5 ms·

I’m reminded of an xkcd alt text, “ There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encou

I’m reminded of an xkcd alt text, “ There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired.” https://xkcd.com/2030/ https://xkcd.com/2030/

CydeWeys 6y ago
Good thing Dominion voting machines do leave an auditable paper trail, which was hand-audited in all of these disputed states and which verified the electronically-reported results.
- throwaway23242 6y ago
  what about reports out of michigan that audit trails / logs were missing for election night? https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_m...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Do you have a link to anything that has been established as true in court? Because that link is pants-on-fire lying: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-james-ramsland-jr/affidavit-michigan-lawsuit-seeking-overturn-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-ja...
    - throwaway23242 6y ago
      oh, cabal fact checkers seem to say this link is garbage (do they though?). i will flog myself and pledge allegiance to the cabal to repent.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Even a cursory review of the Ramsland report you linked to indicates it was largely fiction. From the politifact review: Ramsland lists "Fenton" without specifying Fenton City or Fenton Township. But the turnout Ramsland lists for Fenton does not match the turnout in either jurisdiction. The actual turnout statistics reveal the inaccuracy of Ramsland’s numbers. His figure for North Muskegon is off by a factor of 10: The actual number is 78.11%, not 781.91%. For Zeeland Charter Township, he inflated the turnout nearly sixfold. For Grout Township and the City of Muskegon, his number is more than triple the correct number.
        throwaway10923 6y ago
        "A staggering number of votes required adjudication.This was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles stillstored on the server.This is caused by intentional errors in the system. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots withno oversight, no transparency or audit trail. Our examination of the server logs indicates that this high error rate was incongruent with patterns from previous years. The statement attributing these issues to human error is not consistent with the forensic evaluation, which points more correctly to systemic machineand/or softwareerrors. The systemicerrors are intentionally designed to create errors in order to push a high volume of ballots to bulkadjudication" " Antrim County failed to properly update its system. A purposeful lack ofproviding basic computer security updates in the system software and hardware demonstrates incompetence, gross negligence, bad faith, and/or willful non-compliance in providing the fundamental system securityrequired by federal and state law. There is no way this election management system could have passed tests or have been legally certified to conduct the 2020 elections in Michigan under the current laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures –Michigan requires full compliance with federal standards as determined by a federally accredited voting system laboratory " " Significantly, the computer system shows vote adjudication logs for prior years; but all adjudication log entries for the 2020 election cycle are missing. The adjudication process is the simplest way to manually manipulate votes. The lack of recordsprevents any form of audit accountability, and their conspicuous absence is extremely suspicious since the files exist for previous years using the same software. Removal of these files violates state law and prevents a meaningful audit, even if the Secretary wanted to conduct an audit. We must conclude that the 2020 election cycle records have been manually removed. " so this is just made up?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-refutes-dominion-conspiracy-theory/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r...
  - gilbetron 6y ago
    False reports based on hearsay. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-refutes-dominion-conspiracy-theory/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    How about you throw away your actual HN account too, because people who spread long debunked baseless conspiracy theories aren't welcome here. Good to see you're at least embarrassed to admit who you actually are. That's the first step to realizing you're been fed lies and brainwashed. Go find something to believe in that you're not embarrassed to associate with your true identity.
reaperducer 6y ago
There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired. It's funny how things change. Just five years ago, HN was awash in people shouting that paper ballots are not secure and everyone should switch to electronic. Now the conventional wisdom is the opposite. Much like the way that in the 90's, keeping a password on a Post-It note was considered not secure, and now it's the safest thing going.
- failrate 6y ago
  Keeping a password on a Post it is still dangerous.
  - gilbetron 6y ago
    https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo...
- hajile 6y ago
  They could blockchain votes and have independently auditable election results easily available. Instead, time after time, we get shady software from shady people with disturbing political connections (I’m not talking the dominion thing either — this seems true for all voting software). The idea that crooked politicians hire crooked companies to wrire crooked software shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
bitstan 6y ago
Except software does control airplanes and elevators.. Subscribing to this kind of "digital bad" dogma is lazy because you don't have to think for yourself.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Software does control airplanes and elevators. When it fails, it can kill people. But when people think elevator software is broken, they don't take the elevator. When (enough) people think voting software is broken, they topple governments and start civil wars. And some people who disagree with you are still thinking for themselves. That "not thinking for yourself" is lazy argument.
  - bitstan 6y ago
    > When (enough) people think voting software is broken, they topple governments and start civil wars. But why would they be distrustful unless non-sequitur arguments are presented as the holy grail of truth? "Bro trust me, software engineers and our entire profession are total hacks". Thanks XKCD, very cool. Yet you fly in airplanes and drive in cars that are digitally controlled. You trust the unsecured web with your banking details because a green padlock appears in your browser. The federal reserve and their network banks don't mail each other IOU's "to be secure" so why should that be the MO for accounting public consensus? I'd call it tired reasoning but it's not even reasoning, it's just some hand-wavy appeal to.. p a p e r
tzs 6y ago
That's implicitly assuming that you can't do cryptographic voting protocols with paper ballots. That is false. You can in fact make a cryptographic voting system where: 1. Voters vote by marking ovals with a marker pen on paper ballots. 3. The paper ballots can be counted by the optical scan machines that are already widely used in many places. 4. The paper ballots can be hand counted. 5. All the ballots can be published, allowing anyone to independently verify the counts. 6. An individual voter if they choose to can make a note of short alphanumeric code that is revealed when they vote for a candidate, and using that note later can verify that their vote was included in the total and went to the correct candidate. 7. An individual voter cannot prove to a third party that they voted for a particular candidate. Here is a paper on such a system: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity Here is a paper showing how it satisfies item #7: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502 https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502 Almost all of the cryptographic mojo takes place when the ballots are printed, so no modifications are required to the scanners. You do have to use a special marker to mark the ballots. Doing the cryptographic verification of all the votes would almost certainly be done by software, but as all the ballots are published and the system is completely open and documented, independent parties can easily do their own counts. The software is also fairly simple.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Good thing Dominion voting machines do leave an auditable paper trail, which was hand-audited in all of these disputed states and which verified the electronically-reported results.

