5 ms·

> tl;dr, it's not hard to hack paper! True, but it is significantly (as in several orders of magnitude) harder to hack paper at a national scale than it is to

by eric_h 9y ago

> tl;dr, it's not hard to hack paper! True, but it is significantly (as in several orders of magnitude) harder to hack paper at a national scale than it is to hack an electronic voting record at a national scale. Hacking paper requires people physically interacting with that paper to subvert it. That amounts to 1+ person per box of paper votes. Electronics just needs the one person who discovered and exploited the vulnerability.

jrimbault 9y ago
I think we can assume quite a long chain of people per box. And it quickly becomes unmaintenable, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead".
- eric_h 9y ago
  Indeed, my back of the napkin was ~1+ conspirator per ballot box, assuming many boxes per polling place. Making a conspiracy like that work at US scale would require a small country's worth of conspirators which really, really wouldn't be able to hide from the light of day for very long.
zanny 9y ago
Except we aren't talking about independent or private actors. We are talking about the Russian government. Infiltrating and manipulating nationwide votes becomes a real possibility with resources of that scale. It would take an immense amount of reorganization of trust, but open hardware verifiable (both in person and on some kind of trustless ledger akin to a blockchain) voting systems would be more secure against such national actors, because there would be no back room to burn the paper in. If the machine is public and you can trust it, and you can trace the results nationally to insure the results were accurate, you have more security than you have now.
- justadeveloper2 9y ago
  That's total out and out bullshit and I'm surprised anyone dared post that on here. We're intelligent people you know and the "Muh Russia" narrative is not only dead, it is also buried. It was an out and out lie that only got traction due to the media being completely partisan and focused on creating outcomes instead of doing their job which is to objectively report on current events.
justadeveloper2 9y ago
Also, you can't just stuff a ballot box--the number of people voting has to match the count of registered voters, so if you are stuffing you have the problem of also dealing with somehow getting rid of the legitimate ballots.
smileysteve 9y ago
> harder to hack paper at a national scale than it is to hack an electronic voting record at a national scale To hack the U.S 2016 votes you'd only need to flip a few counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Fl.

by eric_h 9y ago

jrimbault 9y ago

I think we can assume quite a long chain of people per box. And it quickly becomes unmaintenable, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead".

eric_h 9y ago
Indeed, my back of the napkin was ~1+ conspirator per ballot box, assuming many boxes per polling place. Making a conspiracy like that work at US scale would require a small country's worth of conspirators which really, really wouldn't be able to hide from the light of day for very long.

zanny 9y ago

Except we aren't talking about independent or private actors. We are talking about the Russian government. Infiltrating and manipulating nationwide votes becomes a real possibility with resources of that scale. It would take an immense amount of reorganization of trust, but open hardware verifiable (both in person and on some kind of trustless ledger akin to a blockchain) voting systems would be more secure against such national actors, because there would be no back room to burn the paper in. If the machine is public and you can trust it, and you can trace the results nationally to insure the results were accurate, you have more security than you have now.

justadeveloper2 9y ago
That's total out and out bullshit and I'm surprised anyone dared post that on here. We're intelligent people you know and the "Muh Russia" narrative is not only dead, it is also buried. It was an out and out lie that only got traction due to the media being completely partisan and focused on creating outcomes instead of doing their job which is to objectively report on current events.

justadeveloper2 9y ago

Also, you can't just stuff a ballot box--the number of people voting has to match the count of registered voters, so if you are stuffing you have the problem of also dealing with somehow getting rid of the legitimate ballots.

smileysteve 9y ago

> harder to hack paper at a national scale than it is to hack an electronic voting record at a national scale To hack the U.S 2016 votes you'd only need to flip a few counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Fl.