US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
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Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#2Democrats have been complaining about this for decades, but what did they do when they got majorities in 2008? Absolutely nothing.
Like a lot of other things, I feel like Democrats like to keep these issues around as a rallying cause, instead of fixing them.
Edit: I'll just address some of the comments here. This is not "partisan sniping", and I write this as a former Obama volunteer and a lifelong Democrat.
Second: the federal government can do something. Here's an idea: give a $100M grant to 5 major universities to develop an open-source (hardware and software) alternative to the current system, and make a FIPS standard out of it. Then, certify vendors who implement that standard. The states can then buy systems from those vendors.
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#3Isn't election systems the best candidate for open sourcing? So that anyone with technical knowledge can independently verify the security and correctness.
I wish every piece of civilian software funded by gov is open sourced. And why shouldn't they be?
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#4Isn't election systems the best candidate for open sourcing? So that anyone with technical knowledge can independently verify the security and correctness. I wish every piece of civilian software funded by gov is open sourced. And why shouldn't they be?
Yes. But verifying the source code doesn't guarantee anything, as you don't know what is actually running on the machine.
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#5Democrats have been complaining about this for decades, but what did they do when they got majorities in 2008? Absolutely nothing. Like a lot of other things, I feel like Democrats like to keep these issues around as a rallying cause, instead of fixing them. Edit: I'll just address some of the comments here. This is not "partisan sniping", and I write this as a former Obama volunteer and a lifelong Democrat. Second:…
Vox is just trying to delegitimize the election ahead of a potential loss. They did the same thing for the Supreme Court. Textbook fearmongering.
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#6Isn't election systems the best candidate for open sourcing? So that anyone with technical knowledge can independently verify the security and correctness. I wish every piece of civilian software funded by gov is open sourced. And why shouldn't they be?
Yes. But verifying the source code doesn't guarantee anything, as you don't know what is actually running on the machine.
BINGO!
Validating source code does nothing. Even setting aside the fact that firmware and hardware level exploits could be running in any given voting machine, what guarantee do we have that the code in the repository is the code actually running on the machine at the app layer? Or, if you're REALLY security minded like myself, what guarantee do we have that the compiler and build environment didn't slip something in? (I guess that borders more on "paranoid" than "security minded", but you get the idea.)
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#7Isn't election systems the best candidate for open sourcing? So that anyone with technical knowledge can independently verify the security and correctness. I wish every piece of civilian software funded by gov is open sourced. And why shouldn't they be?
Yes. But verifying the source code doesn't guarantee anything, as you don't know what is actually running on the machine.
Unless you specify open testing protocols that also test for cheating (like VW emissions).
It shouldn't be this hard to vote and to trust a certified outcome. Regulators require businesses to run with specified parameters, why do elections get off the hook?
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#8Democrats have been complaining about this for decades, but what did they do when they got majorities in 2008? Absolutely nothing. Like a lot of other things, I feel like Democrats like to keep these issues around as a rallying cause, instead of fixing them. Edit: I'll just address some of the comments here. This is not "partisan sniping", and I write this as a former Obama volunteer and a lifelong Democrat. Second:…
Elections are run by states, not by the federal government, and the most problematic voting situations in the US are usually where Republicans have control of state legislature.
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#9Democrats have been complaining about this for decades, but what did they do when they got majorities in 2008? Absolutely nothing. Like a lot of other things, I feel like Democrats like to keep these issues around as a rallying cause, instead of fixing them. Edit: I'll just address some of the comments here. This is not "partisan sniping", and I write this as a former Obama volunteer and a lifelong Democrat. Second:…
Federal government has very little, of any, control over how states conduct their elections.
Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level
#10I'm from India and every ejection since 1950s has been called rigged by the Opposition. The party which is in power now, has written a book on EVM tampering and the party which was in power for most of the time have rubbished EvM tampering.
Now that roles have reversed, so have their claims.
Coming to the point, isn't US using paperballots? All the papers in my nation say US holds elections via paperballots and not EVMs.
And why the heck do EVMs exist? Who verifies if they are fine or not? We know very well abouhow elections are rigged in third world dictatorships.
There needs to be a standard.