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From checking in at a polling place on a tablet to registering to vote by smartphone to using an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot, computers have become an increasingly common part of voting in America.
But the underlying technology behind some of those processes is often a black box. Private companies, not state or local governments, develop and maintain most of the software and hardware that keep democracy chugging along. That has kept journalists, academics and even lawmakers from speaking with certainty about election security.
In an effort to improve confidence in elections, Microsoft announced Monday that it is releasing an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard that will use encryption techniques to let voters know when their vote is counted. It will also allow election officials and third parties to verify election results to make sure there was no interference with the results.
"It's very much like the cybersecurity version of a tamper-proof bottle," said Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president of customer security and trust, in an interview with NPR. "Tamper-proof bottles don't prevent any hack of the contents of the bottle, but it makes it makes it harder, and it definitely reveals when the tampering has occurred."
Developed with the computer science company Galois, the kit will be available free of charge for election technology vendors to incorporate into their voting systems.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @05:21PM (11 children)
Electronic machinery will not make it any better if corrupt people are working the machine. Best to stick with paper that we can all verify without a magic wand. I ain't buyin', and I hope everybody sees through the bullshit also. We have no need... okay, maybe as a secondary backup (in case of the convenient warehouse fire) and rapid tallies for the tabloids, I'll give you that. But nothing should be official until the paper ballots are counted, in front of real human beings.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @05:58PM (10 children)
What if I told you that about 1 out of 20 times I get incorrect change from cashiers and this supports an overall conclusion that humans get fatigued easily and generally suck at counting?
What if there were a simple way to ensure an individual vote had been counted correctly without the chance of any corruption or human counting error?
What if I told you it can be proven that every vote was properly cast by an individual authorized to vote.
What if I told you there was a way for each and every individual to see that their own vote was properly counted at every stage, while still allowing the individual voter to stay anonymous to the rest of the world?
What if I told you there was a way that you as a voter could prove that not only were you one of ten thousand people who voted for your candidate that day, but that your vote was the 6699th vote for that candidate overall, you were the 1234th vote for that candidate from your district, your vote was the 90th for that candidate at that polling location and the 17th vote for that candidate from that particular booth. All that and literally no one but you can see it unless you authorize them to.
What if I told you that if the individual polling results don't reflect what you expected that you could "spoil" your own ballot and get it "uncounted" then ensure it was recast correctly?
This is all possible with properly constructed evoting and none of it is possible with simple pen and paper.
Meanwhile, pen and paper supporters seem to forget that individual vote counters are humans, they fatigue easily and if they are involved in counting it is not typically out of a simple sense of civic pride, but out of fear that someone other than their favorite candidate or party may win.
This is why the political parties usually have each party double or triple check eachother and this is slow and leads to conflicts of opinion about what that pen and paper ballot actually said. The extra handling also leads to additional spoilage in many cases.
Look man, I just want you to understand where I'm coming from on this. Why I'm so involved. Each election cycle since 2004 I have served at the polls as a supervisor. I setup machines, dealt with spoilt ballots and ensured ballot security as well as dealing with voters, the humble, this pissed off and the confused.
I do this because since my time in the military I really do give a damn about the integrity of our elections and I know that starts at home. Pen and paper ballots are not a good solution. They might stop a casual hacker, but casual hackers aren't the threat here. Entrenched political influence is the real threat. Pen and paper leads to entirely too much fraud real or perceived.
I also work in IT security, especially INFOSEC and cryptography. I see the nexus here of my work as a poll supervisor and my work in INFOSEC. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but I have worked for years and put significant thought into these problems. Pen and paper are not the solution. Closed black boxes are also not the solution. The solution must be open and it must be end to end verifiable. It might seem like magic, but that's why documenting the shit out of what happens under the hood and most importantly documenting how to verify what is supposed to happen under the hood actually happened and what to do if that doesn't happen, is the key to ensuring election integrity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:51PM (2 children)
> Entrenched political influence is the real threat.
Lawrence Lessig outlines the severity of just that problem [youtube.com], but stops short of pointing to any full solutions. His move against the current methods of campaign financing back in 2016 came close. His new tack is to try to get the candidates to mention it before the primaries. Again, while he does not have a solution he does describe why it is overdue to address the problem.
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)
Well my solution is to never vote incumbent. But with only 2 political parties and not a whole lot of real difference between them, it does feel like throwing my vote away. This is one reason I keep working every election cycle as a supervisor. I can put down at least some of the shenanigans. Since I don't care about any party nor any candidate, I at least get to feel impartial.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @10:35PM
But with only 2 political parties
Really? Only two candidates for each office?
In which city/state is that, if I may ask?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @08:07PM (6 children)
Ok, you understand the black box better than most. but that's my point, voting needs to be verifiable by unskilled labor to be trustworthy. I'm fine with using both electronic and paper, complimentary is okay, but paper must always be in the equation. Without it, all the electronics is nothing but magic, even the open stuff. It can never be as transparent as chicken scratch on papyrus.
Entrenched political influence is the real threat.
Who is more able to meddle with the machines, totally unseen? Paper has to be physically moved and destroyed, that's much easier to detect, with a simple infrared camera and a recorder. The risk of getting caught is much higher with paper.
For me it's too simple, gotta show papers. I can't prove my vote is counted any other way. It's not too much to ask. All the objections only make me suspicious.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @08:32PM (1 child)
Well read my example in the posting above this and give me some feedback please.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @10:18PM
Well, I thought I did. The computers are welcome, but only along with the paper. Even the best technical explanations are going to fall on deaf ears for those who don't understand computers. It's all mysticism. And I'm still not convinced of their integrity either. Too many interested players making the machine and writing the code. And there's a lot of pasta on the walls. Best if we keep it simple for all our benefits.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 07 2019, @10:55PM (3 children)
Is, wow, somebody changed his mind on S/N. We are doomed, the end of world is near.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:27PM (2 children)
What change? I still want a paper printout. And that is what has to be counted to make the results official.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:35PM (1 child)
You no longer require that the pen and paper is the only way to go and you accept that the pen can be a technological implement as complex as a computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:42PM
OMG! That's hilarious! Most excellent!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..