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DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

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Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#121
Combine modern polling data/models with these exploits and the hackers would only have to target a dozen counties(?) to change the outcome of the presidential election because of the how the Electoral College works.

( This is a guess. Trump won in 2016 by 107k votes across 3 states - inside those states how many counties were actually "swingy"? https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...)

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another reason (along with preventing remote hacks etc.) that vote-by-mail[1] is much more reasonable. It provides you with as much time as you need to look up candidates and issues. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon

Sure, but you lose vote secrecy.

Not necessarily. Grab a set of ballots in a public library, randomly from a pile, the way you can grab a set of tax forms.

Send them from an arbitrary public mailbox at a busy place, like a train station or a mall.

This should make tracking impractical, unless you expect "them" to scan for fingerprints.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#123

That's why you research and read before you go. Otherwise you'll wind up voting yes to "Proposition B: Unlimited Internet Freedom" which does something possibly disastrous despite the title. Because that's how Republicans roll.

> Because that's how Republicans roll.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

> Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#124

That's why you research and read before you go. Otherwise you'll wind up voting yes to "Proposition B: Unlimited Internet Freedom" which does something possibly disastrous despite the title. Because that's how Republicans roll.

Please keep partisan flamewar off HN. It incinerates everything it touches.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18112453 and marked it off-topic.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another reason (along with preventing remote hacks etc.) that vote-by-mail[1] is much more reasonable. It provides you with as much time as you need to look up candidates and issues. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon

Sure, but you lose vote secrecy.

First, the vote is double enveloped, should you choose to do that. Not everyone does.

It gets validated, then passed along for counting.

Second, if you want, you may drop your ballot into any drop box, or hand deliver it to elections, who will validate it and put it into the counting queue.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#126
During the last 2016 automated elections here in the Philippines, the company responsible for it was Smartmatic and just found out their source code was licensed by Dominion.

Now finding out that Dominion's equipments mentioned here is a little bit worrying. There was also an incident during our elections hours before a voting machine was accessed just because they have to change a single letter. It is still disturbing to this day.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#127
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposition to voter ID laws is usually down to the implementation details of them that make them non-viable - for example, requiring costly IDs that are also difficult to get (while also closing facilities that issue them in some areas which just happen to vote a certain way). A well-written voter ID law - one that truly guarantees the right to vote for every citizen eligible to do so - might well get enough bipa…

Voter ID laws solve a problem that does not exist. I do not support pointless laws that open us up to further abuse by partisans. Voter ID laws have been written in a way that they can be systematically (and I believe deliberately) abused to disenfranchise minorities. This is done by setting unreasonable office hours or locations to obtain voter IDs among other methods. There is no need for voter ID laws and so there…

Can you explain why the vast majority of other countries do have voter ID laws then?

As far as voter suppression, the whole point of what I wrote is that it's not inherent in voter ID. It only happens if the laws are deliberately designed that way. Again, look into how people vote in most European countries to see that it's not what these kinds of laws are actually about, when they're done right.

BTW, my perspective is that of a non-citizen on a track to citizenship. I think that even if real-world voter fraud is very low, there's also the question of symbolism at play. Voting is one of the few rights that are citizen-exclusive, so it is important to protect, even if only as a symbolic gesture. This goes both ways, of course - the right to vote shall not be denied to anyone who has it (and that part has priority for the same reason as presumption of innocence) - but conversely, if it is to be treasured, it needs to be secured to highlight its worth.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are voting for a dozen candidates and a dozen ballot measures, it takes time to read through all of them and make sure you are marking the correct boxes, even when you know how you will vote in advance.

This is another reason (along with preventing remote hacks etc.) that vote-by-mail[1] is much more reasonable. It provides you with as much time as you need to look up candidates and issues. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon

That article says: "30% of respondents said they voted more often since vote-by-mail was enacted."

Uh, you're only supposed to vote once.

Now the ballots show up, you can fill them out for all family members, even if recently deceased, and vote for everybody. That spouse doesn't need to vote. The high-school senior is too busy to do their own voting. The truly ambitious can even grab ballots out of mailboxes, adding them to their pile.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#129
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another reason (along with preventing remote hacks etc.) that vote-by-mail[1] is much more reasonable. It provides you with as much time as you need to look up candidates and issues. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon

That article says: "30% of respondents said they voted more often since vote-by-mail was enacted." Uh, you're only supposed to vote once. Now the ballots show up, you can fill them out for all family members, even if recently deceased, and vote for everybody. That spouse doesn't need to vote. The high-school senior is too busy to do their own voting. The truly ambitious can even grab ballots out of mailboxes, adding…

Voted more often than they used to, which was once every fifteen years.

Re: DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]

#130
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter ID laws solve a problem that does not exist. I do not support pointless laws that open us up to further abuse by partisans. Voter ID laws have been written in a way that they can be systematically (and I believe deliberately) abused to disenfranchise minorities. This is done by setting unreasonable office hours or locations to obtain voter IDs among other methods. There is no need for voter ID laws and so there…

Can you explain why the vast majority of other countries do have voter ID laws then? As far as voter suppression, the whole point of what I wrote is that it's not inherent in voter ID. It only happens if the laws are deliberately designed that way. Again, look into how people vote in most European countries to see that it's not what these kinds of laws are actually about, when they're done right. BTW, my perspective…

First, comparing America to other countries in this case is a poor point. Relative to European countries Americans are spread incredibly far apart with a culture designed around driving. Keep this in mind for the rest of my argument.

In many areas in America the hours for polling stations coincide with the typical workday. It can also take quite literally hours to reach your proper polling station to vote where taking any time off from work for many of the lower-class citizens is impossible. Proper ID for voting can also be harder to come across than you might think especially when access to them in minority or poor neighborhoods is deliberately limited. That's just to reach the location; never mind it potentially taking hours to just vote [1].

When you look at voter ID laws in a vacuum there isn't that much of an issue. However European countries have a far lower barrier to entry both for the act of voting and for getting a proper ID. When people talk about implementing voter ID in various areas; they're putting the cart before the horse, often intentionally because they know it benefits their voter base.

And as I've mentioned before voter ID solves very little. If you make it hard to vote just for a symbolic measure you're essentially admitting that you want to discriminate against minorities and the poor just for the sake of it.

[1] http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/election-day-long-l...

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