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Unless you happen to own the company that makes the machines, or manages them, or operates a significant number of them, or counts the votes. And even if those

Unless you happen to own the company that makes the machines, or manages them, or operates a significant number of them, or counts the votes. And even if those people can't, the public opinion is that they can, and that's just as bad.

progbits 3y ago
Where I'm from, votes are hand counted by committee of multiple people in each voting district and anyone else can come and observe the process. You can't commit large scale fraud this way. And the results are available within 12 hours of the closing thanks to massive parallelism. There is no point in using machines other than enriching their manufacturer and enabling fraud.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  >There is no point in using machines other than enriching their manufacturer and enabling fraud. This is a shortsighted take. To be clear, "machines" can fall anywhere from direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines where people vote on touchscreens with no paper record, to optical-scan machines that process Scantron-style bubble-in paper ballots. The latter is a really good option because you get all the security and usability benefits of paper with the speed of machine counts. That's especially important in jurisdictions that do ranked-choice voting (like Alaska) or places with very long and complicated ballots (like California). If you don't trust the scanner, then a risk-limiting audit [1] will detect discrepancies between what the machine says and what the paper ballots say. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit
  - pivo 3y ago
    Even better than an RLA is a full machine recount from a different company to the one that recorded the votes in the first place. RLAs typically only count a small percentage of the total ballots, while a full machine Audit will count all ballots. I'm biased because this is what the company I work for does, but I think it's hard to argue that not counting all ballots is as good as counting all ballots.
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_joel 3y ago
We have tabulation machines and hand verification, both cross checked, where I'm from. No systematic issues, obviously attempts at localised fraud but this has been caught. More fraud in postal voting.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
I'm surprised nobody who's opposed to voting machines has set up a company to build/sell them yet. I assume people would buy them off your competitors if your pitch was "e-voting is bad, insecure, and has intractable problems. these machines are the cheapest and least-bad ones." I was considering it for a while, calling them Expensive-Pencil machines or something, alluding to the paper they'd print out following your vote.
ta1243 3y ago
Empty box is opened in front of multiple witnesses Voter comes along, name ticked off list of registered voters -- "this person has voted" Voter given stamped piece of paper with candidates on in front of multiple witnesses. Voter marks an X next to a name on a paper, folds paper, showing stamp, puts in a box in front of multiple witnesses Box fills and is then sealed in front of witnesses. Number of votes inside (from the ticking the list) written on. Box is then transferred to counting place. Box is unsealed at counting location in front of multiple witnesses Papers counted to confirm they have a stamp and the number of papers matches the number of votes on the box and accompanying paperwork Papers transferred to counting table in front of multiple witnesses Papers counted in front of multiple witnesses Any confusing ballots set aside to discuss between candidates and the adjudicator If the vote is close papers are recounted Winner announced. This works fine with elections with a turnout measured >30 million people in the UK, which means it works fine for the largest election in the US (California presidential election). So it's secure, scalable, and cheap At what point can you commit fraud to a scale where the effort to do it returns more than the effort to campaign for a few more votes?
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- FrenchyJiby 3y ago
  I'll note that France has a slight variant on that, where it's assumed that any identifiable marker of the ballot could reveal a voter's identity, bad in case of blackmail like "vote for X, and show it by having a stripe at at the top, or I [do bad things to family], I'll be checking the ballots"). To avoid this, no markers, but all possible votes are pieces of paper with printed text, grab N>2, go in the booth, put in one in an envelope. This way your vote and any other vote look identical, and vote is voided in case of any identifying mark (even weirdly bent paper etc). No stamp needed, just number of votes/envelopes.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Much larger problems with voter intimidation in the UK through the postal vote system. I've been to several counts in the UK, spotting a specific ballot, even if you know which box it's in, is impossible. You've then got to be able to enforce that enough to make a difference. You'd have to have a unique mark for every person (at least at every station) you're trying to enforce, one that can be quickly spotted by one of about 5 people you can get at the verification stage. Even then there's no guarantee you didn't just miss it. Sure, you can write "WANK" next to everyone you don't like, and that's great, but again the number of votes you could affect in this way would be a tiny number.

