from the newer-is-not-necessarily-better dept.
The Intercept reports
The nation's secretaries of state gathered for a multi-day National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) conference in Washington, D.C., this weekend, with cybersecurity on the mind.
Panels and lectures centered around the integrity of America's election process, with the federal probe into alleged Russian government attempts to penetrate voting systems a frequent topic of discussion.
[...] One way to allay concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machine infrastructure, however, is to simply not use it. Over the past year, a number of states are moving back towards the use of paper ballots or at least requiring a paper trail of votes cast.
For instance, Pennsylvania just moved to require all voting systems to keep a paper record of votes cast. Prior to last year's elections in Virginia, the commonwealth's board of elections voted to decertify paperless voting machines--voters statewide instead voted the old-fashioned way, with paper ballots.
[...] Oregon is one of two states in the country to require its residents to vote by mail, a system that was established via referendum in 1998. [Oregon Secretary of State Dennis] Richardson argued that this old-fashioned system offers some of the best defense there is against cyber interference.
"We're using paper and we're never involved with the Internet. The Internet is not involved at all until there's an announcement by each of our 36 counties to [the capital] Salem of what the results are and then that's done orally and through a confirmation e-mail and the county clerks in each of the counties are very careful to ensure that the numbers that actually are posted are the ones that they have," he said. "Oregon's in a pretty unique situation."
[...] In New Hampshire, the state uses a hybrid system that includes both paper ballots and machines that electronically count paper ballots with a paper trail.
Karen Ladd, the assistant secretary of state for New Hampshire, touted the merits of the system to The Intercept. "We do a lot of recounts, and you can only have a recount with a paper ballot. You can't do a recount with a machine!" she said.
America's paper ballot states may seem antiquated to some, but our neighbors to the north have used paper ballots for federal elections for their entire history. Thanks to an army of officials at 25,000 election stations, the integrity of Canada's elections is never in doubt.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Veyrdite on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:25AM (16 children)
Processors copy and destroy data many, many times when doing their work. Every time you access data it's copied onto at least one bus or mem/cache location. Even deleting data isn't completely guaranteed: sometimes old copies of it get left on buses that you don't even know about.
Fun example of the latter: 'Extracting the Game Boy Advance BIOS ROM through the execution of unmapped thumb instructions' in PoCoGTFO 16 [alchemistowl.org].
The idea that any piece of information (eg a vote) should remain 'unique' and 'indestructible' or 'verifiable' is not a concept that a processor directly understands. Only through lots of processing can we attempt to emulate this, and even then I'm not sure if you can even prove or guarantee it (any thoughts here?).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Veyrdite on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:35AM (6 children)
Possibly a better way to express this to people who are not familiar with CPU design:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:12AM (2 children)
A copy instruction is not some random operation that happens out of the control of the programmer. If you want a 'deep copy' it is so. If the program is using a database, as it should for this type of implementation, it is expected from the database engine does implement these operations correctly. It is what it is meant to do. Otherwise, not only voting machines, but banking operations would equally be affected.
The issue is that the vendors are without oversight. They can cash in on both the sale of the machine and their result. Assuming they would resist temptation for the latter, they would apparently be justified to hide any breaches because of their legal obligation to shareholders for the sake of the bottom line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:55AM
If my bank makes many copies of the money on my account, I won't object as long as those copies end up also being on my account. ;-)
(Score: 1) by Veyrdite on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:00PM
> Computers do not 'understand' anything in the first place. It is all about how you program it.
Yes, I probably wrote this the wrong way around. Perhaps the understanding problem relies between the programmer and the computer: the programmer believes the computer understands instructions in a certain way, but in practice copies of data get left around the place and sometimes accidentally used.
> I am not sure where this quote comes from
Self. Didn't twig to me that the CSS for blockquotes here makes them look like quoting other users whilst I was previewing. FTP; LTL; apologies.
> Otherwise, not only voting machines, but banking operations would equally be affected.
My understanding is that banking systems have problems all of the time. Luckily money isn't like votes: it's (mostly) not anonymous, so people notice when it goes missing or does something strange.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
That makes as much sense as:
As such: computers have no place handling paychecks. They do not understand that a paycheck should not be copied. They do not understand that a paycheck should be guaranteed protected. They cannot be trusted to destroy every extra copy of a paystub they make along the way. Nor can you know if they have destroyed too many. Even with the best programming they still make these decisions within a millionth of a second, and without human oversight.
(Score: 1) by Veyrdite on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:11PM
Paychecks that are outputted by a paycheck system are checked by people to make sense. Workers (sometimes) notice when they are underpaid, and admins (sometimes) notice when people are overpaid. Errors in paycheck and financial systems are not unheard of.
