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before donald trump was ever in office, i always believed that these voting machines are complete bullshit. our entire voting system is bullshit. and it would b

• tartoran 6y ago
  What are these based on? Are these just opinions?
  • worldsayshi 6y ago
    Voter machines being unreliable has seemed to be the prevailing opinion in hacker news and similar circles until now. Are they suddenly all okay because Giuliani has spread bs about them?
    • pwinnski 6y ago
      Voting machines without a paper trail have been deemed unreliable, and still should be deemed unreliable. These machines are used to generate an authoritative paper ballot, which is exactly what critics have demanded. A prevailing opinion about apples doesn't apply to oranges.
      • worldsayshi 6y ago
        I don't see the point of a voting machine with a paper trail. You get preliminary statistics a bit faster and you get people used to the idea of voting machines.
        • dboreham 6y ago
          The paper emulates a blockchain.
        • sct202 6y ago
          If someone is going to manipulate the results, they now have to change both the paper results and the electronic results instead of just one or the other.
        • pwinnski 6y ago
          Then I suppose it's a good thing you aren't making decisions about voting machines! Instead of thinking of them as "voting machines with a paper trail," think of them as "reliable, trustworthy paper ballots that are made clean and uniform using a machine." The point is that the output is a paper ballot which can be (and often is) hand-counted for auditing and verification purposes. Paper ballots rule.
          • worldsayshi 6y ago
            Maybe you misunderstood me. I meant that paper votes are superior so why bother complicating the process with machines. It gives reasons to not trust or understand the process. Most democracies work fine without voting machines.
            • pwinnski 6y ago
              In 2000, Florida gave us just one of many examples of how paper ballots alone are not always reliable. As I said in my previous comment, the machines are used to provide clean, uniform ballots. They also would speed up counts considerably if not for people deliberately sowing distrust of the machines.
        • tzs 6y ago
          You also get final results much faster in most cases. Suppose candidate X beats candidate Y by 20% according to the machine count. You can then pull a randomly selected subset of the paper ballots and count them. You only need to pick a fairly small subset to establish that the 20% machine count is accurate to within a margin of error much smaller than 20%. This is called a risk-limiting audit. If X beats Y by 10% according to the machine count, you need to include more paper ballots in your risk0limiting audit. In general, the closer X and Y are, the more paper ballots need to be in your audit. If it is close enough, like it was in Georgia, the risk limiting-audit turns into a full hand recount of all the paper ballots. Most elections, though, aren't that close, and you only need to hand count a relatively small random sample of paper ballots to with very high probability verify that the correct candidate was declared the winner.
          • worldsayshi 6y ago
            Still, i fell that machines make it needlessly complex. Most democracies do fine without that. Getting a fast result seems like the least important aspect of voting for representatives.
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      They are as secure as they were before. But the lies are still lies.
• throwaway23242 6y ago
  lots of dodgyness. ppl's judgement clouded by orange man bad. why does a municipal voting machine need a weighted race function? how is chain of custody maintained re usb keys? why are ballot images not being retained (happened in massachusetts r senate primary) why do they run on windows 10? lol
• duxup 6y ago
  Does that have something to do with the article / lawsuit though? The lawsuit is about claims that are straight BS...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• worldsayshi 6y ago
  In a climate such as this it feels incredibly hard to get a nuanced understanding of the reliability of voting machines. That feels very problematic.
• corey_moncure 6y ago
  I was a heavy Slashdot user before the takeover, and now Hacker News fills the hole in my browsing that Slashdot left. If you're like me, you'll remember the many articles about the vulnerability of Diebold voting machines. This has always been a concern, since at least the early '00s or before. I guess people have a very selective amnesia.
  • CydeWeys 6y ago
    The original Diebold machines, at least, were purely electronic; they did not leave an auditable paper trail like the Dominion machines do. So we've fortunately learned a lot in the intervening decades and have fixed the glaring security flaws.
    • david927 6y ago
      We really didn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
  • tgb 6y ago
    Modern machines differ from old ones is a very significant way: they give you a paper ballot that you - the voter - can verify before submitting.
