15 ms·

Decertifying the worst voting machine in the US

296 points by germinalphrase 11y ago

pg_is_a_butt 11y ago
how about decertifying the entire political process that originally certified the machines?
kristopolous 11y ago
so the real question is where is the startup with the solution of $35 tablet "voting machines" on $10 stands and a $30 SBC "voting server" in a $15 lockbox that can deliver 4 "deluxe voting terminals" with a "server" for $2,000? (89% profit) The references of the current players in the industry I see talk upwards of $3,000 per terminal! The industry standard pricing for this would be $12,000. $12,000 for buggy, insecure, closed-source, non-updateable, unverifiable, crappity crap. Awesomes. How about this ... a voter walks into the polling station and can either use a terminal or their own smart-phone - connect to the open wireless "voting hotspot" where they can enter in an anonymous token at something that we use as the "hot spot sign-in page" that they are given by the people who volunteer the polling station that they can use to cast their ballot without waiting in line. It's not like secure voting is an open problem. There just needs to be some crotchety capitalist company with people in suits selling it. Open source, anonymous, verifiable voting machines on open hardware with an optional paper trail (cups + network printer). We can do this making comfortable profits and at atleast a 60% savings to the tax payer. The best part is that if the company goes out of business, everything is open source and documented, so we don't put communities at risk of the security issues with code rot. So ... who wants to make some money? email me: kristopolous (at) gmail
- bhickey 11y ago
  How about this: A voter takes a paper ballot. The voter marks the ballot with a felt pen a deposits it in a bin. Polling place staff mark the voter's thumb with indelible ink. Electronic voting is a problem looking for a problem. You need voter verifiable ballots with a high degree of tamper resistance. As far as trustworthiness goes it's hard to complete with ballot boxes and adversarial observers.
  - jaredklewis 11y ago
    I don't see how your proposal can prevent double voting. Voting happens over a period of several days not to mention absentee voting. Plus, it seems to me the process is not particularly tamper resistant during the ballot tallying phase, when compared with what is possible using cryptographic techniques.
    - pjmorris 11y ago
      How would one go about tampering when, as is traditional, representatives from all parties are in the room when the votes are counted?
    - NeutronBoy 11y ago
      Paper voting works in Australia. You don't even need your ID (edit: and by "don't need", I mean "they aren't allowed to ask for it") - you rock up at a polling station in your electorate, give your name, they mark it off on a sheet. You give verbal confirmation that you haven't already voted. They give you a voting paper, you fill it in at a booth, then drop it in the box on the way out. (If you're so inclined, you can also just get your name marked off and walk out if you want to donkey vote, which is the equivalent to a protest/blank vote. Or draw penises on the voting paper). If you don't vote, you get a nice letter in a few months from the Australian Electoral Commission with a fine of about $100 or so for not voting. Voting is also on a Saturday so most have the day off, and there are early polling stations open for a while prior to the day so if you can't make it on the day you can do it then.
      - bigger_cheese 11y ago
        There is also online voting. At least in the most recent NSW state election there was. I was overseas during the election and attempted to vote via this method. Unfortunately my hotel's WIFI kept timing out and I gave up in frustration. I returned to Australia and there was a $57 fine waiting for me for failing to vote. I think our voting system is good but it has flaws. I recall reading an article a few years ago about somebody who showed up to vote (i.e. Got his name marked off) at multiple polling stations on election day just because he could. He received a fine for doing it but all of his votes were counted. Edit - googled it apparently you can be charged with fraud for multiple voting or for voting under a false name (up to six months prison - so slightly more than a slap on the wrist and a fine).
- minikites 11y ago
  Will a $30 voting machine be accessible by those with vision/motor disabilities?
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    Nope. You can have a special machine for them - just like you have a special porta-potty --- no need to increase the cost of every unit for that.
    - Sanddancer 11y ago
      An accessible system would not increase costs. In fact, it could be more expensive because you'd have to spend a good amount of time testing both the regular voting system, and the accessible voting system. If your voting system requires a separate machine for simple disabilities like vision impairment, you've already given more of a potential of discounting an already marginalized portion of the population. Thankfully, the guidelines to ensure things are accessible are fairly easy to find, and easy to implement as long as you keep accessibility as a requirement, and not a suggested feature. For example, the National Federation of the Blind has a list of features that cover the spectrum of visual impairment on their website for free [1]. Groups for people with other disabilities, like motor impairment, also have guidelines which aren't that difficult to follow. Smart phones with touch screens and the like are used by people with visual and motor disabilities too, so this isn't uncharted territory, it's just a matter of asking. [1] https://nfb.org/purchasing-voting-machine https://nfb.org/purchasing-voting-machine
- sdrinf 11y ago
  Cost of customer acqusition. States have to be bagged one-by-one, each with an insanely long sales cycle, your profits have to cover those nice salespeople's salaries, while leaving you with sufficient profit to cashflow expansion. This is not a dev problem; the sort of orgs which are prepared, and can cashflow these sort of sales simply don't have (nor are they incentivized to have) any dev culture whatsoever.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    first, that margins are pretty standard on accounting for sales and overhead but even if they aren't enough here then you sell the machines to those people to flip them to the states at a higher cost. Don't be in THAT sales game. Otherwise, sure, you can add 30% to the cost ... it's not going to be another 600% just to sell the thing. And even if it was, I'm sure I can personally, in my spare time, produce a far better product than the one outlined in the article.
- krapp 11y ago
  >where they can enter in an anonymous token that they are given by the people who work the station That doesn't seem very anonymous. In fact, it seems like a possible way of deanonymizing votes, since in many places you have to sign a ledger or provide identification before voting.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    you don't have to couple the two.
    - krapp 11y ago
      You don't have to, but unless it's illegal, they'll tend to be coupled just for the sake of convenience.
  - barsonme 11y ago
    Well, it could happen like this: - Walk in, present some form of ID - You sign the slip or give a thumbprint so they record that you've voted - Random token is generated and given to you - You enter the token in order to vote - You keep the token as one way to verify your vote was cast It'd be hard to match the voter to the token if they don't write down the token and associate it with your name.
    - krapp 11y ago
      That might work, as long as no one (including the voting machine) was recording the time you arrived or the time you voted.
