7 ms·

This shouldn't be a surprise: I think most HN members know that it's possible; we know that the rewards (incredible power, status, and everything you can get wi

This shouldn't be a surprise: I think most HN members know that it's possible; we know that the rewards (incredible power, status, and everything you can get with them includig the spoils of office) are worth the investment (only $600K for this solution!); we know that there are many people, including politicians, unsavory enough to do it. The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun? Consider the U.S. presidential election: The outcome is worth billions each to very many parties worldwide; it's existential to some foreign governments and actors; many in the U.S. have very powerful ideological motives. How much would it cost to hack voting machines? It seems very likely to me that it's happening, though I don't know where or to what extent. I know I'm not the first to point out this risk, but why should we assume that the reported vote count represents the actual vote? Becasue there is no smoking gun yet? That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet.

josho 11y ago
It is happening in the US and in plain sight--yet its citizens don't seem to care. Eg. Gerrymandering, drastically reducing voting stations (see AZ), goofy voter registration law changes. These issues don't occur in other mature democracies.
- simplemath 11y ago
  They do happen in late stage capitalist oligarchies though. We'll get Elysium, not utopia.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    We already live in Elysium. All we lack is robots preventing people from Earth (aka India/China/Nigeria/Malaysia) come join us. The ocean does a good enough job.
    - shanacarp 11y ago
      do you believe the state should exist - if so, how does it function? what are the duties of the state? how do people join the state? are there people who are "naturally part of the state" if so - why? How does this state thing work? If you don't believe in a state. Do you believe in contact? if so, why? if they get broken, how do they get enforced, or he penalties within them enforced? Who is or is not involved Do you believe in the concept of laws and law making? Who is involved in laws and law-making, especially if there is no state in your world view, but laws somehow do still exist. Your claim, and other claims you've made in the past, especially around "violence via taxes" and "violence because immigration" makes it sound like you don't think a state should exist, and all the things that come with a stable state, such as the ability to make contracts and get them enforced, have laws and create new ones. It would make you sound less cynical and more serious if you explained what you were really arguing about, what you actually did believe in, what you believe was the intelligent answer, rather than just arguing against people. Otherwise, how are you much better than the Sophists that Socrates railed against?
burkaman 11y ago
A few reasons I can think of: 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge number of people in the polling industry. Campaigns also run internal polls, so opponent campaigns might become suspicious if their own polls were not matching the results. 3) Recounts are possible and somewhat common. Therefore hacking could not be used to create a very close result that could trigger a recount, or it would need to be combined with actual ballot theft, or control over the officials doing the recount. These are not theoretical concerns. See Bush v. Gore in Florida for what might happen if someone tried to hack a close election. It seems to me that hacking an election would only be feasible in an already close race, would require the cooperation of a number of people with huge risks of exposure, and could still be caught by one of the many safeguards that exist. Obviously I am only talking about hacking voting machines. It would not surprise me if the tactics in this article were common; using Twitter bots, spying on other campaigns, etc.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Seems like if you're able to poke at the idea in as much detail as you're providing that you might be able to draft your own. Have any ideas on how to do it? That said, appears like given your points that I agree a better use of the idea would be to insure an election and reduce costs too. Meaning run a real campaign, stay behind, but close enough to not draw attention, which I'm guessing would reduce costs more than enough to cover the added costs of hacking.
  - burkaman 11y ago
    None of my points have anything to do with cost, I'm (realistically) assuming a campaign with huge amounts of cash. The problem, as with most conspiracy theories, is the number of people that need to cooperate and stay silent, and the number of independent safeguards that already exist. Spending more money actually hurts you, because it makes it harder to hide where that money is going, especially with all of the campaign finance regulations. I can't think of a low-risk way to literally hack an election in the US at the moment. You would need a long-term plan to change election laws, homogenize voting machines and methods across the country, and then hack some centralized database. There is no way to get around the polling issue in a country with an even semi-free press, so you still need a pretty strong candidate that you just boost a little. Anybody in the real world who needed to rig an election would use indirect methods. Spying, spreading misinformation, ignoring campaign finance laws, gerrymandering, etc. All things that have happened and will continue to happen.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Changing the reported vote count is amateur-level election rigging. Professionals engage in much less obvious efforts - say, by suppressing turnout in unfavorable voting locations.
- padobson 11y ago
