DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System (vice.com) 232
samleecole writes: For years security professionals and election integrity activists have been pushing voting machine vendors to build more secure and verifiable election systems, so voters and candidates can be assured election outcomes haven't been manipulated. Now they might finally get this thanks to a new $10 million contract the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched to design and build a secure voting system that it hopes will be impervious to hacking.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
Yes...BUT, does it... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is very important and didn't see that listed in there in the top level checkoff marks.
Elections can STILL be rigged (Score:2)
The 1960 John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon election is widely acknowledged to have been rigged [newsweek.com]
There have been no changes in the law to prevent exactly the same thing from happening now and there are no efforts to determine if it still happening.
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I mean, I would go for the actually legally determined example from 2018, not the rumor from 1960, personally. You know, the one in North Carolina that was so bad they are re-running the election.
Why is the department of defense (Score:2)
building us a voting system?
That would be like the Fox counting the Chickens.....
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The US wants stability (because it is more profitable) so it promotes freedom and democracy around the world. A secure voting machine sounds like exactly what is required. Without some way of maintaining a democracy after the fact, what point is there in military intervention?
Good luck getting these machines used in the US. There is too much money pushing for existing proprietary solutions. So I think one should not assume that this system is designed solely for us. Their target will be global.
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Re:Why is the department of defense (Score:4, Informative)
The Department of Defense does a lot of things that are designed to promote democracy, under the theory that democratic countries just don't declare war on one another (or at least, are far less likely.) Notably, they were (are?) heavily involved in TOR.
Also, current voting machines are a clear threat to the US,and their job is to deal with those threats.
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Well, but the fox can easy make an easy recount.
Overcome by events (Score:3, Interesting)
Vote by mail is growing rapidly and in many places exceeds polling place voting. VBM increases voter turnout and solves so many problems that polling place voting probably isn't worth salvaging.
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Vote by mail also makes vote buying trivial.
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Obviously that means there must be a scourge of evil fat cat bosses blackmailing their employees into voting for the bosses preferred candidate! It must be true, it's a Slashdot talking point whenever voting systems come up!
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The reality is much less dramatic than that. Consider the humble ballot harvester thoughtfully assisting the voter to fill out his ballot and hand-carrying it to the precinct.
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Or maybe a few political bosses around the country harvesting ballots.
Hudson Hallum further told Carter that $20 to $40 was too much to pay for one vote, but that this amount was acceptable to pay for the votes of multiple members of a household. On that same date, Hudson Hallum also told Carter, “We need to use that black limo and buy a couple of cases of some cheap vodka and whiskey to get people to vote.” Two days later, Carter and Kent Hallum spoke with an individual in Memphis, Tennessee ab [arktimes.com]
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I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen a billboard with "Vote X get CA$H!", and I've lived in a vote-by-mail state a long time. How exactly does vote by mail make large scale vote buying trivial?
On the other hand, it requires voter registration and a signature on file, with a valid address to receive the ballot. The envelope containing the ballot must be signed and the signatures must match to what is on file. How does that compare to having no voter ID at all, where people can be bussed from
So, no advantage over this system (Score:2)
The DARPA system also uses paper ballots as an intermediary (prints the ballots, then inset into scanner for tabulation.) If you're personally delivering it, the only advantage a "vote by mail" ballot has over this system is that someone else can fill it out for you/observe your vote. Which is only an advantage if you're selling your vote
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The DARPA system utilizes a printer and the tabulator. While there can be extra redundancy with multiple scanners with tabulation, there is only one ballot and thus only one printer. In the system currently enacted, I am the printer, and thus the attack surface has been cut in half. That's an advantage.
Selling votes is a criminal act and those soliciting vote buying leave themselves highly exposed to whistle blowing. I don't find it that concerning.
Re:Overcome by events (Score:5, Insightful)
Vote by mail only works when things are going along quite well. We just witnessed what can happen when things do not go well in North Carolina, where the handful of mail in ballots spoiled the entire election. Vote by mail allows voter intimidation and vote buying - makes them almost trivial, in fact. People act as if "The Machine" in Chicago never happened, as if we somehow matured away from that sort of thing. No, we implemented hard-fought voting reforms that corrected the problem - some of which vote by mail now eliminates.
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Ballot harvesting is illegal in North Carolina and Mark Harris and his campaign weren't just accused of collecting ballots and turning them in. They were destroying ballots that voted against him, filling in those that were left blank and forging witness signatures.
