8 ms·

The Election Won’t Be Rigged, But It Could Be Hacked

41 points by the_duck 10y ago

gizmo686 10y ago
I submitted this as its own post, but it didn't get much traction, so I'll link it here as well. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c29e/t/57a759c2f5e231cfd155331b/1470585287273/000+An+Electoral+System+in+Crisis.pdf http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c2... This paper argues that the 2016 primaries were hacked based on the fact that (among other arguements): There was consistent discrepencies between paper and machine voting results, favoring Clinton and against Trump. Clinton and Trump support was corralated with precinct size Demographics are not sufficent to explain the above observations. I have not verified the accuracy of this analysis, or found other commentary on it.
- michaelvoz 10y ago
  Skimmed through it. Just because its a PDF, and happens to be someone's 'paper' Does not make it a good source. I don't believe this was peer reviewed...
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  > I have not verified the accuracy of this analysis It's not so much that it's inaccurate as that it's not really anything but an op-ed with some basic data. The general form of it is thus: "here is some data. I'm saying it means X, which could be explained in Y way or tampering but I won't say it can be explained other ways. Here's a very handwaving explanation of why Y doesn't fit, so I therefore conclude that it must be tampering... I will now devote lots of pages to conspiracy theories about who and why this tampering was done - assuming that I am correct and there is no other explanation." It's a reddit post writ-large, basically.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  If someone hacked the voting machines, I would expect them to only find vulnerabilities in some of the machines, not all of them. Thus if the paper finds a discrepancy that isn't related to the type of machine, I would expect it is some other kind of cheating (or just an anomaly).
  - DavidPlumpton 10y ago
    You don't need to hack voting machines. If you control the body that allocates them in your area you send more of them to areas favourable to your desired outcome. So in other areas the lines get too long and some people don't get to vote. That alone will swing things a few percent.
nxzero 10y ago
>> "A recent poll found that 34 percent of likely voters believed the general election would be rigged." Even if it the US election was rigged, very possible US wouldn't even care.
- micaksica 10y ago
  I would suspect whomever voted for the winning "team" wouldn't care at all.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Given only 40% of living Americans vote, and that it's likely 35-45% voted for the party that benefited from the fraud - that would leave a very small group of people to force a reversal. Again, possible that all Americans would reject it, but seems possible that they would not.
toodlebunions 10y ago
Lack of paper trail has been an election complaint for at least 16 years now.
jack9 10y ago
It is rigged AND is going to be hacked. That's a given.
- skrowl 10y ago
  After the Wikileaks releases, we know without a doubt that the Democrat primaries were rigged for Clinton. Multiple people were forced to resign from high paying DNC posts over it. I see no reason to think that the actual election in November won't also be rigged to the maximum extent possible for Clinton.
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    Why was Clinton so effective compared to the GOP's old guard? They absolutely despise their nominee- why weren't they able to pull enough dirty tricks to sink Trump? And, again, in the general, I've seen no evidence that the Clinton camp is vastly less moral than the GOP/Trump camp- why attribute all potential rigging to Clinton when the GOP has just as much reason to pull the same tricks?
    - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
      Maybe because GOP primaries isn't more corrupt than Dems. Maybe the GOP constituency actually does consist of the type of people who want Trump.
      - roywiggins 10y ago
        Similarly, the Democrats have a lot of people who wanted Clinton, and 3 million more of them appear to have turned out to vote than did Sanders supporters. I just don't see how, if widespread primary rigging is effective and not all that difficult (since the DNC, who really aren't all THAT clever, supposedly "rigged" it without much in the way of repercussions) Trump could end up the GOP nominee against the wishes of the GOP elite. It's quite easy to explain Clinton's win without any shady "rigging." It's quite difficult to manufacture 3 million net votes- that's either a lot of ballot-box stuffing or a huge voter disenfranchisement campaign and there's no evidence of either. The simplest explanation is that the Dem constituency consists of people who want her.
vaadu 10y ago
It could easily be rigged without a papertrail or having to show ID to vote.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  What on earth makes you think IDs are secure? Have you been near a college campus anytime... I don't know... Ever?
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Faking IDs on a scale necessary to influence a presidential election, without being detected, would be a bit more difficult.
    - ethanbond 10y ago
      Uh yeah, because it's impossible to manipulate an election from the voting booth under basically any circumstances. That's why ID laws make no sense. The physical ID manufacturing isn't the hard part and never would be. It's finding the identity you're masquerading as and then actually standing in line at a voting booth.
