I admittedly dont know the specifics of this process, but to break it down very abstractly, there seems to be a challenge and a misconception.
The challenge is: is the person submitting the results who they say they are, and are they authorized to submit results for said precinct, did their data submission transform on transit. The misconception seems to be that any of the data is private.
Issuing 1700 instagram accounts and having each precinct post and tag a photograph would have been both more secure, and instantly verifiable. Anybody could go back later and go "yep thats the photo I posted." "Yep that is the account that we expected the photo to come from." "Yep, the account wasn't improperly accessed."
Everyone in the public can see the live results real time, and hand verify the summarization. A worst case scenario would be someone doctoring one of the Math Sheets, printing out a near perfect duplicate, and creating confusion over which document is the "real" one. Breaking into a physically secure area with a fake piece of paper may cause a situation with an unverifiable truth. Having a public, timestamped photograph minimizes counterfeiting and forgery.
Providing a csv/xlsx file, and having a whitelisted list of senders would have worked, along with a bot ingesting the files as they came. A onedrive with 1700 shared spreadsheets would have worked, each precinct manager would have just needed a copy of mobile excel. The technology that generates my fantasy football cheat sheets seems more advanced.
The goal here should be to get a definitive answer posted into the public record, timestamped and proven to be the appropriate sender.
The "pin" nonsense is the scary part of all this. Did anybody who shouldnt have download the app, and submit the wrong results?
>he had to sign in with an email and password, provide a two-factor authentication, and enter a one-time password generated by the Google Authenticator app.
What is the point of 2fa/authenticator, if the person is registering for the first time the night of the primary? Wouldnt 2fa be for preventing access to the account youve already made, not to prevent someone from creating your account? Unless somehow the phone numbers were already on file, and a sanity check took place before the 2fa step, which I doubt. Is 2fa anything more than security theater in this application?