      - barsonme 11y ago
        Well, couldn't _only_ the voting machine record the time the token was used as long as the token is random? (They could just generate N tokens -- one for each registered voter -- and pull one from the pool each time.) If they recorded the time you took your token and the time the token was used then they'd have a small enough pool of people to work with. I know in my state if a precinct has a small enough pool of registered voters it doesn't show the vote totals from the precinct because of privacy issues.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Please do better than these folks who just won a bid for elections in Los Angeles, and previously held elections in South Dakota, New Jersey, Chicago, IL, Cook County, IL, Denver, CO, Oregon, New South Wales, El Paso, CO, Utah, West Virginia, Honolulu, HI, Franklin County, WA, Swindon Borough, UK: http://www.everyonecounts.com http://www.everyonecounts.com so the real question is where is the startup with the solution of $35 tablet "voting machines" on $10 stands and a $30 SBC "voting server" in a $15 lockbox that can deliver 4 "deluxe voting terminals" with a "server" for $2,000? They appear to be using an iPad with their "SaaS voting app": http://www.everyonecounts.com/voting-unit/ http://www.everyonecounts.com/voting-unit/
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    I don't understand this race to the iPad ... the LAUSD (Los Angeles School District) had this bizarre iPad for every student program (http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/24/51241/lausd-developing-next-steps-after-ipad-for-every-s/ http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/24/51241/lausd-developing-n...). I say it's bizarre because I know you can get tablets in bulk for $30-$35 each while the lowest price iPad is $400. After getting past "why does every student need a tablet computer" we get to "why from a single vendor with prices that are 1,333% higher than the cheapest competition?" I'm not saying the Apple product isn't nice - it's just I don't see why so many tax dollars should be spent when there's other options. Going back to the voting machine ... we'd not really care about some wonderful durability of the cheap tablet because the owner would only be using it a few days a year at the most; in ideal conditions, without moving it; the thing will survive fine.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      > After getting past "why does every student need a tablet computer" Speak for yourself. I'd rather people didn't get past that quite so easily.
      - kristopolous 11y ago
        the idea is to give less affluent students the same access to the "digital divide" as the more affluent ones. I think it's a valid concern ... but this is not a valid solution to the problem.
owlish 11y ago
I'm curious, what security measures are in place for human vote counters?
- wglb 11y ago
  One member from each party, minimum of two, involved in the count.
  - rdsnsca 11y ago
    Thats pretty much how they do it here in Canada. One member from each party plus an Elections Canada official. The ballot box is sealed in front of at least two voters , who determine that it is empty before sealing and then sign the seals. ( I know this because I was so early to vote the last election I had to wait for another voter to show up).
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  Humans are harder to compromise at scale. A single exploit can be replicated against hundreds of thousands of machines without heightening the risk of discovery by that much. Compromising hundreds of thousands of human vote counters without getting exposed due to a mistake is harder... although not impossible (it's in fact standard practice in plenty of countries)
- realityking 11y ago
  I can only talk about Germany. Election helpers are sourced from the population of the community where the vote is held. (You can be compelled to do it if there are not enough volunteers), at least two election helpers have to be with the urn at any time. Anybody is permitted to stay in the room from the moment it's checked that the ballot box is empty until the vote result is announced. The vote itself is made in a way that loudly announces each individual count. Afterwards the result from every polling station is posted online. So if you want, you can make sure your vote is accounted. Now I'v been an election helper since 2009, I've never seen anybody stick around for the vote. It's mainly the election helpers keeping each other in check.
germinalphrase 11y ago
It likely speaks to my ignorance, but my gut reaction to using electronic voting machines has always been that they are inherently insecure and can't/shouldn't be trusted to provide an accurate tally. There is so much money (available) and motive to cheat an election count that I have a hard time believing large and significant races haven't already been victims of tampering in the US (even if we haven't seen hard evidence of such). Is this cynicism misplaced?
- speeder 11y ago
  I am from Brazil, our machines are made by Diebold and a venezuelan company. I personally think that the 2014 elections were faked, also the machines had been proven to be easy to cheat with, and there are evidence that cheating did happen. (example: in one state election here, the number of votes was higher than the number of voters, one of the candidates complained, and got fined for complaining...) There is even a video on youtube showing how to cheat elections in a "impossible to trace" manner using diebold machines. Also the Dutch banned voting machines that don't print a paper copy of the vote (that you then use to put on a normal ballot).
  - gilney 11y ago
    Could you please provide some links?
    - ehmuidifici 11y ago
      Sure http://programacaobr.com/elections2014/ http://programacaobr.com/elections2014/
    - slasaus 11y ago
      About the dutch campaign in 2006: http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English And about a follow up campaign in India with some of the same people: https://indiaevm.org/ https://indiaevm.org/ Also see some recent research done with the Estonian e-voting system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os
krapp 11y ago
I kind of feel like "worst voting machine in the US" is a meaningless standard without knowing how much better the "best" such machine is. Or, to restate, are there any of these electronic voting machines that aren't crap?
- hughw 11y ago
  Without giving details, the author says Diebold machines are 100 time more secure.
  - agarden 11y ago
    And still horrendously bad. http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-di...
- kennydude 11y ago
  No. Pencil and paper will always work better
lazaroclapp 11y ago
Voting machines are a very hard problem from a security standpoint to solve. So even a well designed and audited voting machine might still not be safe enough to use when compared with manual voting (which is not perfectly secure, but at least is more generally understood). This, however, is stuff out of a Dilbert cartoon: "The wireless connection uses WEP (which we knew). What we didn’t know is that a few minutes of wireless monitoring showed that the encryption key is “abcde”, and that key is unchangeable"
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  E-voting, at least to me, looks completely idiotic. Why would we trust our most important civic duty, voting, to a collection of hardware that's known to be extremely vulnerable to attacks in every other job we give it? Having said that, I think you could make it work with a paper audit trail that contained both the current vote tally and the current vote -- and was distributed to the person voting at the time they voted. (Then do random audits) (And of course that information would be obscured in some way, perhaps using encryption)
