5 ms·

I'm of the opinion that the headline is true, but only vacuously -- foreign agents are not a threat to our elections (except where they attempt to directly comp

I'm of the opinion that the headline is true, but only vacuously -- foreign agents are not a threat to our elections (except where they attempt to directly compromise voting infrastructure), and similarly the threat from bad voting machines is extremely small. There are enough checks in the system (bipartisan counting and validation committees) that a pure digital compromise of an election that would not be flagged and detected is very small. There are much more pressing matters, like access to voting stations (both distance and time), voter roll purging, ballot design flaws that make voting fundamentally error prone, and (controversially) a lack of identification requirements for elections that make certain classes of fraud difficult to detect. I think on balance, all-remote elections, like Oregon has had for a while, and I think Washington now too, are the best balance here. There are certain vulnerabilities around buying, compelling, and selectively harvesting votes, but with universal cell phones, "proof of vote" is too easy to obtain anyway so those ships have mostly sailed, and it seems like a reasonable tradeoff to make.

Someone1234 7y ago
How do you do "bipartisan counting" and validation in an all digital voting system? Reading the same digital information twice, doesn't verify it. If you have paper ballots, sure, but the US does not have paper ballots in some states and won't by the next national election. And even if they did (as many do), few states have a uniform system of random vote audits. So I'm not sure what you're referring to with this: > There are enough checks in the system (bipartisan counting and validation committees) that a pure digital compromise of an election that would not be flagged and detected is very small. I literally read the Diebold Voting machine source code (and tabulator) that was leaked (twice). There's nothing remotely like that in there. There's no facility to do that. And while most of those are now retired, there's similar machines that work exactly the same way still in usage.
- andrewla 7y ago
  > US does not have paper ballots and won't by the next national election This isn't true universally, in fact, fair to say it is rarely true [1]. Often the vote is tabulated electronically, but there is always a bipartisan committee overseeing random re-tabulations and recounts as a matter of course. In the process of rolling up results, there are cross-checks with voter rolls that make certain types of ballot stuffing infeasible (that is, an attack would have to be a read/modify/write). There are also state departments that are tasked with overseeing the general quality of elections that will spot outliers and investigate. It's always possible that corruption or partisan efforts will bypass scrutiny (and there have been several iffy cases of precincts in previous election cycles) but that has been a problem even pre-electronic equipment. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... EDIT: the parent post has been modified to be slightly less aggressive in its claims, including limiting the scope to "some states". Also added "And even if they did (as many do), few states have a uniform system of random vote audits", but can easily be refuted [2]. [2] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/post-election-audits635926066.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/post-el...
  - ryanobjc 7y ago
    there are a few states on there that are "DRE w/o paper trail" which is "pure digital voting". Some of those states are now, or will become swing states. As we saw in 2016, where the presidential race was decided on a 400k margin of error across 3 states, it doesn't take much.
    - andrewla 7y ago
      I don't see any swing states on that list -- the pure DRE w/o paper trail states are Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, none of which are swing states, and all of which are being actively challenged. The non-pure ones (that is, paper + DRE w/o paper trail) only include one swing state, Pennsylvania, which is switching to paper ballots for the next election cycle. So I guess voting machines pose a hypothetical threat, if they were adopted more broadly, but the opposite is the trend.
