11 ms·

A used voting machine from the 2016 election

223 points by jpindar 8y ago

joekrill 8y ago
This seems like it would be very interesting but a series of Tweets seems to be just about the worst possible medium for this.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Here's the entire thread (tweets combined): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    Thanks, that's a million times better
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  You can make this argument almost anytime you see "a series of tweets", but I agree this instance is particularly bad. I really wish people would just write a blog post, and link to it with one Tweet.
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    Almost no one would read it. I've done it both ways. People read threads. Blog posts might get traffic if you stumble on an uncontested search term. You might say "just link it on Twitter!" Doesn't work. No one clicks.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Why? To me, it is presented as a long page of posts in chronological order, like a blog post divided into sections.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    For the same reason webpages don't typically put paragraph breaks in between every sentence for long form articles?
    - code_duck 8y ago
      And excessive visual markers between paragraphs makes it the ‘worst possible medium’?
phren0logy 8y ago
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more traction here, but that's likely due to the issue joekrill already pointed out - a tweet stream is annoying and painful. It's too bad, there's a lot of interesting detail here.
js2 8y ago
My county uses a bubble form which I then place into a scanner and I can see the counter on the scanner increment. I can print out a sample ballot from the county website ahead of time. This seems like the best system to me. Most Americans are very familiar with bubble forms and there is a clear paper trail while still allowing electronic counting. The only downside is the cost of the paper ballots, and I suppose, not allowing for last minute changes. I don’t know how accessibility issues are handled, but I believe there are attendants to help with that. There’s just no way I will ever trust an touch screen voting system, especially from a single manufacturer. Maybe a system where a touch screen system from company A prints out a receipt which is then scanned by a scanner from company B and both systems have to match. Maybe. Meanwhile the parties are fighting over voter ID though so I don’t see this getting any real attention.
- brightball 8y ago
  Honestly, I don’t see how people can be concerned about an audit trail without being concerned about voter id. It seems like the two go hand in hand. Why bother with the audit trail if you can’t verify the voters themselves?
  - danharaj 8y ago
    Large scale voter fraud is much more difficult to pull off, especially if the rest of the process is well audited?
  - femto113 8y ago
    One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. One person hacking a voting system can feasibly alter vote totals by hundreds or thousands.
    - tomjakubowski 8y ago
      > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. Yeah, and scaling voter fraud up in many if not all states is _extremely_ hard. You need at least: - a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote at each voting location; even one double-vote could blow your operation - a large number of people who are willing to actually cast the fraudulent ballots - logistics to shuttle your malicious voters between voting locations to cast their multiple ballots, without raising suspicion.
pmoriarty 8y ago
There was a lot of hoopla in the media over easily hackable voting machines before and shortly after the Bush vs Kerry Presidential election. Afterwards, the Democrats screamed fraud and vowed to get rid of those easily hackable voting machines. Then they apparently forgot all about it and moved on. The machines are still there. The vulnerabilities are still there. The results of any election that they play a role in is suspect. Then Trump vs Clinton came around, and it seems no one remembered that the easily hackable voting machines were even there. But they were. What role did they play in the election? Without a paper trail, we may never know. Apart from the travesty that is the easily hackable electronic voting machine, there are also electronic vote counting machines. In my own district, we voted on paper ballots which where then directly placed in to electronic vote counting machines. If those are hacked they can give out any vote total the hacker wants, perhaps just outside the margin required for a manual recount. Any election where either electronic voting machines or electronic vote counting machines were used should not be trusted. When there's no paper trail, it's even worse, but even where there is the laws might not allow a hand recount. The use of either of these types of machines might explain why exit poll numbers and predictions have been so wildly off the mark in recent years.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Exit poll numbers weren't off. Predictions were only off because people ignored the actual polls and inserted their own biases into the interpretation of said polls, and thought popular vote == winning.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    That's my understanding too, that despite being heavily data driven, the Clinton campaign (and most of the polling agencies as well since they were using the same techniques) didn't have anywhere near a correct model for a "likely voter". That biased the results of their total model heavily towards Clinton.
