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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

#131

Post by CountSessine »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #126
garyrichardson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coupl…

Your population is also less than that of California alone.

Yes, and of course this should be irrelevant given that as the poster said, presumably these things scale linearly.

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

#132

Post by ghettoimp »

lukevp wrote: post #49
ehsankia wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, these new machines seem really good.

I heard (discussions with folks online) that in other parts of the state they are still using the older machines, which the voter just has to trust to record their selections correctly. I think I've heard they are transitioning away from these.

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

#133

Post by CountSessine »

jcranmer wrote: post #63
garyrichardson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coupl…

One of the main reasons it is taking so long is the volume of mail-in ballots is extremely high compared to prior elections. And on top of that, in several states, Republicans were adamant that vote tabulation not begin early to deal with this volume, with the entirely foreseeable result that counting took far longer than necessary.

But it still doesn’t answer the question - in Canada we count all the ballots the same day BY HAND. Why is this so hard in the US?

The only thing that I can think of is that your elections staff are grossly under-allocated?

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

#134

Post by jariel »

A possible solution to the electronic/paper issue might be literally just receipts.

You vote in a 'machine' and it prints a 2 receipts - one for the 'backup' and one that you keep with some kind of encrypted/encoded data for non-repudiation.

You go online with your private receipt number and it can validate your vote.

If the electronic count is not accepted, the physical 'receipts' are coded so they can be counted very quickly by laser scanner.

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

#135

Post by Jayschwa »

mapme wrote: post #117
motohagiography wrote: post #41

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 seriou…

It has been all over the news in the US of trump claiming voter fraud. Apnews fact check has been full of the debunked claims in the last few days. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-joe-b... https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-election-dead-voter... https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-tr... https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-us-news-m... https://apnews.c…

Edit: I have removed the link because someone else found errors in it.

Original: AP claims there's no evidence of "dead voters", but this list seems to indicate otherwise: [redacted] It's obituaries matched with returned absentee ballots. I've inspected a dozen or so entries and it seems legit.

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

#136

Post by jhanschoo »

jlgaddis wrote: post #90
throwaway_l33t wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I forget who said it and I won't even get the quote exactly right, but I'm reminded of something I once heard: > The greatest thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote. > The worst thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote.

If democracies don't allow idiots to vote, that creates a disenfranchised class that does not accept the government as legitimate. An important role of democracy is to stave off class conflict, arguably just as important or moreso than having a government that serves the people efficiently.

A proper long-term solution is to have governments invest in critical thinking skills and education, but of course, it's a catch-22 situation.

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

#137

Post by jariel »

endtime wrote: post #9

No chain of custody, closed source voting machines, ballots sent to people who didn't ask for them based on known-bad voter rolls...but sure, I'll just take some random government agency's word for it.

"some random government agency"

Not remotely 'random', moreover, nobody doubts that there can be flaws, the issue is the degree to which they happen and relevant impact.

Voter rolls will never be perfect, the issue is 'how close' they need to be, and what other elements are in place.

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

#138

Post by CountSessine »

ttul wrote: post #105
garyrichardson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. But local, provincial and national elections are different events. Referendums are occasionally attached. Ballots are almost always one question for provincial and national.

And regardless, all elections are run by a non-partisan agency. Just like the health service, the police service, the fire service, and the garbage service.

I really don’t think that that’s going to be the savings you think it is. Counting votes isn’t front-loaded with a flat rate cost or subject to duplication of effort. Having a single federal elections agency isn’t going to help if you have a super complicated ballot.

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

#139

Post by aw1621107 »

airstrike wrote: post #96
aw1621107 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> verifiable ballots (including online verification) Is this at odds with secret ballots?

Not if you split the info on the ballot in two halves, who voted vs. who they voted on

Ah, that's a slightly different definition of verifiable than I had in mind. I was thinking of schemes to allow voters to not only verify that they voted, but that their vote counted towards their intended candidate.

I suppose it depends on what precisely is to be verified. The scheme you describe allows for verification that a ballot has been received/sent/counted, depending on details, which may or may not be verifiable enough depending on who you ask.

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

#140

Post by ghettoimp »

Someone1234 wrote: post #19
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…

I'm a free software fan, but I don't see that open source matters here.

How do you know the machine is running the program whose source code you're looking at, instead of some other program that looks superficially like it?

If a machine produces convincing evidence of what it has done, e.g., a print-out that (1) the voter can meaningfully check before depositing, and that (2) is audited with at least spot checks or formal recounts later, why does it matter whether it is open or closed source?

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