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They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system
- terryschiavo22 7y agoThis isn't a complicated problem. State election agencies are underfunded and have to cut corners in order to survive. A simple federal cash infusion would solve 70% of this problem. The other 30% is coming up with sufficient election machine standards.
- rectang 7y agoIt isn't technically complicated, but it is politically complicated: free and fair elections are not in everyone's interest. The technical problem will continue to persist (or will be reintroduced!) so long as it benefits someone in power to have a broken system in place.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI think that's an important point. For a lot of people in US politics it's more important to "win" than to have fair elections.
- peteradio 7y agoThis problem was solved millenia ago, no focus group needed. The problem is power interests standing in the way of simple solutions. More money for more polls, hell yes. More money for "better machines" fuck no, that money goes to no good.
- paulgb 7y agoIt's bizarre to me that elections are not considered a central component of natural security. It doesn't matter how many nuclear submarines you have if the very means of government are vulnerable to cyber espionage because of severe underfunding.
- throwaway2048 7y agoit isn't an accident
- throwanem 7y agoWe could vote on paper for the same people we've been voting for, and we'd still end up with the same problems.
- joshfraser 7y agoIt would be a lot easier to trust an electronic voting system if it was open-source, open-hardware, and votes were recorded on a public blockchain.
- mi100hael 7y agoVoting is one of the very few use-cases I can think of where Blockchain would actually be a valuable and differentiating addition.
- jammygit 7y agoIm a blockchain noob, but if the election was driven by blockchain, how would one protect against Chinese mining warehouses trying to gain control of the network? What would a double spend attack look like? Again, just a blockchain noob asking noob questions
- forgotmypw3 7y agoI don't think blockchain necessarily means anyone being able to make blocks.
- jammygit 7y agoSo the important part is the visibility of the blockchain, not the distributed control? One could still verify whether tampering had occurred?
- forgotmypw3 7y agoIn my forum project, I use blockchain-like elements in the sense that when one replies to an existing comment, they include its hash in the reply text, which is then PGP-signed. It is not a chain, however, more like a tree/web. And anyone can inspect the tree and re-verify its validity. What is on the tree, however, is decided by me, the webmaster-operator. If there are troll comments that I want removed, they're gone. But I cannot forge something by another user, because I do not have their private key. And anyone else can fork the forum and append to the tree in their own way, and I cannot stop them.
- 5trokerac3 7y ago> “To say that they don’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say that nothing untoward happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we don’t have the evidence of it.” What kind of "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" nonsense is this? Why doesn't this article talk about how DHS was caught red-handed hacking into GA election systems?
- WillPostForFood 7y agoBecause it wasn't true: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigation-shows-dhs-did-not-hack-georgia-state-computers https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigatio...
- sciurus 7y agoThen Secretary of State and now Governor Brian Kemp has a history of falsely claiming groups he doesn't like are hacking GA election systems. https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/probe-georgia-democratic-party-prompts-fresh-scrutiny-brian-kemp/AElKvktttgsz5UgJbiXgyO/ https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/prob...
- cjslep 7y agoOne way to make it harder for those who "own" the voting system to rig it would be to reform the voting system itself so that it isn't the first-past-the-post winner-take-all system we have today.
- ataturk 7y agoIf you're really serious about that then "simple majority" should give way to county or some other territorial breakdown which would limit the effects of gerrymandering and urban concentration of voters. I grew up in upstate NY. The problem with upstate is that ALL the major policies are for the benefit of NYC and nothing else happens. That means everyone in rural parts of the state is disenfranchised regardless of whether they vote, their needs aren't being met, which is why upstate is full of ghost towns--everyone that could leave got out. I'm all for democratic reforms, but that doesn't mean destroying conservatism in the process. I'm also in favor of Voter Id, not counting illegal immigrants in the census, and disfavor any and all of the current ploys at creating permanent Democrat-Socialist majorities because Marxism is deadly and we had enough of that in the 20th century.
- dbcurtis 7y agoI would feel better if these folks https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15 https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15 helped establish the best practices for voting machine approval. Seriously, what does it say about our society that it is harder to deploy a slot machine in Reno than a voting machine in Peoria?
- organsnyder 7y agoMoney. I work in healthcare. We have a much higher regulation burden on how care is paid for compared to how it is actually delivered.
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoI recall compliance with the NV Gaming Control Board's processes to be painless compared to other regulated markets such as health care, but this is from the 80's. Can you say something about one dimension of the comparison such as change control in both cases?
- 1024core 7y agoIt's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in the Congress, nothing gets done about it.
- hannasanarion 7y agoThis is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump. Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it, Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their voting record. https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_department_appoints_special_prosecutor/dhpcbdc/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_departm...
- rectang 7y agoThis isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine of Chicago. It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do not serve their interest"), we can have a less inflamed discussion. My rejoinder to the grandparent is, "some states are better than others". This is well known, and the correlation with party is well known as well.
