3 ms·

In that case it's poor reasoning and they can do better.

nebula8804 2y ago
They have done better: Since 2016 a majority of states with "DRE only" have switched to DRE with verifiable paper trail. It provides quick results with the backup option of manual counting. They could go further by doing statistical risk limiting auditing for all elections and not just the ones that are close but it is still a large step forward since 2016.
- adriancr 2y ago
  > They could go further by doing statistical risk limiting auditing for all elections I doubt that would help with avoiding or correcting any damage. Lets take the obvious scenario, someone does a blatant large scale steal of an election. (they get access to manufacturer, set up their own firmware to be updated on all voting machines) Imagine the damage in that case. Let's say you do detect and try to correct. It's already too late. The winners will contest statistic analysis and say fake news then tie it and any recount up in lawsuits. (perhaps combined with arranging for some ballots to be destroyed in secondary storage so any recount would be contestable too) They will assume power and it will be too late. (there is a time limit for recount and supreme court might decide to force usage of bad results) Or they might be prevented from getting in power (how would that work, who would be leading?) You will have revolts and unrest either way... That sort of chaos would be exactly what a foreign power like Russia or China would want. Punishing them would be impossible and they would have already won at this point, it wouldn't even matter who wins eventually. Domestic actors might also view this as their only option to win and use it regardless... If they get in power it's game over, if they lose they might still be in a powerful position with lots of support. So why not avoid the issue entirely and go paper ballots with independent observers.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    >Lets take the obvious scenario, someone does a blatant large scale steal of an election. (they get access to manufacturer, set up their own firmware to be updated on all voting machines) A DRE machine with a paper trail works by having the voter see the actual printed paper before committing the vote. How can an attacker overcome the paper record that has been verified by the voter before the vote is committed? Thats why I said that risk limiting audit where you perform statistical analysis on the paper ballots is the best of all worlds. It allows quick results and if there is either a close election or an anomaly from the audit then the entire paper backup is counted manually. Fortunately many states have already laws on the books to automatically trigger a manual count if the election is within a specific extremely close margin but I believe they should also do the risk auditing on all elections which is still something that activists are working towards getting implemented. >It's already too late. The winners will contest statistic analysis and say fake news then tie it and any recount up in lawsuits. (perhaps combined with arranging for some ballots to be destroyed in secondary storage so any recount would be contestable too) That implies that the election staff is compromised. Each ballot has a unique serial number(at least in the states I have looked at). >So why not avoid the issue entirely and go paper ballots with independent observers. I have also been involved in a lawsuit contesting an election in NY. The bigger issue is not intimidation of staff or potential destruction of ballots(there are mitigations for both of those), its that when the ballots themselves are ambiguous (say in the case of a person marking a paper ballot incorrectly) then it allows legal maneuvers to dismiss ballots and swing an election which is exactly what happened in the recount triggered by the lawsuit. We had a number of paper ballots marked incorrectly and it was not possible to reach the voters in time to have their vote registered correctly so the election was lost by the person filing the lawsuit. This issue would have been avoided by a electronic machine producing clean paper records verified by voters and are not ambiguous in a recount.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - adriancr 2y ago
      > This issue would have been avoided by a electronic machine producing clean paper records verified by voters and are not ambiguous in a recount What happens if paper ballot is correct but machine then changes some small percentage of votes randomly when sending upstream? You say there will be a recount, how would that work?, what would trigger it?, and what could a malicious actor do to prevent it from working? Malicious actor that can have firmware modified (that seems like a easy target - compromise company making them), that can work up large crowds and have resources for lawsuits. What would the end result be? What would society look like after a few months of this?
      - nebula8804 2y ago
        >What happens if paper ballot is correct but machine then changes some small percentage of votes randomly when sending upstream? If it does not change the outcome of the election then it does not have the intended effect. If the margin was so close as to change the election the laws on the books would force a complete manual count regardless. Nevertheless, you are proving my point about the risk limiting audits which would help to catch anomalies like this. >You say there will be a recount, how would that work?, what would trigger it?, and what could a malicious actor do to prevent it from working? If the margin is within a certain percentage (depends on the state) it forces a manual count of the ballots. I am advocating the risk limiting audits to help catch the machine acting malicious while printing the correct result on paper. >Malicious actor that can have firmware modified (that seems like a easy target - compromise company making them), that can work up large crowds and have resources for lawsuits. The lawsuits would still have to respect the law on the books. No machine is perfect but humans are not perfect either. In this thread I already discussed the incident in NY where they have paper ballots filled out by voters and then scanned. Humans messing up the ballots lead to the discarding of votes because they could not be validated. A combination of machine verifying human while human verifying machine is best.
        2y ago

