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Some thoughts about the reports of supposed evidence of election irregularities
- pfooti 10y agoThis is similar to what Nate Silver put out earlier (as mentioned in the article). The difference in voting to each candidate by county and voting machine type is completely explained by the population distribution in those counties. In Wisconsin, the counties that used paper ballots tended to be less white and better educated. That's why Clinton got more votes there, probably. It is unlikely that there is real widespread tampering. That said, there is still good reason to audit all national elections. They're quite important, after all. The mad dash to say who won really quickly does a disservice to the process, IMO.
- grzm 10y agothere is still good reason to audit all national elections. They're quite important, after all. The mad dash to say who won really quickly does a disservice to the process, IMO. Agreed. Maybe it's late, but I'm leaning towards thinking auditing should be closer to the norm than otherwise. Kinda like testing? Get the system so smooth and clean that everything is obvious and trustworthy. Edit: Okay, it is getting late. I just starting thinking of what an election Chaos Monkey would look like.
- theparanoid 10y agoState elections do go to automatic recount in 20 states - http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-recount-thresholds.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automat...
- tehwalrus 10y agoDonald Trump is an election chaos monkey.
- Klathmon 10y agoNobody else mentioned it, but an election "chaos monkey" would be interesting. From the few second I thought about it, you could have some "approved troublemakers" that are VERY well controlled and licensed to go and do things like attempt to tamper with machines, multi-vote, ballot stuff, or something similar. If it's done in a way that they know exactly how many extras they put in (how i'm not sure, but it'd need to be bullet proof) they could basically "audit" election systems. Currently, there is no legal way to "test" the system as far as I know.
- grzm 10y agoInteresting idea, isn't it? I suspect that many of the failure modes you'd want to test would require a full re-do of the election, at least at the level of the precinct. I don't know how tolerant the population would be. Though I encourage you to follow through and see what you come up with :) I'd be interested to read about it.
- Klathmon 10y agoI'm not so sure it would need to be that drastic. If I get a "stamp of approval" to tamper with a voting machine, I could get to the point of being able to tamper, but not do anything. Or I could (if it was safe to do so) have it add 30,000 votes to a false candidate. It would be similar to how "white hat" hackers need to be able to show a POC but not actually do any harm. Hell even having "false elections" could be a useful first step. It wouldn't be perfect, but it could at least start figuring out where the weakness are.
- grzm 10y agoHell even having "false elections" could be a useful first step. That, I think, would be potentially useful.
- nkurz 10y agoHere's a 2012 paper from a team at the University of Michigan detailing a "mock election" gone wrong: Title. Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System Abstract. In 2010, Washington, D.C. developed an Internet voting pilot project that was intended to allow overseas absentee voters to cast their ballots using a website. Prior to deploying the system in the general election, the District held a unique public trial: a mock election during which anyone was invited to test the system or attempt to compromise its security. This paper describes our experience participating in this trial. Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near-complete control of the election server. We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot. Election officials did not detect our intrusion for nearly two business days—and might have remained unaware for far longer had we not deliberately left a prominent clue. This case study—the first (to our knowledge) to analyze the security of a government Internet voting system from the perspective of an attacker in a realistic pre-election deployment—attempts to illuminate the practical challenges of securing online voting as practiced today by a growing number of jurisdictions. https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/dcvoting-fc12.pdf https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/dcvoting-fc12.pdf
- zw123456 10y agoI agree completely, this was an extremely important election with a lot of future implications and it, and really all elections, should be meticulously audited. I think there is a lot of pressure to come up with a quick result when the emphasis should be more on accuracy.
- nkurz 10y agoIn Wisconsin, the counties that used paper ballots tended to be less white and better educated. The linked article says that all counties in Wisconsin use paper ballots, and thus the claim that there is a difference between counties that use paper ballots and other counties "cannot be true". Are you disputing this, or did you perhaps mean to say Pennsylvania instead of Wisconsin?
