12 ms·

As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians.

As long as potentially hackable voting machines are used in elections, the anxiety about hacking will be there and will eventually be exploited by politicians. If we want to fix the issue, we really just need to move back to hand counting paper ballots.

CydeWeys 6y ago
Dominion voting machines leave an auditable paper trail and thus do support hand-counting of paper ballots, which was done as part of the recounts in disputed states. No discrepancies beyond the margin of error of hand counting were found in those recounts vs the electronically reported results. You can see how they work in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  I'm not saying they were hacked. I'm saying the layman needs to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt. A normal non-security professional needs to understand and have confidence in the system they use to vote. Most people don't even know how to troubleshoot computer issues beyond rebooting, let alone understanding complex IT security or auditing measures put in place for these machines.
  - Me1000 6y ago
    If you watch the video you can see that a layman would easily understand how it all works. It literally prints a ballot where you can verify your choices, and you drop it off. This is pretty much the gold standard: a paper trail that can be audited every step of the process.
- tunesmith 6y ago
  Still not sufficient though, you only need to hack enough to get outside the automatic recount margin. You also need hand-recount of random samples in all elections.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Of course, if someone hypothetically hacked an election even more brazenly to get outside of that margin, the result would be even more unexpected and likely to be manually contested.
  - astrange 6y ago
    You only need to recount heavily when the election is near 50%, because the higher the margin of victory, the fewer random samples you need to detect fraud. This is what Georgia actually does. The automatic margin is for runoff elections.
chaostheory 6y ago
Yes, this election was the most secure due to the paper trail that mail-in ballots provide. I would trust that more than the bits of a closed, black voting box
NicoJuicy 6y ago
That doesn't give anyone the right to say baseless claims and present them as facts on front of millions of people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
HenryKissinger 6y ago
For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? You can even buy a house from your phone now. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. The future is paperless.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  No it isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
- failrate 6y ago
  I disagree with your conclusion. Voting does not need to be made more convenient beyond preventing obvious voter suppression and making election day a federal and/or state holiday. Additionally, a digital compromise of a fully digital system could compromise all votes. If the system has a nondigital artifact it can reference as a source of truth, then it can be validated, verified, and restored to truth.
  - loonster 6y ago
    A federal holiday would be fantastic. The main benefit is not getting more people to vote, but getting more people to watch the polls & counting. The more opportunity that people have to watch, the more faith people will have in the system.
- lovecg 6y ago
  With the election process, optics is as important as the actual security. It has to seem simple and secure for most people to accept the results easily. We saw recently that even that does not always work but I have hope it was an aberration. Can you imagine the fallout if everything was done digitally instead, considering the average person’s understanding of crypto and “hackers”?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. "Antiquated" is a loaded word that smacks of ageism. Restaurants are antiquated, too. Do you never go out to eat? Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? Are you trying to say that every other country votes paperless? Because that's simply not true. You can even buy a house from your phone now You have obviously never bought a house, and certainly not one from your phone. Just because there's an ad on YouTube doesn't make it true. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. Why is that necessary? What benefit does it provide? The future is paperless. People have been saying that for over a hundred years. Yet, here we are, still with a durable, recordable medium that does things that paperless methods can't.
corrys 6y ago
Hand counting can be manipulated too [0], so the idea that we can just move back to it and save our democracy is not accurate (or at least not a complete solution). In other words, dishonest politicians will find ways to exploit our fears even if we use paper ballots. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379415002073 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02613...
- r00fus 6y ago
  You linked to an abstract of the Russian vote manipulation behind a paywall. That abstract says nothing specifically about hand-count being manipulated. Hand counting remains the golden standard for voting.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    All allegations against Dominion voting machines were pretty much disproved by subsequent manual vote courting. Again, the machines leave a paper trail that allows manual counting for verification. That makes simple handcounting without any assistance more prone to errors and less paper trail as well.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      In what world would manual counting have less paper trail? What is for sure - with voting machines, there is less validation. Hand counting means - all ballots are counted always (by volunteers with all parties invited) - whereas voting machines means a spot-test (in some states), and only a full manual count is when a recount is demanded. All this to say - I think Dominion did a thorough job - but this all only happened because the election was close. What about those where the election isn't "close"?
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Voting by hand takes days, which is why it is only done automatically for close elections. However, a losing candidate may request a recount after the election. In most states, if the margin is outside of a stated threshold, that candidate must pay for the recount. If there is a discrepancy between the two counts, then a hand recount is performed. If an election isn't close, then the respective Secretary of State will audit (by hand) a random selection of precincts to verify vote totals match, but this is a security check and generally takes place weeks after the election.
rtkwe 6y ago
Even that won't stop the lies about the election being stolen. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all paper ballot states [0] counted by machine but preserved for manual recounts. The lie just became that there was either ballot stuffing at some point, a point which changed every time a claim was disproven, or that the Dominion tabulation machines changed some Trump votes to Biden votes. Even Members who were elected in that very same election were saying it was fraudulent, just not their votes of course. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
mypalmike 6y ago
Nothing can "fix the issue" when the issue is primarily that some candidates will not accept a losing outcome. Had this election been entirely hand-counted, the same claims of fraud would have arisen. When a candidate declares in advance of an election that he can only lose if there is fraud, you can be sure he will act in bad faith if he loses. Incredulity was all he needed to claim fraud - the numerous conspiracy theories explaining the fraud would inevitably surface after the fact. If it's not Dominion voting machines, it's dead voters, boxes of ballots showing up, and hand wavy claims of the opposition being in charge of the counting and abusing that role.
ashtonkem 6y ago
If you think that voting machine hacking is a genuine issue, then you should want Giuliani to shut up and go away ASAP. Having your arguments mixed up with crazy pants conspiracy theories is a one way ticket to people deciding that you’re also a crank to be ignored.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Dominion voting machines leave an auditable paper trail and thus do support hand-counting of paper ballots, which was done as part of the recounts in disputed states. No discrepancies beyond the margin of error of hand counting were found in those recounts vs the electronically reported results. You can see how they work in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BDiO3JGTs