- vizeroth 11y ago
  Don't forget the hard-wired Administrator password: "admin"... and no logging to let someone know that someone may have removed into the machine and replaced the Access database holding the votes.
- gizmo686 11y ago
  In fairness, at this point I don't think "abcde" is any less secure of a WEP password then something like "dahslkgjhalgihao". WEP is really broken at this point.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Yeah, it just highlights the fact that they didn't even seemingly try to make it secure.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  Are ATMs also a hard problem from a security standpoint? Because we have relied on them to exchange currency around the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for decades. And they are basically identical in function to a voting machine, except of course for having more functionality. Why don't we just use ATMs as voting machines?
sb057 11y ago
I feel the need to share this video again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
mcv 11y ago
This is unbelievable. How did they even get certified in the first place? What standards are there for voting machines in the US? A couple of years ago, a Dutch group of hackers (led by Rop Gongrijp) argued very strongly against the use of any kind of voting machine. Not because they're so easily hacked (I assume the Dutch voting machines were fairly secure), but simply because they're a black box and you simply have to trust that whatever comes out is correct, and there's no paper trail you can verify to check whether it actually is correct. If they've been tampered with, you most likely don't know, and even if you do know, there's no way to correct it. Netherland has very specific voting laws to ensure that elections are reliable and verifiable, and when voting computers were introduced, an exemption was added to the law because voting computers couldn't possibly meet those rules. The hackers successfully argued their case, so we're back to voting with pencils again. Cumbersome, but we know (and can verify) that it works.
viraptor 11y ago
I'm having a hard time understanding the way voting machines are created these days. Why are they complete operating systems? Why do they have ports? Why do they look like they're overengineered in so many ways? What's stopping the companies from producing a closed box with SoC+board connected to: N buttons, display, card reader/scanner, printer, wifi/ethernet. All you need is to take cards, register the result, add it to some continuously hashing database, print vote proofs, periodically upload data (again, public-key encrypted). If they need to be updated, allow only signed code. (ARM SoCs have secure-boot-like capabilities) Am I missing something? Why do we get multiple iterations of machines with exposed ports, running XP, having hardcoded passwords, allowing admin access, having physical locks which can be opened without a key, etc. How can these things be created without at least one person saying "this shit is unacceptable"?
- rurounijones 11y ago
  Most of your questions can be answered "Because it is cheaper" and "Because certifying boards are useless"
- krapp 11y ago
  >Am I missing something? Probably - corruption involving the contracts, outsourced or incompetent engineers (chances are, the best and the brightest are working on things that actually turn a profit), and neither party really having a strong interest in a system they couldn't subvert if they wanted to.
  - jaawn 11y ago
    Hurray Capitalism?
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    I sort of chalk it up to the sort of stuff you get with hucksters that sell stuff to municipalities. The business is a little different than when some random person buys a phone, because while they are technically inept, there is a layer of brokers/buyers between the manufacturers and the stores. Those guys are smart and know their markets well. If you ever sold something into that market you need to produce a few thousand units, for those guys to beat on. And they have to be perfect, or they won't place orders. This doesn't exist for something like a voting machine. So think 'stuff thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible' in order to land the contract. Quality will vary a lot.
chrischen 11y ago
I'd say that for most people if you aren't hacked, or had your identity stolen, it's because no one has tried.
m_mueller 11y ago
So this machine has now been decertified. Fine. What I'd like to know: How could it ever get certified? What does certified even mean if not accountability of a certifier in case a system doesn't do what it's certified to do? Or is the certification process flawed? In that case I guess that should be fixed next.
- bbanyc 11y ago
  The certification was done by the Election Assistance Commission, created in the wake of the Florida 2000 punchcard ballot debacle. The EAC hastily certified the first batch of electronic voting machines, issued grants to the states to buy them before the ink on the certifications was dry, and then was promptly forgotten about. (There was a 3-year period when the EAC was unable to do business because all the seats on its board were vacant.)
  - jMyles 11y ago
    A commission apparently tasked with ensuring that the hijincks observed in Florida and Ohio are permitted to continue and proliferate.
  - gpvos 11y ago
    Why didn't they just fall back to paper and pencil, and manual counting? We've been doing that in the Netherlands since election machines were discredited after a successful campaign by hackers. Haven't had any real problems with it.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Why would an agency create a reliable system for counting votes, when it was created by an administration which came to power because of problems with counting votes?
itburnswheniit 11y ago
Most voters aren't relevant anymore. Princeton confirmed it in a study earlier this year. It's neatly summed up here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
cjslep 11y ago
An interesting documentary is "Hacking Democracy" (2006) [0] that championed open voting machines and open election processes to help prevent election fraud. The documented fraud that occurred in the early 2000's really lifted some of my childhood innocence from my teenage brain. When mistakes that happen are chalked up to "computer glitches", but it only takes such a few bugs in a few key locations to change the outcome of an election, the results can be game-changing. The full documentary was pretty concerning, and I have carried very little faith in the voting process since. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo (Last minute contains the section where the grandmother "steals" proprietary Diebold Election Systems code off an open webpage) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy
mikeash 11y ago
It's very much worth reading the comments on this one, in which a Virginia elections official who was involved with these machines repeatedly defends them in a delightfully earnest but disturbingly clueless manner. One of the points he's stuck on is that WiFi is short-range and unreliable from outside a building. Thus hacking these things from the parking lot would be impractical because you couldn't get access. Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person. Another strange point is that these defects weren't known when Virginia chose these machines. To him, that seems to mean "therefore it was a reasonable decision." To me, it raises the question: why didn't anyone look into their security as the choice was being made? Apparently the process by which Virginia chooses its voting machines, or at least the process it used at the time, involves no third-party security evaluation. What the hell?