    • covidthrow 6y ago
      And how many people do you think review that paper? Probably as many as review their grocery store receipts, I'd guess. Which is to say, practically none.
      • wyldfire 6y ago
        How would the machine predict which voters to deceive? I reviewed my printed ballot before submitting it. I'd guess it is probably more than "practically none". If 0.1% of voters did this, it would be 159633 ballots reviewed. If the tainted machines consistently changed these ballots to the same presidential candidate, ~80,000 voters would have had an opportunity to detect a dishonest voting machine. What ratio of votes would need to change in order to change the outcome? And what ratio would the bad actors predict was necessary in advance of the election? But regardless of the above -- the design change to include printed ballots was a big improvement in security and voter confidence in the election.
• CydeWeys 6y ago
  Dominion voting machines use human-readable printed ballots as a backup auditing mechanism. In all of the disputed states these paper ballots were hand counted (sometimes multiple times) and the original electronically reported results were confirmed. So how are these voting machines complete bullshit exactly? What do you think the mechanism of attack is, and do you have any sources other than just your speculation?
  • chaganated 6y ago
    They run on MS Windows, and an assorted pile of shitware a mile deep. Bullshit passed through an HP LaserJet is still bullshit. And why on earth does a voting machine require OggVorbis? https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/voting_system/files/Dominion_Voting_Systems_D-Suite_5.5_Test_Report_Rev_A.pdf https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/voting_system/files/...
    • covidthrow 6y ago
      Possibly for accessibility features for the blind?
      • chaganated 6y ago
        Braille is simpler, and does not require thousands of lines of code, which could obscure all sorts of malicious payload. I have a bridge to sell to anyone who thinks Dominion has actually audited any of these external dependencies.
        • CydeWeys 6y ago
          Braille is also, famously, very expensive as a computer interface relative to audio (e.g. https://www.boundlessat.com/Blindness/Braille-Displays/Brailliant https://www.boundlessat.com/Blindness/Braille-Displays/Brail... ), plus not as many people can use it as can use audio.
          • chaganated 6y ago
• vernie 6y ago
  It's too bad that you're using a brand new account and there's no evidence of you holding this position before 2017.
• ncallaway 6y ago
  The good news is election security researchers mostly agree with you. The prevailing opinion of election security professionals is that State election systems should be designed assuming the machines are insecure and the process should be tolerant to that fault. That's why many states that use electronic voting or tabulation produce a voter verifiable paper trail. That means, when you're done voting the machine gives the voter a piece of paper that has their votes on it. The voter can check the paper to ensure it matches their votes, then deposits the paper record like a ballot. State's can then use Risk Limiting Audits to verify a necessary amount of randomly sampled ballots to ensure that the electronic count matches the voter verifiable paper ballots. So, if your concern is that the GA election was overturned by electronic tampering you would need to explain why the voter verifiable paper trail extremely closely matched the electronic tabulation. This is a long-winded way of saying I agree with you. There are some states that use electronic voting or tabulation without a voter-verifiable paper trail and risk limiting audits. Fortunately, none of those states were "disputed" in this election. But those states should absolutely switch to these kinds of systems.
  • nostromo 6y ago
    The attack vector isn’t the tabulation, it’s the mail-in ballot sleeves. The identity of the voter is on the outer envelope which is separated from the ballot and destroyed after their signature is checked. An attacker could insert manufactured ballots to be tabulated after this process and there would be no way to know if they are legitimate or not - they’re anonymous now too so you can’t check with the voter and the voter can’t verify their vote. You can recount the ballots all you want if this attack occurred, because the fake and real ballots would be indistinguishable and unauditable.
    • ncallaway 6y ago
      The exact same criticism can be applied to regular in-person voting. It's a criticism of the concept of anonymous ballots, not actually a criticism of mail in voting.
      • 6y ago
• pupdogg 6y ago
  Maybe you have a real opportunity here to offer consultation services to Giuliani. Seriously!
• kreeben 6y ago
  >> these machines have been shown to be massively flawed That statement goes against everything I've read about voting in the U.S.A. However, I don't think I have actually read everything. What did you read? Is there a link that I can follow?
