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A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation[pdf] that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments.
The legislation comes on the heels of the contentious 2016 election. Post-election investigation hasn't turned up any evidence that foreign governments actually altered any votes. However, we do know that Russians were probing American voting systems ahead of the 2016 election, laying groundwork for what could have become a direct attack on American democracy.
[...] The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots.
The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome).
The bill reads like a computer security expert's wish list.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @10:39AM (1 child)
Problem is, the digital vote fraud machines requires that you trust "the system", including those that built the voting machines and the politicians who ordered them.
If you trust your politicians, you have no need for a democracy. Take North Korea, a great example of a country that requires people to trust their politicians.
If you want to live in a democracy, you by definition do not trust your politicians. You want the ability to vote for someone else.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:17PM
True. The definition of a trusted system is one that, if it fails you, you're screwed.
The definition of a trustworthy system is quite different.
Ideally, only trustworthy systems should be trusted.