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>Apparently the process by which Virginia chooses its voting machines, or at least the process it used at the time, involves no third-party security evaluation. What the hell? Government RFPs pretty much never have a third-party evaluation process. Those cost money, which is almost certainly not in the budget. Also, the vast majority of the time the government already has a preferred vendor, and the RFP is simply a legally-required formality.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  > Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person. IMO that was not the disturbing part. I don't expect elections officials to know anything about RF. What's disturbing to me is that several experts explain in very plain terms why his assumptions are wrong, and he persists in his misunderstanding.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I certainly wouldn't expect advanced RF knowledge, but satellite dishes are a common sight in this country, so I would hope that passing familiarity with the basic concept of directional antennas (even if they don't know what to call them) would exist. Even barring that, I would at least expect an official to know the depths of their own ignorance. If you don't know anything about WiFi, fine, but then don't try to make arguments about it. And yes, persisting in making those arguments, not only being ignorant of the subject but after being corrected by people who know, is a special kind of ridiculous.
avivo 11y ago
It would be fascinating to see if there is a correlation between potential signal strength of an external attacker, and votes for a particular candidate. This seems like the only good way to see at this point if there was any tampering by a (somewhat limited) adversary. While this would only work to detect external wifi based attacks, those seem like the most likely. Perhaps a "simple" first pass could be done by looking at building type (concrete vs. wood?) via aerial maps, and correlating that to local polling data. If anyone does do an analysis like this, I'd love to see the results!
maze-le 11y ago
Voting machines should be called voting computers. That is what they are, they "compute" a vote-count (with all problems and fallacies that word implies).
Vespasian 11y ago
Why is there the need to use these machines in the first place? IMHO the overengineering started when using a tech solution for a non tech problem. Voting on paper seems to work for most democratic countries and it's definitely harder to rig than the electronics. I just don't see any siginificant advantage in using technology here (and no, a few $/€ saved every other year is not significant in my honest opinion)
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  So it's easier to rig elections. Honestly, can't think of another reason.
  - jeltz 11y ago
    Another reason is if you have some buddies who are ATM manufacturers who you want to give some lucurative government contracts.
- ekimekim 11y ago
  Manual vote counting takes significant time and effort, and a properly implemented electronic system would have advantages in tamper-proofness. It also could have advantages in being interactive so users can't fill things out incorrectly, can be guided through the process, etc, which is especially important for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, all the advantages rely on implementing a good system, so I doubt we'll be seeing them any time soon.
  - verytrivial 11y ago
    Electronic voting machine implementation, testing and deployment also takes a significant time and effort. Tamper-proofness obviously has a original and natural physical implmentations that do not require first chosing two large prime numbers: tape and sign the damn box! Though you didn't raise the point, some argue that the time it takes to manually count is a problem, as if people seriously can't wait an extra half-day. Just WAIT. It's important. The clear advantage of paper voting is everyone--the entire electorate-- can see and understand the process. The legitimacy of the outcome depends on this understanding and trust.
Marazan 11y ago
Why does America have alove affair with voting machines? What is wrong with paper and pencil?
- uptown 11y ago
  Paper and pencil aren't a perfect solution either. This page shows a few examples of where things have gone wrong. http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_ballots/ http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_bal... In the case of the Florida Presidential vote, they ran into the problem of "hanging chads" where parts of the page that were intended to be fully punched-out so a machine could detect the vote were still attached to the page, leading to further scrutiny over deciphering the true intent of the voter's ballot.
  - slasaus 11y ago
    That was not a pencil but still a lot of technology/mechanics. But you're right, paper and pencil are not perfect, just the most secure we can practically achieve these days and probably for the upcoming decade. See this video of J. Alex Halderman on e-voting in Estonia and about electronic voting in general [0]. (Halderman is a professor also known from the cold boot attack and the more recent vulnerabilities in a lot of Diffie-Hellman implementations). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os
  - Marazan 11y ago
    The chads was due to yet more voting machines not pencil and paper.
- maxki 11y ago
  The only reason I can think of, is that the " paper+pencil+sealed cardboard box" solution isn't good at giving lucrative contracts to buddies of election officials. The "speed of counting" argument does not hold : in Canada we get the final results of elections just a few hours after the closing of the vote. Tallying is all manual, and the counting of each box is done under the supervision of members of antagonistic parties.
- 11y ago
Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
Why do you need voting machines, when everyone got smartphone, tablet or computer? http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-voting.html http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-voting.html
- kakoni 11y ago
  Some controversy on that topic https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-Pac...
  - slasaus 11y ago
    Mirror in the Netherlands, Amsterdam: http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacA...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Estonia's Internet voting is worse, because it uses cryptography, so people assume it is safer.
  - slasaus 11y ago
    See this video from last December at the CCC in Berlin a famous research professor presents his findings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os They filmed the whole NOC because they wanted to be transparent, but then it became clear there were passwords sticked on paper on the wall :) Never forget or undermine operational security.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      I'd read their report and about their work before, but hadn't seen the CCC talk, thanks for that! The way they presented the OpSec violations at CCC made things funnier :)
Beltiras 11y ago
50$ android tablets with USB tethered networking and WiFi physically removed (take out the antenna). Software solution has been described ad nauseum both in this thread and elsewhere. This would be at least as secure as the current state of affairs and you could actually get this up and running quickly.
davotoula 11y ago
"If an election was held using the AVS WinVote, and it wasn’t hacked, it was only because no one tried." Ouch!
m3h 11y ago
Is this really America you are talking about? O.o
JulianMorrison 11y ago
It's going to be interesting to see who suddenly gets voted out, as soon as these are replaced.

