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US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

vox.com

21–30 of 200 posts

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#21
post #12
post #2

Democrats 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:…

Guys, we've had three terrorist attacks this week, and a lot of us are just kind of tired of the partisan sniping. Can we just kind of give it a rest for a little while? It really is a bad time right now.

Many of us were tired of the partisan sniping before this week's tragedies.

Election season makes the politically-minded think they can endlessly spill toxic discourse across all social and news mediums.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#22

I'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 E…

> Coming to the point, isn't US using paperballots? All the papers in my nation say US holds elections via paperballots and not EVMs.

It's different on a per state/municipality basis. Some are paper, some are EVM. We're trending towards EVM despite warnings from computer security researchers.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#23
If the system is already so rigged and/or fragile, why don't we explore the blockchain world more? If people could get private/public keys into their hands, they could vote using these and no one can change it. They could vote at home or at poling places.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#24
post #2

Democrats 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.

Further the article never mentions: ID, illegals, undocumented

Complaining about fraud via electronic voting machines and ignoring the 20M+ that are potentially voting illegally is quite curious indeed.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#25
post #23

If the system is already so rigged and/or fragile, why don't we explore the blockchain world more? If people could get private/public keys into their hands, they could vote using these and no one can change it. They could vote at home or at poling places.

https://www.xkcd.com/2030/

Why mess around with new technology when there are proven solutions that work? The problem with American voting systems isn’t a failure to embrace new technology, it’s a failure to spend a little more money to do things right, combined with people who don’t want a system that accurately gathers people’s votes.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#26
post #23

If the system is already so rigged and/or fragile, why don't we explore the blockchain world more? If people could get private/public keys into their hands, they could vote using these and no one can change it. They could vote at home or at poling places.

Because voter coersion and vote buying attacks have historically been the largest attacks against the voting system. If you can prove your vote to yourself, you can prove your vote to someone else unless you get into complex zero knowledge proofs that the average voter can't understand (which opens it's can of worms).

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#28

I'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 E…

I don’t think I’ve seen a paper ballot since I voted absentee in 2004.

Why do electronic machines exist? The charitable interpretation is that they were chosen in the aftermath of the disastrous 2000 election because they remove ambiguity and error. The less charitable interpretation is that they’re used because they’re easier to screw with.

Who verifies them? Mostly the companies who make them.

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vox is just trying to delegitimize the election ahead of a potential loss. They did the same thing for the Supreme Court. Textbook fearmongering.

Further the article never mentions: ID, illegals, undocumented Complaining about fraud via electronic voting machines and ignoring the 20M+ that are potentially voting illegally is quite curious indeed.

Because we've looked into it many times, and it's not a big deal. Trump just silently disbanded the task force looking for undocumented immigrants voting for instance.

"I'm undocumented, what am I going to do on a Tuesday? How about skipping work where I already don't get paid a living wage to go to a government building with sone police standing around, and big voter rolls of all citizens in the area. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."

Re: US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

#30
post #12
post #2

Democrats 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:…

Guys, we've had three terrorist attacks this week, and a lot of us are just kind of tired of the partisan sniping. Can we just kind of give it a rest for a little while? It really is a bad time right now.

If you don’t want to read partisan sniping, don’t come into the comments about election systems. It’s not like this is a story about the attacks where people hijacked the conversation. Don’t seek out a topic and then complain that people are discussing it, that’s just silly.
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