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CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

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Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#11

Post by kube-system »

nmlnn wrote: post #5

TIL, electronic voting machines are CLOSED SOURCE (hardware and software) - that should be completely unacceptable in an open democracy. It makes me wonder how a statement like this can be proved. > There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised When it comes to something as important as elections the mantra should be: don't trust. verify.

I don’t see security flaws with closed source software that prints backup paper ballots. If anything, it’s better than an open source machine that doesn’t print a paper backup. Those paper backups can be even audited by the voter at the moment they vote. You’re not going to be dumping the source code from a voting machine that is in use.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#12

Post by exabrial »

Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

I'd rather have someone hack 1700 local elections than one 'national standard' quite frankly. The inefficiency delights me

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#16

Post by mjevans »

Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

I'm fully for a fast electronic count for preliminary results, that are then hand-recounted for the formal validation and final results (up to a month later).

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#17

Post by vvanders »

exabrial wrote: post #12
Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

I'd rather have someone hack 1700 local elections than one 'national standard' quite frankly. The inefficiency delights me

People are always rallying to add blockchain for voting without realizing that the paper ballot is a proof of work that predates it by a significant margin.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#18

Post by anonymouse008 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

What’s your thinking on the “request” process of mail-in ballots?

To me, it’s wild to think all one needs to request a ballot is a name, address and ssn... and on top of all of that, you can get the ballot sent to a different address...

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#19

Post by Someone1234 »

nmlnn wrote: post #5

TIL, electronic voting machines are CLOSED SOURCE (hardware and software) - that should be completely unacceptable in an open democracy. It makes me wonder how a statement like this can be proved. > There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised When it comes to something as important as elections the mantra should be: don't trust. verify.

Fully agreed.

The key thing with closed Vs. open source isn't simply the ability to find defects (design & bugs), but also right now election officials/security experts in some cases aren't allowed to verify election software per the software licenses! That's an untenable position to be in.

Open source isn't some panacea, but it puts you into that position where "verify" is even conceptually possible. I still believe we need paper backups and random audits, but we can do multiple things at once and should.

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