296 points by germinalphrase 11y ago

how about decertifying the entire political process that originally certified the machines?

so the real question is where is the startup with the solution of $35 tablet "voting machines" on $10 stands and a $30 SBC "voting server" in a $15 lockbox that can deliver 4 "deluxe voting terminals" with a "server" for $2,000? (89% profit) The references of the current players in the industry I see talk upwards of $3,000 per terminal! The industry standard pricing for this would be $12,000. $12,000 for buggy, insecure, closed-source, non-updateable, unverifiable, crappity crap. Awesomes. How about this ... a voter walks into the polling station and can either use a terminal or their own smart-phone - connect to the open wireless "voting hotspot" where they can enter in an anonymous token at something that we use as the "hot spot sign-in page" that they are given by the people who volunteer the polling station that they can use to cast their ballot without waiting in line. It's not like secure voting is an open problem. There just needs to be some crotchety capitalist company with people in suits selling it. Open source, anonymous, verifiable voting machines on open hardware with an optional paper trail (cups + network printer). We can do this making comfortable profits and at atleast a 60% savings to the tax payer. The best part is that if the company goes out of business, everything is open source and documented, so we don't put communities at risk of the security issues with code rot. So ... who wants to make some money? email me: kristopolous (at) gmail

bhickey 11y ago
How about this: A voter takes a paper ballot. The voter marks the ballot with a felt pen a deposits it in a bin. Polling place staff mark the voter's thumb with indelible ink. Electronic voting is a problem looking for a problem. You need voter verifiable ballots with a high degree of tamper resistance. As far as trustworthiness goes it's hard to complete with ballot boxes and adversarial observers.
- jaredklewis 11y ago
  I don't see how your proposal can prevent double voting. Voting happens over a period of several days not to mention absentee voting. Plus, it seems to me the process is not particularly tamper resistant during the ballot tallying phase, when compared with what is possible using cryptographic techniques.
  - pjmorris 11y ago
    How would one go about tampering when, as is traditional, representatives from all parties are in the room when the votes are counted?
  - NeutronBoy 11y ago
    Paper voting works in Australia. You don't even need your ID (edit: and by "don't need", I mean "they aren't allowed to ask for it") - you rock up at a polling station in your electorate, give your name, they mark it off on a sheet. You give verbal confirmation that you haven't already voted. They give you a voting paper, you fill it in at a booth, then drop it in the box on the way out. (If you're so inclined, you can also just get your name marked off and walk out if you want to donkey vote, which is the equivalent to a protest/blank vote. Or draw penises on the voting paper). If you don't vote, you get a nice letter in a few months from the Australian Electoral Commission with a fine of about $100 or so for not voting. Voting is also on a Saturday so most have the day off, and there are early polling stations open for a while prior to the day so if you can't make it on the day you can do it then.
    - bigger_cheese 11y ago
      There is also online voting. At least in the most recent NSW state election there was. I was overseas during the election and attempted to vote via this method. Unfortunately my hotel's WIFI kept timing out and I gave up in frustration. I returned to Australia and there was a $57 fine waiting for me for failing to vote. I think our voting system is good but it has flaws. I recall reading an article a few years ago about somebody who showed up to vote (i.e. Got his name marked off) at multiple polling stations on election day just because he could. He received a fine for doing it but all of his votes were counted. Edit - googled it apparently you can be charged with fraud for multiple voting or for voting under a false name (up to six months prison - so slightly more than a slap on the wrist and a fine).
minikites 11y ago
Will a $30 voting machine be accessible by those with vision/motor disabilities?
- kristopolous 11y ago
  Nope. You can have a special machine for them - just like you have a special porta-potty --- no need to increase the cost of every unit for that.
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    An accessible system would not increase costs. In fact, it could be more expensive because you'd have to spend a good amount of time testing both the regular voting system, and the accessible voting system. If your voting system requires a separate machine for simple disabilities like vision impairment, you've already given more of a potential of discounting an already marginalized portion of the population. Thankfully, the guidelines to ensure things are accessible are fairly easy to find, and easy to implement as long as you keep accessibility as a requirement, and not a suggested feature. For example, the National Federation of the Blind has a list of features that cover the spectrum of visual impairment on their website for free [1]. Groups for people with other disabilities, like motor impairment, also have guidelines which aren't that difficult to follow. Smart phones with touch screens and the like are used by people with visual and motor disabilities too, so this isn't uncharted territory, it's just a matter of asking. [1] https://nfb.org/purchasing-voting-machine https://nfb.org/purchasing-voting-machine
sdrinf 11y ago
Cost of customer acqusition. States have to be bagged one-by-one, each with an insanely long sales cycle, your profits have to cover those nice salespeople's salaries, while leaving you with sufficient profit to cashflow expansion. This is not a dev problem; the sort of orgs which are prepared, and can cashflow these sort of sales simply don't have (nor are they incentivized to have) any dev culture whatsoever.
- kristopolous 11y ago
  first, that margins are pretty standard on accounting for sales and overhead but even if they aren't enough here then you sell the machines to those people to flip them to the states at a higher cost. Don't be in THAT sales game. Otherwise, sure, you can add 30% to the cost ... it's not going to be another 600% just to sell the thing. And even if it was, I'm sure I can personally, in my spare time, produce a far better product than the one outlined in the article.
krapp 11y ago
>where they can enter in an anonymous token that they are given by the people who work the station That doesn't seem very anonymous. In fact, it seems like a possible way of deanonymizing votes, since in many places you have to sign a ledger or provide identification before voting.
- kristopolous 11y ago
  you don't have to couple the two.
  - krapp 11y ago
    You don't have to, but unless it's illegal, they'll tend to be coupled just for the sake of convenience.
- barsonme 11y ago
  Well, it could happen like this: - Walk in, present some form of ID - You sign the slip or give a thumbprint so they record that you've voted - Random token is generated and given to you - You enter the token in order to vote - You keep the token as one way to verify your vote was cast It'd be hard to match the voter to the token if they don't write down the token and associate it with your name.
  - krapp 11y ago
    That might work, as long as no one (including the voting machine) was recording the time you arrived or the time you voted.
    - barsonme 11y ago
      Well, couldn't _only_ the voting machine record the time the token was used as long as the token is random? (They could just generate N tokens -- one for each registered voter -- and pull one from the pool each time.) If they recorded the time you took your token and the time the token was used then they'd have a small enough pool of people to work with. I know in my state if a precinct has a small enough pool of registered voters it doesn't show the vote totals from the precinct because of privacy issues.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Please do better than these folks who just won a bid for elections in Los Angeles, and previously held elections in South Dakota, New Jersey, Chicago, IL, Cook County, IL, Denver, CO, Oregon, New South Wales, El Paso, CO, Utah, West Virginia, Honolulu, HI, Franklin County, WA, Swindon Borough, UK: http://www.everyonecounts.com http://www.everyonecounts.com so the real question is where is the startup with the solution of $35 tablet "voting machines" on $10 stands and a $30 SBC "voting server" in a $15 lockbox that can deliver 4 "deluxe voting terminals" with a "server" for $2,000? They appear to be using an iPad with their "SaaS voting app": http://www.everyonecounts.com/voting-unit/ http://www.everyonecounts.com/voting-unit/
- kristopolous 11y ago
  I don't understand this race to the iPad ... the LAUSD (Los Angeles School District) had this bizarre iPad for every student program (http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/24/51241/lausd-developing-next-steps-after-ipad-for-every-s/ http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/24/51241/lausd-developing-n...). I say it's bizarre because I know you can get tablets in bulk for $30-$35 each while the lowest price iPad is $400. After getting past "why does every student need a tablet computer" we get to "why from a single vendor with prices that are 1,333% higher than the cheapest competition?" I'm not saying the Apple product isn't nice - it's just I don't see why so many tax dollars should be spent when there's other options. Going back to the voting machine ... we'd not really care about some wonderful durability of the cheap tablet because the owner would only be using it a few days a year at the most; in ideal conditions, without moving it; the thing will survive fine.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > After getting past "why does every student need a tablet computer" Speak for yourself. I'd rather people didn't get past that quite so easily.
    - kristopolous 11y ago
      the idea is to give less affluent students the same access to the "digital divide" as the more affluent ones. I think it's a valid concern ... but this is not a valid solution to the problem.