That is ILLEGAL in EVERY state.
California law allows a mail-in voter to designate any person to return the ballot to the elections official from whom it came or to the precinct board at a polling place within the jurisdiction. . There has been
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Voting by mail has no Chain of Custody controls. None.
You drop the envelope in the mail and it's open season on fraud from that point on.
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Hey DARPA.... (Score:2, Interesting)
This special 'secure' open hardware: Will you actually ensure there is a reference platform available, for less than say 500 usd to the average consumer, so that we can develop on, test, diagnose, and verify this hardware ourselves, or use it to ensure the security and authenticity of our own application code?
If not, then it is just a 10 million dollar sham. The software, even if perfectly secure by itself, is not trustworthy unless the underlying hardware is trustworthy, and the underlying hardware isn't t
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The plans for the hardware are public. DAPRA doesn't plan on building it, they plan on helping design it. They hope someone else builds it.
Socialist Voting Machines? (Score:4, Funny)
What's next, letting EVERY citizen vote?
Re:Socialist Voting Machines? (Score:4, Funny)
And ... (Score:2, Offtopic)
The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
And ... it comes with a free unicorn!
Taking on the impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
I've posted this before, but it's worth saying again.
In the early 2000s, there was a GNU project [gnu.org] to build a secure online voting system. They ceased work in 2002, citing the project as being at best difficult and at worst, impossible. They quoted Bruce Schneier, one of the foremost experts in computer security as saying "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers... [B]uilding a secure Internet-based voting system is a very hard problem, harder than all the other computer security problems we've attempted and failed at. I believe that the risks to democacy are too great to attempt it."
I see no evidence that Schneier has changed his mind or that any other comparably qualified expert has suggested he's wrong.
Re:Taking on the impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
In the early 2000s, there was a GNU project [gnu.org] to build a secure online voting system.
The article has nothing to do with online voting. It is talking about more secure and verifiable systems than are currently used at polling stations.
To cite one example from the article:
In a voting system, this means the hardware would prevent, for example, someone entering a voting booth and slipping a malicious memory card into the system and tricking the system into recording 20 votes for one vote cast, as researchers have shown could be done with some voting systems.
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Which is a fair point, but raises others.
1) What is the problem we're trying to solve here? In most functional democracies, votes are easily verifiable through chain of custody either of paper votes themselves or paper audit trails.
2) Many of the same concerns still exist. If these devices record votes or verify voters, they need to be secured. That's something
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What is the problem we're trying to solve here? In most functional democracies,
Hmmm....why would the Defense Department be interested in voting systems......perhaps something about the country not being a functional democracy post-invasion.
Also, there's still plenty of places within 'functional democracies' with direct electronic recorded votes with no paper trail.
In other words, securely computerizing the polling booth is, to an extent, even more challenging than where you try to implement networked voting.
You're kidding, right?
"Hey Bob....what's that angle grinder for?"
"Oh, just like carrying it around"
*Poll worker ignores incredibly loud racket as the hardened case is cut open*
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"Hey Bob....what's that angle grinder for?" "Oh, just like carrying it around" *Poll worker ignores incredibly loud racket as the hardened case is cut open*
Why would they cut it open? They could just wait until the polling station is closed, hack into the software running the voting machine, and alter the votes recorded. Or are you not aware that the most likely people to want to modify the outcome of the vote are those running the vote counting process?
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Why would they cut it open? They could just wait until the polling station is closed, hack into the software running the voting machine
:facepalm:
So, the voting machines are only rolled out on election day. At the end of election day, the data is copied off the machines and they are rolled back into a locked/guarded warehouse. Where altering the totals in the machines don't do any good.
They are not just sitting their 365 days a year.
Or are you not aware that the most likely people to want to modify the outcome of the vote are those running the vote counting process?
Which is why that part of the process is observed by members of the political parties on that ballot. If the poll workers try to alter the votes to favor one party, observers for the other party are standing
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The key difference between that project and this one is the DARPA project does not use the Internet. Heck, it isn't even a 'networked application'. Thus reducing the attack surface to locations that can be physically monitored by adversarial parties.
real problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The real issue with electronic voting isn't even the hackability of the system. Or the fact that an exploit scales to an entire country. The real problem is that there's no assurance anymore. A very simple process turns into something opaque.
