Online voting/fraud - Revision history

Woozle: moved Online voter fraud to Online voting/fraud: reorganizing a bit

2011-06-05T13:23:16Z

moved Online voter fraud to Online voting/fraud: reorganizing a bit

Woozle: more or less done, but I think I need to reorganize a bit

2011-06-05T13:22:03Z

more or less done, but I think I need to reorganize a bit

Woozle: /* Decentralized and Organic */ CR applies to other things; doing subpage for voting.

2011-06-04T02:35:25Z

Decentralized and Organic: CR applies to other things; doing subpage for voting.

Woozle: Somewhat done; I may come back and write about replication as a way of preventing corruption

2011-06-04T02:29:27Z

Somewhat done; I may come back and write about replication as a way of preventing corruption

New page

{{#set:thing type=problem}}
==About==
[[Online voter fraud]] is the phenomenon of [[voter fraud]] as it applies specifically to [[online voting]] techniques. Voter fraud is any situation where an individual voter deliberately causes their [[vote]] (i.e. expression of preference) to be counted towards the final [[vote results]] in ways that violate the rules under which the [[voting system]] is supposed to operate -- typically for the purpose of exercising disproportionate influence over those results.

Voter fraud is actually very rare in traditional voting methods, for reasons which have probably been studied (though I do not have any specific data). My understanding of the reasons why this is are solely speculative at this point, but one obvious conclusion is that the degree of verification done before any individual is allowed to vote means that the required effort is very ''high'' even to double one's legitimate vote, while the gain per extra "weight" is very low -- with the bottom line being that effort to influence the vote is best spent elsewhere. (Further data is needed to confirm if this is in fact the case, or if there are other factors which might be considered when designing an online voting system.)

Online voting, however, is particularly vulnerable to voter fraud due to the difficulty -- and in some cases the undesirability -- of verifying identity in online voting situations.

This article is chiefly concerned with methods of ''minimizing'' online voter fraud, to the point where we will almost never be uncertain that it was not a factor in the final decision.
==Methods==
===Crude and Intrusive===
The obvious, brute-force method of voter fraud prevention (online or off) is to require every voter to identify her/himself using some universally available form of unique identification. We couldn't use credit card or bank account numbers, for instance, because individuals commonly have more than one bank or credit card account, and they are very easy to obtain.
====government ID: unsatisfactory====
The obvious, essentially "air tight" method of identification would be to require government identification, such as a driver's license or passport. Since a large part of the reason we are even looking into this question involves a goals of [[local autonomy]] and decentralization, however, this is less than satisfactory. (Even if it were satisfactory, it would still be relatively easy to fool, since we would only be looking at ''images'' of government documents, which are very easy to alter.) This method would also require a privileged class of user with authorization to view those documents and act as gatekeepers. We do not want either of those things, although there are ways to make them accountable and reasonably fair.
====street address: half-satisfactory====
A less "air tight" but also far less government-dependent method of verification would be to require every voter to furnish a street address, to which a postcard with a password would be mailed. This method is flawed, but would probably produce at least as accurate an approximation of democracy as the system we use now.

Some concerns, and answers to them (where applicable):
* This method would actually cost money -- postage isn't free. We would have to secure funding for postage, not to mention the machinery to print out and mail all those cards.
* What do you do if someone from another address reads the password off your postcard?
** At some point, two people will be trying to use the same account number and password; this will be detected. At that point, corrective measures can be taken
* What about houses with higher occupancy than we are allowing for? Or houses with lower occupancy, whose occupants register up to the limit just because they can?
** There are a number of hit-and-miss methods we could use to minimize this. (Going into them doesn't seem worth the time, as I am not really seriously considering this option either; I'm mainly bringing it up to illustrate the issues that arise.)
** To some extent, how much does this really matter? At most, we have a percentage of our votership getting N times their official voting influence, where N is the maximum number we assume for a house. Are such voters likely to have a specific influence on elections? Can anyone use this discrepancy to influence the system? I don't really see how, especially if we take steps (see previous point) to make it difficult to get away with this.
* Again, this requires a privileged class of user able to access personal information of other users and allow or deny them voting privileges. This isn't a total dealbreaker, but it certainly renders the scheme less than satisfactory if we want a level, peer-to-peer, decentralized structure.
===Decentralized and Organic===
I'm going to call the method I favor [[crowdsourced reputation]], for lack of a better term.

← Older revision	Revision as of 13:23, 5 June 2011
(No difference)

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 Online voting, however, is particularly vulnerable to voter fraud due to the difficulty -- and in some cases the undesirability -- of verifying identity in online voting situations.
-This article is chiefly concerned with methods of ''minimizing'' online voter fraud, to the point where we will almost never be uncertain that it was not a factor in the final decision.
+This article is chiefly concerned with methods of ''minimizing'' online voter fraud (rather than rigorously ''preventing'' it), to the point where we can be reasonably sure that it is not a factor affecting the final outcome. Ideally, we should be able set a level of confidence that we need for any given decision, and tweak various parameters to meet that level of confidence by trading off for various other factors.
 ==Methods==
 ===Crude and Intrusive===
@@ Line 25: / Line 34: @@
 * Again, this requires a privileged class of user able to access personal information of other users and allow or deny them voting privileges. This isn't a total dealbreaker, but it certainly renders the scheme less than satisfactory if we want a level, peer-to-peer, decentralized structure.
 ===Decentralized and Organic===
-I'm going to call the method I favor [[crowdsourced reputation]], for lack of a better term. It can be applied to a number of online decision-making processes, but [[crowdsourced reputation/voting|here is how it applies to voting]].
+A method that may become useful later on, as the task of user-management becomes larger and difficult to centralize, is what I will call [[crowdsourced reputation]], for lack of a better term. It can be applied to a number of online decision-making processes, but [[crowdsourced reputation/voting|here is how it applies to voting]].