6 ms·

One party is fixated on voter id fraud and ignores the cyber security, the other party i fixated on cyber security and ignores voter id fraud. Both are signific

by jerzyt 6y ago

One party is fixated on voter id fraud and ignores the cyber security, the other party i fixated on cyber security and ignores voter id fraud. Both are significant issues which we should be addressing. An accurate election results should be in everyone's interest.

TTPrograms 6y ago
Are they really both significant issues? A successful cyber attack could enable a single individual to decide multiple elections. A voter id attack could enable at most, what, 10 votes per conspirator? An undetected voter id fraud changing the outcome of an election seems absurd.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  Lack of voter ID, combined with mail-in voting, can lead to fraudulent “ballot harvesting,” where boxes of votes are “found” at the last minute, for example. Also, many people aren’t aware that ballot harvesting is actually legal in some jurisdictions including California. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting
  - busymom0 6y ago
    28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four Elections https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_mil... https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
    - tarlinian 6y ago
      "Went missing" makes this sound way more nefarious than it is. It just means that the ballot wasn't returned (e.g., the person didn't vote. I vote by mail and there are elections where my ballot would have gone missing because I didn't have the time to make myself well informed enough about the candidates to place an informed vote.) I don't exactly see what's so implausible about this.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Hard to do without getting caught, though. Still one ballot per person, so if you submit a ballot on behalf of someone who also tries to vote for themselves, the double vote will get flagged.
    - pochamago 6y ago
      It takes years for people who have died or moved out of state to be removed from the voter list, you could use those names without much concern
      - learc83 6y ago
        Even assuming 1 person could make it through 10-20 precincts per day, you're going to need thousands of attackers to change even a close national election. Coordination on that scale is completely impossible to pull off without detection. This just isn't a feasible attack.
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
        That's a problem for the registration system to handle, it doesn't need to be solved at the ballot box.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      Say a lot of flags are raised, now what do you do? Do-over?
      - learc83 6y ago
        If there are enough double votes that throwing them all out changes the election. Then yes, do-over. The possibility of that happening is basically non-existent though because it would require a coordinated attack by thousands of people to change a national election (even assuming they strategically attack swing states). There's a virtually zero chance that a group effort involving thousands of people isn't uncovered before the attack happens.
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
  - sixothree 6y ago
    If I vote by mail, I darn well expect my vote to be “found”.
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      Obviously. The issue is when you don’t vote by mail and your vote is still “found.”
      - sixothree 6y ago
        Or even proving that has happened on any level.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  Given that last election was actually decided in just a few states, by a low margin, voter ID attack sounds feasible, given well founded and determined adversary. Of course cyber hacking is likely easier, but it’s not fair to fully dismiss even possibility of other attacks.
  - zapita 6y ago
    It’s not about dismissing but prioritizing. Election hacking is an actual, imminent national security threat. Intelligence agencies are scrambling to prevent or mitigate it right now. In-person voting fraud on the other hand, as a meaningful threat, is entirely hypothetical. Imagine if, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, someone said “ok Soviet missiles within reach of the east coast is a threat; but what if vegan extremists blew up the white house tomorrow? Theoretically it could happen, so let’s not dismiss the threat!” That’s how different those two threat profiles actually are.
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      I do think majority of the effort should be spent on protection from hacking, but dismissing other very real attack vector as entirely hypothetical is just naive. Last elections were decided by 80k votes, in a country with 250M eligible voters. With such a tight margins we have a lot of valid attack vectors, not only most obvious hacking ones. Effective organizations are (and should be) able to deal with many risks at once. Do you think that during Cuban missiles crisis all other investigations stopped, and 100% of CIA, FBI, Police, Army etc focused on Cuba?
      - learc83 6y ago
        >With such a tight margins we have a lot of valid attack vectors In person voter fraud--the kind stopped by requiring poll workers to check ID--isn't one of them. You would need thousands of coordinated attackers to change 80k votes. It's just not a feasible attack.
busymom0 6y ago
Pretty much every country in the world required voter-id. Even India with a population of over 900 million voters, securely counted over 600 million votes which was the largest turnout ever few months ago.
edgefield0 6y ago
Get real. Any credible research on the topic of "voter fraud" suggests it's not a significant issue and efforts to combat "voter fraud" are really just disguised efforts to suppress voting by low income and minority voters.
- darawk 6y ago
  There is no evidence that voting machines have been hacked, either. Why is the standard of evidence for one different than the other? And more to the point, since when does patching a vulnerability require evidence of exploitation. We wouldn't accept Microsoft saying "There's no evidence of this Outlook vulnerability being exploited in the wild, we're not going to fix it". We certainly shouldn't accept that reasoning for our elections.
  - learc83 6y ago
    >Why is the standard of evidence for one different than the other? Because hacking one voting machine potentially allows one person or a small group of people to alter thousands of votes. That person (or persons) has no way to alter anyway near that many votes through in person voter fraud. The amount of effort it would take to alter the results of an election through in person voter fraud makes it extremely difficult to pull off--particularly without detection. Additionally there are downsides to voter id laws. The most troubling is demonstrably lower minority turn out. There are no similar downsides to methods like requiring paper receipts for voting machines. Basically the cost benefit analysis is in favor of hardening electronic voting, but not in favor of voter id laws.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      Detection is much more gnarly than you give it credit. A pretty likely scenario is that one side will claim that fraud was detected, and the other side will deny it. And both side will try to suppress and deplatform each other. Youtube, twitter, facebook will pick a side. And whoever loses will fume with resentment. Maybe they pick up weapons. If they are right that the election was stolen and that fact is suppressed, they will certainly be justified. If they are right - which is a big hypothetical. Because the detection will be drowned in noise.
zapita 6y ago
One party is fixated on getting less people to vote, by any means necessary (including illegal means). The other party is fixated on getting more people to vote. Any other framing of this issue is a distraction.
- darawk 6y ago
  That is an orthogonal issue. Turnout is unrelated to security. Identifying voters, and ensuring the integrity of the voting mechanism are both important security issues.
  - zapita 6y ago
    > That is an orthogonal issue. Turnout is unrelated to security We are both talking about election security. The reason we are talking past each other is that you’re describing a neat hypothetical model that fits your belief of what is worth discussing. Whereas I’m describing a nexus of actual threats, carried out by actual attackers, in the context of an overall strategy. You’re welcome to ignore the full context of those threats, but that will result in your model being worthless. > Identifying voters, and ensuring the integrity of the voting mechanism are both important security issues. A meaningless statement without clarifying the context. Let’s continue your list of possible threats to the integrity and fairness of the US electoral system: - Voter ID fraud - Hacking of voting machines - Hacking of the tally system - Hacking of government contractors developing and operating the election infrastructure - Illegal purging of voter rolls - Corruption of election officials - Voter intimidation - gerrymandering - Targeted shuttering of voting stations - Targeted disinformation in crucial counties - Exfiltration of polling data for precise targeting of attacks - Hacking of political parties (headquarters and campaign staff) All these threats are being carried out right now against the US election system, in a coordinated fashion, by the same nexus of attackers. They are interlocking attacks supporting the same goal: minority rule and a transition to an authoritarian regime. This threat is as serious as it gets. Of course there is one exception in the list: voter ID fraud, in person or by mail, is not a threat. No serious election security expert worries about it. That would be like worrying about a Martian invasion in the middle of WW2: there are more pressing and realistic concerns to worry about... There is no serious coordinated effort to commit such fraud, and as far as I know, there never has been. Hopefully this context will help you understand why you are mistaken in framing election security around the non-issue of voter ID fraud.

