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The Guardian has a story detailing the firing of Christopher Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa)
President Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday, saying Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was "highly inaccurate".
CISA last week released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the statement read. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
Krebs, is a former Microsoft executive, and was appointed by President Trump after allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:58PM (134 children)
Ain't it funny how all us tech types went from saying electronic voting was so flawed in the US that every result should be assumed to be fraud to saying it's secure enough to blindly trust without a paper trail over the course of four years?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:02PM (29 children)
I don't know where you're pulling that from. I know this is a "True Scottman" but, us "real" tech types who know how bad software is, have never advocated for anything but paper voting.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:21PM (25 children)
I take it you aren't old enough to remember the past decade or so of tech history then? Google up Diebold.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:34PM (24 children)
"Diebold" is not "us tech types"; don't move the goalposts... Your claim was that "us tech types" changed our minds.
I know of Diebold and I know how bad their software (and practices) are. I believe it even was "us tech types" calling attention to that.
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:44PM (23 children)
Which is exactly what I said, dumbass. We went from intense scrutiny and screaming about security flaws in Diebold machines to completely trusting all voting machines like our history had never happened.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:55PM (8 children)
Go back to my initial response to your post:
What I dispute is your claim that "us tech types" are (currently) arguing in favor of trusting, blindly or otherwise, computerized voting machines. My counterclaim is that "us tech types" have always, and continue to, argue /against/ using these types of machines and that we argue in favor of paper-based voting.
I don't know if it's me or if you're trying to be deliberately obtuse, but I have a hunch based on your previous response...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:30PM
Buzzard is the only one here who voted on a paper-trail free system.
Maybe instead of bitching about it on a website he could vote for those 'tech types' who want to fix the problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:46PM (1 child)
The buzztard has a well-known habit of being obtuse. Whether it is deliberate or not is anyone's guess. In any case it is not you. Just so you know.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:28PM
Obtuse? I thought it was obstinate. Or obstreperous. Or Obstetric. Obstructive? Ostragoon? Or possibly Obstragastric. We mailed in our electronic votes? What they heck is he even talking about? Mail-in ballots are on paper. Provisional ballots are on paper. Absentee ballots are paper. TMB is stuck in the past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:19PM (1 child)
Maybe I'm misreading TMB's first post, but I read it as sarcasm. Either way, Poe's Law is in full effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:40PM
Every single time I think TMB is trolling he claims to be serious, and frequently his serious posts look like trolling. I think he is more influenced by propaganda and conspiracy crap than he thinks. I haven't seen a single person say voting machines are trustworthy, so he is probably mixing in some of his amger about the election.
Bonus, he will just deny any support of Trump and NOTHING ever upsets him; even when many things obviously upset him. He might be almost entirely detached from his own emotional states.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:01AM (2 children)
I'm not the one being obtuse here. You need to read the rest of the responses. You're very much in the minority, even of this community, if you dare criticize the security of electronic voting.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @05:26PM (1 child)
I think you're missing the point that we don't have electronic voting. It's always counted by hand as well. Fix your own state if they can't get basic shit right.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:00AM
Are you fucking stupid? Pieces of paper with ink on them are not especially difficult to create at will.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:16PM (13 children)
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pa-new-voting-machines-for-2020-with-paper-trails-20200101.html [inquirer.com]
So it seems they did it fucking right, but then you bring up something else for what reason exactly??
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:06AM (12 children)
You think? Unless they give you one for recounts and one to keep, with a matching nonce so fuckery can be proven to be fuckery, you still have zero accountability. If you can't prove your specific vote was changed, you can't prove shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:37AM (1 child)
The people that keep on insisting that there is no fraud keep on failing to get the point. I suspect it's intentional. The point is the following.
I do not hold the burden to prove fraud. The government holds the burden to prove legitimacy. They hold that burden because I pay taxes. They have completely and utterly failed to meet that burden. Anything short of an end-to-end auditable voting system fails to meet the burden. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
I want more to be done to prove to me that there was no fraud. A lot more. I do not see the burden being met. Not even close. I do not hold the burden to prove fraud. They hold the burden to prove legitimacy. They haven't met that burden. At all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @05:31PM
The government doesn't run the elections, citizens do! The poll workers are volunteers (although they do receive nominal pay in some places), often retirees and students. Go work an election, or just go vote and look at how it's operated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:38AM (9 children)
With a secret ballot you can't prove your vote was tampered with at all. If the electronic machines produce a paper backup that the voter reviews before submitting both electronic and paper ballots then you have a reasonable method for manually rechecking the votes. If a voter can check that his/her vote was counted exactly as cast then you no longer have a secret ballot and are back to a situation where vote selling and intimidation practices are feasible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:55AM (1 child)
You're an idiot. The current mail in ballot allows vote buying to happen. I can simply show someone my ballot and show myself mailing it in.
Please, stop intentionally acting stupid like we're too dumb to get this. We get it. You're being dishonest and we very clearly see your dishonesty. It's obvious.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @05:40PM
How do you hide any significant vote buying scheme in 2020? You're being ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @03:17AM (2 children)
Anyways alleged issues with an end to end auditable voting system when compared to what we have now can be found here in the comments
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/11/06/1027247 [soylentnews.org]
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07, @03:14PM (#1074136)
Since the (paid?) trolls will keep on bringing it up I figure I'll just link back to the response.
