49 ms·

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 b

by 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?
      - wholinator2 4y ago
        I thought that they were simultaneously suggesting that funding be increased in a concrete and not easily reverse way. But I do see your point
      - sidlls 4y ago
        That's an incredibly uncharitable read of my comment.
        seoaeu 4y ago
        I wasn't trying to be uncharitable. You said that we should have retroactively discarded 100% of votes from specific precincts, so I pointed out why allowing selective invalidation like that is a really bad idea.
        sidlls 4y ago
        No, you uncharitably ignored the majority of my comment in your haste to make a sarcastic response.
        seoaeu 4y ago
        I ignored the part where you called for mundane improvements, and zeroed in on the small bit where you called for blatant voter disenfranchisement
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        I can register as an assessor for free (both for me and my city). The cases where cities have to pay for some is extremely rare. If you live in a city with even a hundred inhabitants, the chances to find at least one that is interested in their democratic process is already high.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Other than speeding up voting calculations, reducing paper usage, enabling arbitrary language use at the booth, and other things. If electronic fraud is a concern, we should mitigate it, because encryption, identity, and date integrity are solved problems. Furthermore, spot auditing and paper receipts/copies are a thing, or could be. (Also, voting may be "solved" but voting systems and universal access to the ballot has not. First past the post voting is possibly the worst system to use short of flipping a coin.)
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Access to polling places has also been solved, including India where officials carry voting machines through the jungle for or only a handful of voters. And first past the goal post works, or rather can work. It is aggressive Gerrymandering, allocating senators by state and not population and the electoral college that screw it up in the US.
    - r00fus 4y ago
      FPTP is a disaster. Even if you have perfectly representative elections, FPTP essentially disallows anything but 2 parties. This makes both parties more easily corruptible (less people to bribe if you're paying for specific result or legislation). Multiple parties makes gaming elections much harder for moneyed interests.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        France has FPTP, and it works for a lot more than two parties. Admittedly, France has a second round run off in case no candidate has more than 50% of votes in the first round so.
        seoaeu 4y ago
        Having two rounds is by definition not first past the post. And in fact that is the difference that makes it possible in France for third and fourth parties to get non-trivial support in the first round.
- abeyer 4y ago
  > invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes That seems to just introduce a new vulnerability where you could intentionally get caught cheating in precincts that leaned contrary to your beliefs to invalidate everyone there who voted legitimately.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    No. Any attempts at cheating caught live just invalidate that bulletin (and said cheater is brought to the police). With a well organised setup (having a record of who already voted, having a transparent ballot box that is only open for a moment when your identity has been verified, multiple assessors watching for the extremely obvious "hey there's multiple envelopes that fell in there"), cheating is already extremely hard, for almost no gain. Maybe you can stuff two votes instead of one, but at what cost, potentially invalidating hundreds for your candidate ? And since voter counts are recorded and compared to bulletin counts, even a difference of one will start an inquiry and potentially invalidate. If you multiply the voting places, where instead of having a single place which will tally over 10k votes, have 15 places that tally 700 votes each, you have now made both cheating much harder, and less worth it in the scenario you propose.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Voting has been solved centuries ago. Yes, but then we threw in a huge wrench when we decided that votes needed to be secret, too.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    No. Voting has been secret also for centuries. Paper ballots allow secrecy of the vote _and_ verification of voters. Something that electronic ballots will never be able to do.
    - seoaeu 4y ago
      As has been stated repeatedly in this thread, paper ballots wouldn’t have prevented this case
tastyfreeze 4y ago
You can never be sure that people running the precinct, or any office, are not corrupt. The rules should be such that it doesn't matter who is in office. Violation of the rules must be met with stiff penalty or the rules are not really a deterrent.
csee 4y ago
It's not about actual vulnerabilities (although it may also be), it is about the general public's confidence in the legitimacy of the election. Voting machines do not instill confidence, and that is a bad thing for a democracy. I don't care about the microcosm of improved efficiency. That's not the thing to try to make ultra efficient at the cost of legitimacy.

