3 ms·

Not just one of two numbers. Ballots contain multiple referenda, and races for multiple positions, each of which can have anywhere between 1 and tens of candid

by klyrs 4y ago

Not just one of two numbers. Ballots contain multiple referenda, and races for multiple positions, each of which can have anywhere between 1 and tens of candidates. You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format. Oh, and people like "small government" so making custom hardware is completely out of the question. Using a "multipurpose" computer is the economical choice. But there's another aspect to this: if you can swap out the hardware and keep the software the same, it makes the whole thing more transparent. A jumble of 4000-series CMOS on a breadboard could hide any number of bugs/backdoors. And, perception of trust is important, nobody wants to vote on your science fair project. Also, you'd need to produce thousands of these machines to run an election. Really easy to procure thousands of commodity multipurpose machines... but you're talking about mass-manufacturing your science fair project. Hell no.

bastawhiz 4y ago
There's a lot to be said for the value of commodity hardware: you almost certainly can't prove that purpose-built hardware has or hasn't been tampered with by the manufacturer. With commodity hardware, the risk that the manufacturer anticipated your use case (voting machines) and implanted a backdoor that can affect their functions is extremely small.
rgacote 4y ago
And some positions allow you to vote for "up to" some number of candidates. Town selectman is a typical example.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Excellent point, I've never seen that. The whole structure of election has a lot of variation from place to place, which is a major stumbling block for people who want simple, universal technological solutions. And I forgot write-ins! You don't even have a fixed set of candidates in a given election!
jefftk 4y ago
> You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format. These are machines that read paper ballots and compute totals. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882

by klyrs 4y ago

bastawhiz 4y ago

There's a lot to be said for the value of commodity hardware: you almost certainly can't prove that purpose-built hardware has or hasn't been tampered with by the manufacturer. With commodity hardware, the risk that the manufacturer anticipated your use case (voting machines) and implanted a backdoor that can affect their functions is extremely small.

rgacote 4y ago

And some positions allow you to vote for "up to" some number of candidates. Town selectman is a typical example.

klyrs 4y ago
Excellent point, I've never seen that. The whole structure of election has a lot of variation from place to place, which is a major stumbling block for people who want simple, universal technological solutions. And I forgot write-ins! You don't even have a fixed set of candidates in a given election!

jefftk 4y ago

> You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format. These are machines that read paper ballots and compute totals. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882