    - pmyteh 8y ago
      It's very hard to come up with reliable likely voter models, not least because there are significant changes in people who vote every time. The opinion polls in the 2017 British general election were out, for example, because in the event unusual numbers of unlikely voters came out to vote Labour. Things were obviously going to be different that time (Labour had elected a deeply unlikey leader and repositioned itself) but no-one had any solid evidence how turnout patterns would change, or to what degree. So yes, inaccurate likely voter modeling is a serious problem. But it's really hard if things are changing, politically.
satellitec4t 8y ago
Twitter is horrible
korethr 8y ago
I would hope that such a device would be wiped and/or factory reset before being auctioned off. However I've worked in IT long enough to know how all too often, that doesn't happen. That said, I believe any claim that there was evidence of this machine having been tampered with or compromised should be viewed with some skepticism unless we can see said evidence side by side with a known-good machine. How is one to evaluate it otherwise if there's nothing to compare it to? Any thing dredged out of that machine's guts could genuinely seem suspicious, but how are we to know such wasn't simply the vendor's incompetence -- especially with as much incompetence in the design of these machines as has been brought to light so far?
- eat_veggies 8y ago
  Is it even possible to have a known-good machine? If we're potentially dealing with state actors here, the entire supply chain could be compromised, so even machines fresh out the factory might have backdoors.
adreamingsoul 8y ago
Someone should give one of these voting machines to mikeselectricstuff.
- dokem 8y ago
  Yea, listening to EEVblog for too long makes my ears hurt. Mike is much more chill.
jonny_eh 8y ago
So was evidence found of tampering or not?
- foobarbecue 8y ago
  No evidence was presented, but lots of attention was gotten. I guess we are waiting in breathless anticipation for the "results". I doubt anyone doing this seriously would post a tweet thread like this before actually doing the work. Does anyone know this guy? Is he competent or something?
lolc 8y ago
While I welcome a teardown of a voting machine I wonder why it's mixed with the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. You'd think there are enough interested parties to make the Russian state an unlikely culprit even if evidence of tampering should be discovered.
- sethherr 8y ago
  Russia tampering in the election isn’t a conspiracy theory. It is a well reported fact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
  - uxp100 8y ago
    The text of lolc's comment says "the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes" Can you say more specifically where your link covers that, I didn't see it.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      The dismissive phrase "conspiracy theory" implies the conspiracy to interfere with the election is in doubt. Others think that it's reasonably well established, and I think the link was to support that. The lack of proof so far that votes were falsified is a separate issue, but given the existence of the conspiracy, it's unclear why one would rule it out.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I wonder why it's mixed with the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. How is that a conspiracy theory? > You'd think there are enough interested parties to make the Russian state an unlikely culprit even if evidence of tampering should be discovered. How many of those interested parties were actually identified as culprits in widespread hacking of election related systems in the 2016 election?
  - 8y ago
blackflame7000 8y ago
We should still use paper records with identifcation. If there is a problem with some people not having access to proper ID lets solve that problem instead of leaving our firewall down on election security to support the people still using ssl so to speak.
walrus01 8y ago
Canadian federal elections are still done on pencil and paper with cardboard ballot boxes. Manually counted, double checked and recounted at each polling station. However, a Canadian election is much simpler because you're voting for just your MP, there's not dozens of choices of things to vote for like sheriffs, state reps, etc. a ballot looks like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=100&client=ubuntu&hs=6vj&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtuIS_iq_cAhWjCTQIHbpRAZEQ_AUICygC&biw=1508&bih=1388 https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=... Provincial and municipal elections happen similarly but occur at different times and on different schedules.
harry8 8y ago
This is one of the few forums where more than a tiny minority would even understand the vocabulary of the analysis as to whether the machines are fraudulent. This is a huge problem and should prevent such machines ever being used. Even if they are 100% fine and better than paper ballots people are relying on third party expertise to say it's ok. Everyone understands or can very quickly, ballot box stuffing, systematic fraudulent counting of paper ballots etc. It's not just being honest in voting and counting it's being obviously so and readily understandable that is critical for democracy. These machines,v even if otherwise perfect, are neither. Don't let them near your election. Surely. It's insane.
foobarbecue 8y ago
In case anyone was actually interested in the outcome of the research, it's here https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html , and so far there's nothing substantial. They say they're going to replace the boot screen.

