Days after Georgia Democrats warned that the state's new online portal for canceling voter registrations could be abused, officials have confirmed misuse attempts — including efforts to cancel the registrations of prominent Republicans:
On Friday (August 2), four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state's new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State's Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press and The Current that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters' dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver's license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others' voter registrations.
[...] The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal "empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote." In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: "Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain." One user posted, "Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!"
To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter's name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number or their full driver's license number. There's also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter's county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver's license number.
Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.
Related:
- GOP Candidate Improperly Purged 340,000 From Georgia Voter Rolls, Investigation Claims
- Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct
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With worn-out clichés about the dead voting, Chicago used to be the poster child for voter fraud. But if any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.
McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.)
Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues.
The Guardian reports:
Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state's registration rolls, an investigation charges.
Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved - but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.
"Their registration is cancelled. Not pending, not inactive – cancelled. If they show up to vote on 6 November, they will not be allowed to vote. That's wrong," Palast told reporters on a call on Friday. "We can prove they're still there. They should be allowed to vote."
[...] Palast and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda filed a lawsuit against Kemp on Friday to force him to release additional records related to the state's removal of voters.
Under Georgia procedures, registered voters who have not cast ballots for three years are sent a notice asking them to confirm they still live at their address. If they don't return it, they are marked inactive. If they don't vote for two more general elections after that, they are removed from the rolls.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Monday August 12 2024, @08:51PM (17 children)
This phrase seems like an insane leftover from a bygone era. It should be as simple as "You're a citizen, you can vote" and if your government can't figure out who's a citizen of your nation in 2024, you've got other problems.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fliptop on Monday August 12 2024, @08:59PM (4 children)
Without registration candidates can't have important info they need about who's voting in their district. Have you ever acquired voter registration data from your county clerk? I'd suggest calling and asking, you might be surprised.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @09:18PM (3 children)
Why do these candidates feel entitled to voter registration information? It's plain and simple: your voters are all citizens...
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday August 12 2024, @09:47PM (2 children)
Unironically no, absolutely not.
Voting varies by state, but in my state we're allowed to collapse ballots so instead of getting a separate piece of paper federal, federal congressional rep, state, state senate district, state rep district, school district, and municipal ballot, which would be seven different ballots, you get one ballot with all that on one piece of paper.
So if you live a mile down the road in a different school district and city, you'll get a somewhat different ballot than the guy living two miles away whos ALSO in a different state rep district, for example.
In some states, if you "register" as political party X, you cannot vote in political party Y's nomination process, they'll give you a ballot for party X only. In my state they solve that problem by using instant E-validation of ballots, if the optical vote reader doesn't like how you filled out a ballot it'll barf the ballot back at you at the moment of voting and you'll need a new ballot, which has never happened to me because the instructions are pretty simple, "vote in one section only", etc.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday August 15 2024, @01:34PM (1 child)
It is unclear to me why you would need registration for this. As a matter of fact all described above works in European countries without registration.
The nomination should be up to the parties to organize and not facilitated by the state/country.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday August 15 2024, @07:58PM
Somehow, the situation is actually worse than I proposed because there would also be a paper ballot for municipal aldermanic district, which is kind of like a "house of representatives" for the city, and those districts only hold about 2K people, they're pretty small.
Note that these 8 ballots and layers of government are not exactly hierarchical, some municipal aldermanic districts are split at the federal congressional level; you pretty much need a mailing address and about four to six maps to figure out who gets which ballot.
I don't know how euros vote, and it seems you don't know how USAians vote, so that is likely the root cause of our confusion.
At present in my state, or at least last time I did this, the clerk of courts for the muni can issue dead-people-vote-by-mail paper ballots but I don't think they're in charge of printing the 30-odd different ballots required in my city merely in charge of distribution. I think they use the clerk of courts because that office has access to legal records proving, at least in theory, who lives where.
I mean, yes, in a monocultural high trust high IQ society you could just place 30-odd piles of ballots next to about six color coded maps and tell the populace to "please not F this up" but the USA is not that kind of country anymore. So in order to vote in less than a half hour without TOO much obvious corruption, they use registration exactly as a computer uses cache. With the exception that in other states (not where I live) you're not allowed to vote in the D party primary if you're a registered R and vice versa etc.