Also
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/11/09/1823255 [soylentnews.org]
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11, @03:05AM (#1076017)
Which pretty much repeats the same thing.
Much of this is redundant. Yet the trolls keep on bringing up the same arguments. "Vote buying is possible". Not any more possible than our current system of mail in ballots.
There should be a list of registered voters that voted so we can tally the number of votes we should expect. Then there should be a list of votes with my vote on that list. The question is how do we prove that all registered voters on the list exist and are still alive during the elections? Perhaps enough information to uniquely identify each voter if necessary? Maybe everyone's first and last name along with a voterID (the voterID can be listed online) that's associated to an offline database that also has more information on that person like DOB, address, contact info, perhaps info on a few relatives or associates that voted, etc... so that certain non-anonymous people (ie: perhaps anyone without a criminal background willing to physically check in and have their independent audits logged such as the press) can investigate various listings.
But something better than what we currently have. What we currently have is garbage. It's faith based. I want something proof based.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @09:44PM (1 child)
Are you sure there isn't? Voting in-person, where I am, involves signing my entry on a list of registered voters. Mail-in requires name, signature, and address, so the same thing can be done. I think provisional ballots require the same information.
More non-anonymous votes makes it more possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @11:27PM
This is silly logic.
There is no such thing as 'more possible' or 'less possible'. It's either possible or it's not. If the option is available at all then it's possible regardless of how it's possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @03:21AM (2 children)
"are back to a situation where vote selling and intimidation practices are feasible."
So then you agree that we should do away with mail in ballots since mail in ballots allow me to simply show my ballot to someone else before submitting, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @09:32PM (1 child)
Yes, mail-in ballots are no longer secret. Removing them and only allowing in-person voting would be more secure. There's a bit of a difference between a few mail-in ballots and every ballot though. Also the current pandemic makes having everyone vote in-person a bit risky though, unless there are more voting locations or a longer voting window(more days to vote). And there's the issue of people that are eligible to vote but physically cannot get to a polling station. Personally I always did in-person voting until this November.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @11:32PM
"There's a bit of a difference between a few mail-in ballots and every ballot though."
Uhm ... no. It's either possible and those that want to sell their votes can do it or it's not possible and they can't. There is no middle ground here.
If you claim vote buying is a potential problem then any possibility for its existence is a potential problem. To claim otherwise is a non-sequitur.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:04AM
Yes, you can. It is possible to create a nonce for each ballot that cannot be reversed to identify anyone. Yes, even with a sampling as small as the US population.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)
And the states where all the tech types actually live implemented paper trails!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:06AM (1 child)
Not ones that meant anything.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @04:21AM
Widdle babee twowing a tantwum? Aww widdle babee, is all otay don't wowry.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:03PM (27 children)
Where are there no paper trails? What do you think they're counting in Ga right now, 5 million computer systems?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:22PM (22 children)
Weren't any in TN for sure. And no option of a paper ballot unless you filed for an absentee one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:09PM (19 children)
Here in NY, we went from the nice old lever/mechanical machines, straight to paper ballots combined with optical scanning. After scanning, the paper ballot drops into the ballot box below (where it is saved in case of the need for a recount). The changeover was put off as long as possible, I think the decision was made when there weren't enough spare parts and technicians left to maintain the mechanical machines.
If your state used a Diebold (etc) hackable system, and/or doesn't have true paper backup, then you shouldn't be whining here on SN, you should be harassing your representatives about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:18PM (2 children)
Bbbu... fraud?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)
Then 2016 is invalidated as it had less paper ballots, and Clinton gets 2024 by default =)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:02PM
w007
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:11PM
An open source optical scanner could be used to randomly spot check that the results matched to some small error.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:14PM (9 children)
uhm ... telling our representatives that we won't vote for them if they don't fix the voting system that got them elected. Ironic. When the thing that needs fixing is voting how can we use voting to get it fixed?
What we need is an end to End-to-end auditable voting system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems [wikipedia.org]
The burden is not on me to prove that there was fraud. The burden is on the system to prove there wasn't. They hold this burden because I pay taxes.
Of course legislature is never going to get such a system passed, the current system is what got them in power. It needs to be passed through a ballot initiative. It needs to be voted on. We need to vote for a better voting system - we need to vote to fix voting. Again, the irony.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:25PM (4 children)
What's even more telling is that's exactly how we did it in every single Blue state except Jersey.
It almost seems like on particular party has no interest in fixing these systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:26PM (3 children)
Wait, what state has an End-to-end auditable voting system. I consider anything less to be broken. If you really have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:42AM (2 children)
Once a vote can be linked to a specific voter, and proved to be so after the vote, you open up the voter to being bribed or intimidated into voting a certain way. That's why the US switched to secret ballot in the first place.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @04:20AM (1 child)
So then you agree that we should do away with mail in ballots since mail in ballots allow me to simply show my ballot to someone else before submitting, right?
You can't have it both ways. Either vote buying is an issue and we should do away with mail in ballots. Or it's not an issue and we should create a proof based voting system.