  - rexaliquid 7y ago
    I would really appreciate if my county actually did random re-tabulation or integrity checks on my electronic/paper record ballot.
    - eli 7y ago
      I'm a fan of "Risk Limiting Audits" which is a type of post-election integrity check. It's required by law in a few states.
      - donarb 7y ago
        Washington state does this. Random precincts are post-election audited by matching the electronic count with hand counted ballots, this is done before the counts can be certified.
pochamago 7y ago
I would agree. If the worst we have to worry about from outside influences is that they're sharing posts on FB, I really think their power is over stated.
js2 7y ago
> a lack of identification requirements for elections that make certain classes of fraud difficult to detect. Go on, because let me tell you what this looks like in practice here in NC. Here, you currently have to register and then provide your name to a poll worker, then sign that you voted. The only plausible fraud I can imagine if I wanted to vote more than once is to give the name of someone else and hope they don't show up to vote. There's no way I can imagine to do this at a significant scale without it going undetected. (You'd have to somehow get a bunch of fake names registered or figure out names of people who aren't likely to vote, then find people who are willing to commit fraud to vote under those names and get them to do so during early voting I guess.) Beginning next year, we need to present ID to vote, but the acceptable IDs are fairly restrictive[1,2]. In particular, my college aged daughter who will be voting for the first time next year is not able to use her state college issued ID[3]. Nor can she use her expired DMV learner's permit. Now fortunately, she has a passport and she'll use that. But otherwise, she'd have to get some form of acceptable ID. This is not well-publicized, and I guarantee there will be first time student voters next year who will be surprised to learn they can't vote with their college ID, and must instead to submit a provisional ballot. I am certain this will suppress many many more votes than fraudulent votes, if fraudulent votes even exist. 1. https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id 2. "Of the approximately 850 universities, colleges, state and local employers, including charter schools, and tribal entities that were eligible to have their identification cards approved, 81 institutions submitted requests to the State Board of Elections. We do not in all cases know why the majority of institutions chose not to request approval, but in some cases institutions raised concerns that they believed they could not meet the current statutory requirements." https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Correspondence%20to%20Co-Chairs%202019-03-15.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Corresponde... 3. https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%20Employee%20and%20Tribal%20ID%20Approvals.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%...
- andrewla 7y ago
  Implementation of voter ID laws leaves some room for improvement, to understate it, and there's a reason why I put it last on the list. That said, it does appear that NC will accept student ids from most schools [1], thought of course it's possible that your daughter goes to a school that does not conform to the voter id standards. The attack vector for signature-based roll verification is mostly along the lines of submitting votes for non-voting eligible voters, whose names can easily be harvested from voter rolls and looking at historical voting records (coupled, of course, with inside knowledge of which identities have already been used in previous election cycles, so appear to be active even though the agent in question knows that they are actually inactive). I don't know how common this is -- nobody does -- because it's almost impossible to detect without more information about who is voting. You may be right, and it may be insignificant. It is easy for voter id to verge into voter suppression territory, but to throw an old meme on its side, "voter id is impossible to implement, says only country that does not implement voter id". [1] https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID

Someone1234 7y ago

How do you do "bipartisan counting" and validation in an all digital voting system? Reading the same digital information twice, doesn't verify it. If you have paper ballots, sure, but the US does not have paper ballots in some states and won't by the next national election. And even if they did (as many do), few states have a uniform system of random vote audits. So I'm not sure what you're referring to with this: > There are enough checks in the system (bipartisan counting and validation committees) that a pure digital compromise of an election that would not be flagged and detected is very small. I literally read the Diebold Voting machine source code (and tabulator) that was leaked (twice). There's nothing remotely like that in there. There's no facility to do that. And while most of those are now retired, there's similar machines that work exactly the same way still in usage.

andrewla 7y ago
> US does not have paper ballots and won't by the next national election This isn't true universally, in fact, fair to say it is rarely true [1]. Often the vote is tabulated electronically, but there is always a bipartisan committee overseeing random re-tabulations and recounts as a matter of course. In the process of rolling up results, there are cross-checks with voter rolls that make certain types of ballot stuffing infeasible (that is, an attack would have to be a read/modify/write). There are also state departments that are tasked with overseeing the general quality of elections that will spot outliers and investigate. It's always possible that corruption or partisan efforts will bypass scrutiny (and there have been several iffy cases of precincts in previous election cycles) but that has been a problem even pre-electronic equipment. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... EDIT: the parent post has been modified to be slightly less aggressive in its claims, including limiting the scope to "some states". Also added "And even if they did (as many do), few states have a uniform system of random vote audits", but can easily be refuted [2]. [2] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/post-election-audits635926066.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/post-el...
- ryanobjc 7y ago
  there are a few states on there that are "DRE w/o paper trail" which is "pure digital voting". Some of those states are now, or will become swing states. As we saw in 2016, where the presidential race was decided on a 400k margin of error across 3 states, it doesn't take much.
  - andrewla 7y ago
    I don't see any swing states on that list -- the pure DRE w/o paper trail states are Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, none of which are swing states, and all of which are being actively challenged. The non-pure ones (that is, paper + DRE w/o paper trail) only include one swing state, Pennsylvania, which is switching to paper ballots for the next election cycle. So I guess voting machines pose a hypothetical threat, if they were adopted more broadly, but the opposite is the trend.
- rexaliquid 7y ago
  I would really appreciate if my county actually did random re-tabulation or integrity checks on my electronic/paper record ballot.
  - eli 7y ago
    I'm a fan of "Risk Limiting Audits" which is a type of post-election integrity check. It's required by law in a few states.
    - donarb 7y ago
      Washington state does this. Random precincts are post-election audited by matching the electronic count with hand counted ballots, this is done before the counts can be certified.

pochamago 7y ago

I would agree. If the worst we have to worry about from outside influences is that they're sharing posts on FB, I really think their power is over stated.

js2 7y ago

> a lack of identification requirements for elections that make certain classes of fraud difficult to detect. Go on, because let me tell you what this looks like in practice here in NC. Here, you currently have to register and then provide your name to a poll worker, then sign that you voted. The only plausible fraud I can imagine if I wanted to vote more than once is to give the name of someone else and hope they don't show up to vote. There's no way I can imagine to do this at a significant scale without it going undetected. (You'd have to somehow get a bunch of fake names registered or figure out names of people who aren't likely to vote, then find people who are willing to commit fraud to vote under those names and get them to do so during early voting I guess.) Beginning next year, we need to present ID to vote, but the acceptable IDs are fairly restrictive[1,2]. In particular, my college aged daughter who will be voting for the first time next year is not able to use her state college issued ID[3]. Nor can she use her expired DMV learner's permit. Now fortunately, she has a passport and she'll use that. But otherwise, she'd have to get some form of acceptable ID. This is not well-publicized, and I guarantee there will be first time student voters next year who will be surprised to learn they can't vote with their college ID, and must instead to submit a provisional ballot. I am certain this will suppress many many more votes than fraudulent votes, if fraudulent votes even exist. 1. https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id 2. "Of the approximately 850 universities, colleges, state and local employers, including charter schools, and tribal entities that were eligible to have their identification cards approved, 81 institutions submitted requests to the State Board of Elections. We do not in all cases know why the majority of institutions chose not to request approval, but in some cases institutions raised concerns that they believed they could not meet the current statutory requirements." https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Correspondence%20to%20Co-Chairs%202019-03-15.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Corresponde... 3. https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%20Employee%20and%20Tribal%20ID%20Approvals.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%...

andrewla 7y ago
Implementation of voter ID laws leaves some room for improvement, to understate it, and there's a reason why I put it last on the list. That said, it does appear that NC will accept student ids from most schools [1], thought of course it's possible that your daughter goes to a school that does not conform to the voter id standards. The attack vector for signature-based roll verification is mostly along the lines of submitting votes for non-voting eligible voters, whose names can easily be harvested from voter rolls and looking at historical voting records (coupled, of course, with inside knowledge of which identities have already been used in previous election cycles, so appear to be active even though the agent in question knows that they are actually inactive). I don't know how common this is -- nobody does -- because it's almost impossible to detect without more information about who is voting. You may be right, and it may be insignificant. It is easy for voter id to verge into voter suppression territory, but to throw an old meme on its side, "voter id is impossible to implement, says only country that does not implement voter id". [1] https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID