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Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

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Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#91

Post by dogcomplex »

Chardok wrote: post #18

With all of this discussion in Washington about Russian hacking and Russian voter influencing, why are these demonstrably vulnerable voting machines hardly mentioned? It would seem to me this should be a number one priority to prevent outside interference.

Well, when the best way to obfuscate your own voter influencing and voting machine hacking is to keep blaming it on the Russians (based mostly on the language packs installed in the attackers' text editors...), we have to wonder how much they really care about preventing interference in democracy...

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#92

Post by tjoff »

QuercusMax wrote: post #27
jniedrauer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We desperately need a national ID card. Social security was never designed for this purpose and it's terrible for it. Drivers license requires having access to a car and some way to learn how to use it.

If we're going to have a national ID card, then it needs to be: 1) Free. Period. Otherwise you're going to disenfranchise poor people who can't afford even $50 to get an ID. 2) Universally accessible. If we're going to require it, then we need to make sure everyone has one, from a little old lady living 100 miles from civilization in Montana, to the homeless living in camps near San Jose.

Neither of those points could possibly be a problem.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#93

Post by dogcomplex »

yoha wrote: post #77
contravariant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only possible if you sacrifice some of the stronger anonymity requirements. In theory you shouldn't be able to prove you voted a particular way to ensure you can't be intimidated into changing you vote. Unless it's good enough to verify whether your vote was counted, that should be fairly easy to do.

> That's only possible if you sacrifice some of the stronger anonymity requirements Untrue. You can use strong encryption to ensure confidentiality and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure integrity. Then, you can use methods from homomorphic encryption to tally the ballots. There is a whole area of research dedicated to this.

So in your opinion the problem is (theoretically) solved? As in, we can have anonymous, verifiable, online, direct democracy such that 3rd parties cannot verify your vote without your private key?

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#94

Post by JamesBarney »

dogcomplex wrote: post #91
Chardok wrote: post #18

With all of this discussion in Washington about Russian hacking and Russian voter influencing, why are these demonstrably vulnerable voting machines hardly mentioned? It would seem to me this should be a number one priority to prevent outside interference.

Well, when the best way to obfuscate your own voter influencing and voting machine hacking is to keep blaming it on the Russians (based mostly on the language packs installed in the attackers' text editors...), we have to wonder how much they really care about preventing interference in democracy...

There is no disagreement between every serious security professional I follow, and every security agency that has a prepared a report.

All of them believe it's the Russians based on all the available evidence.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#95

Post by dev_dull »

CocaKoala wrote: post #36
jniedrauer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We desperately need a national ID card. Social security was never designed for this purpose and it's terrible for it. Drivers license requires having access to a car and some way to learn how to use it.

You can get an ID card that works as legal id but isn't a driver's license, but it still requires going to the DMV and burning at LEAST several hours, which isn't an option available to everybody.

This is a crisis created by local governments. The private sector could easily solve this problem, but that would require bureaucrats losing their power.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#96

Post by cmurf »

robotrout wrote: post #58
CocaKoala wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get an ID card that works as legal id but isn't a driver's license, but it still requires going to the DMV and burning at LEAST several hours, which isn't an option available to everybody.

I'm sure their friendly neighborhood community organizer will charter a bus for them to get their ID cards. If they're citizens, there will be somebody who wants their vote badly enough to walk them through that process and even buy them a sandwich for their trouble. Let's join the rest of the world and make sure that the people voting in our elections are citizens. Community organizers have proven to be extremely ef…

It's in the realm of tinfoil hat and freakishly paranoid conspiracy theories that there's any meaningful amount of non-citizens voting. Feel free to design a system that meets the John Rawl's "veil of ignorance" thought experiment, such that the burden of obtaining such ID is equal among all. What would that really look like? If Joe Bob has to take 2 hours off work, without pay, to get ID, how do you get a Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos to go without pay for two hours? Charge them $3 million for their ID card? And if you do, is their burden really the same when they still take home $30 million that day, while Joe Bob lost $30 out of his $600 weekly pay, plus the $30 cost of the license or 10% of his weekly take home? And even if you charge ~$17 million for Warren's driver's license, his weekly take home is still $160+ million. So is that the same burden?

By the way, the single prosecuted case of voter fraud from 2016 I'm aware of, is a man in Colorado, who voted for his wife after she'd moved out of state. They're both citizens.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#97

Post by dev_dull »

slg wrote: post #12
dev_dull wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or note, requiring ID to vote in the United States is considered controversial.

Because citizens are not required to have ID and those that don't have one are disproportionately racial minorities and/or in lower socioeconomic classes. Democrats would be much more willing to allow ID to be required to vote if there was a national ID card issued to every citizen, but Republicans would be against any system that would try to create a national ID.

You would think that tightly controlled democratic states such as California would make an effort to make IDs easier to get, but instead they create a bureaucratic nightmare which requires 6 hours of your day (visit to the DMV).

The state believes requiring IDs disenfranchises the poor. It’s actually the disfunctional state governments that do it.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#98

Post by dev_dull »

tjoff wrote: post #92
QuercusMax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to have a national ID card, then it needs to be: 1) Free. Period. Otherwise you're going to disenfranchise poor people who can't afford even $50 to get an ID. 2) Universally accessible. If we're going to require it, then we need to make sure everyone has one, from a little old lady living 100 miles from civilization in Montana, to the homeless living in camps near San Jose.

Neither of those points could possibly be a problem.

You’ve clearly never seen your local government at work.

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#99

Post by yoha »

dogcomplex wrote: post #93
yoha wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's only possible if you sacrifice some of the stronger anonymity requirements Untrue. You can use strong encryption to ensure confidentiality and zero-knowledge proofs to ensure integrity. Then, you can use methods from homomorphic encryption to tally the ballots. There is a whole area of research dedicated to this.

So in your opinion the problem is (theoretically) solved? As in, we can have anonymous, verifiable, online, direct democracy such that 3rd parties cannot verify your vote without your private key?

As I said in another comment, individual verifiability and non-coercion are mutually exclusive online. However, there are indeed solutions for the other properties (including global integrity), and compromises between individual verifiability and non-coercion. For instance, you can have a look at Helios [1] or Belenios [2]. Current research is looking for stronger guarantees, a better compromise, or a more interesting voting system (such as Single Transferable Vote or Majority Judgment).

[1] https://vote.heliosvoting.org/

[2] http://www.belenios.org/

Re: Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

#100

Post by logfromblammo »

bluGill wrote: post #54
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems simple enough to just make it a national holiday.

Not really. Do you need to get to the polling place? I guess all gas station workers are exempt. As is everybody working for the various transit systems. Can you ensure nobody has a medical issue on a national holiday? Doctors, nurses, and hospital support staff are all working. This also brings on either the entire power grid, or someone in maintenance to watch the generators. Do you eat? All restaurants are exempt.…

This is already a solved problem. Wage workers can get paid for a multiple of their actual hours as a holiday differential. But in order to invoke that system, you do need to declare the holiday.
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