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They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

theguardian.com

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Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#81

Post by jerf »

hannasanarion wrote: post #42
1024core wrote: post #26

It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in the Congress, nothing gets done about it.

This is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump. Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it, Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their voting reco…

This is a Uniparty issue. There's several issues in the US that are always proposed by the minority party and blocked by the majority party. The reason is that neither party wants them, but both see an advantage in calling for them while in the minority.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#82

Post by nostrademons »

amenghra wrote: post #78
paulgb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?

Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your credentials to vote.

Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#83

Post by jerf »

hannasanarion wrote: post #65
rectang wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine of Chicago. It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do not serve their interest"), we c…

Cuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio. Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has been for a very long time. Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in favor of more secure and less money-influenced ele…

No, it's all Democrats in favor of things that they know will net them more Democrat votes, and Republicans against them, and vice versa, of course. Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? Well, you could try to derive an answer from first principles... or you could just count votes, and come to the correct answer much more quickly.

Don't be so silly as to believe their spin about "getting money out of the election"; such reforms are not hypothetical things that may happen in the future, reforms have been passed are in effect, and, lo, money is still in politics.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#84

Post by organsnyder »

paulgb wrote: post #67
the_snooze wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by immersing yourself in the process and the people who do it. For example, one often-overlooked advantage of traditional in-person paper voting is that you're entitled to spoil your ballot and request a fresh one. This protects voters from being coerced into voting a cert…

> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a photo of their ballot as proof I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?

In some jurisdictions, it's possible to vote in person after voting absentee (the absentee ballot is then destroyed without being counted).

Any system will have trade-offs, though—since ballot access (getting time off from work, childcare, transportation) appears to be a much more pervasive problem than coercion, it seems like the sacrifice would be worth it.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#85

Post by organsnyder »

dbcurtis wrote: post #17

I would feel better if these folks https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15 helped establish the best practices for voting machine approval. Seriously, what does it say about our society that it is harder to deploy a slot machine in Reno than a voting machine in Peoria?

Money.

I work in healthcare. We have a much higher regulation burden on how care is paid for compared to how it is actually delivered.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#86

Post by stale2002 »

jammygit wrote: post #7
mi100hael wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is one of the very few use-cases I can think of where Blockchain would actually be a valuable and differentiating addition.

Im a blockchain noob, but if the election was driven by blockchain, how would one protect against Chinese mining warehouses trying to gain control of the network? What would a double spend attack look like? Again, just a blockchain noob asking noob questions

Blockchains have nothing to do with proof of work or mining.

There just wouldn't be any mining.

"Blockchain" in this context just means that everyone cryptographicly signs messages in a public database.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#87

Post by stale2002 »

nameless912 wrote: post #16
jammygit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im a blockchain noob, but if the election was driven by blockchain, how would one protect against Chinese mining warehouses trying to gain control of the network? What would a double spend attack look like? Again, just a blockchain noob asking noob questions

Herein lies the rub with blockchain systems. If they're public, they're attackable, and if they're private, they're slower, more power hungry, and less flexible than a plain old database. It's not a dumb question, but blockchain doesn't provide good answers :)

Blockchain in this context just means that everyone signs cryptographic messages, in a public database.

That's it.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#88

Post by joshfraser »

deburo wrote: post #56
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But perhaps some percentage of people would choose to waive their right to privacy, further strengthening trust in the system. This has the same problem. Didn't waive your right to privacy and provably vote for the right candidate - you're fired (or worse). That's why taking photos of a ballot isn't allowed, you can't have any way to show who you voted for.

Huh? If you're asked to waive your right by your employer, I'm pretty sure you can get them in trouble by going to the media and make a fuss about it. This is a silly hypothesis.

It's no different from an evil employer who forces their employees to vote and send a picture of their ballot today. Sure, taking a photo of a ballot is illegal, but that's not going to prevent it from happening when you're behind that little curtain. Coercing people to vote for your guy is illegal in both scenarios and you can and will get in trouble if you try and pull that stunt at any significant scale.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#89

Post by joshfraser »

donarb wrote: post #76
joshfraser wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with paper is that it's too easy to remove and replace the ballots you don't like.

In Washington State, photographs of each ballot are taken as the ballot is removed from the envelope and after it has been electronically tabulated. This prevents someone from replacing a paper ballot along the way.

Good thing photos can't be deleted. Oh wait.

Re: They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system

#90

Post by Tyrek »

nostrademons wrote: post #82
amenghra wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your credentials to vote.

Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?

that's entirely a question of scale - I can imagine that it'll be trivial to scale 'online' voting fraud if you have credential access, whereas doing it in person naturally limits the total number of times you can do it.
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