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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

#41

Post by motohagiography »

Was there a reason CISA needed to release a statement? I haven't seen anything controversial in the news. As they say, if you have to say it...

I have a few comments going back a couple of years predicting how electronic voting will cause civil unrest because it is so vulnerable to being discredited. Edward Snowden even recently tweeted a prof's video about the same thing. Everybody who had given the issue any serious thought at all already knew it was an inevitable problem. Luckily, the U.S. has a process for dealing with contested election results, and the parties will litigate it to its final state.

I'm just hoping for a very cold winter to keep people inside.

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

#42

Post by pstrateman »

alex_young wrote: post #32
anonymouse008 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?

Every person legally allowed to vote should be able to vote.

No votes should be cast by people not allowed to vote.

Mail-in ballots are not secret ballots and that's dangerous. There's a reason a workplace cannot be unionized in the US without a true secret ballot.

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

#43

Post by monoideism »

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.

Not only that. Vendors can deploy unknown, unapproved firmware updates:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/georgia-election-ma...

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

#44

Post by sicromoft »

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…

Are banks auditable? (Yes.) Do they have paper backups of everything? (Not that I'm aware of.) What's the difference? Honest question.

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

#45

Post by garyrichardson »

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…

Canadian here. We still count ballots the old fashioned way and get our election results out the night of the election (typically). Presumably that scales linearly.. more voters means more ballot boxes and more officials counting and auditing. This seems like a solved problem to me.

Why doesn't/wouldn't this work in the US? My guess is the complexity of your ballots -- we typically vote for one person and every couple of years there might be a referendum question.

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

#46

Post by throwaway_l33t »

alex_young wrote: post #32
anonymouse008 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?

Isn’t it reasonable to want the people who make a decision to know what they’re making a decision about? I want all the informed voters to vote but, by and large, uninformed voters make the outcome arbitrary.

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

#47

Post by getlawgdon »

Thorentis wrote: post #27

On what basis? Because there aren't any rumors of Russian meddling being sowed by the opposition this time? There are multiple states with no paper audit trail, closed source electronic voting machines, multiple dubious last-minute decisions made around postal ballots due to COVID, no easy way to verify the voter roll. Making a claim like this reeks of partisanship.

Your comment assumes the nature of wrongdoing is equivalent on both sides.

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

#48

Post by chiefalchemist »

Thorentis wrote: post #27

On what basis? Because there aren't any rumors of Russian meddling being sowed by the opposition this time? There are multiple states with no paper audit trail, closed source electronic voting machines, multiple dubious last-minute decisions made around postal ballots due to COVID, no easy way to verify the voter roll. Making a claim like this reeks of partisanship.

"Unprecedented" times. An "unprecedented" election. An "unprecedented" election process.

And no problems. Really?

FEMA, also a gov-based entity, has had multiple "practice rounds" and it still can't get it right. Rare does the gov get it right, let alone first time.

I have to stick with the tried and true: Trust but verify. And self-verification isn't good enough.

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

#49

Post by lukevp »

ehsankia wrote: post #40
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 not fully familiar with American politics, but out of those states the only that comes close to mattering in terms of EC outcome (this election) was Texas I think? And even then, it's unclear if it was that close considering most of the polling was off by 3-4 points. Then again some other states were spot on, so we'll never know if that was the case for Texas or if they were hacked.

Hmm, I voted in Texas and there were definitely paper ballots, the vote was on a machine with a printer and a scanner was used to actually place the vote.

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

#50

Post by josephcsible »

sicromoft wrote: post #44
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…

Are banks auditable? (Yes.) Do they have paper backups of everything? (Not that I'm aware of.) What's the difference? Honest question.

If your bank account balance is wrong, you can tell for sure that it's wrong and then explain it to the bank and get it fixed. If your vote was counted wrong, you'd never know. For them to be equivalent, the secret ballot would have to be abolished.
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