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Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

arstechnica.com

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Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#11

Post by samarthr1 »

albert_e wrote: post #10
laxmin wrote: post #6

The Indian Voting Machines are the answer. No operating system, no passwords, no connections, no bruteforcing anything, system on a chip, so widely distributed devices that hacking even a few of them is challenging, etc. The US voting machines are just waiting to be hacked, just a matter of when, not if.

Curious to know more. Is there a good source of information on the security of the hardware and software used for elections India. As an Indian citizen I see the casual lack of security mindset in large swathe of things implemented by both public and private actors. Many things get better only though iterative failures and corresponding reactive fixes. What type of failures and improvements have happened here, or ins…

IIRC it uses tamper evident hardware.

There was an interview with one of the Profs who designed the EVMs here.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#12

Post by samarthr1 »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #9
db1234 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Indian voting machines, there is also randomization involved at various levels during distribution making it difficult to game the system but still I always wonder if there is any way to hack the system. I hope people in charge have a process to continuously evaluate the security procedures and improve it.

I never understood the desire to have any kind of machine at all. Paper ballots are a perfectly efficient and scalable system used for many large elections. Even if complicated machines are theoretically safe against malfeasance, keeping it simple increases public confidence.

Scale is a bit of an issue.

We need results in as short a time as possible, ws have about 100 crore registered voters, of whom about 70% on average vote, meaning that the ECI must process 70 Crore votes, in under 10 hours.

Making that happen in a free and fair way is a logistical challenge, one that we undertake every 5 years.

One more large advantage of EVMs is making booth capture very expensive (because EVMs have a inbuilt rate limit, but a ballot box does not).

At any rate, with VVPAT being there, it adds another layer of security.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#13

Post by tupolef »

The only way to get an honest electronic vote is by giving realtime visibility on who voted what and where publicly.

Everything else is a scam.

It would mean no secrecy of vote, but I think that secrecy of vote is for places that are new to democracy.

It could be anonymised to a point a clever system of personal certificats, but the idea is that in a 100 people district, the citizens should be able to count themselves and check if their real votes are correctly registred.

If the list is public, everyone got a proof of vote and can confirm that the global list is correct localy, then there is no way to hide cheating.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#14

Post by cafard »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #9
db1234 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Indian voting machines, there is also randomization involved at various levels during distribution making it difficult to game the system but still I always wonder if there is any way to hack the system. I hope people in charge have a process to continuously evaluate the security procedures and improve it.

I never understood the desire to have any kind of machine at all. Paper ballots are a perfectly efficient and scalable system used for many large elections. Even if complicated machines are theoretically safe against malfeasance, keeping it simple increases public confidence.

I should say, the speed of tabulation. An American election can include ballot lines for president, senator, member of congress, state senator, three state representatives, a county councilmember or two, a member of the board of education etc.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#15

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

cafard wrote: post #14
recursivecaveat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the desire to have any kind of machine at all. Paper ballots are a perfectly efficient and scalable system used for many large elections. Even if complicated machines are theoretically safe against malfeasance, keeping it simple increases public confidence.

I should say, the speed of tabulation. An American election can include ballot lines for president, senator, member of congress, state senator, three state representatives, a county councilmember or two, a member of the board of education etc.

More bits of paper. The ballot papers around here are bloated oversize monstrosities (picture A3 sized) due to the number of parties and candidates but you get a separate one for each election. Unfortunately not every area is paper only.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#16

Post by stuaxo »

tupolef wrote: post #13

The only way to get an honest electronic vote is by giving realtime visibility on who voted what and where publicly. Everything else is a scam. It would mean no secrecy of vote, but I think that secrecy of vote is for places that are new to democracy. It could be anonymised to a point a clever system of personal certificats, but the idea is that in a 100 people district, the citizens should be able to count themselve…

There are ways of doing this using encryption so that the person will know what their own vote is in a way that others don't.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#17

Post by Ekaros »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #15
cafard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should say, the speed of tabulation. An American election can include ballot lines for president, senator, member of congress, state senator, three state representatives, a county councilmember or two, a member of the board of education etc.

More bits of paper. The ballot papers around here are bloated oversize monstrosities (picture A3 sized) due to the number of parties and candidates but you get a separate one for each election. Unfortunately not every area is paper only.

Here we don't even put names on the ballot, instead there is number assigned for each, this scales up to hundreds of candidates. This does prevent write ins, but I see no reason why you could not have own ballot for each purpose and then say colour code them and append letter or two in front of each candidate for each election.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#18

Post by tupolef »

stuaxo wrote: post #16
tupolef wrote: post #13

The only way to get an honest electronic vote is by giving realtime visibility on who voted what and where publicly. Everything else is a scam. It would mean no secrecy of vote, but I think that secrecy of vote is for places that are new to democracy. It could be anonymised to a point a clever system of personal certificats, but the idea is that in a 100 people district, the citizens should be able to count themselve…

There are ways of doing this using encryption so that the person will know what their own vote is in a way that others don't.

But, there is still someone somewhere that distribute the certificats and can link you to your vote so why try to hide something that can leak. It will leak.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#19

Post by llamaimperative »

tupolef wrote: post #18
stuaxo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways of doing this using encryption so that the person will know what their own vote is in a way that others don't.

But, there is still someone somewhere that distribute the certificats and can link you to your vote so why try to hide something that can leak. It will leak.

We have a major party candidate right now saying his political opponents should face a firing squad and you’re asking “why try to hide something that can leak?”

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1852209432878342308

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#20

Post by tupolef »

llamaimperative wrote: post #19
tupolef wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, there is still someone somewhere that distribute the certificats and can link you to your vote so why try to hide something that can leak. It will leak.

We have a major party candidate right now saying his political opponents should face a firing squad and you’re asking “why try to hide something that can leak?” https://x.com/atrupar/status/1852209432878342308

But, should we deceive people like the tech companies are doing right now with privacy?

If someone is scared that his position will be known and still do it only because there is some fakely advertised security in place, you may ruin that person's life againt their will.

I prefer a system where people know how things work, take risks and are responsible. For what do we need a democracy if people are so scared of their family, neighbours and coworkers political views. The way we do democracy should me more mature after all this time. Probably the only place in the world trying to do it right is Switzerland, per example they have frequent local votations accomplished by raising one's hand.

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