Vote results that are outputted by a vote collecting or tallying system cannot be checked against anything unless the votes are also written on physical media such as paper. When the numbers come out: anything within +-20% of the real vote might still look realistic and acceptable.
Arguably you could implement parallel processing using different computer architectures and codebases in a single voting-machine box. This would be a good step forward. Unfortunately it still only attacks the "prevention" side of the problem rather than the "verification of results" part; ie the same exploit vectors (similar CPU bugs, intentional bad code) still exist and cannot be quantified.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:10PM
They do not understand that a vote should not be copied.
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever.
Paper, or plastic? asked the bag-boy.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:48AM (4 children)
Prove or guarantee what, though? Voting is interesting because we want it to be impossible to prove which way a particular person voted, in order to prevent vote-selling, backlash against unpopular votes, etc. At the same time, we want maximum assurances that all votes are tracked and counted correctly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:27PM (3 children)
An excellent analogy to what you're talking about is the technology and mathematics of metrology. Although it sounds like metrology is the study of metrosexuals or some such funny nonsense, its actually the study of the math and protocols and procedures to design, prove, test and build accurate measurement tools, both the tools and standard test conditions. Its somewhat complicated yet interesting.
I'm just saying the math and algorithms for how to really accurately measure the diameter of a diesel engine piston oddly enough work pretty well for measuring voters in a precinct. You manufacture realistic test cases from live data to feed to multiple competing gear makers and the math for evaluating the quality of their gear was all figured out a century or so ago in the industrial era.
Its pretty much a solved problem.
Now if The Powers That Be permit the solution to be deployed or opposed is the real problem, because they have an agenda. Also you're spending a lot of money on something that usually doesn't mean very much in practice due to gerrymandering and simple bribery and various other illnesses of a republic.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:36PM (2 children)
I'm afraid I don't see where you're going with this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:13PM
What's the problem, VLM even gave you a car analogy (grin)...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:57PM
You question asked how to scientifically mathematically validly measure stuff. Thats old WRT precision machine tools, etc.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:11PM (3 children)
Hardware write protection via a switch was a thing on the Altair back 40 years or so.
Immutable data is also a high level language construct, see Clojure. There are multiple problems with doing this immutable:
1) Shutting off the garbage collector for forensic reasons will require a wee bit more memory and its gonna be slow to copy entire data structures every time you do something
2) You can write the worst styles of Fortran / Basic / Perl in Clojure its just not idiomatic good Clojure anymore. So you can do imperative, everythings-mutable coding in Clojure if you abuse the language badly enough. I mean, obviously, you can write a software simulator of a Z80 that runs MS Basic in Clojure and it'll work and easily do things the "wrong" way.
3) Its easier to implement massively redundant small systems than one highly complicated large system. Make two dozen competitive systems and deploy them in parallel and after each election statistically rub them up against each other to find problems, way cheaper and more reliable than trying to make the one true unbreakable system. Where I live we already run two systems in parallel, the same physical vote gets optically scanned by closed source probably hacked hardware and then volunteers from both parties (well, any party, really) spend some time after the election hand counting to verify the machines. Despite the machines being hackable easily, they aren't because the SHTF if they're discovered the next day in hand count.
Also its easier to hack the election by busing in illegal aliens to vote or have dead people vote or whatever, than it is to write code. For us it would be easier to write code than to bus in 100s of illegal aliens but for 99.99% of the population its easier to drive a bus than write code. Thats why "Tech" web sites have a somewhat irrational fixation on hacking elections via writing code; for us its easy. Presumably there's a human chemistry pharmacology board out there fretting and hand wringing constantly about a theoretical "right wing drug" (oral testosterone? Or left wing drugs could exist too, estrogen I suppose) being dumped into the water supply before elections to influence voting for nefarious purposes and it would be so easy for the average organic chemistry mad scientist to synthesize up a couple kilos because ya know that kind of work is their boring day job and they're very good at it, although as said above for 99.99% of the population it would be a heck of a lot easier and more technologically realistic to drive a bus full of illegal voters to a polling site so thats why drugging the water supply to influence elections is technically possible, but impractical and not a real threat. Its very hollywood to suggest "they" or (((they))) encouraged the "lead in the drinking water" fiasco in Flint MI to tip election results to the Democrats, likewise a bit hollywood to suggest lots of people can blink a LED on an arduino so a subset of them could really F with electronic voting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:56PM
I think the "fixation" on hacking elections is a lot more justified than you make it out.