I am entitled to proof based voting system. I am entitled to it because I pay taxes. A government that doesn't provide for one is a fraud.
and your statement isn't really true regardless. The above response is assuming it is true which it's not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2020, @11:15PM
Let me jump in here. When buying a vote. How much would I have to pay for someone to bother voting my way and how do I find one who would not snitch? Those are issues when trying to buy votes. The price for one single vote is likely very high and to make a dent one would need to buy a lot and not get snitched on at the same time. In addition a vote seller could take offers from many vote buyers and send a fake photo to everyone one of them, submitting your own vote for real and cash in. If we'ree going to talk about buying votes, let's look at the logistic nightmare and risks of doing so.
Where I live the vote counts in the local places are so low that we all know who gave that one vote who sticks out.. it's usually me.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday November 20 2020, @07:02AM (3 children)
How does anyone prove a negative? If you want to make claims then the burden of proof is definitely on you to provide evidence that supports those claims. You do have a legal system where you live, don't you?
I claim that you do not understand - and I offer your previous statements to support this claim. That's how it normally works. And time and time again in this election we find that despite all of the claims there is no evidence.
But no matter - the rest of the world has stocked up on popcorn and is waiting for the civil unrest to really kick off. You people need to get your act together and begin cooperating to sort out the mess you are now finding yourself in - no longer is the USA viewed as the paragon of democracy and able to provide leadership to the world. Military might can only get you so far - any further and you just become the bully.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @09:29AM (2 children)
Claiming that there is no fraud is a positive. You claim that there was no fraud. Prove it. Give me an end-to-end auditable voting system. Give me a proof based voting system. Not the faith based on we currently have.
If I apply for a job an employer may want positive proof that I am not a criminal. So they do a background check.
If I apply for a credit card the CC company may want positive proof that I have good credit. Or a mortgage lender may want positive proof that I have a good credit score or they may want positive proof of my income. I have to provide for it.
Landlords may want positive proof of a potential tenant's history.
I'm asking for positive proof. An end-to-end auditable voting system can provide for it. I am entitled to positive proof. I explained why. Deliver.
What we currently have is a faith based system that provides zero proof. I want a proof based system. Systems that provide proof are possible. Deliver. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @09:45AM (1 child)
Imagine if I tried to take a tax deduction for an expense and I didn't keep the receipt and the IRS asked for receipts and I didn't provide for one and said prove that I didn't buy this item?
The IRS wants to see the receipt on my end and they want to see the receipt on the end of the entity I bought the item from.
When I work I submit my taxes to the government. The government also collects information about my taxes from my employer. They match the two. They audit what I tell them.
Likewise when I submit my state taxes I also have to submit to the state information about my federal income. The federal government also submits this information to the state and the state audits the two and compares.
The argument that the government shouldn't be able to audit me because that would be requiring them to prove a negative doesn't hold up.
The problem with our current voting system is that it's not auditable. It's faith based. This isn't rocket science. Accountants understand this. They don't blindly trust us. Tax collectors (ie: the IRS) understand this. They understand what auditable means. Why can't you? Are you just being dense and stupid. Again, this isn't that difficult. I want an auditable system. Why is that so hard to understand? Why should I just blindly trust the system? I shouldn't. I don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @09:51AM
and when I say it needs to be auditable I mean that it needs to be auditable by ME. Not just by some stranger on T.V. or some useless 'journalist'. But by everyone which includes me.
Just in case someone tried to come up with some smart aleck response.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:21PM (3 children)
What you describe is like where I vote. (flyover) Fill out paper ballot. Drop ballot into machine. You (and poll watchers) can visibly see that your ballot was counted and that the total ballots counted display increments by one, as the ballot drops into a box that collects the ballots.
Counting by machine makes vote counts rapid and efficient. Also can make recounts rapid and efficient.
Use of paper, human readable ballots makes manual recounts possible.
Ideally, one type of paper ballot could be counted by optical counting machines from multiple vendors. Then some easy reality checks become possible:
* Grab subset of ballots, and count them on two different brands, expecting same totals.
* Before counting them on the 2nd machine, first shuffle the deck, expect same totals.
* Swap counting machines with other precincts, expect same totals.
* Run stack of ballots through machine 1, shuffle and cut the deck, run the two halves through machines 2 and 3. Expect totals of 1 to match sum of totals of 2 and 3.
Other possible quick checks could be done on machines.
There is no excuse for voting machines that do not count human readable paper ballots that were manually filled in by the voter. The ballot is what is sacred. The machine is there simply to make counting more efficient.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:27PM (2 children)
Same as CO, it's a great system that has the benefits of both worlds.
It's a shame that folk like Buzzard in TN won't elect anyone who wants to fix their paperless voting system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:33PM
TN? That is how Rand Paul stays in office?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 20 2020, @12:22AM
Careful guys, Trump may fire you too. That's not what he wants to hear, reality be damn'd. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:38PM
Been using the optical scanner system in Minnesota for years. Fill out your paper ballot, and then run it into the scanner.
The absentee ballot I used this year was virtually identical to past year's ballots.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:33PM (1 child)
Sounds like almost everywhere was fully converted this election [govtech.com].