owlish 11y ago

I'm curious, what security measures are in place for human vote counters?

wglb 11y ago
One member from each party, minimum of two, involved in the count.
- rdsnsca 11y ago
  Thats pretty much how they do it here in Canada. One member from each party plus an Elections Canada official. The ballot box is sealed in front of at least two voters , who determine that it is empty before sealing and then sign the seals. ( I know this because I was so early to vote the last election I had to wait for another voter to show up).
lazaroclapp 11y ago
Humans are harder to compromise at scale. A single exploit can be replicated against hundreds of thousands of machines without heightening the risk of discovery by that much. Compromising hundreds of thousands of human vote counters without getting exposed due to a mistake is harder... although not impossible (it's in fact standard practice in plenty of countries)
realityking 11y ago
I can only talk about Germany. Election helpers are sourced from the population of the community where the vote is held. (You can be compelled to do it if there are not enough volunteers), at least two election helpers have to be with the urn at any time. Anybody is permitted to stay in the room from the moment it's checked that the ballot box is empty until the vote result is announced. The vote itself is made in a way that loudly announces each individual count. Afterwards the result from every polling station is posted online. So if you want, you can make sure your vote is accounted. Now I'v been an election helper since 2009, I've never seen anybody stick around for the vote. It's mainly the election helpers keeping each other in check.

germinalphrase 11y ago

It likely speaks to my ignorance, but my gut reaction to using electronic voting machines has always been that they are inherently insecure and can't/shouldn't be trusted to provide an accurate tally. There is so much money (available) and motive to cheat an election count that I have a hard time believing large and significant races haven't already been victims of tampering in the US (even if we haven't seen hard evidence of such). Is this cynicism misplaced?

speeder 11y ago
I am from Brazil, our machines are made by Diebold and a venezuelan company. I personally think that the 2014 elections were faked, also the machines had been proven to be easy to cheat with, and there are evidence that cheating did happen. (example: in one state election here, the number of votes was higher than the number of voters, one of the candidates complained, and got fined for complaining...) There is even a video on youtube showing how to cheat elections in a "impossible to trace" manner using diebold machines. Also the Dutch banned voting machines that don't print a paper copy of the vote (that you then use to put on a normal ballot).
- gilney 11y ago
  Could you please provide some links?
  - ehmuidifici 11y ago
    Sure http://programacaobr.com/elections2014/ http://programacaobr.com/elections2014/
  - slasaus 11y ago
    About the dutch campaign in 2006: http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English And about a follow up campaign in India with some of the same people: https://indiaevm.org/ https://indiaevm.org/ Also see some recent research done with the Estonian e-voting system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os

krapp 11y ago

I kind of feel like "worst voting machine in the US" is a meaningless standard without knowing how much better the "best" such machine is. Or, to restate, are there any of these electronic voting machines that aren't crap?

hughw 11y ago
Without giving details, the author says Diebold machines are 100 time more secure.
- agarden 11y ago
  And still horrendously bad. http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-di...
kennydude 11y ago
No. Pencil and paper will always work better

lazaroclapp 11y ago

Voting machines are a very hard problem from a security standpoint to solve. So even a well designed and audited voting machine might still not be safe enough to use when compared with manual voting (which is not perfectly secure, but at least is more generally understood). This, however, is stuff out of a Dilbert cartoon: "The wireless connection uses WEP (which we knew). What we didn’t know is that a few minutes of wireless monitoring showed that the encryption key is “abcde”, and that key is unchangeable"

