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You have the total of votes per machine. In looking at these locations local candidates have a good notion on how well their party is going to perform. Things t

You have the total of votes per machine. In looking at these locations local candidates have a good notion on how well their party is going to perform. Things that call their attention are the "bumps" like the one by the end of last US election. When that happens, they can signal the voting machine to be isolated and call in an electoral judge.

tarakat 4y ago
Sounds easy to evade. Once a machine has recorded 10+ votes since the last time it outputted a count, it could start giving a small probabilistic advantage to a preferred candidate, at the expense of other candidates. There would be no bumps, and the results would never differ by more than, say, relative 20% from the real count. E.g. if preferred candidate got 10% on one voting machine, it would give him 12%, taking the other 2% from all other candidates. No bumps or disproportionate popularity in traditionally unpopular regions to raise suspicion.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  You're suggesting large scale compromise of millions of voting machines. These machines are heavily guarded and secure. They are audited by members of parties and the civil society. I'm not saying such a thing is impossible but it more or less is.
  - tarakat 4y ago
    Or the compromise (or cooperation) of a few of the software supply chain components used to program the chipset of the voting machines. Or the development machines used to write and upload the voting software. Or the foundry used to cast the chips. You think if e.g. China devoted ~5 years of their best hacking group's time to this, they couldn't do it? Because that's a very low price to pay to sway the election of a country such as Brazil. > They are audited by members of parties and the civil society. Audited how? Do they plug in a USB, download the software, and verify that it matches the (hopefully open-source, ideally formally verified) code it's supposed to be running? Let's say it matches - how can they trust that the code the USB port emitted, is what is actually running?
    - tiagobraw 4y ago
      they seize random voting machines from polling sessions and input a known amount of votes for each candidate and match them with the ending totals. (just one kind of audit they do)
      - tarakat 4y ago
        VW was able to detect when an emissions test was being done, so there may be ways to detect this as well. E.g. by the unusually fast rate at which votes are being cast, or if this "seizure" involves moving the machine, reconnecting power to it, or any other kind of abnormal interaction. Why make things so complicated when manual counting works perfectly well?? With auditing being so difficult, you're not even saving any labor.
        cassianoleal 4y ago
        Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about. Manual counting does not work well. I cannot stress this enough. Manual counting in the past has meant much work, rework, terror, confusion and rampant fraud and miscounting. Brazil is a gigantic country with over 150 million electors spread across an area larger than western Europe and with a population much more diverse than that. The labour and the complexity involved in producing the machines and auditing is nothing compared to what manual counting was.
        tarakat 4y ago
        Can you be more specific? I know that population or geographic size alone has no effect on counting complexity - the number of people counting is proportional to the number of votes to be counted. Communicating the vote totals from electoral districts can be done through the same medium as the voting machines would use, and producing final sums takes only O(log n) parallel steps. So where does the terror, confusion, and rampant fraud come from, and what is it about Brazil that causes them, when so many other countries manage to avoid them?
        4y ago

tarakat 4y ago

Sounds easy to evade. Once a machine has recorded 10+ votes since the last time it outputted a count, it could start giving a small probabilistic advantage to a preferred candidate, at the expense of other candidates. There would be no bumps, and the results would never differ by more than, say, relative 20% from the real count. E.g. if preferred candidate got 10% on one voting machine, it would give him 12%, taking the other 2% from all other candidates. No bumps or disproportionate popularity in traditionally unpopular regions to raise suspicion.

cassianoleal 4y ago
You're suggesting large scale compromise of millions of voting machines. These machines are heavily guarded and secure. They are audited by members of parties and the civil society. I'm not saying such a thing is impossible but it more or less is.
- tarakat 4y ago
  Or the compromise (or cooperation) of a few of the software supply chain components used to program the chipset of the voting machines. Or the development machines used to write and upload the voting software. Or the foundry used to cast the chips. You think if e.g. China devoted ~5 years of their best hacking group's time to this, they couldn't do it? Because that's a very low price to pay to sway the election of a country such as Brazil. > They are audited by members of parties and the civil society. Audited how? Do they plug in a USB, download the software, and verify that it matches the (hopefully open-source, ideally formally verified) code it's supposed to be running? Let's say it matches - how can they trust that the code the USB port emitted, is what is actually running?
  - tiagobraw 4y ago
    they seize random voting machines from polling sessions and input a known amount of votes for each candidate and match them with the ending totals. (just one kind of audit they do)
    - tarakat 4y ago
      VW was able to detect when an emissions test was being done, so there may be ways to detect this as well. E.g. by the unusually fast rate at which votes are being cast, or if this "seizure" involves moving the machine, reconnecting power to it, or any other kind of abnormal interaction. Why make things so complicated when manual counting works perfectly well?? With auditing being so difficult, you're not even saving any labor.
      - cassianoleal 4y ago
        Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about. Manual counting does not work well. I cannot stress this enough. Manual counting in the past has meant much work, rework, terror, confusion and rampant fraud and miscounting. Brazil is a gigantic country with over 150 million electors spread across an area larger than western Europe and with a population much more diverse than that. The labour and the complexity involved in producing the machines and auditing is nothing compared to what manual counting was.
        tarakat 4y ago
        Can you be more specific? I know that population or geographic size alone has no effect on counting complexity - the number of people counting is proportional to the number of votes to be counted. Communicating the vote totals from electoral districts can be done through the same medium as the voting machines would use, and producing final sums takes only O(log n) parallel steps. So where does the terror, confusion, and rampant fraud come from, and what is it about Brazil that causes them, when so many other countries manage to avoid them?
        4y ago