Busing in illegal voters requires that you find lots of people willing to commit a serious crime in front of lots of witnesses. If it happens there will be lots of available evidence of the fact. If you aren't being shown the actual, solid evidence, it's probably just scaremongering.
Dead people voting may not be quite as obvious - it might involve similar fraudulent voters, but more likely it'll probably involve ballot stuffing at some point when the voting machines or ballot boxes are under-supervised - but that's easy to avoid if you actually implement decent chain-of-custody over the boxes/machines (and if you *don't* have that, then your vote is completely untrustworthy regardless of anything else).
Hacking though can often be done from 5,000 miles away with no evidence, or at best, by anyone competent left alone with the voting or tallying machine for 2 minutes at any point prior to the election. Either way, if it's done even halfway competently there'll be no evidence it happened other than a discrepancy with exit polls.
And yeah, for 99.9% of people, maybe the bus thing would be easier - but it's also very risky. Meanwhile that remaining 0.01% translates to 4 million potential hackers in the US alone, several of whom are already in the pocket of one criminal enterprise or another (political parties of all stripes included), and any *one* of which could potentially hack *every* remotely hackable voting machine in the country, as well as training anyone capable of using a screwdriver how to apply a ready-made hack to those machines that need physical access to compromise.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:33PM
Even if we just restrict ourselves to the developed world, that's well over a billion people. 0.01% of that is still 100,000 people. I think the man power can be managed, especially if the voting gear is designed to allow for hacking.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:55PM
That would be a federal felony.
If it was happening, the prisons would be full of such offenders.
Oddly (going by your speculation), no such condition exists.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach of Kansas (KKK) spent a bunch of time and money attempting to demonstrate that that sort of thing was happening.
We previously had a related story which included the results of that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:53AM (18 children)
Until voting machines are running un-obfuscated open source program, paper seems the proven choice.
It is hard to hack, more importantly by those selling it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:13AM (17 children)
Stalin (an authoritative source on election tampering, if ever there was one) said that it doesn't matter who casts the votes, only who counts them. For a fair election, you need at least half of the electorate to be able to audit the election - any smaller amount and the auditors can collude. Even in an unobfuscated open source program, that just means that the non-malicious bits are unobfuscated, the malicious parts are going to be hidden. I doubt that there are more than a few hundred people in the world that could do an audit of the code and guarantee that there are no bugs that affect the outcome (there are more that could audit the code and might find a bug, but proving the non-existence is a lot harder).
In contrast, anyone can look at a box, check that there are no hidden compartments in it, watch the box as people put folded pieces of paper in it, watch the box as it's carried to the counting centre, and watch people take the pieces of paper out and count them. This guarantees that candidates will be able to find people able to monitor the election on their behalf.
Unless your objective is to disenfranchise the majority without their noticing, computerised voting is not the correct solution.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:54AM (11 children)
I'm against electronic voting generally, but I'll play Devil's advocate: how about a formally verified software system?
There aren't many people who could, uh, 'verify' such a system, but there are enough of them scattered around the world (with differing political interests) that I figure you could do it and provide strong assurances.
Providing assurances that you haven't secretly patched the code with backdoors before deployment, is another matter...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @01:52PM (3 children)
Why does there have to be one system?
Once you have scantron optical ballots not only can you write the tabulation software but theoretically you could write scanning software to use anything from the dedicated scantron testing machines we already have, to OCR style scanning of ballot pictures.
For that matter we're about at the point of being able to take a pix of every vote cast and put the archive on the internet.
Of course that puts us back in the situation of voting districts where 110% of the registered population voted for candidate X (mostly left wing doing this kind of stuff, which then politicizes discussion debate or actually fixing things into right vs left thus preventing repair)
Of course the "real" problem is fourteen Russian PR people supposedly warped the election more than millions of illegal aliens. Or for political bias reasons, the legacy media provided trillions of dollars of free propaganda to the candidate that none the less lost, at least in part because most of the population hates the legacy media, which is kinda funny. Then theres the billions of dollars of legal bribes in the form of political contributions, vs the billions of dollars of pork barrel kickbacks in payment. I'm just saying WRT subversion of the will of the people, extremely obscure voting technical attacks are probably not the biggest problem we have nor is it a very hard problem to solve.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Wootery on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:41PM (2 children)
With proof of identity? If no, the idea is useless, if yes, that's a crime. I already said in another comment: one of the major design goals is to ensure people can't sell their vote by proving who they voted for. That's why it's illegal to record yourself placing your vote, and should remain so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:15PM
That's how Alabama's system works.
...and when Roy Moore got beaten there, the preservation|erasure of those images became an issue.
it's illegal to record yourself placing your vote
Depends on where you are.