Hmmm, it is interesting almost all of those states are red states. So what do you guys do with all those millions of dollars that were sent to you to fix your voting processes anyway?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:09AM
Massively overpay their brother-in-law's company to do something for the state, of course.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by hemocyanin on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:28PM (3 children)
Paper trails only matter if the paper can be subjected to forensic testing. For example, it is interesting that so many mail-in ballots, presumably placed in envelopes, had no creases (*). In one affidavit, 500 in a row all with perfectly filled bubbles (**).
* https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.283580/gov.uscourts.gand.283580.6.20.pdf [courtlistener.com]
** https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.283580/gov.uscourts.gand.283580.6.9.pdf [courtlistener.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 20 2020, @12:31AM (1 child)
A Trump-appointed judge has rejected that nonsense. [lawandcrime.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday November 20 2020, @02:22AM
Based on standing and other excuses regarding some agreement about mail-in ballots from 8 mos ago. Not on the substance.
You would think with evidence of duplicated ballots though, somebody somewhere would have the guts to have them examined. The box numbers they're in is listed in one of the affidavits.
It is interesting though that in America, we do everything we can to make elections less secure, less verifiable, and when testable claims of fraud are made, evade examining the evidence.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:15AM
They need to be printed twice, with a matching nonce on the printouts. Doesn't have to be personally identifiable, properly created hashes would work just fine. You just need to be able to check online afterwards to make sure your shit got registered and didn't get changed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Subsentient on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:12PM (39 children)
Fraud happens every election, but it's usually small scale and not significant. I believe CISA when they say this was the most secure in history. That does not mean it was entirely secure! It means that people gurgling about voting machines has finally gotten enough attention that a handful of counties cleaned them up.
I've looked at all the sources, all the news outlets I can find, I've kept an open mind.
All evidence points to the GOP idiotically following the Orange Fuhrer's tirades. I just don't see the evidence.
Uzzard, look at the courts, how they're throwing out every case, including republican judges.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:23PM (25 children)
They might be the most secure since we started doing electronic voting, they're most assuredly not the most secure in history though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:33PM (16 children)
And you have actual evidence of this? Have you brought your evidence to the attention of Trump's legal team? If not, why not? Or, are you just bullshitting yet again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:49PM (15 children)
Yes. Look up the process for registering by mail and voting by mail in California if you want definitive proof of insecurity. Mostly I'm concerned by the fact that we completely stopped all scrutiny and criticism of voting machines by the tech community overnight.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:49PM (3 children)
If you know of a specific issue, state it; then people will investigate and prove it wrong (because it is wrong). Just throwing out nebulous baseless claims isn't fooling anybody.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:27PM
But you've set a catch-22. Without an investigation, there could be mistakes or fraud, but nobody will know. Is that an okay system?
I'd advocate for everyone using paper ballots, and counting 3 times, or as many as necessary to achieve reasonable convergence. "Reasonable" meaning: if the margin or error is greater than the difference between the totals, you need to count again.
This ain't rocket science. Or maybe it is and should be done by rocket scientists.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:58PM
Here's a *specific* case of *attempted* election fraud. [latimes.com]
Even if the scheme had succeeded (which it didn't, because appropriate controls were in place to detect such efforts), it was nowhere near enough to change the outcome of just a *city* election, let alone a state-wide election.
Election fraud in the US is hard to do in a way that could actually affect the outcome of an election -- even a local election.
If you take even a cursory look into how elections in the US work, that becomes obvious.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:17AM
I just did. Read the procedures for registering and voting by mail in CA and tell me they're not absolutely designed to protect voter fraud.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:17PM (8 children)
California has paper trails.
The state you live in does not.
California wins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:31PM (4 children)
Maybe he is extrapolating the insecurity of voting in his own state to how the rest of the country's voting works.
Also, non white skinned people actually do get to have a fair say in the government. Just like everyone else. Yes, really. And it is not unfair for it to be that way. I know some people will be horribly offended about this. But there it is.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:41PM (3 children)
The rightwing filter would never allow a story about how all the Blue states fixed their voting systems while all the Red states left them insecure into his bubble.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:03PM (2 children)
That looks to me like the republicans have loyalty tests, ever since the tea party idiots introduced the term "RINO" to describe anyone who didn't fit their particular narrative.
If the rest of the republican party had had any real ethics, they would have rejected the Sarah Palin types, or at least debated with them, instead of rolling over and allowing them free reign.
Now they're in the situation that they have to argue black is white, because they have allowed their partry to be taken over by Trump and he has no regard for reality.
The Mighty Buzzard might ask himself why, if this voter fraud thing is so real, can the Trump campaign cannot find a reputable law firm to argue their case in court?
Instead they have fools like this working for them, and even worse, Rudy Giuliani. [politico.com]
I don't think TMB is stupid, but I do think he has wound up invested in "his team" and won't be disloyal by questioning any of their narrative.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)
The most disturbing thing is the "Black is White, might makes right" actions they are taking while in control of things like Supreme Court nominations.
I know the Ds pulled out the nuclear option first, but the Rs are going beyond retribution.