For you americans who don't understand how voting is done properly in the rest of the world, it goes like this:
You put an X in the circle or box of your choice (sometimes several X in several boxes, but nothing too complicated). Then you seal that paper in an envelope or you simply fold it. Then you drop it into a box. That box is watched over by volunteers from all the major parties and basically everyone who cares to spend his time checking that the election is done properly. These same people at the end of the day open the box and count the votes.
At no point is anything not accounted for. At no point is there an attack vector. The whole thing is so simple that an idiot can understand it and that's the point - because it means that every idiot or non-idiot can check it and verify that all is well. Think the box has been tampered with? Go and check the box. Think the paper is special? Go and check the paper. Think some votes were thrown into the box at the beginning of the session? Check the box at the beginning, then seal it, and at the end count the number of paper slips against your very simple tally sheet of people who voted.
There are ways to fuck with the system, of course, there always are. But the low-tech approach also means they are low-tech and can be spotted. Tell me how you'll find the kernel-level backdoor in the voting system that knows which bits to flip in-memory without leaving any traces on the disk. And the number of people capable of validating a system at such a level are low enough to be pressured or bribed.
A highly distributed low-tech system is exactly what we want for something like elections.
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For you americans who don't understand how voting is done properly in the rest of the world, it goes like this:
Hate to damage your arrogance, but about 80% of the US votes in the way you described. The other 20% bought expensive machines that they haven't replaced yet. But they are being replaced.
Also, the massive gaping hole in your system that you didn't bother to think about is what do disabled people do? That actually was the primary selling point of all-electronic voting systems - handling disabled voters is far simpler. Blind people are gonna have a teensy bit of a problem marking a paper ballot, but a pai
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Beyond a certain point, and the U.S. is beyond that point, making it easier to vote is a bug not a feature. As one illustration of this, people who are not willing to make sure that they are on the rolls to vote a week or more in advance of the
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In order to understand whether it is worth addressing your primary point
Protip: Primary points do not start with "Also".
So, what percentage of eligible voters are disabled in a way which makes getting to the polling station and casting their vote excessively difficult?
To rephrase your question, "what percentage of people don't deserve their rights because they had bad luck?". And then you might notice just how awful your line of thinking is.
Beyond a certain point, and the U.S. is beyond that point, making it easier to vote is a bug not a feature.
Yes, those pesky voters might not choose the properly ordained candidate!!
As one illustration of this, people who are not willing to make sure that they are on the rolls to vote a week or more in advance of the election (how far in advance is another question) are unlikely to have spent the time to understand who and what they are voting for.
First, there's not particular time limit for removing someone from the voter rolls. Go ahead and do it on the day before the election so that you can get your preferred outcome while blaming the voters you disenf
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Blind or otherwise disabled voters have a counselor who votes with them together.
And, now the american system is not similar/the same, you punch holes into the paper. And the first as well as second Bush vote counters disregarded all votes for "the other one" where the paper had no full hole as: unclear vote.
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Blind or otherwise disabled voters have a counselor who votes with them together.
And that is far inferior to that person being able to fill out their own ballot. Plus, blind is not the only disability.
And, now the american system is not similar/the same, you punch holes into the paper.
:facepalm:
First, there is no "American" system. Our elections are run by the states. There are 50 election systems in the US.
Second, a minority of states ever used punch cards, and none have used punchcards since 2000.
You have absolutely zero idea of what you are complaining about.
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have friend verify if blind
That would be the part that electronic voting machines were trying to eliminate. For the same reason we don't want people to just let their friend vote in their place.
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And the people who come voting are counted/registered.
So if you have more or less papers in the ballot than people on the sheet of paper, you know something is wrong.
Blockchain (Score:2)
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What, you actually believe that paper ballots are secure? Apparently you've never lived in a place where, now and then, a box full of ballots is replaced with another box full of ballots. With different votes....
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Would not be possible in Germany.
The votes are counted at the place of voting, in the same room. The box never moves anywhere.
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LOLZ the art of throwing paper ballot elections was honed to perfection here in Chicago over 120 years ago. Of course, voting machine with handles were the solution! Yeah they'd tie Republic lever to Democrat one inside with rubber band or women's stocking....
This message brought to you by the City of Chicago, where the dead vote early and often.
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I'll bet 100 dogecoins that you didn't read the article. Cause the system uses printed paper ballots (retained for security/verification), fed into a scanner.
Still can't be anonymous AND verifiable. (Score:2)
I don't understand how nobody ever mentions this but voting machines can't be both anonymous AND verifiable.