Want to take "ballot selfie"? Here's where it's legal, and not [usatoday.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:55PM
It would be trivial technologically to post process the images before posting to mask out everything except the scantron image windows (where you scribble a mark or not).
That would make it impossible to write in the margin "VLM was here" thus selling my vote.
The idea being you could re-examine poorly marked ballots.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:07PM (5 children)
It's a problem of trust. How many people have enough mathematics to follow a formal proof of correctness of a voting system? Let's say ten thousand. Now, to trust the election, every voter who is not one of these people has to trust at least one of these people. Unfortunately, the people in that group are all highly educated, with a strong bias towards current and retired university employees. If you are voting for a party that mostly represents working class voters with a maximum of high school education, do you trust verification carried out by a group whose interests may be diametrically opposed to yours? Are you willing to bet your country on the idea that foreign nationals with no vested interest in your wellbeing would rather point out the flaw than keep quiet while people like them run your country?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:53PM (4 children)
I probably would, yes. The world's a big place, we're talking about an Open Source project, and it only takes one objector to kick up about a flaw.
Compare: the Soviets' Cuban missile project. There were no leaks there and the USA only discovered the sites through U2 reconnaissance missions. Because the (doubtless numerous) people who knew of the project were all working on the same side, and would have taken on enormous risk exposing the project anyway (which, again, they were not motived to do in the first place).
That's not how crypto works, though. When a researcher finds a problem, they publicise it. It's adversarial scholarship in action. It would be the same here. Deliberate maliciousness in FOSS is pretty rare even in obscure projects (though I'm aware people have tried it with the kernel).
It would certainly be a damn sight better than those amateur-hour Diebold trainwrecks.
Again though, I'm still against electronic voting. Even with such a software system, you can't trust the final deployment. More compellingly still, there's just not enough reason to move away from paper ballot in the first place. Digital isn't always better.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 21 2018, @02:51PM (3 children)
But it also takes one objector to have the time and expertise to conduct a full review. How long did vulnerabilities like Heartbleed stay in OpenSSL, when companies had a big financial incentive to care that it was secure? If they find a flaw a year after the election, what do you do, re-run the whole thing?
And then, a decade later, something is declassified and you learn that the NSA and / or GCHQ knew about that vulnerability 20 years earlier and were using it for all of that time. If you're working for the FSB and you find a vulnerability in the US election code, do you publish it? My guess is that you either tamper with the election, or you wait for a year after the election and then leak evidence that you knew about the vulnerability and pretend that you tampered with the election and undermine trust in the process. And, actually, if you don't find a flaw, then leaking that you did and tampered with the election will have a similar effect - and how does the government then prove that there wasn't a flaw in the formal verification of the voting system in a way that the majority of the population would trust?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:59PM (2 children)
Indeed, I'm putting some faith in formal methods making this considerably easier. I presume it would be a good deal harder to conceal a malicious 'feature' in a formal spec (from which the imperative code is then refined) than in a typical ball-of-mud C codebase.
To your second paragraph: all good points. I don't know formal methods well enough to know how much real help they'd be in all of this. Perhaps my point boils down a With a sufficiently approachable formal system... pipe-dream.
(Again though, the impossibility of trustable deployment renders our whole exercise insignificant.)
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:39PM (1 child)
If anything, they make it harder. To check a formally verified program you need to understand both the problem domain and the mathematical tools. That dramatically reduces the set of people that can do it. You can machine check the proof, but you can't check that the proof is actually telling you anything useful. seL4 is a great example here: all of their proofs are probably fine, but it was about 6 hours between their initial public release and the first security vulnerability being found, because the security vulnerability wasn't as a result of a property that was checked.
The problem with security proofs is that you need to define what security means before you can prove that a system has that property. You can't exhaustively enumerate security requirements, the next attack always comes from the thing that you didn't consider.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:03PM
True, but I still think it'd be harder to conceal a deliberate defect.
Sure you can - it tells you the program fulfils the formal spec. Of course you still have to worry about side-channel attacks and anything not covered by the formal spec, but it's not as if the assured properties are worthless.
Side-channel attacks can be an issue with formal systems, sure, such as Haskell programs leaking secrets by having more predictable timings than the equivalent C code. Oops, wasn't part of the formal model, and the type-safety didn't help.
I missed the seL4 bug - what did they miss?
I'm not sure how that would manifest with a voting system, but that might just be proof that I'm not that imaginative.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:55AM
There's two issues here. Having a trustworthy election system and having the average person trust the election system. While an electronic voting system can probably be built to be trustworthy, how do you convince the average person it is trustworthy? It's just as important to convince the losers they lost fairly and as long as it appears to be a black box to most people, it's impossible to trust.
