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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

#191

Post by aw1621107 »

01100011 wrote: post #169
aw1621107 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You go online with your private receipt number and it can validate your vote. What precisely do you mean by "validate" here? Would this scheme make the ballot non-secret?

If each ballot has a unique ID and there is no association between the person voting and the ID, then the voter can retain that number, possibly by tearing off a section of the ballot as is done in CA, and check that number online to verify their vote was tallied as expected.

> there is no association between the person voting and the ID, then the voter can retain that number

This seems somewhat contradictory. The voter retaining possession of the ID creates a link between the ballot and the voter, doesn't it?

Then again, it does open the door to plausible deniability, though correctly pulling that off could introduce new complications and/or avenues of attack.

> and check that number online to verify their vote was tallied as expected.

"as expected" is the key phrase here. If it includes seeing what candidate(s) the voter voted for (i.e., trying to verify that the ballot was read correctly), then that seems like it would break the secret ballot. If it means just checking that the ballot was included in the count without revealing precisely what candidate(s)/issue(s) the vote was for, then that might work.

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

#192

Post by bobthepanda »

CountSessine wrote: post #138
ttul wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are plenty of things to vote for though, and usually it's considered a good thing to put things on the ballot in presidential years because presidential elections have the highest turnout.

My Washington ballot this year was a double-sided single page bubble sheet. I'm not sure how much easier it's supposed to get.

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

#193

Post by zepto »

CountSessine wrote: post #133
jcranmer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It isn’t unless you have valid mail in ballots that haven’t even arrived by Election Day.

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

#194

Post by zepto »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83
jcranmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are secret ballots. The way they work is that they have two envelopes: you put your ballot in the inner envelope, which has no indication of who is casting the ballot. All of that information is on the outer envelope. When processing the ballot, the information is checked on the outer envelope; once verified, the inner envelope is then handed to another station to be opened and fed into the counting m…

> Mail-in ballots are secret ballots I’ve knocked on doors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many registered Democrats (usually the wife) denied being Democrats when their partners were around. I thought this was an error in our data until I revisited the neighbourhood. Husband wasn’t home. Wife scolded us. He is an ardent Republican and wouldn’t appreciate how she votes. Mail-in ballots let voters verify their vote to…

How exactly do mail in ballots let voters verify their vote to third parties?

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

#195

Post by ehsankia »

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.

I see, I guess the article is outdated. I was just going off the 8 states listed there.

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

#196

Post by koheripbal »

snypher wrote: post #122
ttul wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that: a non-partisan agency, much as the police and fire services are also non-partisan.

The police are not non-partisan, at least in USA.

It's hard to imagine any worker staying non-partisan when one party is threatening their paycheck.

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

#197

Post by garyrichardson »

bobthepanda wrote: post #166
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.

The argument against this is that generally speaking, US presidential elections are considered the most important, so turnout on any election on “off” years, or even “off” days, is considered a sure way to get less voter turnout. Is this not a pattern observed in Canadian elections?

I'm not sure I follow. Assuming I have this right, there are no "off year" elections in a parliamentary system like in Canada. Elections occur when the government in power receives a vote of no confidence. In a minority government situation this could be the first session after an election. In the rare occasion that a government makes its 5 year term limit, the PM will "drop the writ" at a strategic point to queue up an election.

Municipal elections do occur on a schedule here, but I don't think that's relevant since it's hyper local.

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

#198

Post by dang »

zepto wrote: post #6
auslegung wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the connection to the OP url

There is no connection. ‘Maxharris’ is astroturfing.

You broke the site guidelines with this, as well as being quite mistaken. (These are two legit users with no connection to each other, one of whom went a bit overboard with linking to a post.) Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules? They include:

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

In the future, if you are genuinely concerned about astroturfing, please follow the rules and email us. We will investigate and get back to you.

It's important for community here that HN users get out of the habit of cheaply smearing each other in response to something they don't like. It's much harder to respond to swipes like these than it is to post them in the first place, plus it's off topic.

There's lots of past explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#199

Post by pontifier »

ric2b wrote: post #180
pontifier wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe each ballot could include a one time pad that you keep to verify the vote. You could verify your own vote but nobody else could. It could be very simple to use, like a qr code that links to a public api showing the encoded ballot data, and a second qr code that you scan to decrypt it.

Not being able to verify who you voted for is by design, it's an important feature to prevent people from being pressured into/persecuted for voting a certain way, or selling their vote. If there's no way to verify your specific vote you can just lie about who you voted for.

Hence why you would want to use a one time pad... It would be easy to choose a key that would show any particular vote cast any way you want. Only you would know how to verify your ballot.

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

#200

Post by bitwize »

dashundchen wrote: post #103
whiteflame7000 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every person who downvoted you knows this too. They are being willfully ignorant because they are too smart not to notice at least in the slightest the difference in treatment.

I don't think it's true. Democrats still don't like the electoral college even when they win. The real margin in this election would be over 5 million instead of the hundred of thousands if the EC didn't exist. And in this case the Republican claims of misnformation and conspiracy have seemed so outlandish and baseless it's hard to take any of them seriously. Like videos of ballots being burned, that turned out to be…

So let's say I went onto Twitter in the runup before the election and said something like "Reminder: Donald Trump hired Russian prostitutes to pee on him."

Would/Should Twitter put a little "this claim is disputed" banner on this tweet? If not, why not?

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