progbits 3y ago

Where I'm from, votes are hand counted by committee of multiple people in each voting district and anyone else can come and observe the process. You can't commit large scale fraud this way. And the results are available within 12 hours of the closing thanks to massive parallelism. There is no point in using machines other than enriching their manufacturer and enabling fraud.

the_snooze 3y ago
>There is no point in using machines other than enriching their manufacturer and enabling fraud. This is a shortsighted take. To be clear, "machines" can fall anywhere from direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines where people vote on touchscreens with no paper record, to optical-scan machines that process Scantron-style bubble-in paper ballots. The latter is a really good option because you get all the security and usability benefits of paper with the speed of machine counts. That's especially important in jurisdictions that do ranked-choice voting (like Alaska) or places with very long and complicated ballots (like California). If you don't trust the scanner, then a risk-limiting audit [1] will detect discrepancies between what the machine says and what the paper ballots say. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit
- pivo 3y ago
  Even better than an RLA is a full machine recount from a different company to the one that recorded the votes in the first place. RLAs typically only count a small percentage of the total ballots, while a full machine Audit will count all ballots. I'm biased because this is what the company I work for does, but I think it's hard to argue that not counting all ballots is as good as counting all ballots.
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_joel 3y ago

We have tabulation machines and hand verification, both cross checked, where I'm from. No systematic issues, obviously attempts at localised fraud but this has been caught. More fraud in postal voting.

extraduder_ire 3y ago

I'm surprised nobody who's opposed to voting machines has set up a company to build/sell them yet. I assume people would buy them off your competitors if your pitch was "e-voting is bad, insecure, and has intractable problems. these machines are the cheapest and least-bad ones." I was considering it for a while, calling them Expensive-Pencil machines or something, alluding to the paper they'd print out following your vote.

ta1243 3y ago

Empty box is opened in front of multiple witnesses Voter comes along, name ticked off list of registered voters -- "this person has voted" Voter given stamped piece of paper with candidates on in front of multiple witnesses. Voter marks an X next to a name on a paper, folds paper, showing stamp, puts in a box in front of multiple witnesses Box fills and is then sealed in front of witnesses. Number of votes inside (from the ticking the list) written on. Box is then transferred to counting place. Box is unsealed at counting location in front of multiple witnesses Papers counted to confirm they have a stamp and the number of papers matches the number of votes on the box and accompanying paperwork Papers transferred to counting table in front of multiple witnesses Papers counted in front of multiple witnesses Any confusing ballots set aside to discuss between candidates and the adjudicator If the vote is close papers are recounted Winner announced. This works fine with elections with a turnout measured >30 million people in the UK, which means it works fine for the largest election in the US (California presidential election). So it's secure, scalable, and cheap At what point can you commit fraud to a scale where the effort to do it returns more than the effort to campaign for a few more votes?

deleted 3y ago
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FrenchyJiby 3y ago
I'll note that France has a slight variant on that, where it's assumed that any identifiable marker of the ballot could reveal a voter's identity, bad in case of blackmail like "vote for X, and show it by having a stripe at at the top, or I [do bad things to family], I'll be checking the ballots"). To avoid this, no markers, but all possible votes are pieces of paper with printed text, grab N>2, go in the booth, put in one in an envelope. This way your vote and any other vote look identical, and vote is voided in case of any identifying mark (even weirdly bent paper etc). No stamp needed, just number of votes/envelopes.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Much larger problems with voter intimidation in the UK through the postal vote system. I've been to several counts in the UK, spotting a specific ballot, even if you know which box it's in, is impossible. You've then got to be able to enforce that enough to make a difference. You'd have to have a unique mark for every person (at least at every station) you're trying to enforce, one that can be quickly spotted by one of about 5 people you can get at the verification stage. Even then there's no guarantee you didn't just miss it. Sure, you can write "WANK" next to everyone you don't like, and that's great, but again the number of votes you could affect in this way would be a tiny number.