I'm maybe smarter then most when it comes to this stuff and I wouldn't trust electronic voting for anything important no matter who reassured me that the code was formally verified, and I wouldn't trust myself to verify it either.
Compare to how voting works here (Canada), I can watch most of the process, show up in the morning, examine the empty ballot boxes etc and watch the whole procedure till the counting is finished at the end of the day. I also see others doing the same and as they're from all political interests, I feel pretty confident that they'll watch carefully.
There's still the flaw of absentee ballots but it is very few elections where they make a difference besides slightly changing the margin of victory by the odd individual seat changing. Here in BC last election, they did matter and I was happy to see the absentee votes not changing the outcome of the opposition winning the deciding seat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:35PM (1 child)
I was going to say something like this. Our local county has used electronic voting with no paper trail for a long time. I've complained since the first year they picked it, but got a "trust us" form letter back from the SoS about it. Now it's in the news again, and the officials are all "oh, but we don't connect them to the internet, so they can't be hacked" while completely ignoring insider threats.
And then they wonder why turnout is always so low...
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:16PM
We used to have those in my city, until just last year (went back to optical scan paper ballots). They were Windows XP machines with MS Access databases and touch screens. Each precinct had several machines, which communicated over WiFi so that a master machine could tabulate the votes from all the machines.
They finally got rid of them when a newspaper article came out describing how you could access the WiFi network from the parking lot, download the Access database, change a bunch of votes, and upload it back to the master. Oh, and the published the 5-character passwords, too, which had not changed since 2007.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:22PM (1 child)
"Even in an unobfuscated open source program, that just means that the non-malicious bits are unobfuscated, the malicious parts are going to be hidden."
I know that there is some very impressive code written to that effect, and even contests, but checks and balances can be added in at different levels. Take for example a completely different program written by a different entity and provide it with the same input. If it doesn't provide the same output there is a problem. It is not a mathematical proof, but is an added level of verification.
Perhaps it is possible to build a system where the voter can check his own vote while remaining anonymous (using private/public key to vote and count?). Again, that alone isn't sufficient.
I'm all for paper, line phones and networks, but what worries me is that at some point, enough people are going to want to vote with their phones because it is easier. It would be nice if a relatively good system could be designed before, even if that is not likely to happen.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:00AM
Even a perfect system can't be trusted by the average person, which can lead to the loser screaming fraud and being believed by their base.
Having everyone trust the results is actually more important then having trustworthy results.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:54PM
Hmmm, seems to me you just devastated your own Stalin quote. Or was it the other way around?
But on another point...
If you have paper ballots, you don't really have to know how to read code to prove that the counting software is correct or in-correct.
You just have to gather the Daughters of the American Revolution (unfortunately weaponized by the Democrats of late) and count the ballots with redundancy and observers. If it matches the machine total, fine. If not, the machine is wrong. Doesn't matter if the code is pretty or polluted. Long is its right.
Software should never be the depository of votes. Merely the counter of easily read paper ballots.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by therainingmonkey on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:09AM (16 children)
I don't know of anywhere in Europe which uses electronic voting machines. Why would you introduce potential bugs and vulnerabilities into your voting process?
Perhaps even more importantly, it seems like people who disagree with a result could blame the machines rather than accept a result. Transparency is vital in elections.
In the UK, we have a pretty sophisticated security system: The ballot box is metal, and padlocked shut. Volunteers from all different political persuasions stand around and watch the box until all the votes have been counted.
In France they make things even more transparent: The box is made from perspex.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:58AM (1 child)
Indeed, in Germany electronic voting machines have been ruled unconstitutional. [bundesverfassungsgericht.de]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @01:28AM
If the Nazis find this unconstitutional, then surely the Glorious Great Grand Don should also.
Lest his grandpappy roll in the grave.
/sarcasm Incase you nazi snowflakes get triggered.
(Score: 2, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:43AM (5 children)
You mean the electoral college? The whole raison d'etre of the electoral college was an admission that the voting public is stupid and don't know what they want, so they should nominate a proxy who will do the actual voting for president for them. The level of trust is total, and the trustworthiness in reality is almost zero.
Why the US population clings to this, I cannot fathom. Unless, of course, they are actually stupid.
Oh...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:53AM (3 children)
You mean the electoral college? The whole raison d'etre of the electoral college was an admission that the voting public is stupid and don't know what they want, so they should nominate a proxy who will do the actual voting for president for them. The level of trust is total, and the trustworthiness in reality is almost zero.