- makomk 10y agoThis isn't entirely true. All counties in Wisconsin may use paper ballots as the main form of voting, but there are two different methods of accessible voting offered: direct-recording electronic machines, and machines that print paper ballots. See http://elections.wi.gov/sites/default/files/page/179/voting_equipment_by_municipality_09_2016_pdf_19011.pdf http://elections.wi.gov/sites/default/files/page/179/voting_... (Of course, since only a small percentage of voters use these machines...)
- tomohawk 10y agoThe article has been updated with a note that addresses this. It's at the very end.
- flexie 10y agoAbsolutely, there is no harm done in double checking. In a way it's weird that in 2016 there is no automatic auditing of all elections for congress and president, given how much is at stake.
- learnstats2 10y agoIf Nate Silver's analysis is correct, it suggests strongly that electronic ballots are not for white, educated people. That's a problem in itself, isn't it? What are the reasons for this demographic difference in how the election is conducted?
- SubiculumCode 10y agoIt also probably introduces suppression effects from multicollinearity when entering the same multiple regression, like Nate Silver did.
- i-think 10y agoI don't think this article adds anything to the discussion. It repeats Halderman's earlier point. the important point is that all elections should be audited, and not only if you have statistics suggesting that something might be fishy. And repeats other conclusions which say that there are no signs of something fishy in the currently available data, at least based on initial statistical analyses.
- fanzhang 10y agoIs it not currently the case that there are redundancy tests (i.e. overconstraint tests / unit tests) on election results already? Would a manual miscount of a vote have a near-nil chance of getting caught? If so, I totally agree we need to have samples of all elections verified to at least get bounds on error rates.
- mzw_mzw 10y agoIt's a pity that journalists (and a few self-interested politicians) distorted Halderman's points so dramatically. This stuff's never going to go away, now -- it'll be the foundation of wild conspiracy theories for decades.
- whybroke 10y agoMore damaging would be if it implicitly changes the message from 'audits should always be done' to 'we're doing it because there was monkey business'
- mzw_mzw 10y agoIt already has. Which is doubly unfortunate since there is no evidence whatsoever of monkey business anyway.
- magicalist 10y ago> This stuff's never going to go away, now -- it'll be the foundation of wild conspiracy theories for decades. Eh, the same stuff was said after Bush v Gore and it died down within a few months of inauguration. You can see it happening already, most people are uninterested in pushing this.
- biafra 10y agoWhy do they allow computers for voting at all? There will always be doubt that computers have been manipulated.
- hashkb 10y agoBut paper ballots and scanning machines... those are clearly safer?
- meowface 10y agoYes. Because - assuming you keep the paper ballots around somewhere - someone 2000 miles away can't manipulate what those paper ballots say.
- JadeNB 10y ago> Yes. Because - assuming you keep the paper ballots around somewhere - someone 2000 miles away can't manipulate what those paper ballots say. But someone on the premises can. It's not as if there was never election fraud before computerisation!
- grzm 10y agoTrue. With paper ballots it is more localized. Chains of custody along with observers from multiple parties help prevent collusion. Like all security, you can only minimize, not eliminate, risk.
- meowface 10y agoIt's a lot harder to organize multiple staff at multiple polling stations in multiple precincts - enough so that it's unlikely someone not in on the plan won't notice what's going on, all of whom are willing to cover for each other and who won't leak, and who can somehow protect the ballots against independent auditing, to conspire to manipulate paper ballots than some guy in another country just compromising the polling station and tweaking the numbers slightly to give one side an edge. Election fraud is possible in any system, but it's a lot easier when the system is purely computer-based.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- transfire 10y agoAll we do is make excuses.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoYes. The US is very much a blame society.
- chvid 10y agoYes; HRC lost because she ran a bad campaign, not because the voting machines were hacked.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- grzm 10y agoOnce more unto the breach… Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 6 times over the past month or so (most recently a day ago). If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads: "Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032199 "American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 "Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 "Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 "In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 "Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178
- CPLX 10y agoFortunately meta-comments that comment on the suitability of a thread rather than contribute to it are completely novel. I believe yours may be the first.