      - vaadu 10y ago
        The ID process doesn't have to be perfect, just effective enough to curtail most attempts at fraud. If ID didn't work why do so many other nations require it for voting and why does the US use it for buying a beer. http://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2016/08/Mandella-Register-copy.jpg http://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2016/08/Mandella-Regi...
        ethanbond 10y ago
        Once you prove that more fraudulent votes than authorized votes would be prevented by ID laws I'd be glad to implement such a system.
      - 10y ago
micaksica 10y ago
Of course it will be hacked. I find it hilarious that people think that our political parties have some type of moral code they actually use to play by the "rules", whatever nonexistent rules those are. As long as they aren't doing something directly illegal or can deflect the blame for illegal behavior to an underling that "misunderstood the directions", the incentive is there for ALL political parties to play as dirty as they possibly can. Democrat, Republican, whatever, doesn't matter. The party's game is to win seats in Congress and the Presidency. Not win fairly. Not win "by the rules". To win, at whatever cost, as long as that cost isn't the elected positions themselves.
- ianlevesque 10y ago
  Exhibit A: Gerrymandering
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    I think someone pointed out here that gerrymandering would be useless if people didn't reliably, blindly, vote based on party.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      Gerrymandering would be less useful if fewer people voted along party lines, but not useless. Any demographic edge is better than nothing; even if only 5% of voters decide on the basis of party affiliation, that's 5% more than nothing.
    - fatbird 10y ago
      In the normal case, wouldn't a person usually vote in the next election the way they voted previously? A party's platform is generally the same election-to-election, and if I voted previously for that platform, I'd tend to continue voting for it unless I had a pretty significant change of heart--and then changed it again for the election following? Unless either the party or the voter swung wildly around, gerrymandering doesn't require "blind" allegiance to a party.
ktRolster 10y ago
Sounds like a challenge! If any of the precincts turn up 100% for Jill Stein, you'll know it was me.
sverige 10y ago
I was an election judge in Colorado in 1994, '98, '00, and '04. I observed elections in North Carolina in 2006 and '08. The Colorado elections used paper ballots (complete with "hanging chads") and from what I could tell were run pretty fair and square. One year there were some problems with some of the kids from the local college where rich Easterners send their lower-caliber offspring when they can't get into the Ivy League. They flooded a particular precinct insisting that they be given provisional ballots (name not on the list and ballots not counted unless it's close). They didn't meet the requirements even for those ballots and some threw a hissy fit. The local prosecutor discovered that many had already voted absentee back in their home state. They were not prosecuted, unfortunately. In North Carolina in '06, the precinct captain ran it by the books. In '08, same precinct, same captain, many were allowed to vote provisionally even though they didn't meet the requirements (didn't live in the county they were trying to vote in). Others told me it was similar in other precincts. Paper ballots, ID, and lots of well-trained observers seem to be the best way to avoid the threats from social engineering and hack attacks on the integrity of the voting process. I would even go for the purple dye they use on the thumbs of voters in some countries to prevent people from traveling precinct to precinct to vote for dead people and people who have moved away who are still on the rolls. (There are more than you probably think.) In general, my observation has been that the voting process has become more corrupt over the past 20 years. It's just damn hard to catch it if the people who are supposed to enforce the rules don't care to.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  But here's the problem: "You want to check ID at the polling place? You must be a racist! Here's how that represents a tiny, yet unacceptable burden, for some underprivileged group." This is actually where we are as a country. It's depressing.
  - IIAOPSW 10y ago
    I think that the issue there is not with the ID per se, but with the cost (in time and money) disproportionately affecting the poor and also with the fact that it de facto creates a national ID system (which some are ideologically opposed to). I would be ok with voter ID laws which accepted a multitude of valid existing documents. E.g if you allow passport, driver license, state ID, SS card and birth cert then there probably does not exist a person whom does not have at least one of those.
shireboy 10y ago
If the election gets hacked, won't it by definition be rigged by the hacker(s)? I just don't see how it's "ridiculous" to think the vote somewhat impacted by 1) some people voting more than once since many jurisdictions are basically "honor system", 2) exploits of vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems, and 3) ballot stuffing and other illicit activities by poll workers. How prevalent those are, the full impact, etc. are debatable, but it seems a little naive to say those things never happen at all or that people who suspect they happen are crazy conspiracy theorists.