In theory the Electoral College should have kicked in back in 2016. That was a textbook use-case. However, for ages and ages the electoral college members have been appointed from narrow pools in either party: only the most dogmatic, loyal, and synchophantic party members are sent. The result shortcircuits the designated purpose of the electoral college. There's not really a way around that if the electors are not operating in good faith, and they've proven they're not. However, there are several possible tweaks to work around that [usatoday.com], if they could (or would) ever be voted through.
The voting process has been getting successively worse every cycle [theguardian.com] for decades now. Even what should be a simple process of counting votes is and remains a fiasco, with NO WAY TO REPRODUCE OR VALIDATE THE RESULTS in any state, especially those that use machines to receive or tally votes [defcon.org]. It is almost as if both parties eagerly facilitate outside influence from many directions. Partial audits, like the one sponsored by Jill Stein in 2016, show that the results cannot be reproduced. So for all practical purposes the numbers are made up [foreignpolicy.com].
It's not a new problem. I remember the arguments online even before Bush II was appointed. My frustration has become not as much that the problems with the process exist, it's that for over 20 years they have been made only worse and worse. However, equally important as using paper-based voting are both the ability and desire to carry out the process competently. Outrageously, both ability and desire are lacking [bridgemi.com] even when paper ballots are used.
TFA is about paper ballots. They are an essential foundation in a free and fair election. Same for hand counting. It's a first step, but only a first step.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:09PM (2 children)
Well it could have been, sure. But the leader of the international criminal conspiracy that was selling influence to the highest bidder ended up losing anyway, so it was unnecessary to override the vote.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:17AM
The electoral college had more than the choice between two styles of crook. Their task was to pick a president from the suitable candidates and they did not.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:12AM
From my reading of the Federalist papers, the electoral collage is supposed to be non-political, as in not politicians (and no parties then either), and choose the best statesman for the job. Note that originally the second place winner became Vice-President.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 20 2018, @02:46PM
As with most things theres the exoteric explanation thats an opiate to the masses and the esoteric true reason.
The exoteric reason for the electoral college is pretty lame so you get lots of complaining.
The true esoteric reason is they were engineering a new culture and you need a balance between Florida recount fiasco butthurt for the entire country vs expediency instead of arguing everywhere all the time after all elections. Its kinda like gerrymandering or pro sports in that it provides a certain sense of belonging and lack of conflict on a small scale even if there's large scale conflict elsewhere among other people.
The pro football analogy is interesting. The loser loses by a lot of points, lets say 50%; however the loser isn't a mere 50% of the athleticism of the winner. If you measured each teams athleticism to determine the winner of a match by having them run dashes and bench press and add them all up, then the difference between winner and loser team might be less than a percent, and people are going to freak about corruption and cheating. But manipulate the results into 14 vs 28 and they're a little calmer about losing.
Maybe another argument is its like rounding. If the election is decided by rounding errors, maybe that's an indication the result doesn't really matter anyway on a long term. Voting doesn't always provide good leaders or avoid bad ones, but sometimes likewise it doesn't really matter and that situation would be the definition of it. 49.9999 vs 50.0001 in the election results isn't a tragedy, its a success, overall, thats kinda sorta what the electoral college system is saying.
Sort of an opiate of the masses WRT elections. Can't have infinite irritation and pot stirring every election, yet having elections between typically hand picked candidates means not much changes yet the populace thinks it has power to change. Sometimes they get Trump'd. But usually it works and the system is engineered to keep people calm and uninvolved while feeling involved.
I'm just saying we'd have more riots than we already have if votes counted more than they do.
Its kind of a oil calming the waves on the pond thing; probably not ecologically sound in all conditions all the time, but sometimes gotta do it?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:50PM (4 children)
One practical reason is that US elections happen on very few fixed days in the year, and then have multiple offices to choose from.
If it were done with paper, you would need to have separate ballots and boxes for each office. The alternative, everything on one sheet, is what we have for absentee ballots, and those are error prone to hand count.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:49PM (3 children)
As TFS notes, Canada has never done it any other way and has results that are accurate, agreed on, quick enough, and 100 percent verifiable.
Hand-counted paper ballots FTW.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:21AM (2 children)
We also split our elections, Federal, usually a different year (and always at least a few months) then Provincial, and in both cases we vote for one person to represent us (though most vote by party). Municipal are more complex, but do happen on a different day again.
Besides the advantage of it being easier to count. It also divorces the elections and allows different/new parties at the different levels or even here in BC as an example, generally no parties at the municipal level (Vancouver being an exception).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:32AM (1 child)
Hey, you don't even have to try to convince me that you guys are smarter/better at Democracy.
