8 ms·

> Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates > Why is it so easy? I don't know, it doesn't seem easy

> Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates > Why is it so easy? I don't know, it doesn't seem easy to me. I mean, it seems like the result of a ton of long-term planning to implement processes that allow each instance of this to be easy. But the fight against electronic voting machines was fierce, and took a long time. We lost, by the way.

jaywalk 4y ago
There is no mention of electronic voting machines. Nothing described in this press release would even require electronic voting machines. They cast actual (fraudulent) votes and then falsified the records in the polling books to match.
- bpicolo 4y ago
  > The voting machines at each polling station, including in the 39th Ward, 36th Division, generate records in the form of a printed receipt documenting the use of each voting machine...Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine Sure there is
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    How is this different than dropping in additional paper ballots into a ballot box? If it isn’t, then this has nothing to do with the machine, but rather control of the “ballot box”.
  - cyberge99 4y ago
    Tabulator could have printed a receipt from scantron sheet feed.
  - tunesmith 4y ago
    They didn't hack the machine. They actually voted on the machines multiple times. The same scheme would have worked with mechanical machines or paper ballots.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      I know for a fact that where I vote it is impossible to vote more than once (or close to, Berlin managed to fuck up voting last year for some reason). How is it impossible? Everyone is centrally registered with their primary residence. Based on these records, invitations are sent out prior to elections. With that invitation, or passport or ID, you show up at your voting local (of which there are plenty, the school just across the street has three of those and it is far from the only place in our town). There volunteers check you invitation or ID, hand you your ballot, verify you drop in the ballot box and strike from the voting list for this election. Not on the list? No ballot. No documents? No ballot. Since there are thousands of those locales, preliminary results are available in the first two hours after voting closes. We have no waiting lines (most of the time, Berlin is the exception that proofs the rule but then we talk about Berlin...). Mail-in voting works just fine and without any constraints. ballots are archived (for a very long time, I'm too lazy to check the exact duration), so if there are any doubts everything can be rechecked. No idea how the US just fails at the most simple thing in a democracy, voting. Or rather I have an idea, with gerrymandering and such shenanigans it seems to be by design to keep certain demographics from voting too much.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        > No idea how the US just fails at the most simple thing in a democracy, voting. You're generalizing too far. Much of the US works just like you described for your local voting. The US has tens of thousands of voting precincts with their own rules. For better or worse.
        Blahah 4y ago
        > The US has tens of thousands of voting precincts with their own rules Surely that's the failure being described. There are always parts of the US where corruption is winning, and those places ultimately have enough political or other capital that they are worth corrupting, and that puts the system of the entire country at continuous risk.
      - xienze 4y ago
seoaeu 4y ago
Stuffing paper ballots into a box or tapping the screen of an electronic voting machine are both very easy. This stuff has to be fixed at a higher level, like by making sure the folks running the precinct aren’t corrupt or by having a neutral observer present
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Stuffing paper ballots is infinitely harder if your election system isn't entirely fucked. Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right, invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes, increase the amount of voting places so that scaling this up becomes impossible. Voting has been solved centuries ago. And voting machines will never be part of the solution.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    > Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right The story is literally about ballot stuffing at precincts where there weren’t observers like that watching. Which makes the electronic voting part a complete red herring
    - sidlls 4y ago
      And 100% of the votes from those precincts without observers should’ve been discarded. The real problem is that we don’t fund elections properly. This sort of thing isn’t a problem in other developed democracies. It’s only one here by design.
      - seoaeu 4y ago
        What you’re proposing is that the official in charge of running elections can cut funding to precincts that usually vote for his opponent, and then later invalidate all ballots cast there?
        4y ago
shadowgovt 4y ago
Having some familiarity with the Pennsylvania election machinery specifically, there is nothing about this story that required (or would have been stopped by the absence of) electronic voting machines. If it was the old iVotronic system, there would be no ballot to check against (the vote was held in the machine memory in redundant locations), but that's no protection against the machine being activated illegitimately and the judge of elections entering illegitimate votes. In the new system, the machines are just tabulators and physical "SAT-style" fill-the-oval vote cards are used as ballots, but again, there's nothing stopping a judge of elections from filling out a pile of invalid ballots and entering them into the machine if the other team members (majority and minority inspector, and the clerks of election) have been bribed to look the other way. In fact, the judge would have to do that, because the fraud will be obvious if the total count of record doesn't match the total count of paper ballots in the box... But structurally, this is equivalent to just activating the iVotronic machine several additional times to cast fraudulent digital-only ballots. The nature of the fraud here is simple, old-fashioned stuffing the ballot box, and the only protection against that is physically barring access to the hardware (be it a computer or a pine box with a padlock), which is incompatible with the duties of the judge of elections.