Also adding to the chaos, my state legally requires civilized optical scan paper voting, but with e-voting I have no idea how it works. Do they program the e-vote machine every time a voter walks in? I would guess so. In that case, a "caching" mechanism of registering to vote would be useful to speed things along.
An interesting idea, although the good idea fairy struck and "if we're running a muni election anyway may as well let the party primary piggy back upon it". I do not know the cash flow and it's quite possible the .gov bills the parties enough to run a profit off the election LOL so it would not be in their financial interest to kick the parties out of the official elections.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @09:06PM (2 children)
Have you actually voted and interacted with the poll workers?
My experience (in multiple locations in Florida) has been that they seem to be old ladies who have all, personally, met the original Betsy Ross. It's like the library has a cryogenic vault they keep these women in, only bringing them out for elections.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Monday August 12 2024, @09:21PM
FTFY
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 12 2024, @10:41PM
I don't know why that's flamebait. It's the same way here in Arkansas. They greet you by name at the door, greet you by name as you enter the polling area, greet you by name when you approach the desk to get your ballot, then ask for proof of identity before they hand over the ballot. And, yes, they know the geneology of every voter going back to 1492, and further in some instances.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday August 12 2024, @09:11PM (6 children)
We do have an open border problem, yes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 12 2024, @09:41PM (4 children)
While this is true, it is a huge deal to secure the border. Like herding cats.
Try getting Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico to seal off their border to their South.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 13 2024, @03:44AM (3 children)
So here's the thing about all the "secure the border" rhetoric: Is it possible? Yes. Are there downsides? Definitely yes.
Let's first talk about what this would actually take:
1. Unmanned border walls slow down somebody crossing the border by approximately 10-15 minutes. Fences are even worse, generally lasting less than 5 minutes. Ergo, any walls you build must be combined with a reliable detection mechanism and a manned response within that time frame.
2. The detection mechanism can't be simple motion detectors or something like that, because animals will trip the alarms, causing lots of false alarms. So you now either need something like 24,000 border guards (assuming each guard can see about 1/4 mile in each direction, with night-vision goggles and such for night work, one per half-mile, and 3 shifts), and/or a camera system. And you need mechanisms to keep those guards very vigilant, and also ensure that none of them get bribed by people or organizations trying to cross illegally. Detection could easily take a couple of minutes.
3. So if there's a breach detected, it's going to take more than 1 guard to stop it. So now we need mobile response teams capable of stopping a breach, no more than about 8 minutes away. So now we're talking about groups of 10 guys as a mobile defense, with each group able to cover about 8-10 miles. So now another 10000 or so border guards, about 1 per mile in 3 shifts as part of the mobile response.
4. Plus, if you've had your guards capture, say, 100 people trying to cross illegally, you need to pull in mobile defenses from elsewhere to handle the fact that your guards are now busy in one area moving their new prisoners to wherever we're keeping them. So now we need prisoner transport units close enough to the front lines to get there within, say, an hour or so to free up the mobile response units.
Now for some downsides:
1. It's not cheap to do this. We're talking $billions easily. And no, Mexico isn't going to help pay for any of this.
2. Walls make it harder for the people on the defending side to see what's going on on the other side.
3. The wall goes right through the property of people who live on the border. Not impossible to manage, but not a great situation.
4. Wildlife should be able to cross freely. They can't with a big wall in the way.
5. Any wall system that can be used to keep illegal immigrants out can also be used to keep American citizens in. Why do you think the Berlin Wall was framed as a defensive structure against imperialist aggression?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 13 2024, @04:44PM
If they cared enough about it, they could use the same basic set of sensors that they use to secure the area around Area 51, but that would be ridiculously expensive. The easiest way to secure the border would be to simply not have so much poverty on the other side of the border. That would mostly eliminate the illegal crossing that wasn't directly linked to smuggling drugs and counterfeit goods into the country.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday August 13 2024, @05:26PM (1 child)
Its infinitely easier to secure the border by not providing infinite free resources to invaders, than to keep the invaders out.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 13 2024, @09:57PM
Good thing no government has ever done that, then. Most of the people you're terming "invaders" do whatever they can to avoid coming into contact with the government, on the grounds that any contact at all can lead to deportation.