223 points by jpindar 8y ago

This seems like it would be very interesting but a series of Tweets seems to be just about the worst possible medium for this.

bdcravens 8y ago
Here's the entire thread (tweets combined): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  Thanks, that's a million times better
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
You can make this argument almost anytime you see "a series of tweets", but I agree this instance is particularly bad. I really wish people would just write a blog post, and link to it with one Tweet.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  Almost no one would read it. I've done it both ways. People read threads. Blog posts might get traffic if you stumble on an uncontested search term. You might say "just link it on Twitter!" Doesn't work. No one clicks.
code_duck 8y ago
Why? To me, it is presented as a long page of posts in chronological order, like a blog post divided into sections.
- monocasa 8y ago
  For the same reason webpages don't typically put paragraph breaks in between every sentence for long form articles?
  - code_duck 8y ago
    And excessive visual markers between paragraphs makes it the ‘worst possible medium’?

phren0logy 8y ago

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more traction here, but that's likely due to the issue joekrill already pointed out - a tweet stream is annoying and painful. It's too bad, there's a lot of interesting detail here.

js2 8y ago

My county uses a bubble form which I then place into a scanner and I can see the counter on the scanner increment. I can print out a sample ballot from the county website ahead of time. This seems like the best system to me. Most Americans are very familiar with bubble forms and there is a clear paper trail while still allowing electronic counting. The only downside is the cost of the paper ballots, and I suppose, not allowing for last minute changes. I don’t know how accessibility issues are handled, but I believe there are attendants to help with that. There’s just no way I will ever trust an touch screen voting system, especially from a single manufacturer. Maybe a system where a touch screen system from company A prints out a receipt which is then scanned by a scanner from company B and both systems have to match. Maybe. Meanwhile the parties are fighting over voter ID though so I don’t see this getting any real attention.

brightball 8y ago
Honestly, I don’t see how people can be concerned about an audit trail without being concerned about voter id. It seems like the two go hand in hand. Why bother with the audit trail if you can’t verify the voters themselves?
- danharaj 8y ago
  Large scale voter fraud is much more difficult to pull off, especially if the rest of the process is well audited?
- femto113 8y ago
  One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. One person hacking a voting system can feasibly alter vote totals by hundreds or thousands.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. Yeah, and scaling voter fraud up in many if not all states is _extremely_ hard. You need at least: - a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote at each voting location; even one double-vote could blow your operation - a large number of people who are willing to actually cast the fraudulent ballots - logistics to shuttle your malicious voters between voting locations to cast their multiple ballots, without raising suspicion.

pmoriarty 8y ago

There was a lot of hoopla in the media over easily hackable voting machines before and shortly after the Bush vs Kerry Presidential election. Afterwards, the Democrats screamed fraud and vowed to get rid of those easily hackable voting machines. Then they apparently forgot all about it and moved on. The machines are still there. The vulnerabilities are still there. The results of any election that they play a role in is suspect. Then Trump vs Clinton came around, and it seems no one remembered that the easily hackable voting machines were even there. But they were. What role did they play in the election? Without a paper trail, we may never know. Apart from the travesty that is the easily hackable electronic voting machine, there are also electronic vote counting machines. In my own district, we voted on paper ballots which where then directly placed in to electronic vote counting machines. If those are hacked they can give out any vote total the hacker wants, perhaps just outside the margin required for a manual recount. Any election where either electronic voting machines or electronic vote counting machines were used should not be trusted. When there's no paper trail, it's even worse, but even where there is the laws might not allow a hand recount. The use of either of these types of machines might explain why exit poll numbers and predictions have been so wildly off the mark in recent years.

noobermin 8y ago
Exit poll numbers weren't off. Predictions were only off because people ignored the actual polls and inserted their own biases into the interpretation of said polls, and thought popular vote == winning.
- monocasa 8y ago
  That's my understanding too, that despite being heavily data driven, the Clinton campaign (and most of the polling agencies as well since they were using the same techniques) didn't have anywhere near a correct model for a "likely voter". That biased the results of their total model heavily towards Clinton.
  - pmyteh 8y ago
    It's very hard to come up with reliable likely voter models, not least because there are significant changes in people who vote every time. The opinion polls in the 2017 British general election were out, for example, because in the event unusual numbers of unlikely voters came out to vote Labour. Things were obviously going to be different that time (Labour had elected a deeply unlikey leader and repositioned itself) but no-one had any solid evidence how turnout patterns would change, or to what degree. So yes, inaccurate likely voter modeling is a serious problem. But it's really hard if things are changing, politically.