They have done better: Since 2016 a majority of states with "DRE only" have switched to DRE with verifiable paper trail. It provides quick results with the backup option of manual counting. They could go further by doing statistical risk limiting auditing for all elections and not just the ones that are close but it is still a large step forward since 2016.

adriancr 2y ago
> They could go further by doing statistical risk limiting auditing for all elections I doubt that would help with avoiding or correcting any damage. Lets take the obvious scenario, someone does a blatant large scale steal of an election. (they get access to manufacturer, set up their own firmware to be updated on all voting machines) Imagine the damage in that case. Let's say you do detect and try to correct. It's already too late. The winners will contest statistic analysis and say fake news then tie it and any recount up in lawsuits. (perhaps combined with arranging for some ballots to be destroyed in secondary storage so any recount would be contestable too) They will assume power and it will be too late. (there is a time limit for recount and supreme court might decide to force usage of bad results) Or they might be prevented from getting in power (how would that work, who would be leading?) You will have revolts and unrest either way... That sort of chaos would be exactly what a foreign power like Russia or China would want. Punishing them would be impossible and they would have already won at this point, it wouldn't even matter who wins eventually. Domestic actors might also view this as their only option to win and use it regardless... If they get in power it's game over, if they lose they might still be in a powerful position with lots of support. So why not avoid the issue entirely and go paper ballots with independent observers.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  >Lets take the obvious scenario, someone does a blatant large scale steal of an election. (they get access to manufacturer, set up their own firmware to be updated on all voting machines) A DRE machine with a paper trail works by having the voter see the actual printed paper before committing the vote. How can an attacker overcome the paper record that has been verified by the voter before the vote is committed? Thats why I said that risk limiting audit where you perform statistical analysis on the paper ballots is the best of all worlds. It allows quick results and if there is either a close election or an anomaly from the audit then the entire paper backup is counted manually. Fortunately many states have already laws on the books to automatically trigger a manual count if the election is within a specific extremely close margin but I believe they should also do the risk auditing on all elections which is still something that activists are working towards getting implemented. >It's already too late. The winners will contest statistic analysis and say fake news then tie it and any recount up in lawsuits. (perhaps combined with arranging for some ballots to be destroyed in secondary storage so any recount would be contestable too) That implies that the election staff is compromised. Each ballot has a unique serial number(at least in the states I have looked at). >So why not avoid the issue entirely and go paper ballots with independent observers. I have also been involved in a lawsuit contesting an election in NY. The bigger issue is not intimidation of staff or potential destruction of ballots(there are mitigations for both of those), its that when the ballots themselves are ambiguous (say in the case of a person marking a paper ballot incorrectly) then it allows legal maneuvers to dismiss ballots and swing an election which is exactly what happened in the recount triggered by the lawsuit. We had a number of paper ballots marked incorrectly and it was not possible to reach the voters in time to have their vote registered correctly so the election was lost by the person filing the lawsuit. This issue would have been avoided by a electronic machine producing clean paper records verified by voters and are not ambiguous in a recount.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - adriancr 2y ago
    > This issue would have been avoided by a electronic machine producing clean paper records verified by voters and are not ambiguous in a recount What happens if paper ballot is correct but machine then changes some small percentage of votes randomly when sending upstream? You say there will be a recount, how would that work?, what would trigger it?, and what could a malicious actor do to prevent it from working? Malicious actor that can have firmware modified (that seems like a easy target - compromise company making them), that can work up large crowds and have resources for lawsuits. What would the end result be? What would society look like after a few months of this?
    - nebula8804 2y ago
      >What happens if paper ballot is correct but machine then changes some small percentage of votes randomly when sending upstream? If it does not change the outcome of the election then it does not have the intended effect. If the margin was so close as to change the election the laws on the books would force a complete manual count regardless. Nevertheless, you are proving my point about the risk limiting audits which would help to catch anomalies like this. >You say there will be a recount, how would that work?, what would trigger it?, and what could a malicious actor do to prevent it from working? If the margin is within a certain percentage (depends on the state) it forces a manual count of the ballots. I am advocating the risk limiting audits to help catch the machine acting malicious while printing the correct result on paper. >Malicious actor that can have firmware modified (that seems like a easy target - compromise company making them), that can work up large crowds and have resources for lawsuits. The lawsuits would still have to respect the law on the books. No machine is perfect but humans are not perfect either. In this thread I already discussed the incident in NY where they have paper ballots filled out by voters and then scanned. Humans messing up the ballots lead to the discarding of votes because they could not be validated. A combination of machine verifying human while human verifying machine is best.
      - 2y ago