The only way to check on the count is to ask the machine itself so it's no verification at all.
That should be obvious to anyone thinking about it for more than 2 minutes.
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Always do such things sound good (Score:2)
This ain't rocket science (Score:3)
1. First machine is a touch screen. Voters make selections on screen.
2. Once done a paper ballot with their selections is spit out, and they can visually check the ballot
3. Second machine is a optical reader from a different vendor, and must use a different OS from the 1st machine. Paper ballot is inserted and read.
4. Results from both machines are fed to a computer to be compared. If they match, vote goes through. If they do not match, vote is scrubbed and voter asked to try again.
You have verification from two independent systems AND a paper ballot at the end.
You are welcome.
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so we compromise #4 and your idea becomes just as useless as an insecure voting machine
thanks for playing
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so we compromise #4
I'm not really sure what you think that would accomplish. The original machine is still going to have the first tally. And the 2nd machine (reader) will have IT'S tally as well. Guess what happens when #1 and #2 say candidate Smith won and #3 says candidate Hacker won? You'll know something is up. And there is still a ballot printout of each vote that you could run through the scanner again if you like.
thanks for playing
So, you read the article? (Score:2)
So, you read the article and quoted it here. Except #4 doesn't happen automatically (the optical reader tabulates, checked against a human count of the paper ballots). And the whole system is made by one company.
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So, you read the article...
Uh, nope. You must be new to /.
..and quoted it here
Nope again. I had this idea a while back. And mine is actually better because their idea wastes the tallying of the first machine.
I actually went back and read the article to see what else they had for their idea. I'm kind of surprised at this statement:
Kiniry said they’re aiming to design their system without barcodes.
Well, I hope so. Why would you use barcodes in this day and age? Any descent text reading program, especially on a ballot that is going to be consistently printed by you in whatever text/size you want, could handle this
Seriously? (Score:2)
I read this entire comment thread and was both surprised and disappointed at the lack of the obligatory xkcd. [xkcd.com]
Its called paper (Score:3)
Candidates suggest some of their own trusted witnesses, gov has a few witnesses, civil society has some witnesses.
Then count the nations votes in front of many witnesses.
Everything adds up as each vote is seen and counted in front of many people.
No code, computers to vote with are needed.
Computer systems are liked by failed nations governments that want to subtly flip votes.
Use paper to vote and photo ID every citizen.
Enjoy some democracy without computers and illegal immigrants voting.
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Mod parent as funny :)
Open source software does not mean you get to make code changes in THEIR source code. You can only see it and fork-it and make your own evil voting software.
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Desiderata verus Requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
Having studied this issue for a very long time I'm perpetually frustrated with the Computer scientists constantly injecting overly clever desiderata that can only be implemented at the sacrifice of core requirements of voting systems.
the core requirements are
1. Secret ballot so no one can tell how you voted.
2. Secret ballot so you cannot prove to anyone how you voted even if you want to. (too often ignored)
3. transparency at a level where an ordinary person can reasonably see how the security works
4. Robust against operator errors. Mistakes happen, power gets lost, protocols are not followed.
5. Resistant to cheating.
6. in the event of a failure, Ballots must be re countable-- preferably at a precinct level
What the computer scientists is inject nice-to-have but unnessassary desiderata, like "crytpographic proof your vote was counted" and encrytption. These, to date, always sacrifice one of the requirements. For example, many (not all) proof of vote systems will violate 2, allowing you to prove how you voted. indeed many touch screens allow proving how you voted using a video inside the voting booth (whereas paper ballots have to be publically deposited and videos can be prevented). Many (not all) cryptosystems reduce the number of people who know the keys but this comes at the price of concentration where a few people can change all the ballots without detection, whereas distribnuted precint counting makes whole sale attacks hard.
Serial numbers on ballots, to the voter, appear to offer a way to track their ballot to them. Even if you tell them the cypto prevents this an ordinary person cannot possibly tell that. Ballots need to be indistinguishable.
Thus I worry that people doing this are trying to "improve" something with "more features" that already has a good solution. namely hand marked paper ballots and optical scan.
when an optical scanner breaks down you can still collect the ballots. People can still vote. And you don't get long lines when you are short on equipment or the power goes down because all you need is more pens and desks. Optical scans are easy to recount by humans at a precint level.