throwaway23242 6y ago
what about reports out of michigan that audit trails / logs were missing for election night? https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_m...
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Do you have a link to anything that has been established as true in court? Because that link is pants-on-fire lying: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-james-ramsland-jr/affidavit-michigan-lawsuit-seeking-overturn-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/russell-ja...
  - throwaway23242 6y ago
    oh, cabal fact checkers seem to say this link is garbage (do they though?). i will flog myself and pledge allegiance to the cabal to repent.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Even a cursory review of the Ramsland report you linked to indicates it was largely fiction. From the politifact review: Ramsland lists "Fenton" without specifying Fenton City or Fenton Township. But the turnout Ramsland lists for Fenton does not match the turnout in either jurisdiction. The actual turnout statistics reveal the inaccuracy of Ramsland’s numbers. His figure for North Muskegon is off by a factor of 10: The actual number is 78.11%, not 781.91%. For Zeeland Charter Township, he inflated the turnout nearly sixfold. For Grout Township and the City of Muskegon, his number is more than triple the correct number.
      - throwaway10923 6y ago
        "A staggering number of votes required adjudication.This was a 2020 issue not seen in previous election cycles stillstored on the server.This is caused by intentional errors in the system. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots withno oversight, no transparency or audit trail. Our examination of the server logs indicates that this high error rate was incongruent with patterns from previous years. The statement attributing these issues to human error is not consistent with the forensic evaluation, which points more correctly to systemic machineand/or softwareerrors. The systemicerrors are intentionally designed to create errors in order to push a high volume of ballots to bulkadjudication" " Antrim County failed to properly update its system. A purposeful lack ofproviding basic computer security updates in the system software and hardware demonstrates incompetence, gross negligence, bad faith, and/or willful non-compliance in providing the fundamental system securityrequired by federal and state law. There is no way this election management system could have passed tests or have been legally certified to conduct the 2020 elections in Michigan under the current laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures –Michigan requires full compliance with federal standards as determined by a federally accredited voting system laboratory " " Significantly, the computer system shows vote adjudication logs for prior years; but all adjudication log entries for the 2020 election cycle are missing. The adjudication process is the simplest way to manually manipulate votes. The lack of recordsprevents any form of audit accountability, and their conspicuous absence is extremely suspicious since the files exist for previous years using the same software. Removal of these files violates state law and prevents a meaningful audit, even if the Secretary wanted to conduct an audit. We must conclude that the 2020 election cycle records have been manually removed. " so this is just made up?
- tptacek 6y ago
  https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-refutes-dominion-conspiracy-theory/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r...
- gilbetron 6y ago
  False reports based on hearsay. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-refutes-dominion-conspiracy-theory/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/audit-in-michigan-county-r...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  How about you throw away your actual HN account too, because people who spread long debunked baseless conspiracy theories aren't welcome here. Good to see you're at least embarrassed to admit who you actually are. That's the first step to realizing you're been fed lies and brainwashed. Go find something to believe in that you're not embarrassed to associate with your true identity.

