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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 tho

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.
- plasticchris 8y ago
  Like the scene from gangs of new York? Where they vote, shave, vote again...
- masonic 8y ago
  a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote You can indentify large numbers of such candidates with high accuracy even without complex programming, let alone anything approaching AI, and the number of prospects can be huge in registrars which don't purge dead/moved voters. There is often an order of magnitude more unvoted ballots than the vote margin for most offices and measures. And generally, the party central committees get both registration data and turnout data for the entire county for free.
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  If you control the machines, then it's actually pretty easy - you simply alter the votes of people who actually voted. There's no paper receipt or general mechanism for voters to verify they voted how they think they did. And it's absent for a good reason, which is that a nonrepudiatable vote receipt opens elections to coercion. A malicious machine could use a registration database (available to campaigns) to target elderly or otherwise likely tech unsavvy voters - people, who even if they found out their vote was altered, would probably have their complaints dismissed as user error like butterfly ballots in 2000. If your manipulation is spread across counties, and flips what would have already been a close election, it would almost certainly be undetected. Even if it was detected, the winning party (who doesn't even have to be in on the con) will defend the result. And without ironclad evidence of malfeasance, courts will be hesitant to give the appearance of overturning an election result. It's critical that we have real security in our elections.
rdtsc 8y ago
So have both? > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals. ...unless you make even a single mistake in your assumption of who will keep the secret or who will not vote so you can vote in their place.
  - masonic 8y ago
    But it's essentially risk-free. A false voter has left behind no identification, and video at the polling place is not allowed. Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless.
    - Redoubts 8y ago
      > Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless. That seems incorrect.
      - masonic 8y ago
        It is correct. Think about it. How would you pull that ballot back out of the system to invalidate its votes? Those votes are by definition secret.

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.

plasticchris 8y ago
Like the scene from gangs of new York? Where they vote, shave, vote again...
masonic 8y ago
a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote You can indentify large numbers of such candidates with high accuracy even without complex programming, let alone anything approaching AI, and the number of prospects can be huge in registrars which don't purge dead/moved voters. There is often an order of magnitude more unvoted ballots than the vote margin for most offices and measures. And generally, the party central committees get both registration data and turnout data for the entire county for free.
charleslmunger 8y ago
If you control the machines, then it's actually pretty easy - you simply alter the votes of people who actually voted. There's no paper receipt or general mechanism for voters to verify they voted how they think they did. And it's absent for a good reason, which is that a nonrepudiatable vote receipt opens elections to coercion. A malicious machine could use a registration database (available to campaigns) to target elderly or otherwise likely tech unsavvy voters - people, who even if they found out their vote was altered, would probably have their complaints dismissed as user error like butterfly ballots in 2000. If your manipulation is spread across counties, and flips what would have already been a close election, it would almost certainly be undetected. Even if it was detected, the winning party (who doesn't even have to be in on the con) will defend the result. And without ironclad evidence of malfeasance, courts will be hesitant to give the appearance of overturning an election result. It's critical that we have real security in our elections.

rdtsc 8y ago

So have both? > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals.

crooked-v 8y ago
> But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals. ...unless you make even a single mistake in your assumption of who will keep the secret or who will not vote so you can vote in their place.
- masonic 8y ago
  But it's essentially risk-free. A false voter has left behind no identification, and video at the polling place is not allowed. Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless.
  - Redoubts 8y ago
    > Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless. That seems incorrect.
    - masonic 8y ago
      It is correct. Think about it. How would you pull that ballot back out of the system to invalidate its votes? Those votes are by definition secret.