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I understand the issue, but then this is an issue with democracy in general. What if China could do that by bribing representatives (as they do) or financing propaganda (as they do)? And possibly an issue with any system of governance.
I'm quite familiar with how rickety infosec is in particular but I feel like when this is discussed people assume that the existing institutions are much more trustworthy than they assume in literally any other context.
The relative effort required is vastly different. Right now you need to compromise thousands of systems and individuals, in the app democracy scenario a single zero day could deliver you any policy you choose and nobody would be the wiser.
This is not how crypto-voting systems work.
You get the series of numbers from the voting system and can run them in your own computer, or even by hand with pencil and paper, and verify that your vote was counted.
The entire point of crypto verification is that you are not relying on someone else's computer. The threat model is the other person actively trying to screw you over, so "someone loaded a zero-day onto the voting equipment" is not even relevant.
I don't quite understand your reasoning here. What quality of crypto voting secures it? It's still software running on a client or server, yeah?
No, it is the math that works regardless of the security of the individual components.
If I send an encrypted message over an unsecured wire, and someone else shows up and says "oh but what if someone interferes with the unsecured wire?" they are missing the first part of understanding.
Each E2E system has its tradeoffs, but in general they are designed to absolutely detect if the people running the system deliberately messing with your vote. Detecting accidental messing with your vote is a necessary side-effect.
Ok, but merely securing the wire isn't impressive or going to solve the problem.
You still are not getting it.
WE
DO
NOT
CARE
ABOUT
SECURING
THE
WIRE.
The assumption is that the fire is compromised as fuck. Not only monitored by the enemy, but in complete control of the enemy.
What is secure in this scenario?
In an E2E voting scenario, the design goal is (more or less, there are different systems) that you have the math so you can sit at home and verify that your vote was counted, often without anyone else being able to verify how you voted, and even if the people who are running the election are trying to screw you over.
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