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3. transparency at a level where an ordinary person can reasonably see how the security works
This is the part that'll never be implemented with electronic voting. Even the most perfect system will be basically a black box to the average person.
I can watch the whole voting process here, including counting and anyone can understand how it works. I can't imagine how electronic voting can be understood by everyone no matter how good.
Re:Desiderata verus Requirements (Score:5, Interesting)
bingo.
When New Mexico implemented random sampled recounts they used 10 sided dice done in publicfor random precinct selection. When colorado did it, they hired eminent computer scientists to design the recount and they use a computer random number generator and all the selections is automated in the computer. No one who understands computers trusts the colorado system though admittedly it's way better than nothing. it just violates the transparency for the sake of some computer science optimality in the algorithm.
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This. There is just everything wrong with the entire idea of digital voting. It's a bad idea and no amount of technology or cryptography will ever save it.
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I agree, so this is just nitpicking...paper ballots arguably violate #2. I can show some the ballot before depositing it into the ballot box.
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People aren't allowed to loiter within the polling area, so one person couldn't check many ballots. So while they could violate #2 on a handful of ballots, they wouldn't be able to do so on a scale large enough to affect the election. At least, not without a very large army of people acting as "watchers", which would make it far more likely someone would talk.
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I hear you Goombah99 and I agree with all your points (plus others you didn't make). Not sure what the fixation is with electronic balloting - unless it is just the elected who can't stand the tension. "Polls are closed - I want to know if I won. Not tomorrow, not next week, not at 3:00 AM - I want to know NOW"
Anyway, I'm glad DARPA has stepped up to the plate on this - there is a reason they call things "DARPA-hard problems" - they will attempt things that are seemingly just not possible, and have no com
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Having studied this issue for a very long time I'm perpetually frustrated with the Computer scientists constantly injecting overly clever desiderata that can only be implemented at the sacrifice of core requirements of voting systems.
*snip*
Thus I worry that people doing this are trying to "improve" something with "more features" that already has a good solution. namely hand marked paper ballots and optical scan.
That right there is the key that we've all been saying for years now.
There can only be sacrifices if "expanding features" is interpreted as "replace the whole thing", and there is absolutely no reason for this.
The clear solution is to do both.
When you vote on paper and that paper is optically digitized, you gain all of the advantages of fast computer tallying and statistics, as well as quickly and cheaply gathering the results centrally for preliminary announcement.
Then at the same time when you vote
What, no "blockchain"? (Score:4, Funny)
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There is a clear and obvious way that computers can improve voting, and that's computer assisted voting.
You can have a touch-screen UI with pictures of the candidates. You can have assistance for the blind. You can have all the chrome you want. And when the voter is done, the computer prints a clearly marked paper ballot, which the voter reviews and casts into the ballot box.
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we already have these and have used them for decades. They print out optical scan ballots and they do so right on the normal ballot too.
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1. Secret ballot so no one can tell how you voted.
2. Secret ballot so you cannot prove to anyone how you voted even if you want to. (too often ignored)
So thousands of extra votes show up after voting closed. Are they real? How do we check?
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lots of ways. such as the contemporaneous digital record of ballots cast. The number of ballots cast in anyone precient will be less than that. The record both official and unoffical of the number of ballots cast. The multiple eye's on the system. the rate at which ballots can be fed into the scanner. And other less well known security features.
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Nope. We tried that already in early american history and people used the proof mechanisms to corrupt votes. It's the whole reason we went to precint based secret ballots. And for the most part we know the system works excellently without proof of vote. So there's not even a question in anyone's mind aside form yours which is a bigger problem
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Holy shit, SCORES? Literally DOZENS? Obviously this is a clear and present danger to our democracy! Yikes!
Disproportionately wide ramifications (Score:3)
Holy shit, SCORES? Literally DOZENS? Obviously this is a clear and present danger to our democracy! Yikes!
Yeah, because a handful of votes at the "correct" time and place can't have disproportionately wide ramifications ... oh wait
... oh wait.
Now replace parent with employer, phone pics of paper ballot or paper verification for a "bonus".
Or replace employer with a political operative paying out cash.
Its not like these weren't problems in America's past
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this is not related to the conversation. you are talking about authentication not secure voting. different problem. It does resemeble this problem in one way. The most important thing is people are confident in the system and weak authentication can weakly contribute to mistrust in the system. Thus even though there's no evidence authentication is actually any significant concern, it is something some voters, such as yourself, see as confidence building.
thus I do support stroing authentication too. Bu
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That sounds like the argument about immigration reform vs border security.