What kind of mechanism is required to de-Gerrymander districts? The R hold on power is so tenuous at this point, if they lost that one advantage it seems that they would fall down a deep hole they might never climb out of.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @05:54PM
Gerrymandering can be prevented by having districts set by a committee of citizens, like Michigan is now doing (a form of direct democracy). Apportionment reform could make gerrymandering less relevant by greatly increasing the number of districts and diluting the power of partisan voting blocs.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:18AM (2 children)
Dude, I could have voted in CA this time around. As many times as I wanted to take out post office boxes for. I could even shave that down some if I used folks with the same last names.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @05:05AM (1 child)
I was wrong, you are the Rudy Giulani of SN.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:07AM
You're wrong on the issue as well. You should look into fixing that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)
Just blind uninformed hatred towards "commiefornia." Here I thought you were a libertarian above all that partisan hackery /s
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:10AM
I give you facts you were unaware of, you hate and deny said facts without being able to refute them in any way, and you think I'm the ignorant one?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:25PM (7 children)
Most secure in history certainly depends on your scope.
If you're comparing to "pre-electronic" elections like in the 1970s, I'm going to go with more secure today. Bags of ballots can "accidentally" get forgotten in storage rooms, and the relatively higher cost of recounts meant that they didn't happen as much back then. Also, checksum type data was less used back then (total expected ballots as counted by multiple sources of information) and information relayed by telephone was lower fidelity than today's digital photo/video communication, so, I'm still going with more secure today.
If you're going back to the 13 colonies and elections where results were carried by horseback courier, I'm going to go with more secure today. I hope you understand why?
If you're talking about an election that took place in a single room with a hundred or so people in personal attendance, sure - that might have conceivably hit 100% secure.
If you're talking about the clusterfuck of 2000, 2020 sure seems like a better run circus than that.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:24AM (6 children)
You ever code online billing systems? I've been doing it for over twenty years and I will absolutely never put anything but a single purpose prepaid card across the Internet, because I know precisely how many things can go horribly wrong. Electronic voting systems are nowhere near as secure and far more important.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 20 2020, @01:45AM (4 children)
No, but I applied for work at a payments processing software company in Gainesville, Florida. Didn't get the jerb because I made 2x as much as the software manager, who himself made more than any given two of his code monkeys - not that he didn't think they were worth more, just that their owners refused to pay more. Hardly surprising the state of that "art." And, I'm not a prince or anything, just a code monkey for medical device startups running on academic grants at the time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:19AM (3 children)
I didn't say the code was bad in comparison to all the other code out there. I'd never say it was bad compared to any code involved in healthcare. I said it's not secure enough to trust my money to.
Know why? Random idiots.
In online billing you have every random idiot who coded a piece of software that runs on any of the routers or boxes involved in a transaction; from your computer, to the bank's servers, to the nameserver you query for the A/AAAA record, to your home router that never gets software updates. In voting you have poll workers and those overseeing them.
All of the above should be assumed to be entirely crooked and doing their best to commit fraud for whoever you voted against. Placing blind trust in someone who self-selected to count other people's ballots is foolish in the extreme.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:31PM (2 children)
Well, I guess my point was: assuming that shop was typical (they did POS embedded card reader stuff), they had massive turnover in their programmers - in large part because they were paying them less than half of what I was paying zero experience code monkeys for medical device work.
There was a medical billing / office management shop around there that I interviewed with that had a similar situation - average tenure of a programmer was about 3 months, 1 year was rare, and if they stuck around longer they usually had to be fired because of their lack of ability. Being out of work at the time, I offered to work for whatever they wanted to pay, but I think they were afraid to bring in someone who actually stuck with a programming job for 2 to 10 years, they said "you'd just leave when you got a better offer" - well, yeah, or you could keep me if you think I'm worth paying for, but with an average turnover of 3 months what are the odds I'll find my next job even that fast?
Medical device software has its problems, but nowhere near on the scale of billing / finance related stuff. Life safety seems to get slightly better attention than financial safety.
The whole political / representative government system suffers from this problem. If I were immortal, I might try to do something about it. As it is, worrying too much about things you are essentially powerless to fix is even more foolish, IMO. Look for the maximal ROI: voting is low investment, and relatively high impact compared to devoting your life to "fixing the system."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @02:15PM (1 child)
Most billing/finance code problems are at the admin or individual business level and caused by one person or a small group refusing to learn or follow best practices. Trying to reinvent the wheel or not taking threats seriously enough are the major causes of bad finance code.
It's rarely the code that causes the problem though. Mostly it's everyone having to deal with a bare minimum of two untrusted participants: the CC processing company and the site admin. Which is a large part of why we pawn our part off on the CC processing companies here at SN. They have plenty of time and manpower to get their shat right where we don't.