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
E-voting, at least to me, looks completely idiotic. Why would we trust our most important civic duty, voting, to a collection of hardware that's known to be extremely vulnerable to attacks in every other job we give it? Having said that, I think you could make it work with a paper audit trail that contained both the current vote tally and the current vote -- and was distributed to the person voting at the time they voted. (Then do random audits) (And of course that information would be obscured in some way, perhaps using encryption)
vizeroth 11y ago
Don't forget the hard-wired Administrator password: "admin"... and no logging to let someone know that someone may have removed into the machine and replaced the Access database holding the votes.
gizmo686 11y ago
In fairness, at this point I don't think "abcde" is any less secure of a WEP password then something like "dahslkgjhalgihao". WEP is really broken at this point.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  Yeah, it just highlights the fact that they didn't even seemingly try to make it secure.
peterwwillis 11y ago
Are ATMs also a hard problem from a security standpoint? Because we have relied on them to exchange currency around the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for decades. And they are basically identical in function to a voting machine, except of course for having more functionality. Why don't we just use ATMs as voting machines?

sb057 11y ago

I feel the need to share this video again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

mcv 11y ago

This is unbelievable. How did they even get certified in the first place? What standards are there for voting machines in the US? A couple of years ago, a Dutch group of hackers (led by Rop Gongrijp) argued very strongly against the use of any kind of voting machine. Not because they're so easily hacked (I assume the Dutch voting machines were fairly secure), but simply because they're a black box and you simply have to trust that whatever comes out is correct, and there's no paper trail you can verify to check whether it actually is correct. If they've been tampered with, you most likely don't know, and even if you do know, there's no way to correct it. Netherland has very specific voting laws to ensure that elections are reliable and verifiable, and when voting computers were introduced, an exemption was added to the law because voting computers couldn't possibly meet those rules. The hackers successfully argued their case, so we're back to voting with pencils again. Cumbersome, but we know (and can verify) that it works.

viraptor 11y ago

I'm having a hard time understanding the way voting machines are created these days. Why are they complete operating systems? Why do they have ports? Why do they look like they're overengineered in so many ways? What's stopping the companies from producing a closed box with SoC+board connected to: N buttons, display, card reader/scanner, printer, wifi/ethernet. All you need is to take cards, register the result, add it to some continuously hashing database, print vote proofs, periodically upload data (again, public-key encrypted). If they need to be updated, allow only signed code. (ARM SoCs have secure-boot-like capabilities) Am I missing something? Why do we get multiple iterations of machines with exposed ports, running XP, having hardcoded passwords, allowing admin access, having physical locks which can be opened without a key, etc. How can these things be created without at least one person saying "this shit is unacceptable"?

rurounijones 11y ago
Most of your questions can be answered "Because it is cheaper" and "Because certifying boards are useless"
krapp 11y ago
>Am I missing something? Probably - corruption involving the contracts, outsourced or incompetent engineers (chances are, the best and the brightest are working on things that actually turn a profit), and neither party really having a strong interest in a system they couldn't subvert if they wanted to.
- jaawn 11y ago
  Hurray Capitalism?
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  I sort of chalk it up to the sort of stuff you get with hucksters that sell stuff to municipalities. The business is a little different than when some random person buys a phone, because while they are technically inept, there is a layer of brokers/buyers between the manufacturers and the stores. Those guys are smart and know their markets well. If you ever sold something into that market you need to produce a few thousand units, for those guys to beat on. And they have to be perfect, or they won't place orders. This doesn't exist for something like a voting machine. So think 'stuff thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible' in order to land the contract. Quality will vary a lot.

chrischen 11y ago

I'd say that for most people if you aren't hacked, or had your identity stolen, it's because no one has tried.

m_mueller 11y ago

So this machine has now been decertified. Fine. What I'd like to know: How could it ever get certified? What does certified even mean if not accountability of a certifier in case a system doesn't do what it's certified to do? Or is the certification process flawed? In that case I guess that should be fixed next.

bbanyc 11y ago
The certification was done by the Election Assistance Commission, created in the wake of the Florida 2000 punchcard ballot debacle. The EAC hastily certified the first batch of electronic voting machines, issued grants to the states to buy them before the ink on the certifications was dry, and then was promptly forgotten about. (There was a 3-year period when the EAC was unable to do business because all the seats on its board were vacant.)
- jMyles 11y ago
  A commission apparently tasked with ensuring that the hijincks observed in Florida and Ohio are permitted to continue and proliferate.
- gpvos 11y ago
  Why didn't they just fall back to paper and pencil, and manual counting? We've been doing that in the Netherlands since election machines were discredited after a successful campaign by hackers. Haven't had any real problems with it.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Why would an agency create a reliable system for counting votes, when it was created by an administration which came to power because of problems with counting votes?

itburnswheniit 11y ago

Most voters aren't relevant anymore. Princeton confirmed it in a study earlier this year. It's neatly summed up here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

cjslep 11y ago

An interesting documentary is "Hacking Democracy" (2006) [0] that championed open voting machines and open election processes to help prevent election fraud. The documented fraud that occurred in the early 2000's really lifted some of my childhood innocence from my teenage brain. When mistakes that happen are chalked up to "computer glitches", but it only takes such a few bugs in a few key locations to change the outcome of an election, the results can be game-changing. The full documentary was pretty concerning, and I have carried very little faith in the voting process since. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk95SVRdEo (Last minute contains the section where the grandmother "steals" proprietary Diebold Election Systems code off an open webpage) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy

mikeash 11y ago

It's very much worth reading the comments on this one, in which a Virginia elections official who was involved with these machines repeatedly defends them in a delightfully earnest but disturbingly clueless manner. One of the points he's stuck on is that WiFi is short-range and unreliable from outside a building. Thus hacking these things from the parking lot would be impractical because you couldn't get access. Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person. Another strange point is that these defects weren't known when Virginia chose these machines. To him, that seems to mean "therefore it was a reasonable decision." To me, it raises the question: why didn't anyone look into their security as the choice was being made? Apparently the process by which Virginia chooses its voting machines, or at least the process it used at the time, involves no third-party security evaluation. What the hell?