A completely secure system from the point of the ballot being cast to the point it is tallied is useless if you don't know who is casting the ballots if they are entitled to do so.
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As for votes out counting the number of registered voters you are likely misinformed. I have spent a number of years investigating cases like that. What I find in most cases is that the reports in the news media are mistaken. To give you an example, it has been the practice of some state to assign the counting of absentee ballots to certain precincts resulting in more votes than precinct members. Another way this shows up is incorrect reporting of registered voters. There are often two lists of regist
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Right Secret ballots were a major innovation. We encountered a lot of large scale problems in vote coercion prior to that. For example, pubs would act as vote collection centers issuing color coded ballots pre-marked then collect them from you when you took your free pint of beer. Secret ballots and secure voting places put a stop to that.
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Seven States Still Force Prohibition-era Bans on Election Day Alcohol Sales [wthr.com]
I remember going to a bar after the first time I voted and was shocked to find I could NOT buy a drink to celebrate. Bars could only even open on election day if they made at least 30% of their revenue from non-alcohol sales.
Unfortunately, corruption still exists and this happened less than a decade ago:
Hudson Hallum further told Carter that $20 to $40 was too much to pay for one vote, but that this amount was acceptable to pay for [arktimes.com]
Re:Illegals voting (Score:4, Insightful)
1. There is very little evidence of illegals voting.
2. How is this stealing if it's done by the states?
3. Enfranchising citizens is bad?
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Illegal Aliens are not Citizens
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Illegal Aliens are not Citizens
Neither are legal ones. What's your point?
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States also joined with the arrangement at the time that they could keep slavery. Things change.
Even so, it was always possible for the populous states to have a popular-vote covenant. So the small states should have known that when they ratified the constitution.
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I have personally seen shuttle buses of non-English-speaking illegals being taken to more than one voting location in Spokane WA.
Is there a particular reason you decided to join their conspiracy instead of reporting it?
Also, do your telepathic powers only reveal citizenship status, or can you get other information?
Alternatively, and far more likely, you're lying.
Re:Voter ID not relevant (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, it's much, much worse. You really need to look at the big picture. It is a known fact that their chemtrails trigger enzymes they injected into your bloodstream when they vaccinated you, that turn you into a mindless drone who will vote for any candidate the deep state Ivy-league Fake News Illuminati tells you to. Our only hope is that the courageous Russian freedom fighters will oversee our elections from outside the left wing mind control zone and ensure that saviors like Trump get elected. They are trying to stop this with their "secure voting" nonsense, but it's a desperate last-ditch attempt that will surely fail.
Or maybe they're just trying to make voting systems more resistant to tampering. But only the crazies believe that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Source?
Evidence?
After two years of this unbelievable extensive investigation, so you a shred of evidence to back up your absurd conspiracy theory?
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No one was removed from any roles and no one was disenfranchised. the list was merely intended to be the basis for investigations.
Re:Secure voting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you prefer $50 to vote for who I tell you or a bullet in the knee of your daughter?
Re:Secure voting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
How do you cope with "I'll kill your family if you don't vote for x"? And I don't mean that problem literally - but the more general problem of a voter who faces consequences if they vote the wrong way.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have to deal with that, but I never put signs out in my front yard, or join a campaign. Maybe you should ask those folks how they deal with it.
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Statistical noise. In addition, there's no reason why a law (which frankly probably already exists) couldn't prohibit vote coercion, invalidating such a blatant example as you presented. Any cases of some evil white patriarch strong arming his binder of women into voting the way he wants are statistical noise. How many people vote completely randomly? Where's your hand wringing over that?
Re: (Score:3)
Statistical noise.
We literally just had to throw out an election in North Carolina over vote-buying (via paid workers tampering with absentee ballots)
In addition, there's no reason why a law (which frankly probably already exists) couldn't prohibit vote coercion
We know about the problem in North Carolina because people are getting charged with a crime. Didn't stop them from doing it in the first place.
Also, there's really good evidence that this is the second election where this particular consultant did this.
How many people vote completely randomly?
Exceptionally few. There's no incentive to show up when you're just going to vote randomly. So you don't go out of your way
Re: (Score:3)
Tell your abusive husband about your "law" prohibiting coercion. Tell the "volunteers" that go to the retirement home [philly.com] that it's illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
Gotta hold elections after we have been greeted as liberators.