I still advise folks to never put anything but a single use prepaid card across the Internet though. Nobody's perfect and that money cost you quite a lot of your life, so expose only as much of it as you have to to risk.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 22 2020, @04:42PM
Oh, I finally did get a job at a high turnover shop once - they did video security, had a whole custom system coded over 5 years by a team of 4 programmers. Speaking of best practices, after I had been there about a week I asked: "how do I build this from source?" "Oh, it's all on this server here, ssh in and follow the scripts." "Great, um, when is the last time that system was backed up?" Crickets, followed by lame evasion. I'm barely 5 days on the job so I shrug and go back to my desk. Just after I start walking away there's a flurry of activity and a few minutes later an announcement that the build server is going down for about an hour. Since my work was just interrupted I casually walk over and ask the IT guy who just showed up how's it going? "Oh, great, we're just taking a VM image of this box that holds the only copy of our build system for 40% of the company revenue, on a spinning hard drive."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 20 2020, @02:34AM
Courses for horses, the attack surfaces and use cases are completely different. Audit trail needs are different. Could they be better? Sure can. So can medical device security, the insecurity of implantable pacemaker interfaces could literally shock you to death, but it has not happened yet - not because it is impossible to make a more secure pacemaker interface, but because the current designs serve the current users as optimally as the designers were able to at the time they were designed.
Needs change, the need for secure interfaces only grows more. We've known enough about theoretical security to make these systems "practically unbreakable" since the 1970s, had the hardware to do it in trivial money, time and power since the mid 1990s - what we're still juggling is usability vs ultimate security. Who do you trust to hold the keys? Why do you trust them?
Our OR based devices have a relatively low attack profile, little value in their stored information, marginal health risk if they are compromised, biggest concern in all our risk analyses is "delay of surgery" which is far above trivial, but hardly the brass ring for hackers. We're actually more of a target for bot-net recruitment than hacking our intended functions, and the bot-nets have far softer targets of opportunity in the hospital networks.
One of the big advantages our OR devices have is that they are powered down and/or disconnected from the network 99% of the time, a lot like voting machines.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by PaperNoodle on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:32PM (12 children)
Partly because the requested relief became moot in some cases. In MI and PA the courts threw out lawsuits asking a halt to counting while observers and challengers were not present. When it finally got to the court the count was finished meaning the lawsuit was moot because the relief sought was moot.
Other lawsuits were from citizens or GOP state party. It's been hard to keep up but not all the lawsuits thrown out are from Trump's campaign.
What is more concerning is the judgment from the PA supreme court. "Observing" doesn't specify distance so being in the same room with binoculars is "observing" the count process. You are in the same room and can see people counting 150ft away but that fulfills the "observing" state law requirement. That does not instill confidence.
B3
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:59PM (11 children)
Which is it, they couldn't observer or the observers just weren't allowed as close as they'd like?
Also, for the record, the distance was 15 feet [nbcnews.com]. Close enough to verify nothing fishy is going on, not close enough to read the personal details of the voters and compile a hit list.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by PaperNoodle on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:13PM (10 children)
We are dealing with multiple states and multiple activities. I think MI were kicking out observers while PA pushed them across the room. It is not and either or question. But the theme is the same.
Is 15ft enough to verify a signature? How do you challenge any ballot from that kind of distance? How many tables were farther away? The nearest might be 15ft but each observer was assigned multiple tables. In GA for instance it's something like 10 to 1 tables to observers at a distance that cannot possibly see what is on each ballot.
B3
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:26PM (1 child)
Also if the observer blinks then for a fraction of time NOBODY is observing. This is an intolerable injustice that can only be remedied by disenfranchising millions of voters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:07PM
They also made them wear blinders. Alex Jones said so.
(Score: 4, Informative) by helel on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:31PM (7 children)
They are there to observer the count, not the ballots. Their job is to verify the person verifying the signature, not to verify the signature themselves.
And in Michigan "over 100 Republican challengers remained inside throughout the counting [soylentnews.org]." Yes, the Trump campaign wanted more but they already had more republican observers than there were counters in the room.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by PaperNoodle on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:33PM (6 children)
And challenge a ballot. How do you challenge a signature at 15 ft?
B3
(Score: 2, Informative) by helel on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:40PM (4 children)
That is not something they are allowed to do. Their job is to observer and raise legal challenges if they see anything amiss. They didn't see anything shifty go down so instead they tried to claim that the mere fact that they were between 6 and 15 feet away (depending on time and place) was itself grounds to challenge the tally.
You're confusing Pensilvania with Michigan where there were only two Republican observers leaning over the shoulder of each election official and where the observers are allowed to challenge individual ballots.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Redundant) by PaperNoodle on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:06PM (2 children)
One of the MI lawsuit. https://www.greatlakesjc.org/cases/costantino_v_detroit/ [greatlakesjc.org]
It doesn't make claim to distances. Could be wrong only glanced through it.
PA is filed in federal court. At least the one I am aware claim equal protection violations for treating mail in ballots differently in parts of the state because they treated the observers different for curing. As it also coincides with the PA Supreme court ruling. I am not sure all the specifics as it's hard to parse. But am happy to be wrong. If you can provide the judgements or defendant claims countering the distance claims.
B3
(Score: 5, Informative) by helel on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:27PM (1 child)
Here's the judges response to that case [scribd.com]. The tl;dr looks to be that the plaintive's evidence of wrongdoing is vague lacking time/date and place where the fraud took place and the persons involved. The plaintive also was not present for important portions of the proceedings they claim to have witnessed and other acts they claim to be fraudulent are in fact normal parts of the election process.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:18PM
Time to throw some of these false accusers in jail. Tampering with our democracy is not ok.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:00PM
How can you be expected to see irregularities without being able to see any details of what's going on? All you can see from 15ft away is that there's no burn bin for "wrong" votes. Although, that is far from the only way to influence the count. Making sure that the signatures match, the ballots and envelopes aren't tampered with requires being able to see the details.