- hannasanarion 7y agoCuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio. Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has been for a very long time. Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in favor of more secure and less money-influenced elections, all Republicans opposed.
- tptacek 7y agoIf you want to have strong opinions about voting security, you should do as Matt Blaze recommends and sign up to be an election judge. I did it after my business partner 'lvh did, presumably at Blaze's urging, and he's right: you really can't comprehend fully what's going on in an election until you've worked on one firsthand. A lot of things you'd be inclined to think are major security problems probably aren't, and the converse is also true. Wherever you are, it's probably easy to sign up (I did online) and they'll likely pay you to do it.
- the_snooze 7y agoSome people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by immersing yourself in the process and the people who do it. For example, one often-overlooked advantage of traditional in-person paper voting is that you're entitled to spoil your ballot and request a fresh one. This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof, as there's no guarantee that the ballot in the photo is the same as what was submitted.
- paulgb 7y ago> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amenghra 7y agoOnce you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your credentials to vote.
- spenrose 7y ago"VotingWorks is a non-profit building a secure, affordable, open-source voting machine." https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-machines/ https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-machi...
- davidw 7y agoHappy with my Senator Ron Wyden's take on this: paper ballots. He's also mentioned in the article. Our system here in Oregon works pretty well: you vote by mail with paper ballots and there's automatic voter registration.
- neilv 7y agoOne of the downsides of vote-by-mail is that it makes some ways of buying votes easier. But it does have the upside of making participation easier (especially for people overburdened with work or other responsibilities). And the physical paper auditing trail makes it immensely better than all the electronic systems without that record.
- davidw 7y agoIt's not perfect - another potential flaw is late breaking information that might lead some people to change their votes. Still, compared to the mess where people don't vote because of long lines and taking time off work (most western countries vote on weekends) and so on... I think it's good. Now we just need more ranked choice voting.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago> late breaking information There's a dark money documentary about this. These companies funnel thousands into an LLC, print thousands of fliers and they arrive 2-3 days before the election (https://deadline.com/2018/11/dark-money-kimberly-reed-pbs-interview-news-1202494050/ https://deadline.com/2018/11/dark-money-kimberly-reed-pbs-in...)
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoI believe in Oregon you can change your vote right up until election day.
- davidw 7y agoNope. > Can I change my mind after I've returned the ballot? > No. Your ballot has been cast as soon as you deposit it in the mailbox or at a drop site. After that, you cannot receive a new ballot to re-vote. From https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-mail https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-mail
- UweSchmidt 7y agoNo machines are needed for voting. Votes should be counted manually. Several tiers if error correction ensure honest counting and no manipulation. Counters should be paid well and be recruited from all parts of society.
- specialist 7y agoTabulation is the smallest part of the election administration software stack. Even when ballots are counted manually, vendors would still get their cheddar.
- Izkata 7y agoThat was a large part of the "hanging chad" controversy in the year 2000 US elections, though...
- Animats 7y agoWe need a Democrat to buy an election company. Then legislation for voting transparency will sail through the Senate.
- e40 7y agoThis is 100% snark and 100% true, at the same time.
- jakeogh 7y agoIt's really not. The US is (well was...) dominated by a uni-party. They usually only really need to rig primaries.
- e40 7y agoI think you missed the point. Had HRC become president, she would have likely been impeached (in the House, not Senate) over emails. We have a criminal in office now who has made it 2 years without impeachment. There are two parties are a double standard. If the Republicans thought votes were being stolen by Democrats, there would be swift and strong action.
- jakeogh 7y agoThe RINO's as we call them are indistinguishable from the DINO's. The "criminal" you referred to terrifies them, and rightly so. Jeb! was supposed to lose to Clinton. Bush Sr. referred to Bill as his son. They vacationed with the Bin Ladens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-oU3Hqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-oU3Hqg
- techrich 7y agoOr how about we don't use a computer at all, something as important as elections should have nothing to do with a computer. If the russians are that good at hacking elections, why take the chance?
- ryanmarsh 7y agoThe dichotomy between our pride in the power of the individual to cast their vote and be represented in government, and the facts of how voting and vote counting happens (the security of the systems and the conflicts of interest involved) is so stark a contrast that I can only assume there are forces at work which have achieved full capture.
- specialist 7y agoJournalist Andrew Gumbel called this "America's recurring amnesia." Steal This Vote [2005] https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-Democracy/dp/1560256761 https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-Democracy/d... As an (burnt out) election integrity activist, I'd say not much has changed.
- Stokes22 7y agoThis is a concrete action that is happening right now-- Tulsi Gabbard's bill to have all votes secured by PAPER BALLOT BACKUP: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1946...
- Stokes22 7y agoPaper Ballot Backup Current bill to do just that: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1946...