There are so many places where USA could take lessons on how to do stuff right. [google.com]
...but, apparently, being the global hegemon and making rich people richer are USA's only priorities.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:58AM
It has its problems. Government that has a majority is almost a dictatorship as the parties almost always vote as a block. Too much American influence where the Prime Minister's are starting to think they're a President. And of course, first past the post voting system.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:02PM (2 children)
Sigh.
You do know this is the procedure everywhere there are paper ballots, right?
There are so many steps AFTER the ballot is dropped into the box, where things can go wrong, that your comment serves no purpose other than to trivialize the discussion.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:52AM
I sense strawmen.
Independent, volunteer observers, as well as nominated party observers, and paid staff actually doing the counts.
These people watch all day, and stay until the count is finished.
Total number of votes matches total signed off as attending that booth.. Then start counting the preferences.
Any variation between local polling stations more than x% triggers a recount.
No announced results until a certain percentage have been counted.
Usualły done within a few hours of the closure of the booths.
All done with paper. All able to be re-done at any time afterwards, until several years later.
Sure. Australia is only as big as California, by population, but if it works, it can work anywhere.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:30AM
We use cardboard ballot boxes here in Canada. The important thing is enough people watch the whole process from start to the finish of counting that no one has an opportunity to screw with the ballots.
It's really simple, count the ballots at the polling place in front of witnesses rather then taking them away to count.
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:39AM (2 children)
For our elections we have VERY SPECIAL machines, they're called TABULATORS. And they count the ballots. You put the ballots in a stack, you put the stack in the Tabulator, you press a button. The ballots go inside the Tabulator, it counts them, they come out again. Untouched by human hands. Because it's not a hand count, it's a machine count. And the Tabulator can do recounts. You take a stack of ballots that have been counted, you put the stack in the Tabulator, you press a button. The ballots go inside the Tabulator, it recounts them, they come out again. And if the Tabulator didn't work the way you wanted, you can put the stack of ballots back in the Tabulator. And press that same button. Over and over again, and see if you get different results. In Michigan they did it many times, they did 3 recounts with the Tabulators. Because the Tabulators didn't work right. Then they stopped recounting, they were only allowed to do 3 recounts. Because of laws. They didn't do a hand recount. But they did 3 machine recounts. The machines didn't work right, they were old and broken. But they got the right result!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:55AM (1 child)
I didn't say the beauty part, this is PRIMO, it's PERFECTO. They did the 3 recounts on the Tabulators, right? On the broken Tabulators. But they have a BEAUTIFUL law that says only 3 recounts are allowed. So a hand recount would be ILLEGAL. Because they already did the 3, right? On the Tabulators. And the hand would make 4, if you count to 4 you're in big trouble. Bing bing bong bang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @06:02PM
Congratulations. I hear you edged out James Buchanan Jr. as worst president ever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @03:51PM (5 children)
If you want a quick ballot, do a paper ballot that comes out when you electronically vote (or two ballots?: one you keep for your own 'records' and one you drop in a ballot box).
Vote electronically, it spits out a ballot with your vote choice (or two ballots, whatever): you check to see that the paper ballot shows correctly who you voted for, you then drop that ballot in a box.
This gives you a quick electronic vote total but also allows for a slower but 'true' vote total.
Yes, here in Canada, we've always taken voting seriously and therefore use paper ballots. Obviously Americans haven't always really cared or this wouldn't have happened. [ducks]
[geese]
[cow]
[another cow]
[no, i think that's the same cow]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:26PM (3 children)
Amazing the levels of ignorance even on sites like this. You can't allow a copy of a ballot, that was a specific design feature introduced to eliminate a specific problem. Do you want to be 'required' to show your 'properly' marked ballot to your employer? Was a time you could bring your own pre-marked ballot to the polling station. And yes that was a problem, lots of people would be handed a premarked ballot and escorted to the polling station. It is like the "free speech" we have today, you can say whatever you want, just don't expect to ever have a job again if you exercise it. Well being fired for voting the 'wrong way' is problem that was solved with the secret ballot. The free speech problem is, for now, only solvable by the same method, anonymous online forums.
Elections are a solved problem. The United States Army conducted some of the freest and fairest elections in recorded history. Too bad they were in Iraq and Afghanistan where it didn't matter. The problem is free and fair elections are exactly what Democrats most fear breaking out here and they will exert every effort to prevent it.