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I'm not saying they were hacked. I'm saying the layman needs to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt. A normal non-security professional needs to understand and have confidence in the system they use to vote. Most people don't even know how to troubleshoot computer issues beyond rebooting, let alone understanding complex IT security or auditing measures put in place for these machines.
- Me1000 6y ago
  If you watch the video you can see that a layman would easily understand how it all works. It literally prints a ballot where you can verify your choices, and you drop it off. This is pretty much the gold standard: a paper trail that can be audited every step of the process.
tunesmith 6y ago
Still not sufficient though, you only need to hack enough to get outside the automatic recount margin. You also need hand-recount of random samples in all elections.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Of course, if someone hypothetically hacked an election even more brazenly to get outside of that margin, the result would be even more unexpected and likely to be manually contested.
- astrange 6y ago
  You only need to recount heavily when the election is near 50%, because the higher the margin of victory, the fewer random samples you need to detect fraud. This is what Georgia actually does. The automatic margin is for runoff elections.

chaostheory 6y ago

Yes, this election was the most secure due to the paper trail that mail-in ballots provide. I would trust that more than the bits of a closed, black voting box

NicoJuicy 6y ago

That doesn't give anyone the right to say baseless claims and present them as facts on front of millions of people.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

HenryKissinger 6y ago

For a community (HN) so focused on technology and the future, I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? You can even buy a house from your phone now. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. The future is paperless.

