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Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

utahpolicy.com

71–80 of 220 posts

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#71
post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

What's the point of voter ID cards when the system you are casting your vote into is compromised?

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#72

If there is no online voting, why is the system even connected to the Internet? What exactly are the attacks against? The voter registration site? The election results site?

From what I understand the greatest vulnerability is modification of voter registration data. If you show up to vote and they don't have you in that district's voter rolls because your address was changed to another state, your vote has just been taken away.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Voting requires ID in almost every other western democracy, including Canada. The rest of the world see it as very reasonable to identify yourself at a polling station. It's odd that this is so contentious in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws

mostly cause the laws get abused to target mostly democrat voters.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#74
post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

Let's not forget about how the Bushs burned a few thousand votes in Florida to win the 2000 election over Gore.

It's hard to believe voting machines aren't hacked on the regular with how they're almost built to be insecure. But maybe they've never been hacked. I don't know.

Either way, that doesn't make all technological solutions bad by default. A technological solution /could/ be better than a paper solution.

I think the crypto bubble is very overhyped, but I'm pretty sure some form of a distributed voter database /could/ make it nearly impossible to forge a single vote, let alone forging votes at scale.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#75
post #65

Why would a voting system even need to be online?

Depends what you mean by "voting system". Individual voting machines rarely are - they're usually air-gapped, read the ballot from a physical memory card transported by sneakernet from administrative offices, and write vote totals back to those cards for sneakernet transmission to same offices.

However, those central locations use a lot of internet-connected machines, mostly to communicate their numbers to outside systems. The computers that program the ballot descriptions pre-election (a vector for attacking voting machines) are also usually internet-connected - they're plain old desktop workstations of some elections official.

Air-gapping those systems is probably doable, at a minor loss of convenience, but there is a reason they're internet-connected.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#76
Vote by mail works, is efficient and easy.

Autoregister on State ID or Drivers License.

Online party management.

Signature validation, collected at registration.

Voters can mail it, use a drop, or vote in person at an elections office.

My favorite is voting parties. Everyone brings ballots, talk abot the options, vote, eat, smoke, drink, done.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#77
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Right. The hysteria around double or fraudulent voting is crazy. You’d need thousands of people doing it in most districts to have any impact, and that would get obvious really bloody quickly. I think this is a pretty good example of what I find to be the typical of an American practice of cutting off their own nose to spite their face. [1] Americans absolutely hate the idea of freeloaders or someone getting somethin…

[deleted]

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

What about finger paint, like most other countries use? You just simply get an unwashable ink on your thumb. It does a few things. It shows you voted already. Also, puts a little bit of social pressure on people you see who don't have the mark.

Never heard of that... fascinating! I don't think it's used in Croatia, Bosnia, US or Canada. Can you provide examples?

Thx!:)

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#79
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of transactions in voting and at banks are pretty wildly different.

It doesn't have to be. If online voting ever becomes widespread, there is a reasonable chance there will be more votes and referendums.

There would be a absurd cognitive overhead for people to have to study and prepare an opinion for as many votes as they have financial transactions. Every other productive activity in the US would grind to a halt.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#80
post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

> Voting ID cards too

National ID cards is better. Requiring and ID to vote is open to actual fraud as it can be granted or denied on political basis.

A mandatory national ID card is politics free. It is used to register your weapon, to get health care, to vote, to register your kids in school, etc. It helps that everybody is counted as a citizen. Instead of just removing the people that you don't like (https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/12/22/67481/you-say-you-re-an...).

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