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Apparently the process by which Virginia chooses its voting machines, or at least the process it used at the time, involves no third-party security evaluation. What the hell? Government RFPs pretty much never have a third-party evaluation process. Those cost money, which is almost certainly not in the budget. Also, the vast majority of the time the government already has a preferred vendor, and the RFP is simply a legally-required formality.
nmrm2 11y ago
> Apparently the very concept of directional antennas is completely unfamiliar to this person. IMO that was not the disturbing part. I don't expect elections officials to know anything about RF. What's disturbing to me is that several experts explain in very plain terms why his assumptions are wrong, and he persists in his misunderstanding.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I certainly wouldn't expect advanced RF knowledge, but satellite dishes are a common sight in this country, so I would hope that passing familiarity with the basic concept of directional antennas (even if they don't know what to call them) would exist. Even barring that, I would at least expect an official to know the depths of their own ignorance. If you don't know anything about WiFi, fine, but then don't try to make arguments about it. And yes, persisting in making those arguments, not only being ignorant of the subject but after being corrected by people who know, is a special kind of ridiculous.

avivo 11y ago

It would be fascinating to see if there is a correlation between potential signal strength of an external attacker, and votes for a particular candidate. This seems like the only good way to see at this point if there was any tampering by a (somewhat limited) adversary. While this would only work to detect external wifi based attacks, those seem like the most likely. Perhaps a "simple" first pass could be done by looking at building type (concrete vs. wood?) via aerial maps, and correlating that to local polling data. If anyone does do an analysis like this, I'd love to see the results!

maze-le 11y ago

Voting machines should be called voting computers. That is what they are, they "compute" a vote-count (with all problems and fallacies that word implies).

Vespasian 11y ago

Why is there the need to use these machines in the first place? IMHO the overengineering started when using a tech solution for a non tech problem. Voting on paper seems to work for most democratic countries and it's definitely harder to rig than the electronics. I just don't see any siginificant advantage in using technology here (and no, a few $/€ saved every other year is not significant in my honest opinion)

madaxe_again 11y ago
So it's easier to rig elections. Honestly, can't think of another reason.
- jeltz 11y ago
  Another reason is if you have some buddies who are ATM manufacturers who you want to give some lucurative government contracts.
ekimekim 11y ago
Manual vote counting takes significant time and effort, and a properly implemented electronic system would have advantages in tamper-proofness. It also could have advantages in being interactive so users can't fill things out incorrectly, can be guided through the process, etc, which is especially important for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, all the advantages rely on implementing a good system, so I doubt we'll be seeing them any time soon.
- verytrivial 11y ago
  Electronic voting machine implementation, testing and deployment also takes a significant time and effort. Tamper-proofness obviously has a original and natural physical implmentations that do not require first chosing two large prime numbers: tape and sign the damn box! Though you didn't raise the point, some argue that the time it takes to manually count is a problem, as if people seriously can't wait an extra half-day. Just WAIT. It's important. The clear advantage of paper voting is everyone--the entire electorate-- can see and understand the process. The legitimacy of the outcome depends on this understanding and trust.

Marazan 11y ago

Why does America have alove affair with voting machines? What is wrong with paper and pencil?

uptown 11y ago
Paper and pencil aren't a perfect solution either. This page shows a few examples of where things have gone wrong. http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_ballots/ http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2008/12/timewasters_the_bal... In the case of the Florida Presidential vote, they ran into the problem of "hanging chads" where parts of the page that were intended to be fully punched-out so a machine could detect the vote were still attached to the page, leading to further scrutiny over deciphering the true intent of the voter's ballot.
- slasaus 11y ago
  That was not a pencil but still a lot of technology/mechanics. But you're right, paper and pencil are not perfect, just the most secure we can practically achieve these days and probably for the upcoming decade. See this video of J. Alex Halderman on e-voting in Estonia and about electronic voting in general [0]. (Halderman is a professor also known from the cold boot attack and the more recent vulnerabilities in a lot of Diffie-Hellman implementations). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os
- Marazan 11y ago
  The chads was due to yet more voting machines not pencil and paper.
maxki 11y ago
The only reason I can think of, is that the " paper+pencil+sealed cardboard box" solution isn't good at giving lucrative contracts to buddies of election officials. The "speed of counting" argument does not hold : in Canada we get the final results of elections just a few hours after the closing of the vote. Tallying is all manual, and the counting of each box is done under the supervision of members of antagonistic parties.
11y ago

Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago

Why do you need voting machines, when everyone got smartphone, tablet or computer? http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-voting.html http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/economy-a-it/e-voting.html

kakoni 11y ago
Some controversy on that topic https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf https://pacsec.jp/psj14/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-Pac...
- slasaus 11y ago
  Mirror in the Netherlands, Amsterdam: http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacAlpine_Estonia-PacSec.pdf http://controleerbareverkiezingen.nl/pub/PSJ2014_Hursti-MacA...
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Estonia's Internet voting is worse, because it uses cryptography, so people assume it is safer.
- slasaus 11y ago
  See this video from last December at the CCC in Berlin a famous research professor presents his findings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os They filmed the whole NOC because they wanted to be transparent, but then it became clear there were passwords sticked on paper on the wall :) Never forget or undermine operational security.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    I'd read their report and about their work before, but hadn't seen the CCC talk, thanks for that! The way they presented the OpSec violations at CCC made things funnier :)

Beltiras 11y ago

50$ android tablets with USB tethered networking and WiFi physically removed (take out the antenna). Software solution has been described ad nauseum both in this thread and elsewhere. This would be at least as secure as the current state of affairs and you could actually get this up and running quickly.

davotoula 11y ago

"If an election was held using the AVS WinVote, and it wasn’t hacked, it was only because no one tried." Ouch!

m3h 11y ago

Is this really America you are talking about? O.o

JulianMorrison 11y ago

It's going to be interesting to see who suddenly gets voted out, as soon as these are replaced.