  Introducing a bug at voting machines that makes them break in unfavorable precincts would probably be the most effective election hacking strategy.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Arizona's voter database has apparently been tampered with or at the very least been susceptible to lax security standards. Apparently someone has copies of voter registration forms and just copied the signature and changed party affiliation, nullifying votes (causing voters to receive provisional ballets, which generally are not counted) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PnM6rf7X8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PnM6rf7X8 Here's the Arizona House elections Committee hearing, and a citizen mentions that voter registration documents have been leaked to the web. https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=58m37s https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=58m37s
colordrops 11y ago
> The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun? Part of the propaganda is to label and marginalize people who point things like this out as conspiracy nuts and mentally unstable.
- irixusr 11y ago
  I would add that we need tip think we're a democracy
fweespee_ch 11y ago
> Consider the U.S. presidential election: The outcome is worth billions each to very many parties worldwide; it's existential to some foreign governments and actors; many in the U.S. have very powerful ideological motives. How much would it cost to hack voting machines? It seems very likely to me that it's happening, though I don't know where or to what extent. It is largely a question of Cost adjusted by Risk v. Reward. Running attack ads, social media sockpuppet operations, etc. are legal, effective, and have similar costs. Similarly, you have a nation-wide machine who you endanger when you fuck with the integrity of that machine [i.e. being caught doing anything illegal] already. You've got plenty of options to spend your money on, from the preceding election(s) to seize local and state voting mechanisms to run the game in those states [legally] with tactics that are clearly unethical and immoral [voter suppression, deploying outright lies/euphemisms in the name of controlling the voting population]. These mechanisms are much, much more powerful than "hacking" voting machines due their lack of risk, similar costs, and provide you with a foundation with which to influence future elections. Kansas shifted the vote [~2%] greater than Obama's margin of victory in Florida [.88%] with a single law. Consider the current situation nationally: http://www.luc.edu/quinlan/stories/archive/why-attack-ads-work.shtml http://www.luc.edu/quinlan/stories/archive/why-attack-ads-wo... > Although no one jumped from “definitely Bush” to “definitely Kerry,” some students who were leaning toward one candidate did switch to the other side. And in a tightly contested race, like this year’s presidential election, getting even a few people to change their vote can make all the difference in the world. > They then showed the students one of four political ads and asked them to re-rate their levels of support. Roughly 14 percent of the students said the attack on their candidate made them support him even more, the researchers found. But an equal percentage of students said the advertisement weakened their support and caused them to move closer to the opponent—the one who ran the negative ad. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-the-vote/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-t... > In the ongoing fight between Democrats and Republicans over election procedures like voter ID and early voting, the Democrats are supposedly the champions of higher turnout and reducing barriers to participation. But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression. > Scheduling local elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election’s outcome. http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/24/voter-discrimination/ http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/24/voter-discrimination/ > Governor Chris Christie: Same-Day Voter Registration Is a “Trick” and GOP Needs to Win Gubernatorial Races So They Control “Voting Mechanisms” > Fran Millar: Georgia Senator Complains About Polling Place Being Too Convenient for Black Voters > Doug Preis: An Ohio GOP Chair Says We Shouldn’t Accommodate the “Urban — Read African-American — Voter-Turnout Machine” > Greg Abbott: Texas AG Says Partisan Districting Decisions Are Legal, Even if There Are “Incidental Effects” on Minority Voters > Don Yelton: North Carolina GOP Precinct Chair: Voter ID Law Will “Kick Democrats in the Butt” and Hurt “Lazy Blacks” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-voter-suppression-laws-are-already-deciding-elections/2014/11/10/52dc9710-6920-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-vo... > In the state’s nail-biting gubernatorial race, Republican incumbent Sam Brownback bested his Democratic challenger, Paul Davis, by a mere 33,000 votes out of nearly 850,000 cast. Now, compare that with the estimated effects of Kansas’s new restrictions on voting. > We know that more than 21,000 people tried to register but failed because they lacked the necessary “documentary proof of citizenship” required by a new Kansas law. The state’s separate, strict voter ID law also had an effect: Applying findings from a recent Government Accountability Office report that examined how the voter ID law affected the state’s turnout in 2012, Weiser estimates that it probably reduced turnout this time around by about 17,000 votes. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-voter-id-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-vo... > For example, the researchers found that in primary elections, “a strict ID law could be expected to depress Latino turnout by 9.3 points, Black turnout by 8.6 points, and Asian American turnout by 12.5 points.” ----- > 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. I don't agree with Burkman on that. It'd be relatively easy to hack them with a couple guys in a swing state who drops devices at target locations. You can get a partnership with decent security to function in this regard. http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/04/16/399986331/hacked-touchscreen-voting-machine-raises-questions-about-election-security http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/04/16/399986... > When state auditors investigated, though, they didn't find that particular problem. Instead, they found something more disturbing. While using their smartphones, they were able to connect to the voting machines' wireless network, which is used to tally votes. > Other state investigators easily guessed the system's passwords — in one case, it was "abcde" — and were then able to change the vote counts remotely without detection. > 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge number of people in the polling industry. This is a larger problem that can only be surmounted in 1-2 swing states in a given election. You can't push the needle more than a few basis points with these tricks or you'll get all sorts of accusations flying, recounts, Bush v. Gore, etc. etc. Weird statistical outliers simply don't happen often enough at the precinct/county level and the shift in state results are the results of an aggregation of events in multiple precincts. So I highly suspect you could flip one or two precincts this way as well as shift the whole state a few basis points on top of that but if you swing more than 1-1.5% this way I'm pretty sure you'll fail due to recounts and other safeguards. The target states for this would be the usual "swing states": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [ .88% ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [ 2.98% ] You aren't going to be able to pull this off in Ohio but you could in Florida. You'd also need to be able to predict which states you could swing this way and do so without triggering a recount. So you push Florida to +.62% Romney and sabotage things when your opponent demands a recount. The risk of detection is really, really high. If detected swinging this one state, you lose the election due to being on trial for criminal conspiray, etc. etc.
cubano 11y ago
The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun? Only a fool thinks it not happening everywhere, and one thing I know for sure after reading these forums for a few years now... HN members are not fools.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  HN members also write server-side code in JavaScript.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    And here is why we the techies can't have nice thing, we trow shit each other over which language we use instead of working togheter toward gaining credibility to the masses, and I say this as one whom wouldn't touch anything nodejs as that's my preference: people out there are doing very smart things with it (And some very bad stuff, but such is life of widespread tools)
yummyfajitas 11y ago
I know I'm not the first to point out this risk, but why should we assume that the reported vote count represents the actual vote? Becasue there is no smoking gun yet? That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet. Interestingly this exact same argument applies to fraudulent voting. We take no reasonable steps (e.g. requiring ID, same as for buying a beer or a gun) to prevent it, and have no way to detect it if it occurs, yet we assume it doesn't.
- burkaman 11y ago
  We do have ways to detect it, nobody just assumes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-pap... Much of the country does require ID: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state And requiring ID is not a reasonable step unless you provide a free and easy way to get an ID.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    The first two links cited by the washington post suggest there is little evidence of fraud. That totally misses the point of hackuser's critique: why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun?...That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet. To refute this claim, you need to show that fraud would be easily detected if present. In stats terms, show P(evidence|fraud) is large. I suppose that requiring ID before purchasing a firearm, alcohol or opening a bank account is also unreasonable if said ID is not free and easy?
    - burkaman 11y ago
      Well, there are more than two links in the article. Many of them lay out methods that would detect fraud if it were happening. Nobody is "pretending", we have investigated and concluded that it is not happening. For example: http://apr.sagepub.com/content/42/2/311 http://apr.sagepub.com/content/42/2/311 "Although voter ID laws have become a hot topic of political debate, existing scholarship has failed to produce conclusive evidence concerning the existence or frequency of electoral fraud, especially the type of fraud that would be prevented by photo identification laws and signature verification protocols for voting by mail. We propose a new method of measuring election fraud, especially identity fraud, that is superior to previous measurement efforts because it measures actual instances of fraud rather than waiting for conclusive proof of fraud produced in a criminal prosecution. We test our method in multiple jurisdictions, including two known cases of electoral fraud, and we find no additional cases of fraud. We speculate that public access to voting and registration records play an important role in preventing this type of election fraud, suggesting that these practices are perhaps more important than voter ID laws in preventing election fraud." Requiring an ID for alcohol is not unreasonable because there is no constitutional right to be able to purchase it. I imagine there are some gun control opponents who argue that requiring an ID to buy a gun is unconstitutional, but there is ample evidence that not requiring an ID causes immense societal problems, and infringes on other people's constitutional rights. This is not true of voting, as you can see in that article.
Aelinsaar 11y ago
Because most people don't know, don't understand the basic concepts, and don't trust people like you and me when we tell them. We're not "Good people" with "Good values". sigh
cortesoft 11y ago
I think the reason is because there are easier, legal, ways to exert political control than to commit election fraud. Why mess around with petty vote fraud when you can just make large donations to both candidates and guarantee the results you want?