- lotso 10y ago
  I don't think you understand how voting works in the US. Voting isn't even close to the honor system. The people who run precincts are incredibly decentralized and individual precincts have such a small impact on national elections.
  - shireboy 10y ago
    In my area (and most without voter ID) anybody can give any name and address and vote as that person. The "honor system" refers to the fact people are trusted to not just look up a name/address and vote as someone else. Yes, the electoral system and general statistics of the election mean in any one case that doesn't necessarily sway the outcome. Which is why I said the impact is debatable but to deny it could happen is naive.
    - leot 10y ago
      Could someone please describe a plausible scenario in which an election is impacted by so-called "voter fraud"? While elections have been rigged from the very beginning (ballot stuffing etc.), "voter fraud" is an invented concept that didn't exist before passage of the Voting Rights Act.
      - shireboy 10y ago
        Not sure how many more times I can say "the impact is debatable" in recognition that individuals voting as other individuals would be an inefficient way to sway an election. However, it is fairly well documented that this happens to some degree: https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting and that it is completely feasible to pretend to be another person when voting: https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU But, since you asked, here is a scenario that I think is entirely plausible: A group of over-zealous activists travel to a very tight state with a handful of close precincts. They look up recent deaths in the areas and get a list of 1000 names and addresses that they then use to vote, each voting multiple times. They simply go in, give the name and address, and vote, then go to another polling location and repeat. Other groups decide on other tactics. A poll worker decides to stuff a box. A hacker changes a few 100 votes just to see if she can. No one technique alone would have swayed the election, but in concert they push it to the opposite of what a 100% fair election would have been. In this scenario, note that there is no big evil conspiracy - just a handful of misguided people taking actions with a collective big consequence. Obviously the risk of fraud has to be weighed against the risk that someone due a vote will be unable to do so because they couldn't obtain an ID or lost it. It's also worth pointing out that before the general election, the various shenanigans of the primaries and two parties mean that the general is not really "fair" before it even starts. Again, my point is that it's not "ridiculous" to posit that US elections have systemic flaws that could sway the outcome.
ruffrey 10y ago
OSET is trying to help with this. They are working to make open source voting systems available. http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/ http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/
- taserian 10y ago
  I'd be interested in seeing if a transparent, fair and honest voting booth can be achieved with commodity hardware: - Raspberry Pi with a multiple checksum-verified OS image - simple receipt printer with a verifiable hash of your vote - etc.
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago
I wish that we would abandon the concept of all-in-one electronic voting machines and instead incentivize ballot printers. They could have a happy touch screen UI that is easy to localize, and then print out a human-readable paper ballot for the voter to review and then drop into a physical ballot box. And you could have one machine with a special printer to produce raised-character printing for blind voters to verify. All the advantages of a computer UI and very few of the disadvantages of the DRE voting machines.
- r00fus 10y ago
  The electronic voting machines used by many districts are not only insecure, but run by former felons (link from 2003!) [1]. The only reason I can see why we use voting machines run by criminals is that the powers-that-be want it that way. No amount of ineptitude can survive for 15 years without a small group benefitting immensely (and then selling that access). [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml
elihu 10y ago
Is there any practical difference between rigging and hacking? Whether the election outcome is manipulated by government officials, one or both major political parties, Vladimir Putin, corporate insiders at the vendors that supply voting machines, some guy named Chad, or some collaboration between any of the above, it amounts to the same thing: the loss of voter's right to hold their elected leaders accountable. Most election tampering requires a pretty big conspiracy and is therefore hard to pull off on a large enough scale to change the outcome without being caught, but electronic voting with no paper trail makes it possible for someone to do just that without more than one or a handful of people knowing about it, which I think makes it the biggest threat to the accuracy and credibility of elections in the United States. Even in the absence of real election fraud, if the voters have no credible reason to believe it didn't happen, then the election system ought to be fixed. Ideally, the burden of proof should be on election officials to show that the results are correct, not on activists to prove fraud.

41 points by the_duck 10y ago

I submitted this as its own post, but it didn't get much traction, so I'll link it here as well. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c29e/t/57a759c2f5e231cfd155331b/1470585287273/000+An+Electoral+System+in+Crisis.pdf http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c2... This paper argues that the 2016 primaries were hacked based on the fact that (among other arguements): There was consistent discrepencies between paper and machine voting results, favoring Clinton and against Trump. Clinton and Trump support was corralated with precinct size Demographics are not sufficent to explain the above observations. I have not verified the accuracy of this analysis, or found other commentary on it.

michaelvoz 10y ago
Skimmed through it. Just because its a PDF, and happens to be someone's 'paper' Does not make it a good source. I don't believe this was peer reviewed...
abritinthebay 10y ago
> I have not verified the accuracy of this analysis It's not so much that it's inaccurate as that it's not really anything but an op-ed with some basic data. The general form of it is thus: "here is some data. I'm saying it means X, which could be explained in Y way or tampering but I won't say it can be explained other ways. Here's a very handwaving explanation of why Y doesn't fit, so I therefore conclude that it must be tampering... I will now devote lots of pages to conspiracy theories about who and why this tampering was done - assuming that I am correct and there is no other explanation." It's a reddit post writ-large, basically.
ktRolster 10y ago
If someone hacked the voting machines, I would expect them to only find vulnerabilities in some of the machines, not all of them. Thus if the paper finds a discrepancy that isn't related to the type of machine, I would expect it is some other kind of cheating (or just an anomaly).
- DavidPlumpton 10y ago
  You don't need to hack voting machines. If you control the body that allocates them in your area you send more of them to areas favourable to your desired outcome. So in other areas the lines get too long and some people don't get to vote. That alone will swing things a few percent.

nxzero 10y ago

>> "A recent poll found that 34 percent of likely voters believed the general election would be rigged." Even if it the US election was rigged, very possible US wouldn't even care.

micaksica 10y ago
I would suspect whomever voted for the winning "team" wouldn't care at all.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Given only 40% of living Americans vote, and that it's likely 35-45% voted for the party that benefited from the fraud - that would leave a very small group of people to force a reversal. Again, possible that all Americans would reject it, but seems possible that they would not.

toodlebunions 10y ago

Lack of paper trail has been an election complaint for at least 16 years now.

jack9 10y ago

It is rigged AND is going to be hacked. That's a given.

skrowl 10y ago
After the Wikileaks releases, we know without a doubt that the Democrat primaries were rigged for Clinton. Multiple people were forced to resign from high paying DNC posts over it. I see no reason to think that the actual election in November won't also be rigged to the maximum extent possible for Clinton.
- roywiggins 10y ago
  Why was Clinton so effective compared to the GOP's old guard? They absolutely despise their nominee- why weren't they able to pull enough dirty tricks to sink Trump? And, again, in the general, I've seen no evidence that the Clinton camp is vastly less moral than the GOP/Trump camp- why attribute all potential rigging to Clinton when the GOP has just as much reason to pull the same tricks?
  - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
    Maybe because GOP primaries isn't more corrupt than Dems. Maybe the GOP constituency actually does consist of the type of people who want Trump.
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      Similarly, the Democrats have a lot of people who wanted Clinton, and 3 million more of them appear to have turned out to vote than did Sanders supporters. I just don't see how, if widespread primary rigging is effective and not all that difficult (since the DNC, who really aren't all THAT clever, supposedly "rigged" it without much in the way of repercussions) Trump could end up the GOP nominee against the wishes of the GOP elite. It's quite easy to explain Clinton's win without any shady "rigging." It's quite difficult to manufacture 3 million net votes- that's either a lot of ballot-box stuffing or a huge voter disenfranchisement campaign and there's no evidence of either. The simplest explanation is that the Dem constituency consists of people who want her.

vaadu 10y ago

It could easily be rigged without a papertrail or having to show ID to vote.

ethanbond 10y ago
What on earth makes you think IDs are secure? Have you been near a college campus anytime... I don't know... Ever?
- ams6110 10y ago
  Faking IDs on a scale necessary to influence a presidential election, without being detected, would be a bit more difficult.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    Uh yeah, because it's impossible to manipulate an election from the voting booth under basically any circumstances. That's why ID laws make no sense. The physical ID manufacturing isn't the hard part and never would be. It's finding the identity you're masquerading as and then actually standing in line at a voting booth.
    - vaadu 10y ago
      The ID process doesn't have to be perfect, just effective enough to curtail most attempts at fraud. If ID didn't work why do so many other nations require it for voting and why does the US use it for buying a beer. http://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2016/08/Mandella-Register-copy.jpg http://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2016/08/Mandella-Regi...
      - ethanbond 10y ago
        Once you prove that more fraudulent votes than authorized votes would be prevented by ID laws I'd be glad to implement such a system.
    - 10y ago

micaksica 10y ago

Of course it will be hacked. I find it hilarious that people think that our political parties have some type of moral code they actually use to play by the "rules", whatever nonexistent rules those are. As long as they aren't doing something directly illegal or can deflect the blame for illegal behavior to an underling that "misunderstood the directions", the incentive is there for ALL political parties to play as dirty as they possibly can. Democrat, Republican, whatever, doesn't matter. The party's game is to win seats in Congress and the Presidency. Not win fairly. Not win "by the rules". To win, at whatever cost, as long as that cost isn't the elected positions themselves.

ianlevesque 10y ago
Exhibit A: Gerrymandering
- ktRolster 10y ago
  I think someone pointed out here that gerrymandering would be useless if people didn't reliably, blindly, vote based on party.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Gerrymandering would be less useful if fewer people voted along party lines, but not useless. Any demographic edge is better than nothing; even if only 5% of voters decide on the basis of party affiliation, that's 5% more than nothing.
  - fatbird 10y ago
    In the normal case, wouldn't a person usually vote in the next election the way they voted previously? A party's platform is generally the same election-to-election, and if I voted previously for that platform, I'd tend to continue voting for it unless I had a pretty significant change of heart--and then changed it again for the election following? Unless either the party or the voter swung wildly around, gerrymandering doesn't require "blind" allegiance to a party.

ktRolster 10y ago

Sounds like a challenge! If any of the precincts turn up 100% for Jill Stein, you'll know it was me.

sverige 10y ago

I was an election judge in Colorado in 1994, '98, '00, and '04. I observed elections in North Carolina in 2006 and '08. The Colorado elections used paper ballots (complete with "hanging chads") and from what I could tell were run pretty fair and square. One year there were some problems with some of the kids from the local college where rich Easterners send their lower-caliber offspring when they can't get into the Ivy League. They flooded a particular precinct insisting that they be given provisional ballots (name not on the list and ballots not counted unless it's close). They didn't meet the requirements even for those ballots and some threw a hissy fit. The local prosecutor discovered that many had already voted absentee back in their home state. They were not prosecuted, unfortunately. In North Carolina in '06, the precinct captain ran it by the books. In '08, same precinct, same captain, many were allowed to vote provisionally even though they didn't meet the requirements (didn't live in the county they were trying to vote in). Others told me it was similar in other precincts. Paper ballots, ID, and lots of well-trained observers seem to be the best way to avoid the threats from social engineering and hack attacks on the integrity of the voting process. I would even go for the purple dye they use on the thumbs of voters in some countries to prevent people from traveling precinct to precinct to vote for dead people and people who have moved away who are still on the rolls. (There are more than you probably think.) In general, my observation has been that the voting process has become more corrupt over the past 20 years. It's just damn hard to catch it if the people who are supposed to enforce the rules don't care to.

marcoperaza 10y ago
But here's the problem: "You want to check ID at the polling place? You must be a racist! Here's how that represents a tiny, yet unacceptable burden, for some underprivileged group." This is actually where we are as a country. It's depressing.
- IIAOPSW 10y ago
  I think that the issue there is not with the ID per se, but with the cost (in time and money) disproportionately affecting the poor and also with the fact that it de facto creates a national ID system (which some are ideologically opposed to). I would be ok with voter ID laws which accepted a multitude of valid existing documents. E.g if you allow passport, driver license, state ID, SS card and birth cert then there probably does not exist a person whom does not have at least one of those.

