US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by mikelward » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

daphneokeefe wrote: post #92

unethical_ban wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect the idea that paper is "unhackable" and that decentralized voting counts are less vulnerable to attack. I've been thinking alot about Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) and how to do an instant runoff with paper ballots at scale, notably for something like President. I suppose it's unlikely to occur, but in the instance of a national popular vote for president that results in a runoff, it is worth the extra time to…

I am a pollworker in San Francisco, and I can tell you from personal experience with thousands of voters that Ranked-Choice Voting is widely misunderstood. The common refrain is: I only want to vote for this one candidate, and not for anyone else. In a hotly-contested election, they absolutely do not want to vote for the other guy as #2.

Then make it optional preferential voting. You can number as many boxes as you want.

It works that way in New South Wales. Apparently in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Malta, too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_preferential_voting

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

#102

Post by Armisael16 » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #44

ISL wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are the mideastern states?

If you mean the Midwest then I regret to inform you that Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are all in the top 10 most populous states.

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

#103

Post by int_19h » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #76

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #60

Paper ballots are the superior method of voting. It makes it nigh impossible to cheat at a large scale and there's a paper trail verified by multiple adversarial parties. It's also way more reliable due to the sheer simplicity of the system. For a system as important as our elections we should take every precaution possible. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't even trust mail-in ballots. I'm perfectly content to fill out…

There's essentially no one saying there should be no identity verification, just like there's no meaningful voter impersonation fraud. The complaint is the fairness of the burden to obtain acceptable ID, for voting. In Alabama, over a dozen driver's license office closures mean people in overwhelmingly black counties had a vastly high burden to obtain ID than people living in predominately white counties. There are a…

> Anyway, people have a right to vote. It is not a privilege.

Actually, in US, it is a privilege. Look up the Constitution - the original one doesn't define any right to vote at all (which was a necessary component of the 3/5th Compromise); all it says is that the states must have a "republican form of government". And all subsequent amendments specify what can't be used as a basis to deny the right to vote. Aside from the ones that did so explicitly, there's also the catch-all Equal Protection Clause - but even that does not amount to a full-on acknowledgement that voting is a basic right of any American citizen.

This is why the states can e.g. deny the right to vote to felons - some doing so for the rest of their lives, and without any ability to reinstate it. And why all challenges to voter suppression have to be coached in anti-discrimination language (i.e. that they deny the right to vote to some protected minority specifically, as opposed to a generic right to vote).

It's a very unfortunate state of affairs, and we desperately need a constitutional amendment that instates the right to vote as one of the fundamental rights of a citizen.

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

#104

Post by krapp » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #98

int_19h wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree. Which is why whoever will be the first one to propose a no-cost, easy-to-get national ID (could be issued via post offices, since those already have pervasive geographic coverage) combined with voter ID, pitching it all as "a real investment into election security while protecting the right of all citizens to vote" or some such, would likely win this political fight.

Unfortunately this has a lot of opposition behind it from republican voters who believe in kooky mark of the beast theories, and concerns about federal government surveillance. You can be completely certain they would fan those flames hard if a proposal like this ever saw the light of day.

The kooky mark of the beast people heavily oppose everything from RFID to social security cards... the real mainstream opposition would be from gun owners and the NRA.

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

#105

Post by mikeash » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:05 PM UTC

tropo wrote: post #94

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E.g. Poor without car in big city, required to show up at DMV office to get ID card during work hours. Two weeks to get the time off, two hours on the bus, find the ID office closed because budget forced limited hours. The ID law has been shown to be slanted to disfavor the working poor who vote for one party over another. It's not done as a legitimate concern over fraud; its a political maneuver to favor one party o…

It doesn't work like that. The poor have ID. Sure, it isn't easy, but they get ID because they need it for damn near everything. For example, you mentioned "work hours". If they are legally working, they have ID. If they get any sort of welfare, they have ID. If they smoke or drink, they have ID.

“Rates of identification-ownership are highest among White individuals, while other ethnic groups disproportionately lack necessary photo ID. Thirteen percent of Blacks, 10 percent of Hispanics, but only 5 percent of Whites lack photographic identification.

“Lower-income individuals are less likely to have photo ID. Twelve percent of adults living in a household with less than $25,000 annual income lack photo ID, compared to just 2 percent in households with over $150,000 annual income.”

From http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERIC...

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

#106

Post by int_19h » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #33

mycall wrote: 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.

I work in the public sector of Scandinavia, where we’ve digitised voter registration to make queues more efficient but kept the actual voting part on paper. Overall there isn’t a reason to have voting machines, and if you do, they should really just print a piece of paper with your vote so that you can make sure it’s what you picked. You’ll sometimes hear finance and efficiency as a reason, but unless American licens…

> You can never vote from home in a democracy, because people might force you to vote a way you didn’t want to. I don’t really think groups would show up at your house to force you to do anything, but we frequently get husbands ask if they can vote for their wives, and if they could do that from home, no one would be there to stop them.

The states that implement vote-by-mail in US (which, coincidentally, uses paper ballots), ensure that the person casting the vote is the person to whom the ballot was mailed by requiring a signature. To implement secret voting, the ballot is enclosed in two envelopes, and only the outer envelope has any personally identifiable information, including said signature. The signature is checked against the one in the voter registration database, and if there's a mismatch, the election department will contact the voter to ensure that the ballot was, in fact, theirs. Once the check is done, the outer envelope is discarded, and the still-sealed ballots are transferred to the people who will actually count them.

This doesn't preclude forcing someone to vote in a certain way, or paying them to vote in a certain way. But that is just as feasible with voting booths with modern tech - you simply demand that the victim records filling the ballot with their smartphone or a similar device. Some countries are banning camera phones from voting booths for this reason, but enforcement is usually impractical.

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

#107

Post by njarboe » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #83

Muromec wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explain for non-americans what's the actual problem with havinf ID in US? Is it like most people only have driver license and ones who don't have a car (because they are poor) don't need one or it's more complicated? Where I'm from everybody is required by law to have one from the age of 14 and gets it for free for the first time. You just can't have anything done without id and tax identification code…

The difference is that every country with any sense actually keeps track of its citizens. Consistently. Because when you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous to be a government with no idea who your people actually are. For half a century social security cards had "not for identification" written on them because they are really bad for ID. Didn't stop everyone from using them as ID because there was no other option…

"Because when you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous to be a government with no idea who your people actually are."

In the US, one of the founding principles, different from all (almost all?) others at the time, was the people create the government to govern for them. Government was not suppose to be a system where the government (ie. the monarchy) rules and owns the people. I don't think it is such a bad idea that people are resistant to a national ID. "Show me your papers" and all that comes with it is something to avoid if possible.

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

#108

Post by int_19h » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:07 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #26

mycall wrote: 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).

All it takes to prove a vote is a camera. Which practically everybody has in their pocket these days, even on the cheap $10 feature phones.

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

#109

Post by mikeash » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

adjkant wrote: post #71

colemannugent wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is democracy itself they [The Republican Party] are opposed to, and will continue to amass power until bloodshed forces change. So in your opinion, the solution to Republicans subverting democracy isn't well considered democratic action, but rather bloodshed? That seems rather anti-democratic. > Proposing technical solutions assumes all players wish for fair elections. This is not the case. So you can't think of…

I'm not in agreement about violence being the answer, but when the democracy has already been subverted, democratic action is very unlikely to be possible to fix it. It's then a populist power struggle that usually leads to violence. No one in the US government these days actually does much more than lip service to the idea of democracy, and we have long been going away from direct democracy for quite some time. The…

JFK put it simply: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

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

#110

Post by fromthestart » Sun, Oct 28, 2018, 11:26 PM UTC

adjkant wrote: post #69

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #60

Paper ballots are the superior method of voting. It makes it nigh impossible to cheat at a large scale and there's a paper trail verified by multiple adversarial parties. It's also way more reliable due to the sheer simplicity of the system. For a system as important as our elections we should take every precaution possible. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't even trust mail-in ballots. I'm perfectly content to fill out…

> I think it should also be a requirement to show a state or federal ID before you can cast your vote. I'm always floored when people try to defend voting without requiring any kind of identity verification. In Puerto Rico you're required to register ahead of time for a voter ID and you must present it in order to vote. If Puerto Rico, which is drastically poorer than all 50 states, can pull this off without it being…

>The problem is that the state and federal ID system is so fucked up that it disenfranchises voters. Until that system is fixed, you can't use it for voting.

I really think this is a giant myth. You're expecting me to believe that these minorities are living such horrid, opressed lives that they slave away every single day, and can't find a friend with a ride, or band together to make a group trip to get registered one day out of the year?

Yeah, I've heard it, registration centers are closing in minority neighborhoods; but that doesn't mean that these people don't have places to register/get an ID within an hour or two by bus.

The problem is ignorance and apathy, not voter suppression. Frankly, if someone is so uninterested/unwilling to participate in society that they can't be fucked to spend even 1 day out of the year to get a license, then they don't have any business making any decisions regarding out collective government.