josho 11y ago

It is happening in the US and in plain sight--yet its citizens don't seem to care. Eg. Gerrymandering, drastically reducing voting stations (see AZ), goofy voter registration law changes. These issues don't occur in other mature democracies.

simplemath 11y ago
They do happen in late stage capitalist oligarchies though. We'll get Elysium, not utopia.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  We already live in Elysium. All we lack is robots preventing people from Earth (aka India/China/Nigeria/Malaysia) come join us. The ocean does a good enough job.
  - shanacarp 11y ago
    do you believe the state should exist - if so, how does it function? what are the duties of the state? how do people join the state? are there people who are "naturally part of the state" if so - why? How does this state thing work? If you don't believe in a state. Do you believe in contact? if so, why? if they get broken, how do they get enforced, or he penalties within them enforced? Who is or is not involved Do you believe in the concept of laws and law making? Who is involved in laws and law-making, especially if there is no state in your world view, but laws somehow do still exist. Your claim, and other claims you've made in the past, especially around "violence via taxes" and "violence because immigration" makes it sound like you don't think a state should exist, and all the things that come with a stable state, such as the ability to make contracts and get them enforced, have laws and create new ones. It would make you sound less cynical and more serious if you explained what you were really arguing about, what you actually did believe in, what you believe was the intelligent answer, rather than just arguing against people. Otherwise, how are you much better than the Sophists that Socrates railed against?

burkaman 11y ago

A few reasons I can think of: 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge number of people in the polling industry. Campaigns also run internal polls, so opponent campaigns might become suspicious if their own polls were not matching the results. 3) Recounts are possible and somewhat common. Therefore hacking could not be used to create a very close result that could trigger a recount, or it would need to be combined with actual ballot theft, or control over the officials doing the recount. These are not theoretical concerns. See Bush v. Gore in Florida for what might happen if someone tried to hack a close election. It seems to me that hacking an election would only be feasible in an already close race, would require the cooperation of a number of people with huge risks of exposure, and could still be caught by one of the many safeguards that exist. Obviously I am only talking about hacking voting machines. It would not surprise me if the tactics in this article were common; using Twitter bots, spying on other campaigns, etc.

nxzero 11y ago
Seems like if you're able to poke at the idea in as much detail as you're providing that you might be able to draft your own. Have any ideas on how to do it? That said, appears like given your points that I agree a better use of the idea would be to insure an election and reduce costs too. Meaning run a real campaign, stay behind, but close enough to not draw attention, which I'm guessing would reduce costs more than enough to cover the added costs of hacking.
- burkaman 11y ago
  None of my points have anything to do with cost, I'm (realistically) assuming a campaign with huge amounts of cash. The problem, as with most conspiracy theories, is the number of people that need to cooperate and stay silent, and the number of independent safeguards that already exist. Spending more money actually hurts you, because it makes it harder to hide where that money is going, especially with all of the campaign finance regulations. I can't think of a low-risk way to literally hack an election in the US at the moment. You would need a long-term plan to change election laws, homogenize voting machines and methods across the country, and then hack some centralized database. There is no way to get around the polling issue in a country with an even semi-free press, so you still need a pretty strong candidate that you just boost a little. Anybody in the real world who needed to rig an election would use indirect methods. Spying, spreading misinformation, ignoring campaign finance laws, gerrymandering, etc. All things that have happened and will continue to happen.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

Changing the reported vote count is amateur-level election rigging. Professionals engage in much less obvious efforts - say, by suppressing turnout in unfavorable voting locations.

padobson 11y ago
Introducing a bug at voting machines that makes them break in unfavorable precincts would probably be the most effective election hacking strategy.

nosuchthing 11y ago

Arizona's voter database has apparently been tampered with or at the very least been susceptible to lax security standards. Apparently someone has copies of voter registration forms and just copied the signature and changed party affiliation, nullifying votes (causing voters to receive provisional ballets, which generally are not counted) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PnM6rf7X8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PnM6rf7X8 Here's the Arizona House elections Committee hearing, and a citizen mentions that voter registration documents have been leaked to the web. https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=58m37s https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=58m37s

colordrops 11y ago

> The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun? Part of the propaganda is to label and marginalize people who point things like this out as conspiracy nuts and mentally unstable.

irixusr 11y ago
I would add that we need tip think we're a democracy

fweespee_ch 11y ago

> Consider the U.S. presidential election: The outcome is worth billions each to very many parties worldwide; it's existential to some foreign governments and actors; many in the U.S. have very powerful ideological motives. How much would it cost to hack voting machines? It seems very likely to me that it's happening, though I don't know where or to what extent. It is largely a question of Cost adjusted by Risk v. Reward. Running attack ads, social media sockpuppet operations, etc. are legal, effective, and have similar costs. Similarly, you have a nation-wide machine who you endanger when you fuck with the integrity of that machine [i.e. being caught doing anything illegal] already. You've got plenty of options to spend your money on, from the preceding election(s) to seize local and state voting mechanisms to run the game in those states [legally] with tactics that are clearly unethical and immoral [voter suppression, deploying outright lies/euphemisms in the name of controlling the voting population]. These mechanisms are much, much more powerful than "hacking" voting machines due their lack of risk, similar costs, and provide you with a foundation with which to influence future elections. Kansas shifted the vote [~2%] greater than Obama's margin of victory in Florida [.88%] with a single law. Consider the current situation nationally: http://www.luc.edu/quinlan/stories/archive/why-attack-ads-work.shtml http://www.luc.edu/quinlan/stories/archive/why-attack-ads-wo... > Although no one jumped from “definitely Bush” to “definitely Kerry,” some students who were leaning toward one candidate did switch to the other side. And in a tightly contested race, like this year’s presidential election, getting even a few people to change their vote can make all the difference in the world. > They then showed the students one of four political ads and asked them to re-rate their levels of support. Roughly 14 percent of the students said the attack on their candidate made them support him even more, the researchers found. But an equal percentage of students said the advertisement weakened their support and caused them to move closer to the opponent—the one who ran the negative ad. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-the-vote/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-t... > In the ongoing fight between Democrats and Republicans over election procedures like voter ID and early voting, the Democrats are supposedly the champions of higher turnout and reducing barriers to participation. But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression. > Scheduling local elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election’s outcome. http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/24/voter-discrimination/ http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/24/voter-discrimination/ > Governor Chris Christie: Same-Day Voter Registration Is a “Trick” and GOP Needs to Win Gubernatorial Races So They Control “Voting Mechanisms” > Fran Millar: Georgia Senator Complains About Polling Place Being Too Convenient for Black Voters > Doug Preis: An Ohio GOP Chair Says We Shouldn’t Accommodate the “Urban — Read African-American — Voter-Turnout Machine” > Greg Abbott: Texas AG Says Partisan Districting Decisions Are Legal, Even if There Are “Incidental Effects” on Minority Voters > Don Yelton: North Carolina GOP Precinct Chair: Voter ID Law Will “Kick Democrats in the Butt” and Hurt “Lazy Blacks” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-voter-suppression-laws-are-already-deciding-elections/2014/11/10/52dc9710-6920-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-vo... > In the state’s nail-biting gubernatorial race, Republican incumbent Sam Brownback bested his Democratic challenger, Paul Davis, by a mere 33,000 votes out of nearly 850,000 cast. Now, compare that with the estimated effects of Kansas’s new restrictions on voting. > We know that more than 21,000 people tried to register but failed because they lacked the necessary “documentary proof of citizenship” required by a new Kansas law. The state’s separate, strict voter ID law also had an effect: Applying findings from a recent Government Accountability Office report that examined how the voter ID law affected the state’s turnout in 2012, Weiser estimates that it probably reduced turnout this time around by about 17,000 votes. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-voter-id-study/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-vo... > For example, the researchers found that in primary elections, “a strict ID law could be expected to depress Latino turnout by 9.3 points, Black turnout by 8.6 points, and Asian American turnout by 12.5 points.” ----- > 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. I don't agree with Burkman on that. It'd be relatively easy to hack them with a couple guys in a swing state who drops devices at target locations. You can get a partnership with decent security to function in this regard. http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/04/16/399986331/hacked-touchscreen-voting-machine-raises-questions-about-election-security http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/04/16/399986... > When state auditors investigated, though, they didn't find that particular problem. Instead, they found something more disturbing. While using their smartphones, they were able to connect to the voting machines' wireless network, which is used to tally votes. > Other state investigators easily guessed the system's passwords — in one case, it was "abcde" — and were then able to change the vote counts remotely without detection. > 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge number of people in the polling industry. This is a larger problem that can only be surmounted in 1-2 swing states in a given election. You can't push the needle more than a few basis points with these tricks or you'll get all sorts of accusations flying, recounts, Bush v. Gore, etc. etc. Weird statistical outliers simply don't happen often enough at the precinct/county level and the shift in state results are the results of an aggregation of events in multiple precincts. So I highly suspect you could flip one or two precincts this way as well as shift the whole state a few basis points on top of that but if you swing more than 1-1.5% this way I'm pretty sure you'll fail due to recounts and other safeguards. The target states for this would be the usual "swing states": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [ .88% ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [ 2.98% ] You aren't going to be able to pull this off in Ohio but you could in Florida. You'd also need to be able to predict which states you could swing this way and do so without triggering a recount. So you push Florida to +.62% Romney and sabotage things when your opponent demands a recount. The risk of detection is really, really high. If detected swinging this one state, you lose the election due to being on trial for criminal conspiray, etc. etc.

cubano 11y ago

The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun? Only a fool thinks it not happening everywhere, and one thing I know for sure after reading these forums for a few years now... HN members are not fools.

peterwwillis 11y ago
HN members also write server-side code in JavaScript.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  And here is why we the techies can't have nice thing, we trow shit each other over which language we use instead of working togheter toward gaining credibility to the masses, and I say this as one whom wouldn't touch anything nodejs as that's my preference: people out there are doing very smart things with it (And some very bad stuff, but such is life of widespread tools)

yummyfajitas 11y ago

I know I'm not the first to point out this risk, but why should we assume that the reported vote count represents the actual vote? Becasue there is no smoking gun yet? That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet. Interestingly this exact same argument applies to fraudulent voting. We take no reasonable steps (e.g. requiring ID, same as for buying a beer or a gun) to prevent it, and have no way to detect it if it occurs, yet we assume it doesn't.

burkaman 11y ago
We do have ways to detect it, nobody just assumes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-pap... Much of the country does require ID: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state And requiring ID is not a reasonable step unless you provide a free and easy way to get an ID.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  The first two links cited by the washington post suggest there is little evidence of fraud. That totally misses the point of hackuser's critique: why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking gun?...That's like assuming your critical network hasn't been hacked, and doing nothing to protect it, because you haven't seen evidence of an attack yet. To refute this claim, you need to show that fraud would be easily detected if present. In stats terms, show P(evidence|fraud) is large. I suppose that requiring ID before purchasing a firearm, alcohol or opening a bank account is also unreasonable if said ID is not free and easy?
  - burkaman 11y ago
    Well, there are more than two links in the article. Many of them lay out methods that would detect fraud if it were happening. Nobody is "pretending", we have investigated and concluded that it is not happening. For example: http://apr.sagepub.com/content/42/2/311 http://apr.sagepub.com/content/42/2/311 "Although voter ID laws have become a hot topic of political debate, existing scholarship has failed to produce conclusive evidence concerning the existence or frequency of electoral fraud, especially the type of fraud that would be prevented by photo identification laws and signature verification protocols for voting by mail. We propose a new method of measuring election fraud, especially identity fraud, that is superior to previous measurement efforts because it measures actual instances of fraud rather than waiting for conclusive proof of fraud produced in a criminal prosecution. We test our method in multiple jurisdictions, including two known cases of electoral fraud, and we find no additional cases of fraud. We speculate that public access to voting and registration records play an important role in preventing this type of election fraud, suggesting that these practices are perhaps more important than voter ID laws in preventing election fraud." Requiring an ID for alcohol is not unreasonable because there is no constitutional right to be able to purchase it. I imagine there are some gun control opponents who argue that requiring an ID to buy a gun is unconstitutional, but there is ample evidence that not requiring an ID causes immense societal problems, and infringes on other people's constitutional rights. This is not true of voting, as you can see in that article.

Aelinsaar 11y ago

Because most people don't know, don't understand the basic concepts, and don't trust people like you and me when we tell them. We're not "Good people" with "Good values". sigh

cortesoft 11y ago

I think the reason is because there are easier, legal, ways to exert political control than to commit election fraud. Why mess around with petty vote fraud when you can just make large donations to both candidates and guarantee the results you want?