No early or mail in voting. Require all voters be registered far enough ahead of the election to have time to challenge fraud. All voters have a difficult to forge photo ID. Place a clear plastic tub on an unadorned table in the center of a room. On election day, all voters are carefully checked against the registration records, then given a paper ballot. Voters fill in the ballot in private then insert them into a slot cut in the top of the clear tub in full view of as many election monitors as candidates, parties and media wish to have present. When they drop the ballot in the tub they stick their finger into the purple ink to prevent voting in another precinct. When the polls close, while maintaining uninterrupted view by the monitors, the tubs are opened and counted. The results are announced and submitted to a central location over a secure link, but since all of the local results are now unchangeable any shenanigans would be quickly unmasked anyway.
So simple yet so politically impossible. Once you ask why that is you will begin your journey to the red pill view or the world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:06PM
Yeeesh, calm the frack down!
Fine, no copy of ballot! Yoinks!
Solution, simple. Vote, paper ballot checked, paper ballot deposited in secured bin! Don't get your panties twisted.
I just suggested electronic plus paper because you Americans seem to need speedy electronic voting and didn't, before, care about security. Do both and you are speedy AND secure for recounts or slower counting for 'true' ballot counts.
WOW. So simple.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:14PM
The problem is free and fair elections are exactly what Democrats most fear breaking out here and they will exert every effort to prevent it.
And when they enlist the aid of a hostile foreign power to fraudulently and illegally launder money into their campaigns and hack the systems of their competitors and the state election commissions maybe you'll finally want to do something about it.
It'll be too late by then, of course...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:32PM
You were one stupid unnecessary anti-Democrats swipe from an actually meaningful comment.
Once anyone proves that a few thousand votes were fake, I'll start wondering whether a giant conspiracy could quietly generate 3 million votes, yet be too stupid to generate them where it matters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:22PM
In my part of New York State we used to have mechanical lever machines which I really liked (but I guess they finally wore out). Now we have paper ballots that are scanned, then the paper is dropped in a box for use if there is a recount. We never had any of the "electronic" machines.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 20 2018, @07:17PM
Thank god SOMEONE is trying to protect our Democratic process.
The President of the United States doesn't seem to care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @08:23PM
We want free, fair, and honest elections.
Nothing online, and no facebook, nor outside interference from ANYONE.
Paper is the old reliable standard the world over.
At least, there won't be any fallout or noise about interference or meddling that have to be investigated.
But hey, what do I know, I can't even vote.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:51PM (7 children)
OK. You get rid of the machine. You do paper ballots. Is everyone going to count every single ballot by hand? You can do that, if you're willing to foot the HR expenses involved, but is anyone seriously questioning the use of tabulation machines? (Even if you use volunteer counters, there are still paid invidiuals in the process).
Developing a secure system of voting machines is possible. But not if one isn't going to pay for the security.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @11:04PM
Yes. As mentioned in TFS, Canada has done it that way since Day 1.
When all the poll workers|witnesses agree on the count, the results are posted.
It Just Works(tm). No need to change anything.
Certainly no need for added expense or added uncertainty.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @01:11AM
This is how it works in my district. Hire some high schoolers, pay them $100 to work alongside the volunteers and party reps. Good pay for an evenings work for a few kids, everything gets counted by hand under supervision, and it works quite well.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:45AM (4 children)
Hmm - secure paper ballots counted by hand requires
a handful of unskilled people counting for a day for every few thousand ballots
Secure electronic voting requires
a troupe of multi-party IT experts capable of thoroughly auditing *every* voting or ballot-counting machine in the days before the election, right down to the internal microcode on the CPU and other micro-controllers. All working at all times in teams of no less than two members loyal to opposing-parties, since non-expert observers would be virtually useless in detecting tampering or willful negligence.
constant unbroken multi-party security for every machine from the moment of the audit until the final count is publicly declared
I think the manual count is liable to come out substantially cheaper.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:56AM (3 children)
You forgot the cost of the machinesthe cost pf transporting and installing the machines, and any issues with power or access
With paper, all you need is a dry place and some pencils, so moving the location in an emergency is also far easier.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:56AM
An indelible marker would make the marks less prone to tampering.
...but you weren't far off the mark.
{Slingblade voice} "Mark". Git it?
(I believe one of them^W^W^W GP was from Arkansas.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:19AM (1 child)
Nope. Just figured I'd compare them straight on human costs. Then all other costs only further damn an already irredeemable concept.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:27AM
Fair enough.
The other benefits are that paper can support proportional voting (Which is quite likely just plain better than first-past-the-post), as well as large numbers of candidates, which would, quite likely break existing computer systems:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-16/senate-ballot-paper-stretches-beyond-a-metre-in-nsw/4892934 [abc.net.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex