Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 200 posts

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

#41

Post by marmaduke »

ISL wrote: post #37
jcrawfordor wrote: post #20

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff…

The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't…

Decentralization may make targeted attacks easier compared to similar investment in a centralized equivalent (would be my guess at the argument here)

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

#42

Post by everdev »

ISL wrote: post #37
jcrawfordor wrote: post #20

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff…

The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't…

In principle, yes. In practice, a halted recount in FL in 2000 affected who represented 100% of Americans as President.

The number of true "toss up" states is unfortunately fairly small.

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

#43

Post by everdev »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #10

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…

Calling the opposition "fake" is an old political practice used as both valid criticism and deception. Unfortunately, the claim sounds the same even if the facts are not.

Unfortunately, I think politicians know that most people don't have the time or resources to fact check and claims don't need to be supported by much evidence to be believed.

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

#44

Post by stephengillie »

ISL wrote: post #37
jcrawfordor wrote: post #20

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff…

The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't…

> Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country.

If only populations were so evenly distributed. 1/2 of Americans live east of the Mississippi, on 1/3 of the Continental US, and about 1/2 of the rest live on the West Coast. The mideastern states have very few residents.

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

#45

Post by mtgx »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #38

Where is our National Security Agency in all of this? Isn't their express goal the monitoring of foreign signals and the protection of US signals?

And didn't they promise the Cybersecurity Act of 2016 would help them - oh so much - in stopping these attacks and that it "was not another surveillance bill in disguise" ?

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

#46

Post by mtgx »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #10

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…

These back and forth accusations could stop if they actually implemented automatic (random) audits, so that all elections would be verified, without anyone first having to "call" an election stolen first, before the audit would have to happen.

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

#47

Post by DennisP »

tomrod wrote: post #7
gsich wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not hard, if you use paper ballots and well-established protocols for securing elections.

On the other hand, if you use electronic machines without paper backup, it's basically impossible.

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

#48

Post by pjc50 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #12
1024core wrote: 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.

The terror attacks are themselves partisan sniping with live ammunition. This will continue until the right realises that it's better to live in a peaceful country than win at all costs.

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

#49

Post by r00fus »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #20

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff…

I'm almost in agreement... I'd rather have centralized and constantly updated/audited standards which are mandated for all national level elections, and are enforced rigorously with federally funded programs.

The actual implementation of how these standards are met should be left to the states. Updating the standards to eliminate exploits and loopholes would minimize gaming of the system.

Ideally I also feel that somehow the entire nation should be incented to increase voting %. Just not sure how to do that though without creating unforeseen consequences.

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

#50

Post by anigbrowl »

ISL wrote: post #37
jcrawfordor wrote: post #20

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff…

The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't…

The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country.

Don't agree. Just look at the history of Alec to see how local and regional governments are easily captured by self-serving actors. These are nice sentiments but the underlying assumptions are painfully naive.

Post reply on HN