- kahrkunne 10y agoThe whole reason people think it's fraud is because the media led people to think that Hillary couldn't possibly lose. When she lost, people started looking for an explanation.
- rincebrain 10y agoI'd posit that Trump making noise about the election being rigged beforehand also contributed to this perception.
- pavlov 10y agoThe result of the popular vote reflected the media's interpretation of pre-election polls: she won by a strong margin, millions of votes. Trump still won the presidency thanks to the peculiar American system that emphasizes the mostly arbitrary state lines over popular representation. Because the results of a single state can swing the total so wildly out of proportion with the state's population, doing recounts against the paper trail (which otherwise would never get looked at) seems like a reasonable thing to do.
- akvadrako 10y agoThe electoral college is not some new information the media wasn't aware of, so it doesn't make sense to say it explains their story about how she couldn't lose.
- davrosthedalek 10y agoThe popular vote is meaningless. Everybody knew the system. There is no incentive to vote in states-not-perceived-as-swing-states. It's not clear from this election who would have one a straight up popular vote. Also: The voting system America has is an important step to protect minority groups, that is, small population states. Maybe the winner-takes-all in the states has to be modified.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoThe president is meant to represent the populace more closely than it does, as should the House. The Senate is meant to protect less populace states. Really, the problem is capping the number of representatives at around 450. We should have something like 1000-3000 members of the house, which if distributed by population would fix most people's problems with the electoral college. Basically, Congress got selfish and broke the balance of power for the country to entrench their own, and now the states that don't do much have too much say, and basically slow the country down.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoHow quickly things change: “Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.” - Hillary Clinton “When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines our democracy,” - Barack Obama https://www.google.com/amp/newsinfo.inquirer.net/829936/clinton-warns-trump-is-threatening-us-democracy/amp?client=ms-android-google https://www.google.com/amp/newsinfo.inquirer.net/829936/clin... "Give me a break, @realDonaldTrump. You’re not losing because it’s rigged. You’re losing because we see through your creepy bullying." "Anyone with children knows that whining about imaginary cheating is the last refuge of the sore loser, @realDonaldTrump." - Elizabeth Warren https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/788743064009388032?s=09 https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/788743064009388032...
- noobermin 10y agoTo be fair, neither Obama nor Clinton have commented on this.
- tgb 10y agoI agree that there's hypocrisy going on, but I haven't seen Clinton or Obama or Warren claim fraud. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- mimimimi 10y agoThe hypocresy is from the side that refused to denounce Trump when he was foaming at the mouth yelling riggeeed! And now they don't like it when some people, not clinton nor obama, ask questions.
- analog31 10y agoRepublican state governments have been claiming election fraud for years, as a justification for passing Voter ID laws.
- tgb 10y agoPoor timing in my part: looks like Clinton's team is joining the recount effort. http://nytimes.com/2016/11/26/us/politics/clinton-camp-will-join-push-for-wisconsin-ballot-recount.html http://nytimes.com/2016/11/26/us/politics/clinton-camp-will-...
- justAsking2017 10y agoHas anyone noted that Trump sounding off about election rigging is a perfect ploy for one who knew the election would be rigged in their favor? In response, the opposition made strong claims that elections cannot be rigged, in spite of the verified evidence of experts that they can be rigged. Net result: Trump wins an 'upset' election, that was actually rigged in his favor, whilst the opposition cannot bring itself to claim that is was rigged, as that would be a contradiction of their earlier defense of the voting system's integrity. There already exists a flawless system for ensuring 100% accurate voting results: a distributed consensus network utilizing a public block chain. Voters get assigned public/private key pairs upon registration. Their vote is a simple transaction on the blockchain which they can validate anytime they want.
- throwanem 10y agoHas anyone noticed that "blockchain" has become the new "rewrite"? Except that I've never seen anyone rely on a conspiracy theory to argue for a rewrite.