reaperducer 6y ago

There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired. It's funny how things change. Just five years ago, HN was awash in people shouting that paper ballots are not secure and everyone should switch to electronic. Now the conventional wisdom is the opposite. Much like the way that in the 90's, keeping a password on a Post-It note was considered not secure, and now it's the safest thing going.

failrate 6y ago
Keeping a password on a Post it is still dangerous.
- gilbetron 6y ago
  https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo...
hajile 6y ago
They could blockchain votes and have independently auditable election results easily available. Instead, time after time, we get shady software from shady people with disturbing political connections (I’m not talking the dominion thing either — this seems true for all voting software). The idea that crooked politicians hire crooked companies to wrire crooked software shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

bitstan 6y ago

Except software does control airplanes and elevators.. Subscribing to this kind of "digital bad" dogma is lazy because you don't have to think for yourself.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Software does control airplanes and elevators. When it fails, it can kill people. But when people think elevator software is broken, they don't take the elevator. When (enough) people think voting software is broken, they topple governments and start civil wars. And some people who disagree with you are still thinking for themselves. That "not thinking for yourself" is lazy argument.
- bitstan 6y ago
  > When (enough) people think voting software is broken, they topple governments and start civil wars. But why would they be distrustful unless non-sequitur arguments are presented as the holy grail of truth? "Bro trust me, software engineers and our entire profession are total hacks". Thanks XKCD, very cool. Yet you fly in airplanes and drive in cars that are digitally controlled. You trust the unsecured web with your banking details because a green padlock appears in your browser. The federal reserve and their network banks don't mail each other IOU's "to be secure" so why should that be the MO for accounting public consensus? I'd call it tired reasoning but it's not even reasoning, it's just some hand-wavy appeal to.. p a p e r

tzs 6y ago

That's implicitly assuming that you can't do cryptographic voting protocols with paper ballots. That is false. You can in fact make a cryptographic voting system where: 1. Voters vote by marking ovals with a marker pen on paper ballots. 3. The paper ballots can be counted by the optical scan machines that are already widely used in many places. 4. The paper ballots can be hand counted. 5. All the ballots can be published, allowing anyone to independently verify the counts. 6. An individual voter if they choose to can make a note of short alphanumeric code that is revealed when they vote for a candidate, and using that note later can verify that their vote was included in the total and went to the correct candidate. 7. An individual voter cannot prove to a third party that they voted for a particular candidate. Here is a paper on such a system: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity Here is a paper showing how it satisfies item #7: https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502 https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502 Almost all of the cryptographic mojo takes place when the ballots are printed, so no modifications are required to the scanners. You do have to use a special marker to mark the ballots. Doing the cryptographic verification of all the votes would almost certainly be done by software, but as all the ballots are published and the system is completely open and documented, independent parties can easily do their own counts. The software is also fairly simple.