satellitec4t 8y ago

Twitter is horrible

korethr 8y ago

I would hope that such a device would be wiped and/or factory reset before being auctioned off. However I've worked in IT long enough to know how all too often, that doesn't happen. That said, I believe any claim that there was evidence of this machine having been tampered with or compromised should be viewed with some skepticism unless we can see said evidence side by side with a known-good machine. How is one to evaluate it otherwise if there's nothing to compare it to? Any thing dredged out of that machine's guts could genuinely seem suspicious, but how are we to know such wasn't simply the vendor's incompetence -- especially with as much incompetence in the design of these machines as has been brought to light so far?

eat_veggies 8y ago
Is it even possible to have a known-good machine? If we're potentially dealing with state actors here, the entire supply chain could be compromised, so even machines fresh out the factory might have backdoors.

adreamingsoul 8y ago

Someone should give one of these voting machines to mikeselectricstuff.

dokem 8y ago
Yea, listening to EEVblog for too long makes my ears hurt. Mike is much more chill.

jonny_eh 8y ago

So was evidence found of tampering or not?

foobarbecue 8y ago
No evidence was presented, but lots of attention was gotten. I guess we are waiting in breathless anticipation for the "results". I doubt anyone doing this seriously would post a tweet thread like this before actually doing the work. Does anyone know this guy? Is he competent or something?

lolc 8y ago

While I welcome a teardown of a voting machine I wonder why it's mixed with the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. You'd think there are enough interested parties to make the Russian state an unlikely culprit even if evidence of tampering should be discovered.

sethherr 8y ago
Russia tampering in the election isn’t a conspiracy theory. It is a well reported fact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
- uxp100 8y ago
  The text of lolc's comment says "the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes" Can you say more specifically where your link covers that, I didn't see it.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    The dismissive phrase "conspiracy theory" implies the conspiracy to interfere with the election is in doubt. Others think that it's reasonably well established, and I think the link was to support that. The lack of proof so far that votes were falsified is a separate issue, but given the existence of the conspiracy, it's unclear why one would rule it out.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I wonder why it's mixed with the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. How is that a conspiracy theory? > You'd think there are enough interested parties to make the Russian state an unlikely culprit even if evidence of tampering should be discovered. How many of those interested parties were actually identified as culprits in widespread hacking of election related systems in the 2016 election?
- 8y ago

blackflame7000 8y ago

We should still use paper records with identifcation. If there is a problem with some people not having access to proper ID lets solve that problem instead of leaving our firewall down on election security to support the people still using ssl so to speak.

walrus01 8y ago

Canadian federal elections are still done on pencil and paper with cardboard ballot boxes. Manually counted, double checked and recounted at each polling station. However, a Canadian election is much simpler because you're voting for just your MP, there's not dozens of choices of things to vote for like sheriffs, state reps, etc. a ballot looks like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=100&client=ubuntu&hs=6vj&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtuIS_iq_cAhWjCTQIHbpRAZEQ_AUICygC&biw=1508&bih=1388 https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=... Provincial and municipal elections happen similarly but occur at different times and on different schedules.

harry8 8y ago

This is one of the few forums where more than a tiny minority would even understand the vocabulary of the analysis as to whether the machines are fraudulent. This is a huge problem and should prevent such machines ever being used. Even if they are 100% fine and better than paper ballots people are relying on third party expertise to say it's ok. Everyone understands or can very quickly, ballot box stuffing, systematic fraudulent counting of paper ballots etc. It's not just being honest in voting and counting it's being obviously so and readily understandable that is critical for democracy. These machines,v even if otherwise perfect, are neither. Don't let them near your election. Surely. It's insane.

foobarbecue 8y ago

In case anyone was actually interested in the outcome of the research, it's here https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html , and so far there's nothing substantial. They say they're going to replace the boot screen.