by jerzyt 6y ago

TTPrograms 6y ago

Are they really both significant issues? A successful cyber attack could enable a single individual to decide multiple elections. A voter id attack could enable at most, what, 10 votes per conspirator? An undetected voter id fraud changing the outcome of an election seems absurd.

TechBro8615 6y ago
Lack of voter ID, combined with mail-in voting, can lead to fraudulent “ballot harvesting,” where boxes of votes are “found” at the last minute, for example. Also, many people aren’t aware that ballot harvesting is actually legal in some jurisdictions including California. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting
- busymom0 6y ago
  28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four Elections https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_mil... https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
  - tarlinian 6y ago
    "Went missing" makes this sound way more nefarious than it is. It just means that the ballot wasn't returned (e.g., the person didn't vote. I vote by mail and there are elections where my ballot would have gone missing because I didn't have the time to make myself well informed enough about the candidates to place an informed vote.) I don't exactly see what's so implausible about this.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Hard to do without getting caught, though. Still one ballot per person, so if you submit a ballot on behalf of someone who also tries to vote for themselves, the double vote will get flagged.
  - pochamago 6y ago
    It takes years for people who have died or moved out of state to be removed from the voter list, you could use those names without much concern
    - learc83 6y ago
      Even assuming 1 person could make it through 10-20 precincts per day, you're going to need thousands of attackers to change even a close national election. Coordination on that scale is completely impossible to pull off without detection. This just isn't a feasible attack.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      That's a problem for the registration system to handle, it doesn't need to be solved at the ballot box.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Say a lot of flags are raised, now what do you do? Do-over?
    - learc83 6y ago
      If there are enough double votes that throwing them all out changes the election. Then yes, do-over. The possibility of that happening is basically non-existent though because it would require a coordinated attack by thousands of people to change a national election (even assuming they strategically attack swing states). There's a virtually zero chance that a group effort involving thousands of people isn't uncovered before the attack happens.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
- sixothree 6y ago
  If I vote by mail, I darn well expect my vote to be “found”.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Obviously. The issue is when you don’t vote by mail and your vote is still “found.”
    - sixothree 6y ago
      Or even proving that has happened on any level.
justapassenger 6y ago
Given that last election was actually decided in just a few states, by a low margin, voter ID attack sounds feasible, given well founded and determined adversary. Of course cyber hacking is likely easier, but it’s not fair to fully dismiss even possibility of other attacks.
- zapita 6y ago
  It’s not about dismissing but prioritizing. Election hacking is an actual, imminent national security threat. Intelligence agencies are scrambling to prevent or mitigate it right now. In-person voting fraud on the other hand, as a meaningful threat, is entirely hypothetical. Imagine if, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, someone said “ok Soviet missiles within reach of the east coast is a threat; but what if vegan extremists blew up the white house tomorrow? Theoretically it could happen, so let’s not dismiss the threat!” That’s how different those two threat profiles actually are.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    I do think majority of the effort should be spent on protection from hacking, but dismissing other very real attack vector as entirely hypothetical is just naive. Last elections were decided by 80k votes, in a country with 250M eligible voters. With such a tight margins we have a lot of valid attack vectors, not only most obvious hacking ones. Effective organizations are (and should be) able to deal with many risks at once. Do you think that during Cuban missiles crisis all other investigations stopped, and 100% of CIA, FBI, Police, Army etc focused on Cuba?
    - learc83 6y ago
      >With such a tight margins we have a lot of valid attack vectors In person voter fraud--the kind stopped by requiring poll workers to check ID--isn't one of them. You would need thousands of coordinated attackers to change 80k votes. It's just not a feasible attack.