enraged_camel 6y ago
No it isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
failrate 6y ago
I disagree with your conclusion. Voting does not need to be made more convenient beyond preventing obvious voter suppression and making election day a federal and/or state holiday. Additionally, a digital compromise of a fully digital system could compromise all votes. If the system has a nondigital artifact it can reference as a source of truth, then it can be validated, verified, and restored to truth.
- loonster 6y ago
  A federal holiday would be fantastic. The main benefit is not getting more people to vote, but getting more people to watch the polls & counting. The more opportunity that people have to watch, the more faith people will have in the system.
lovecg 6y ago
With the election process, optics is as important as the actual security. It has to seem simple and secure for most people to accept the results easily. We saw recently that even that does not always work but I have hope it was an aberration. Can you imagine the fallout if everything was done digitally instead, considering the average person’s understanding of crypto and “hackers”?
reaperducer 6y ago
I'm surprised to see support for antiquated technology such as paper ballots. "Antiquated" is a loaded word that smacks of ageism. Restaurants are antiquated, too. Do you never go out to eat? Does the future of voting not belong to online remote voting, like almost everything else? Are you trying to say that every other country votes paperless? Because that's simply not true. You can even buy a house from your phone now You have obviously never bought a house, and certainly not one from your phone. Just because there's an ad on YouTube doesn't make it true. In the future, we will know the results of the election as soon as the online polls close. Why is that necessary? What benefit does it provide? The future is paperless. People have been saying that for over a hundred years. Yet, here we are, still with a durable, recordable medium that does things that paperless methods can't.

corrys 6y ago

Hand counting can be manipulated too [0], so the idea that we can just move back to it and save our democracy is not accurate (or at least not a complete solution). In other words, dishonest politicians will find ways to exploit our fears even if we use paper ballots. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379415002073 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02613...

r00fus 6y ago
You linked to an abstract of the Russian vote manipulation behind a paywall. That abstract says nothing specifically about hand-count being manipulated. Hand counting remains the golden standard for voting.
- tartoran 6y ago
  All allegations against Dominion voting machines were pretty much disproved by subsequent manual vote courting. Again, the machines leave a paper trail that allows manual counting for verification. That makes simple handcounting without any assistance more prone to errors and less paper trail as well.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    In what world would manual counting have less paper trail? What is for sure - with voting machines, there is less validation. Hand counting means - all ballots are counted always (by volunteers with all parties invited) - whereas voting machines means a spot-test (in some states), and only a full manual count is when a recount is demanded. All this to say - I think Dominion did a thorough job - but this all only happened because the election was close. What about those where the election isn't "close"?
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Voting by hand takes days, which is why it is only done automatically for close elections. However, a losing candidate may request a recount after the election. In most states, if the margin is outside of a stated threshold, that candidate must pay for the recount. If there is a discrepancy between the two counts, then a hand recount is performed. If an election isn't close, then the respective Secretary of State will audit (by hand) a random selection of precincts to verify vote totals match, but this is a security check and generally takes place weeks after the election.

rtkwe 6y ago

Even that won't stop the lies about the election being stolen. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all paper ballot states [0] counted by machine but preserved for manual recounts. The lie just became that there was either ballot stuffing at some point, a point which changed every time a claim was disproven, or that the Dominion tabulation machines changed some Trump votes to Biden votes. Even Members who were elected in that very same election were saying it was fraudulent, just not their votes of course. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

mypalmike 6y ago

Nothing can "fix the issue" when the issue is primarily that some candidates will not accept a losing outcome. Had this election been entirely hand-counted, the same claims of fraud would have arisen. When a candidate declares in advance of an election that he can only lose if there is fraud, you can be sure he will act in bad faith if he loses. Incredulity was all he needed to claim fraud - the numerous conspiracy theories explaining the fraud would inevitably surface after the fact. If it's not Dominion voting machines, it's dead voters, boxes of ballots showing up, and hand wavy claims of the opposition being in charge of the counting and abusing that role.

ashtonkem 6y ago

If you think that voting machine hacking is a genuine issue, then you should want Giuliani to shut up and go away ASAP. Having your arguments mixed up with crazy pants conspiracy theories is a one way ticket to people deciding that you’re also a crank to be ignored.