Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Voting machine maker ES&S has said it “will no longer sell” paperless voting machines as the primary device for casting ballots in a jurisdiction.
ES&S chief executive Tom Burt confirmed the news in an op-ed.
TechCrunch understands the decision was made around the time that four senior Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why ES&S, and two other major voting machine makers, were still selling decade-old machines known to contain security flaws.
Burt’s op-ed said voting machines “must have physical paper records of votes” to prevent mistakes or tampering that could lead to improperly cast votes. Sen. Ron Wyden introduced a bill a year ago that would mandate voter-verified paper ballots for all election machines.
The chief executive also called on Congress to pass legislation mandating a stronger election machine testing program.
Burt’s remarks are a sharp turnaround from the company’s position just a year ago, in which the election systems maker drew ire from the security community for denouncing vulnerabilities found by hackers at the annual Defcon conference.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/09/voting-machine-maker-election-security/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @10:33AM (1 child)
They're pushing a machine ballot that prints out a potentially fake log that black boxes the counting and transmission of results.
Same crap. Different package.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:42PM
This is what they are doing in Georgia [wabe.org].
The problem with paper trails that use bar codes is that there is no proof that what the paper prints out is an exact match of the information encoded on the barcode.
Unless there are audits to prove that the barcode always has the same information, these paper ballots are not any better than a lack of a paper trail. And regardless of any regularly scheduled audit, in any recount, an extra audit must be made to verify the veracity of barcodes.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:24AM (5 children)
Electronic voting industry is an interesting one, as deep down it is meant to fail. The same people do the ATM, which don't fail, and the voting booth, which spectacularly do.
Imagine a working internet, a relatively safe and anonymous way of voting. Parties reduced to simple aggregators of decisions, voters been given a mandatory day of rest in which they can fuck their SO (let's not kid ourselves) and also get informed, electoral programs becoming law the day the election winner gets the vote, projected objectives being unmet meaning the authors of the law and the elected representatives being booted off politics altogether or some other nice ways to actual democracy. It would be a disaster in the beginning as people have been de-volved intentionally, but since disaster is unavoidable, better to have one right now and rebuild instead of doing the second half of the french revolution, that involves returning to the original state, with serfs and untouchables. Especially since you average meatbags are not even guaranteed the role of serf.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:07PM (1 child)
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting was able to download the Diebold Election Systems software about 15 years ago, and noticed a bunch of things. Most notably, there was a different code branch created for the equipment certification than was being installed for the election itself.
More recently, she wrote a series of articles on how vote counts are stored as floating-point numbers [blackboxvoting.org] for no legitimate reason whatsoever, and describes the tools available in one of the most popular voting systems in the US for election officials to skew results in a way that seems believable enough that those saying that there was a problem can be safely dismissed as conspiracy theorist nutjobs. Never mind that in numerous US elections as of late the results have been substantially different than the exit polls, conveniently in the direction favored by the election officials in the district in question, in precincts where this particular voting system is in use.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:45PM
floats? that's hilarious. how else can you add .05% to a vote. lol
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:39PM (1 child)
I wonder if you can... No need for grep or hung jobs, people reading man. Imagine all the users, sharing all the web.
I say "you're a dreamer," and you're the only one. One day Skynet will rise, and we'll all be done.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 11 2019, @08:53PM
And no systemd too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:40PM
> electoral programs becoming law the day the election winner gets the vote
That would be absolute disaster, as you correctly put it.
Gladly, we've had a protection against insane "programs" -ever seen a reasonable one?- by having no single elected official empowered to write the law (Turtleman has gotten close, single-handedly blocking laws and appointments).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:43PM (2 children)
Option 1: Use electronic voting machines but publish all the votes. Each voter can use their smart phone to do a screen shot of their vote and then look in thru the Internet to check if they were recorded correctly. Third party sites can download the vote data base and do the publishing and secondary tally if you don't trust the election officials. Once you trust it, do the actual voting over the Internet and dispense with the voting place and time. Seems secure, but may loose some privacy. A third party could force some to vote a particular way if they can check how you voted. You could eliminate this with paper if you disallow taking pictures in the paper voting area.
Option 2: Print actual paper ballots and then only sell scanners to count them. The printers get the money instead of these folks, but there is a good audit trail and privacy.
Option 3: Have an electronic voting machine print a paper ballot after collecting a user's selections. The voter can inspect and then have the paper ballot counted. The selection machines have no memory or network connections. The printed ballot can include a checksum to cross check the subsequent scan. These folks then get to sell the counting and voting machine and the supplies. Good audit trail and privacy. Not sure why an open source solution with standard hardware would not do this just fine.
To date, option 2 with paper works fine. Attempts at paperless seem a sad joke. Hopefully, paper with option 3 is what these folks are trying to push?
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:48PM
On paper? Sure, forgery is a lost art, particularly with today's tech.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday June 11 2019, @07:33PM
Unfortunately, many states have a ban on cameras and cellphones at polling locations. (I know there are multiple states, but I only know for sure that Georgia is one of them.)
While this law was created to prevent voter fraud, the fact is that the party in power doesn't want people to have verifiable results and it is unlikely to be changed.
(The law theoretically prevents voter fraud in cases of selling your vote... no one would pay you if you can not prove you voted the way you agreed.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 11 2019, @01:03PM (2 children)
If you have a paper system, there will be forgery, destruction of votes, and all the business as usual chicanery we've had for hundreds of years - along with the barely acceptable controls we've devised for them.
If you move to a full electronic system, you might bluff that there's anonymity because the system is "so complex that nobody could ever figure it out," but, in reality, just like cryptocurrency, if you've effectively protected against double voting, you've also eliminated anonymity for the voters from the auditors who can determine if there has been double voting or not.
The problem with electronic systems is that nobody trusts them... with today's tech, we could literally photograph and time/location stamp every voter along with their authority to vote - boil that down to a hash code, and attach all votes to hash codes in a public ledger. The trick is: who gets copies of the non-anonymous data in order to perform audits? The voter could take away a copy of their hash and check the ledger to be assured that their vote has been counted, but who do they trust to guard against fake votes? Whoever that is, no matter how convoluted you make the system, if they can really check the vote tally for authenticity of each vote, they can also unmask how people voted.
Electronic can definitely be developed to a "better" system than paper, but only once people trust it. Photos and unique hash codes might be a first step toward that trust, but compartmentalizing the information in a way that it isn't abused is a human problem: checks and balances, giving opposing forces partial information sufficient that they can reach consensus without either side having the whole picture.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @03:00PM (1 child)
A system with paper receipts is supposed to have 2 copies, one for the officials and one for the voters precisely so that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
But, really, the correct solution is to not use voting machines, instead use paper ballots with optical scanners. We've been using those for years here and there haven't been any problems. You can even go watch the votes being counted if you want to. It turns out that after all the GOP accusations of elections fraud that there weren't any changes even after rebuilding the building that the votes are counted to allow people to watch from any side of the room they want to.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @02:19AM
And votes are never lost... absentee ballots are never "misplaced" and uncounted. And the voters themselves turn out in great numbers to ensure that their votes are properly represented in recounts... sure.
there were slightly more cases of GOP voting fraud than non-GOP voting fraud.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @01:59PM (4 children)
The only voting machine I trust is a pencil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:38PM
But sadly in most places with paper all you will get is a stylus to dimple chads with.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Chocolate on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:19PM (2 children)
Who does your pencil usually vote for?
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @01:12AM (1 child)
Number 2
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:54PM
To avoid bias, I only vote with green charcoal pencils.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:45PM
Voting Machines:
https://www.xkcd.com/463/ [xkcd.com]
Voting Software:
https://xkcd.com/2030/ [xkcd.com]
Pencil and Paper is good.
No teachers were hurt in the production of this comic:
https://www.xkcd.com/499/ [xkcd.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"