By the way, the counting system should be set up so that the envelopes are sorted into valid/invalid prior to being opened. The opening of the ballot could be done by an observable machine in batches (with matching in/out counts). Then the ballots scanned and hand counted. Each of these steps could be witnessed with no risk to voter privacy. So there's absolutely no reason to prevent observers from seeing the details of what the counters are doing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:18PM
How do you verify a signature? Does your signature remain consistent over the years? Mine isn't consistent signature to signature. The only thing consistent about my signature is that it is unreadable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:30PM
Our elections here in the USA do have paper trails. Pay attention, dumbass!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:26PM (12 children)
Except there is a paper trail [ballotpedia.org] in just about every state. In fact, the only state that Biden won that *doesn't* have a paper trail is New Jersey.
Every other state *without* a paper trail was won by Trump. So, by your logic, we should cry fraud wherever there is no paper trail. That would be:
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
New Jersey
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Note that no one is claiming that there was fraud in those states.
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin *all* have paper trails.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @05:27PM (2 children)
Too late - he's wandered off into the fact-free zone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:56PM (1 child)
Actually, he has been in the "fact-free zone" as long as I can remember him posting here. Just saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:38PM
That is what the "right-wing" soylent filter is for. Keeps reality from popping his bubble. Welcome to the desert of the fact-free zone!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:34PM (1 child)
The list of states you point out that do NOT use paper ballots is amusing. Those are the states I would LEAST trust to run fair elections. And Trump won in those.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:51PM
It wouldn't be 2020 without a MASSIVE dose of Republican hypocrisy thrown in the mix!
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:23PM
Au contraire, mon frere ...
If Trump won, there was most assuredly fraud.
However, it was probably on Facepalm, not on the ballot paper.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:27PM (2 children)
Arizona does have a paper trail, but it's been made useless. After the issues in 2000, they removed the ability to request a recount and set the automatic recount trigger so low that it is essentially impossible to trigger (difference of 200 votes or 0.01% of votes, whichever is smaller). So while we do have paper ballots here, they will only be read by the machines.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:56PM (1 child)
What *evidence* do you have that suggests there were significant problems with Arizona's votes?
I mean that quite seriously. If *anyone* has evidence of any fraud or vote tampering, it should be fully investigated.
And I'm sure Dan Patrick [theguardian.com] would be quite generous if you can provide some. At $25,000/tip that leads to a conviction, you could clean up.
What's more, as someone who voted for Biden, I'm all about free and fair elections.
If there's evidence for fraud, let's get it all out in the open. It's not like voter fraud never happens. In fact, the Heritage Foundation [heritage.org] has documented 1300 cases of voter fraud since 1982.
Since 1982, many more than a billion votes have been cast. [statista.com]
Let's take the low end of that and work the numbers. 1300 documented cases of fraud/1,000,000,000 votes = 0.0000013% voter fraud.
That's not nearly enough to affect *any* election. But let's say the "problem" is much, much worse. Let's say there are *ten times* more cases of fraud than have been documented.
That would 13,000 documented cases of fraud/1,000,000,000 votes = 0.000013%. That's still far less than could affect an election, unless of course all or most of those were in a single small-medium sized town during a single election.
And since those were cases all over the country over almost 40 years, even ten times the fraud we know about certainly wouldn't impact any state-wide or even local races.
Even more, there isn't just one election, or even one election system. There are, in fact, 3,143 separate elections in the US on election day. Each with an election system managed by folks in each of 3,143 counties in the US.
And in each county representatives from all parties that have candidates on the ballot are able to monitor both voting and counting of votes.
The self-interest of the political parties and the processes that are in place make any sort of widespread election fraud, and certainly anything widespread enough to actually impact the outcome of an election would require complicity from hundreds, if not thousands of people, many of whom would have a vested interest in having the election go a different way.
But don't believe me. And don't believe the folks who claim there is rampant fraud.
Go ahead and work it out yourself. I recommend starting by looking at the election system and processes in your own county. That should give you a pretty good baseline.
And as you learn about how elections *actually* work, I think you'll come to the same conclusion I did.
And even if you don't, at least you'll have a better understanding of how our elections actually work. That's not a bad thing is it?
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday November 20 2020, @04:40PM
The whole point is that fraud can easily be accomplished without leaving evidence or only easily dismissible evidence. So, the whole "where's the evidence?" thing is a strawman. You know there's no evidence because the systems are set up in a way that makes it nearly impossible to prove whether voter fraud occurred. This is particularly true with mail-in ballots. They are out in public being handled by unsupervised individuals at multiple steps and even in the best case scenario, there's no way to ensure that only the intended voter can fill out that ballot.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:29AM (2 children)
One printed receipt is not a paper trail, it's a comforting fiction.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @11:43AM (1 child)
How's comforting fiction been treating you lately?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:21AM
Pretty good. Been rereading this Carrie Vaughn series about a werewolf named Kitty.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:12PM (1 child)
Most states replaced electronic voting machines that do not create a paper trail.