busymom0 6y ago

Pretty much every country in the world required voter-id. Even India with a population of over 900 million voters, securely counted over 600 million votes which was the largest turnout ever few months ago.

edgefield0 6y ago

Get real. Any credible research on the topic of "voter fraud" suggests it's not a significant issue and efforts to combat "voter fraud" are really just disguised efforts to suppress voting by low income and minority voters.

darawk 6y ago
There is no evidence that voting machines have been hacked, either. Why is the standard of evidence for one different than the other? And more to the point, since when does patching a vulnerability require evidence of exploitation. We wouldn't accept Microsoft saying "There's no evidence of this Outlook vulnerability being exploited in the wild, we're not going to fix it". We certainly shouldn't accept that reasoning for our elections.
- learc83 6y ago
  >Why is the standard of evidence for one different than the other? Because hacking one voting machine potentially allows one person or a small group of people to alter thousands of votes. That person (or persons) has no way to alter anyway near that many votes through in person voter fraud. The amount of effort it would take to alter the results of an election through in person voter fraud makes it extremely difficult to pull off--particularly without detection. Additionally there are downsides to voter id laws. The most troubling is demonstrably lower minority turn out. There are no similar downsides to methods like requiring paper receipts for voting machines. Basically the cost benefit analysis is in favor of hardening electronic voting, but not in favor of voter id laws.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Detection is much more gnarly than you give it credit. A pretty likely scenario is that one side will claim that fraud was detected, and the other side will deny it. And both side will try to suppress and deplatform each other. Youtube, twitter, facebook will pick a side. And whoever loses will fume with resentment. Maybe they pick up weapons. If they are right that the election was stolen and that fact is suppressed, they will certainly be justified. If they are right - which is a big hypothetical. Because the detection will be drowned in noise.

zapita 6y ago

One party is fixated on getting less people to vote, by any means necessary (including illegal means). The other party is fixated on getting more people to vote. Any other framing of this issue is a distraction.

darawk 6y ago
That is an orthogonal issue. Turnout is unrelated to security. Identifying voters, and ensuring the integrity of the voting mechanism are both important security issues.
- zapita 6y ago
  > That is an orthogonal issue. Turnout is unrelated to security We are both talking about election security. The reason we are talking past each other is that you’re describing a neat hypothetical model that fits your belief of what is worth discussing. Whereas I’m describing a nexus of actual threats, carried out by actual attackers, in the context of an overall strategy. You’re welcome to ignore the full context of those threats, but that will result in your model being worthless. > Identifying voters, and ensuring the integrity of the voting mechanism are both important security issues. A meaningless statement without clarifying the context. Let’s continue your list of possible threats to the integrity and fairness of the US electoral system: - Voter ID fraud - Hacking of voting machines - Hacking of the tally system - Hacking of government contractors developing and operating the election infrastructure - Illegal purging of voter rolls - Corruption of election officials - Voter intimidation - gerrymandering - Targeted shuttering of voting stations - Targeted disinformation in crucial counties - Exfiltration of polling data for precise targeting of attacks - Hacking of political parties (headquarters and campaign staff) All these threats are being carried out right now against the US election system, in a coordinated fashion, by the same nexus of attackers. They are interlocking attacks supporting the same goal: minority rule and a transition to an authoritarian regime. This threat is as serious as it gets. Of course there is one exception in the list: voter ID fraud, in person or by mail, is not a threat. No serious election security expert worries about it. That would be like worrying about a Martian invasion in the middle of WW2: there are more pressing and realistic concerns to worry about... There is no serious coordinated effort to commit such fraud, and as far as I know, there never has been. Hopefully this context will help you understand why you are mistaken in framing election security around the non-issue of voter ID fraud.