- pg314 10y agoIf a voter can validate their vote at any time, the system is susceptible to coercion and vote buying. From what I've read most experts seem to agree that paper voting is the safest.
- leereeves 10y agoAlso susceptible to hackers who get access to the voter's private key. It's not "a flawless system for ensuring 100% accurate voting results".
- npiazza83 10y agoI don't understand how our government can fight against the widespread use of strong encryption but in the same breath insist that it is the ONLY way to conduct an election? This argument that everyone's vote or at least the default method of voting MUST be absolutely inviolately private and secure while our most personal conversations and details of our lives be matters of government scrutiny seems, to put it in the most charitable light, "inconsistent". A much more plausible explanation would seem to me to be that making voting more accessible regardless of security implications will change the voting demographics in ways that haven't been vetted and agreed upon by both parties in our two party system.
- mark_l_watson 10y agoA bit off topic but: our country has a real problem that was hit home last night by a comment made by a dinner guest. He is a democrat (my wife and I are also registered democrats) and was over joyed at the prospect of a recount and/or electoral college delegates putting Clinton in the White House. I pointed out how disruptive this would be to the country and the fact that Clinton has acknowledged that Trump won, and that Trump will probably end up with close to 2/3 of the electoral votes, kind of a landslide. I stated that we could have mass violence in this country if the election were overturned this late after the election. Our friend said that mass violence was better than a Trump presidency, which seems like a really stupid point of view. I find it troubling that his view seems to be reflected by many people. In my opinion, we should respect the office of presidency, give Trump a "honeymoon" period to see what he actually does, and most importantly, get very politically active before the next interim elections.
- james-watson 10y ago> I stated we could have mass violence in this country if the election were overturned this late after the election. "Could"? There will be a civil war if Trump's presidency is revoked. Count on it. By the way, how many Democrats are there in the Army, Navy and Air Force? How about the National Guard? Law enforcement? How many Democrats own guns? Democrats are funny people. "Mass violence is better than a Trump presidency." Be careful what you wish for.
- krapp 10y ago>Democrats are funny people. "Mass violence is better than a Trump presidency." And yet Republicans have been using crypto-revolutionary language for years, especially after deciding to make the Tea Party their proxy in order to gin up fears of Obama's "radical marxist ideology". This isn't a matter of only one party or the other wanting bloodshed. The Second Amendment has deeply ingrained into the American political consciousness the premise that revolutionary violence is not only justifiable but periodically necessary for a free state - that ideal, coupled with the polarized political atmosphere that requires everyone to view their opponents as evil and their every political action illegitimate, makes violence seem inevitable. Luckily for our Republic, far more American armchair revolutionaries are willing to talk about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants than are willing to do the gardening themselves.
- kenesom1 10y agoIn 2013, the supreme court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. As a result, "fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in 2016. [...] This was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act." [0] For instance, this was the first election in Wisconsin where voters were required to show a photo ID, a measure which barred 300,000 people from voting. Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin was only 22,525 votes. In addition to voter suppression, there were also large unexplained discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts. [1] [0] https://www.thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-rights-was-the-most-under-covered-story-of-2016/ https://www.thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-... [1] http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/can-we-count-election-results-exit-poll-discrepancies-and-voter-suppression-are http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/can-we-count-election-...
- james-watson 10y agoI can't go to a bar or buy alcohol/tobacco without showing ID. Why should I be able to vote for the country's future without ID?
- kenesom1 10y agoThe voter ID law in Wisconsin disqualified 9% of its registered voters. The right to vote is protected by 5 constitutional amendments and isn't conditional upon obtaining a state-issued photo ID. Requiring a photo ID is akin to a poll tax (24th amendment). There's no evidence that photo IDs make elections more secure, since voter-impersonation fraud is practically non-existent [0]. [0] http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-why-voter-id-laws-are-evil-20141013-column.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-why-voter-i...
- james-watson 10y agoIn what meta-logical wonderland is requiring ID equivalent to a poll tax?
- 10y ago