shireboy 10y ago

If the election gets hacked, won't it by definition be rigged by the hacker(s)? I just don't see how it's "ridiculous" to think the vote somewhat impacted by 1) some people voting more than once since many jurisdictions are basically "honor system", 2) exploits of vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems, and 3) ballot stuffing and other illicit activities by poll workers. How prevalent those are, the full impact, etc. are debatable, but it seems a little naive to say those things never happen at all or that people who suspect they happen are crazy conspiracy theorists.

lotso 10y ago
I don't think you understand how voting works in the US. Voting isn't even close to the honor system. The people who run precincts are incredibly decentralized and individual precincts have such a small impact on national elections.
- shireboy 10y ago
  In my area (and most without voter ID) anybody can give any name and address and vote as that person. The "honor system" refers to the fact people are trusted to not just look up a name/address and vote as someone else. Yes, the electoral system and general statistics of the election mean in any one case that doesn't necessarily sway the outcome. Which is why I said the impact is debatable but to deny it could happen is naive.
  - leot 10y ago
    Could someone please describe a plausible scenario in which an election is impacted by so-called "voter fraud"? While elections have been rigged from the very beginning (ballot stuffing etc.), "voter fraud" is an invented concept that didn't exist before passage of the Voting Rights Act.
    - shireboy 10y ago
      Not sure how many more times I can say "the impact is debatable" in recognition that individuals voting as other individuals would be an inefficient way to sway an election. However, it is fairly well documented that this happens to some degree: https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting and that it is completely feasible to pretend to be another person when voting: https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU https://youtu.be/pZMU2oMJNHU But, since you asked, here is a scenario that I think is entirely plausible: A group of over-zealous activists travel to a very tight state with a handful of close precincts. They look up recent deaths in the areas and get a list of 1000 names and addresses that they then use to vote, each voting multiple times. They simply go in, give the name and address, and vote, then go to another polling location and repeat. Other groups decide on other tactics. A poll worker decides to stuff a box. A hacker changes a few 100 votes just to see if she can. No one technique alone would have swayed the election, but in concert they push it to the opposite of what a 100% fair election would have been. In this scenario, note that there is no big evil conspiracy - just a handful of misguided people taking actions with a collective big consequence. Obviously the risk of fraud has to be weighed against the risk that someone due a vote will be unable to do so because they couldn't obtain an ID or lost it. It's also worth pointing out that before the general election, the various shenanigans of the primaries and two parties mean that the general is not really "fair" before it even starts. Again, my point is that it's not "ridiculous" to posit that US elections have systemic flaws that could sway the outcome.

ruffrey 10y ago

OSET is trying to help with this. They are working to make open source voting systems available. http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/ http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/

taserian 10y ago
I'd be interested in seeing if a transparent, fair and honest voting booth can be achieved with commodity hardware: - Raspberry Pi with a multiple checksum-verified OS image - simple receipt printer with a verifiable hash of your vote - etc.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago

I wish that we would abandon the concept of all-in-one electronic voting machines and instead incentivize ballot printers. They could have a happy touch screen UI that is easy to localize, and then print out a human-readable paper ballot for the voter to review and then drop into a physical ballot box. And you could have one machine with a special printer to produce raised-character printing for blind voters to verify. All the advantages of a computer UI and very few of the disadvantages of the DRE voting machines.

r00fus 10y ago
The electronic voting machines used by many districts are not only insecure, but run by former felons (link from 2003!) [1]. The only reason I can see why we use voting machines run by criminals is that the powers-that-be want it that way. No amount of ineptitude can survive for 15 years without a small group benefitting immensely (and then selling that access). [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml

elihu 10y ago

Is there any practical difference between rigging and hacking? Whether the election outcome is manipulated by government officials, one or both major political parties, Vladimir Putin, corporate insiders at the vendors that supply voting machines, some guy named Chad, or some collaboration between any of the above, it amounts to the same thing: the loss of voter's right to hold their elected leaders accountable. Most election tampering requires a pretty big conspiracy and is therefore hard to pull off on a large enough scale to change the outcome without being caught, but electronic voting with no paper trail makes it possible for someone to do just that without more than one or a handful of people knowing about it, which I think makes it the biggest threat to the accuracy and credibility of elections in the United States. Even in the absence of real election fraud, if the voters have no credible reason to believe it didn't happen, then the election system ought to be fixed. Ideally, the burden of proof should be on election officials to show that the results are correct, not on activists to prove fraud.