jaywalk 4y ago

There is no mention of electronic voting machines. Nothing described in this press release would even require electronic voting machines. They cast actual (fraudulent) votes and then falsified the records in the polling books to match.

bpicolo 4y ago
> The voting machines at each polling station, including in the 39th Ward, 36th Division, generate records in the form of a printed receipt documenting the use of each voting machine...Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine Sure there is
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  How is this different than dropping in additional paper ballots into a ballot box? If it isn’t, then this has nothing to do with the machine, but rather control of the “ballot box”.
- cyberge99 4y ago
  Tabulator could have printed a receipt from scantron sheet feed.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  They didn't hack the machine. They actually voted on the machines multiple times. The same scheme would have worked with mechanical machines or paper ballots.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    I know for a fact that where I vote it is impossible to vote more than once (or close to, Berlin managed to fuck up voting last year for some reason). How is it impossible? Everyone is centrally registered with their primary residence. Based on these records, invitations are sent out prior to elections. With that invitation, or passport or ID, you show up at your voting local (of which there are plenty, the school just across the street has three of those and it is far from the only place in our town). There volunteers check you invitation or ID, hand you your ballot, verify you drop in the ballot box and strike from the voting list for this election. Not on the list? No ballot. No documents? No ballot. Since there are thousands of those locales, preliminary results are available in the first two hours after voting closes. We have no waiting lines (most of the time, Berlin is the exception that proofs the rule but then we talk about Berlin...). Mail-in voting works just fine and without any constraints. ballots are archived (for a very long time, I'm too lazy to check the exact duration), so if there are any doubts everything can be rechecked. No idea how the US just fails at the most simple thing in a democracy, voting. Or rather I have an idea, with gerrymandering and such shenanigans it seems to be by design to keep certain demographics from voting too much.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > No idea how the US just fails at the most simple thing in a democracy, voting. You're generalizing too far. Much of the US works just like you described for your local voting. The US has tens of thousands of voting precincts with their own rules. For better or worse.
      - Blahah 4y ago
        > The US has tens of thousands of voting precincts with their own rules Surely that's the failure being described. There are always parts of the US where corruption is winning, and those places ultimately have enough political or other capital that they are worth corrupting, and that puts the system of the entire country at continuous risk.
    - xienze 4y ago

seoaeu 4y ago

Stuffing paper ballots into a box or tapping the screen of an electronic voting machine are both very easy. This stuff has to be fixed at a higher level, like by making sure the folks running the precinct aren’t corrupt or by having a neutral observer present

ohgodplsno 4y ago
Stuffing paper ballots is infinitely harder if your election system isn't entirely fucked. Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right, invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes, increase the amount of voting places so that scaling this up becomes impossible. Voting has been solved centuries ago. And voting machines will never be part of the solution.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  > Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right The story is literally about ballot stuffing at precincts where there weren’t observers like that watching. Which makes the electronic voting part a complete red herring
  - sidlls 4y ago
    And 100% of the votes from those precincts without observers should’ve been discarded. The real problem is that we don’t fund elections properly. This sort of thing isn’t a problem in other developed democracies. It’s only one here by design.
    - seoaeu 4y ago
      What you’re proposing is that the official in charge of running elections can cut funding to precincts that usually vote for his opponent, and then later invalidate all ballots cast there?
      - 4y ago

shadowgovt 4y ago

Having some familiarity with the Pennsylvania election machinery specifically, there is nothing about this story that required (or would have been stopped by the absence of) electronic voting machines. If it was the old iVotronic system, there would be no ballot to check against (the vote was held in the machine memory in redundant locations), but that's no protection against the machine being activated illegitimately and the judge of elections entering illegitimate votes. In the new system, the machines are just tabulators and physical "SAT-style" fill-the-oval vote cards are used as ballots, but again, there's nothing stopping a judge of elections from filling out a pile of invalid ballots and entering them into the machine if the other team members (majority and minority inspector, and the clerks of election) have been bribed to look the other way. In fact, the judge would have to do that, because the fraud will be obvious if the total count of record doesn't match the total count of paper ballots in the box... But structurally, this is equivalent to just activating the iVotronic machine several additional times to cast fraudulent digital-only ballots. The nature of the fraud here is simple, old-fashioned stuffing the ballot box, and the only protection against that is physically barring access to the hardware (be it a computer or a pine box with a padlock), which is incompatible with the duties of the judge of elections.