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Why would I trust anything with "off the shelf" parts (China) and elections in California? You've listed two pieces that are not truly in favor of legitimate o

Why would I trust anything with "off the shelf" parts (China) and elections in California? You've listed two pieces that are not truly in favor of legitimate or honest elections.

hedora 4y ago
Talking about how these machines are open source is misleading. They (like many, many other voting machines already in use) are designed to let you run an election without actually trusting the software on the machines. From the risk limiting auditing link above: > How Does a RLA Work? > A risk-limiting audit examines a random sample of paper ballots, comparing them to the machine count to ensure that the winner actually won. > The number of votes needed to manually count depends on the margin of victory. The closer the margin, the more votes we manually count. The RLA confirms that, if a full hand-tally were performed, it would give the same outcome. Put another way, the malicious voting machine plays a game: It makes the first move by lying about the tally and incorrectly claiming that candidate X wins. If the machine claims X won by a large margin, then a small randomized recount exposes its lie. If the machine claims X won by a small margin, then a full recount is performed. Crucially, with high probability (it can be set arbitrarily high), the faulty voting machines get caught the first time they attempt this, and then are thrown away. There are some voting machines in use in the US that do not keep paper trails. There's widespread evidence of systematic fraud with those machines in swing districts, going back to a least 2004. (Old paperless mechanical machines had the same problem.)
- trelane 4y ago
  > There's widespread evidence of systematic fraud with those machines in swing districts, going back to a least 2004. Uhh, citation please?
  - cudgy 4y ago
    Given that countless companies, websites, social media networks, governmental organizations, hospitals, school systems, and individuals including consumer credit companies are hacked every year, do you really need more evidence that an electronic voting machine could be compromised?
    - toofy 4y ago
      generally we need to see evidence, yes. particularly with the claim of “widespread” and “systemic abuse” casually tossed in. do we doubt machines have been hacked? of course not, you’re on hackernews, we all attended defcon voting machine village, but yes, “widespread” and “systemic abuse” needs to be backed up with something more than, “it happened to joe and jim two streets over so obviously it happened to jill next door.”
    - llbeansandrice 4y ago
      Yes. What kind of bullshit question is that? The claim is “widespread evidence of fraud”. I’d like to see any of the widespread evidence and not hand wavey back tracking to “could be compromised”.
      - cudgy 4y ago
        It doesn’t have to be widespread in order to have a widespread impact. Some national elections are extremely close and essentially decided in one county of a single swing state. Most local elections are by definition “local” and close local elections can be decided by the votes from a single voting precinct. Requiring the evidence to be widespread in order to acknowledge the risk is real and impactful is shortsighted and “hand wavy”.
- toofy 4y ago
  > …widespread evidence of systemic fraud… i’m sorry, that’s a very bold statement to make without a number of reliable citations…
  - specialist 4y ago
    Voter Action proved in court that Kerry won New Mexico, rather than Bush. The problems in NM were a subset of the problems in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. Make of that what you will. Walks like a duck... Eye On Ohio: The Informed Citizen's Guide to the 2004 Election http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/mirrors/EyeOnOhio/ http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/mirrors/EyeOnOhio/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo... https://www.amazon.com/Was-2004-Presidential-Election-Stolen/dp/1583226877 https://www.amazon.com/Was-2004-Presidential-Election-Stolen... https://www.projectcensored.org/voter-fraud-august-2005/ https://www.projectcensored.org/voter-fraud-august-2005/ https://www.amazon.com/Stole-Americas-2004-Election-Rigging/dp/097534028X https://www.amazon.com/Stole-Americas-2004-Election-Rigging/...
philips 4y ago
I have been involved in elections in both Oregon and California and the hardware from the incumbent vendors is mostly regular off the shelf general purpose computer hardware which as we know isnt always produced fully domestically. The difference is that the voting machine incumbents wrap their hardware and software in unfair licenses with single source provisions so municipalities end up paying a huge markup over retail to get “certified gear”. In San Francisco one of the voting machines I managed as a poll manager in 2018 was a early pentium machine with a BIOS and floppy. These machines were never designed to be remotely attested let alone tamper evident like modern Chromebooks. Anyways, the VotingWorks systems are all based on paper ballots so hand counts and risk limiting audits are options if the hardware is found to be untrustworthy.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
The nice thing is that all the votes with this system are on paper ballots. The paper ballots can then be verified against the machine counts. It does not stop people from stuffing ballot boxes, but it does stop people from fudging the machine count too much.