by seoaeu 4y ago

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?
    - wholinator2 4y ago
      I thought that they were simultaneously suggesting that funding be increased in a concrete and not easily reverse way. But I do see your point
    - sidlls 4y ago
      That's an incredibly uncharitable read of my comment.
      - seoaeu 4y ago
        I wasn't trying to be uncharitable. You said that we should have retroactively discarded 100% of votes from specific precincts, so I pointed out why allowing selective invalidation like that is a really bad idea.
        sidlls 4y ago
        No, you uncharitably ignored the majority of my comment in your haste to make a sarcastic response.
        seoaeu 4y ago
        I ignored the part where you called for mundane improvements, and zeroed in on the small bit where you called for blatant voter disenfranchisement
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      I can register as an assessor for free (both for me and my city). The cases where cities have to pay for some is extremely rare. If you live in a city with even a hundred inhabitants, the chances to find at least one that is interested in their democratic process is already high.
unethical_ban 4y ago
Other than speeding up voting calculations, reducing paper usage, enabling arbitrary language use at the booth, and other things. If electronic fraud is a concern, we should mitigate it, because encryption, identity, and date integrity are solved problems. Furthermore, spot auditing and paper receipts/copies are a thing, or could be. (Also, voting may be "solved" but voting systems and universal access to the ballot has not. First past the post voting is possibly the worst system to use short of flipping a coin.)
- hef19898 4y ago
  Access to polling places has also been solved, including India where officials carry voting machines through the jungle for or only a handful of voters. And first past the goal post works, or rather can work. It is aggressive Gerrymandering, allocating senators by state and not population and the electoral college that screw it up in the US.
  - r00fus 4y ago
    FPTP is a disaster. Even if you have perfectly representative elections, FPTP essentially disallows anything but 2 parties. This makes both parties more easily corruptible (less people to bribe if you're paying for specific result or legislation). Multiple parties makes gaming elections much harder for moneyed interests.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      France has FPTP, and it works for a lot more than two parties. Admittedly, France has a second round run off in case no candidate has more than 50% of votes in the first round so.
      - seoaeu 4y ago
        Having two rounds is by definition not first past the post. And in fact that is the difference that makes it possible in France for third and fourth parties to get non-trivial support in the first round.
abeyer 4y ago
> invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes That seems to just introduce a new vulnerability where you could intentionally get caught cheating in precincts that leaned contrary to your beliefs to invalidate everyone there who voted legitimately.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  No. Any attempts at cheating caught live just invalidate that bulletin (and said cheater is brought to the police). With a well organised setup (having a record of who already voted, having a transparent ballot box that is only open for a moment when your identity has been verified, multiple assessors watching for the extremely obvious "hey there's multiple envelopes that fell in there"), cheating is already extremely hard, for almost no gain. Maybe you can stuff two votes instead of one, but at what cost, potentially invalidating hundreds for your candidate ? And since voter counts are recorded and compared to bulletin counts, even a difference of one will start an inquiry and potentially invalidate. If you multiply the voting places, where instead of having a single place which will tally over 10k votes, have 15 places that tally 700 votes each, you have now made both cheating much harder, and less worth it in the scenario you propose.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> Voting has been solved centuries ago. Yes, but then we threw in a huge wrench when we decided that votes needed to be secret, too.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  No. Voting has been secret also for centuries. Paper ballots allow secrecy of the vote _and_ verification of voters. Something that electronic ballots will never be able to do.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    As has been stated repeatedly in this thread, paper ballots wouldn’t have prevented this case

tastyfreeze 4y ago

You can never be sure that people running the precinct, or any office, are not corrupt. The rules should be such that it doesn't matter who is in office. Violation of the rules must be met with stiff penalty or the rules are not really a deterrent.

csee 4y ago

It's not about actual vulnerabilities (although it may also be), it is about the general public's confidence in the legitimacy of the election. Voting machines do not instill confidence, and that is a bad thing for a democracy. I don't care about the microcosm of improved efficiency. That's not the thing to try to make ultra efficient at the cost of legitimacy.