And if you're curious, the current administration has deported more people than any other. Not the previous one, if you thought that was the case merely because the guy in charge of that administration said so.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @11:29PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 12 2024, @09:49PM
The government does know who the citizens are. Government is not some automated machine. It is made up of people. Therefore . . .
The problem is that not everyone wants some other citizens to exercise their right to vote. So they erect every possible obstacle to prevent them from voting.
These bad actors will use local government positions and try to sway things making it difficult to impossible for "certain" citizens to vote. They don't want citizens "of the wrong sort" to be voting.
That is the problem.
The second problem is if the vote doesn't go their way, they simply aren't going to accept the outcome.
Clue: getting more votes is NOT cheating!
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @10:35PM
Registration is corrupt by design, but the DNC/GOP needs a system to control who can vote
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jman on Tuesday August 13 2024, @10:27AM (7 children)
If you want to cancel your voting registration, go - in person - to your local county tax assessor's office, and present valid photo ID (or perhaps a few pieces of supporting documentation, such as birth certificate, voting registration card, SSN card, recent paper utility or credit card bills, etc.).
Though the convenience is great, the more we rely on faceless electronic communication for identity verification, the more it can be abused.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 13 2024, @04:46PM (6 children)
I'm not sure what the point of canceling your voter registration is. Around here just about every interaction with the state government comes with an offer to register you to vote and registering in a new location results in the previous registration being updated. I suppose if you're moving out of state or die, but in those cases, there should be databases of that shared between the states already.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 13 2024, @09:59PM
I mean, you would think that whichever government office gets the death certificates would use the opportunity to update the voter rolls, the driver's license database, the tax records, etc. But no, that's not generally how it works.
But also, some politicians are trying to arrange things so they dictate who the voters are, rather than voters dictating who the politicians are. And they have lots of ways of doing that.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by jman on Wednesday August 14 2024, @10:58AM (4 children)
Concur, but I was speaking more to what Thexalon said with regards to nefarious folk trying to decide who gets to vote.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday August 14 2024, @11:25PM (3 children)
I figured as much. The whole idea of having voter registrations canceled for reasons other than dying, losing your right to vote, or as part of a transfer between states makes little sense. And all of those things are going to involve some entries being made into state databases that could just as easily be updated at that time to indicate a need to check of voter registration is still valid and take appropriate action to verify and/or cancel it.
It never really made much sense to outright cancel voter registration in the past, at least if you weren't in an area where the voting is done by mail.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday August 15 2024, @03:39AM (2 children)
If they don't have your information for voter registration, they can't sell or leak it.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday August 15 2024, @05:10AM
If you're cancelling it, they already have your information.
(Score: 2) by jman on Thursday August 15 2024, @02:25PM
It's more about the entity then turning around and selling that information without my consent.
As the originator of that info, it should be my call if and where it gets passed around; and, should I allow it to be sold, I should have a say in the resulting profit.
Other types of data - driving habits, for example, which also happen to reveal just where you tool around - should never be allowed to be resold.
From an actuarial point of view I could see why the insurance company would like to know how one drives, but that info should stay with them; unless used to prove some criminal activity (and if I'm committing crimes, too bad for me, society has a right to know!) it's absolutely no one else's business.
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday August 13 2024, @06:51PM (2 children)
Let's see:
How could anyone, in 2024, not recognize that step 3 above will immediately become: "system will be abused by one or more individuals from the internet"?
Were these folks living under a rock, with no internet access for the last 25+years?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 13 2024, @10:36PM (1 child)
It's worse than that:
Step 2a. Leak all the information needed to abuse the portal.
I do wonder whether the goal of that was to allow some non-government friends to target voters for removal based on reasons that aren't legal at all.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday August 15 2024, @05:12AM
I'm not really sure why else it would be cancellation rather then update.