Why would I trust anything with "off the shelf" parts (China) and elections in California? You've listed two pieces that are not truly in favor of legitimate or honest elections.

hedora 4y ago

Talking about how these machines are open source is misleading. They (like many, many other voting machines already in use) are designed to let you run an election without actually trusting the software on the machines. From the risk limiting auditing link above: > How Does a RLA Work? > A risk-limiting audit examines a random sample of paper ballots, comparing them to the machine count to ensure that the winner actually won. > The number of votes needed to manually count depends on the margin of victory. The closer the margin, the more votes we manually count. The RLA confirms that, if a full hand-tally were performed, it would give the same outcome. Put another way, the malicious voting machine plays a game: It makes the first move by lying about the tally and incorrectly claiming that candidate X wins. If the machine claims X won by a large margin, then a small randomized recount exposes its lie. If the machine claims X won by a small margin, then a full recount is performed. Crucially, with high probability (it can be set arbitrarily high), the faulty voting machines get caught the first time they attempt this, and then are thrown away. There are some voting machines in use in the US that do not keep paper trails. There's widespread evidence of systematic fraud with those machines in swing districts, going back to a least 2004. (Old paperless mechanical machines had the same problem.)

trelane 4y ago
> There's widespread evidence of systematic fraud with those machines in swing districts, going back to a least 2004. Uhh, citation please?
- cudgy 4y ago
  Given that countless companies, websites, social media networks, governmental organizations, hospitals, school systems, and individuals including consumer credit companies are hacked every year, do you really need more evidence that an electronic voting machine could be compromised?
  - toofy 4y ago
    generally we need to see evidence, yes. particularly with the claim of “widespread” and “systemic abuse” casually tossed in. do we doubt machines have been hacked? of course not, you’re on hackernews, we all attended defcon voting machine village, but yes, “widespread” and “systemic abuse” needs to be backed up with something more than, “it happened to joe and jim two streets over so obviously it happened to jill next door.”
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    Yes. What kind of bullshit question is that? The claim is “widespread evidence of fraud”. I’d like to see any of the widespread evidence and not hand wavey back tracking to “could be compromised”.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      It doesn’t have to be widespread in order to have a widespread impact. Some national elections are extremely close and essentially decided in one county of a single swing state. Most local elections are by definition “local” and close local elections can be decided by the votes from a single voting precinct. Requiring the evidence to be widespread in order to acknowledge the risk is real and impactful is shortsighted and “hand wavy”.
toofy 4y ago
> …widespread evidence of systemic fraud… i’m sorry, that’s a very bold statement to make without a number of reliable citations…
- specialist 4y ago
  Voter Action proved in court that Kerry won New Mexico, rather than Bush. The problems in NM were a subset of the problems in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. Make of that what you will. Walks like a duck... Eye On Ohio: The Informed Citizen's Guide to the 2004 Election http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/mirrors/EyeOnOhio/ http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/mirrors/EyeOnOhio/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo... https://www.amazon.com/Was-2004-Presidential-Election-Stolen/dp/1583226877 https://www.amazon.com/Was-2004-Presidential-Election-Stolen... https://www.projectcensored.org/voter-fraud-august-2005/ https://www.projectcensored.org/voter-fraud-august-2005/ https://www.amazon.com/Stole-Americas-2004-Election-Rigging/dp/097534028X https://www.amazon.com/Stole-Americas-2004-Election-Rigging/...

philips 4y ago

I have been involved in elections in both Oregon and California and the hardware from the incumbent vendors is mostly regular off the shelf general purpose computer hardware which as we know isnt always produced fully domestically. The difference is that the voting machine incumbents wrap their hardware and software in unfair licenses with single source provisions so municipalities end up paying a huge markup over retail to get “certified gear”. In San Francisco one of the voting machines I managed as a poll manager in 2018 was a early pentium machine with a BIOS and floppy. These machines were never designed to be remotely attested let alone tamper evident like modern Chromebooks. Anyways, the VotingWorks systems are all based on paper ballots so hand counts and risk limiting audits are options if the hardware is found to be untrustworthy.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

The nice thing is that all the votes with this system are on paper ballots. The paper ballots can then be verified against the machine counts. It does not stop people from stuffing ballot boxes, but it does stop people from fudging the machine count too much.