  • david927 6y ago
    Here's a John Oliver episode from a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
    • kreeben 6y ago
      That clip does not show massive failure. Does it show failure? Yes. Is it massive? No. Did the US court system show massive fraud? No. Did they show fraud that wasn't massive but could still have changed the outcome of the election? No. Were you cheated out of winning the election? A thousand times no.
      • david927 6y ago
        > Did the US court system show massive fraud? It was never heard in court. I think that's what people are upset about. If they felt it had its day in court, they would feel differently. Instead, they have the media patting their heads explaining that "it's all fine." Fraud didn't have to be proven; it simply had to be shown to have been possible. The question is whether protections were breached that keep fraud from not being possible. Listen, I'm a "Bernie Sanders" Progressive. I didn't vote because both candidates were too conservative for me. I don't really have a horse in this race. That said, this clip shows that the US didn't take its electoral systems seriously. Georgia hasn't applied a security patch since 2012? Really? And you and the entire media are telling me that it wasn't possible when this clip is pretty clear that it wasn't just possible but fairly easy. It reminds me of when a blockbuster film comes out and it's a stinker, but a lot of money was dropped on it. So there's an effort to make up the opening weekend by having the media sing its praises. "'Cats' is an amazing film!" But it doesn't work. Your strategy isn't working and won't work. The only way forward is to let it have its day in court.
• covidthrow 6y ago
  And if Trump had won, I suspect most of these comments would be critical of the absolutely sub-par security of our voting infrastructure. But tribalism still rules, so lots of praise abounds about how well things went. Mostly because their opponent lost. Frankly, we need publicly auditable records. For some reason we can request practically any non-classified data from the government... but not fine grained, anonymous voting data. That nobody seems to think this is a problem is... well, not shocking. But when the party that Hacker News largely opposes wins in the future, I bet (hope) there will be calls to improve our infrastructure.
  • chaganated 6y ago
    They used mechanical voting machines when I was a kid, and I don't recall elections ever being this "buggy." Damn nerds.
  • covidthrow 6y ago
    For a bunch of people who raise hell about the dangers of using SMS for 2FA, I'm a little surprised at the cavalier dismissal of serious institutional and technological shortcomings in one of the most mission critical systems in the world. I think maybe that's psychological bias at play and not, say, actual affirmation that the system is resilient, let alone adequate. The number of downvotes I've gotten without a single reply is quite suggestive of this. Seriously disappointed in this community of some of the most enlightened technical and scientific minds in the world, right now...
  • CyberDildonics 6y ago
    You don't have to wonder what would happen if trump had won, because he actually did win four years ago.
• lokar 6y ago
  I had that view for the older direct recording systems with no paper trail. But these seem to record on each machine for a quick count the night of, but then also produce a paper ballot for an audit. Much better. It would be even better if the paper ballot was easy for the voter to quickly validate. But as long as the machine is really just helping you mark a paper ballot, and it's the paper ballot that is "official" end the end, it seems much safer.
  • mountainboy 6y ago
    Except I've seen witnesses testify that on at least some systems, there is a non human readable QR code generated by the ballot-marking-device and it is the QR code that is actually read. Hopefully you can see the problem with that...
• david927 6y ago
  Here's a John Oliver special from a year ago that will terrify you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
  • jansan 6y ago
    John Oliver should not be used for anything other than entertainment.
    • david927 6y ago
      Argue the points, not the person.
      • jansan 6y ago
        I argue the concept. In my view using comedy to make fun of supposedly intellectually inferior people is despicable. We have a very similar show in Germany called "Tagesshow". Both are claiming a moral high ground while ridiculing political opponents.
        • david927 6y ago
          I agree with you. This video doesn’t have any of that, though. Watch it and then let me know.
  • tzs 6y ago
    The Dominion machines address the issues from that video. In particular, the machine that the voter makes their choice on prints out a paper ballot marked with that choice, which the voter then turns in to be counted on a different machine. The paper ballots can then be used for risk limiting hand audit afterwards to verify that the machine count was accurate, or in the case of a close race a full hand recount.