Apple Pay, have you?
I can pretty much guarantee that this will happen in my lifetime, because some people in government -- and the vast majority of patriotic citizens of any country -- want to make it easier to vote, not harder. Mr. LaRose doesn't seem to be a member of that coalition.
Modifying the existing model of Apple Pay to work with voting is certainly possible and easily imaginable ... to people with imaginations, which Mr. LaRose clearly lacks. The on-device Face ID or Touch ID check could be required at each step of the voting process (rather than just once), but that verification is handled on-device and doesn't go anywhere. Then the verified vote is sent off -- encrypted -- to be counted by election officials with zero personal information attached to it. We do far more complex things with biometrics without compromising personal information every day.
Well, if you're an Apple user, anyway ...
RTFM
RTFM?
And that too has been used for voter suppression (or should it be called 'voter selection') where politicians choose their voters because those who couldn't read couldn't vote.