There are only 8 states left that use paperless voting and take a wild guess at what color 88% of those states are. [thehill.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:33AM
Yes, you get a paper ballot printed out. Nobody could ever figure out how to get around that. I mean they'd have to have something that would magically put whatever they wanted it to on a piece of paper.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by sjames on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:46PM (16 children)
Perhaps that's because the concerns were addressed. What's really funny is when the outbound Republican thinks he actually won and that any appearance otherwise is because the elections run by Republicans in a state with a Republican governor using equipment selected by a Republican and with Republicans watching the whole process was biased towards Democrats. (See Georgia)
Also that the same Republican seemed mostly afraid of the absentee ballots that are submitted as marks on paper just like in the old days.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @01:32AM (15 children)
I don't give a rat's ass what Trump thinks, I care that we have no way whatsoever to verify that our vote got counted and that it got counted as we cast it. I trust poll workers very little and computers not at all.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Friday November 20 2020, @02:18AM (14 children)
If you don't trust the computers and you don't trust the poll workers, there is literally no way to trust the polling no matter how it's done short of you personally overseeing every ballot cast and then counting the results personally. Unfortunately, the President's term will be over before you can finish.
Of course, after that, you might be the only person who actually trusts the results, so each person will need to make approximately 260 million copies of their ballot witnessed by all 260 million people....
At the same time, I am glad most states have been phasing the unauditable machines out. I would be happier still with the old paper ballots marked in ink such as the absentee ballot I cast.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:25AM (13 children)
Sure there is. I take it you're not a programmer. We've long since solved untrusted parties dealing with critical data. And yet we don't use fucking any of those lessons on something this critical. Not only that but the Dems go way the hell out of their way to make fraud as convenient and untraceable as possible.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday November 22 2020, @01:36AM (12 children)
I am a programmer. I am a programmer who has worked enough with emulation and OS intercepts to realize that most of the systems dealing with un-trusted parties just shove the trust under a rug where it's not so obvious.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @02:44AM (11 children)
There are some idiots who do not use what works != It is not an already solved problem
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday November 22 2020, @06:21AM (10 children)
So what do you have in mind to make voting and tallying absolutely trustworthy in spite of untrustworthy computers and untrustworthy poll workers?
And what leads you to trust that that system has been implemented correctly and without subversion?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @02:29PM (9 children)
Being able to verify that your own vote was counted and was correctly counted would be a good start. That's dead simple to do without coupling your identity to your vote. You create a single-use identifier for each ballot cast. Not a crypto hash, a 32bit number would do just fine. You print it out on two copies of the paper ballot, one for recounts and one for the voter. The only metadata saved for that number should be the polling place id, a timestamp with a intentionally poor resolution (fifteen minutes, an hour, whatever's necessary to not be able to tell whose vote it is by the timestamp), and the votes themselves. Then you upload all of the collected data to a torrent file or similar for anyone to do a recount any time they like.
That's just me spitballing off the top of my head. I could come up with something quite a lot better if I actually gave it any real thought.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday November 22 2020, @06:20PM (8 children)
Then marvel as kooks come out of the woodwork for the next 4 years with fake ballots that they claim were 'lost'.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 23 2020, @12:20PM (7 children)
Kind of difficult to do if you can check that your vote was accurately registered as soon as you cast it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 23 2020, @06:41PM (6 children)
How in the world does that prevent someone from fraudulently claiming that they cast a ballot that wasn't counted?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 24 2020, @02:19PM (5 children)
Same way you prove email came from the person it says it did. Cryptographic signature on the receipt.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday November 24 2020, @08:20PM (4 children)
You've passed the point where many qualified voters no longer understand how it works and so have to trust the downloaded software.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 25 2020, @03:26AM (3 children)
Verifying the validity of a ballot was never going to rest on the voter's shoulders. They already know if it's valid or not since they cast it. The signature is so someone else can verify that it's not a forgery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 25 2020, @06:45AM (2 children)
So the voters are expected to trust those verifiers who actually understand how it works and Swear to God it DOES work?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:57AM (1 child)
Nope. And if you have to ask that, please never get into security of any sort beyond the Mall variety.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday November 28 2020, @06:48PM
So you'll need to come up with something they actually understand that actually allows them to not need to trust those machines and people.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Friday November 20 2020, @01:43AM
All this because droopy Trumpy has electile dysfunction. Sad.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday November 20 2020, @04:22AM
Buzzard, did you know that the only state that doesn't have paper ballots or voter-verifiable paper trails is Louisiana?
Every. Other. State. uses some form of paper ballots or paper printout trails for their voting.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2020, @01:33AM
Ain't it funny how Bruce Schneier, maybe one of the top two or three most respected and trusted security researchers in the world, just reposted a paper written by Ron Rivest, who literally invented modern cryptography, and three other highly respected security researchers from MIT, about how electronic voting is "a spectacularly dumb idea for a whole bunch of reasons" [schneier.com]. But, why listen to them when you could listen to right-wing nutcases!