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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

#21

Post by aftbit »

I hate the narratives around voting security in the US. One side says that it is totally secure, basically 0 fraud, most secure election in history, etc etc. The other side claims that the election was completely stolen from them by voting machines.

Neither of these claims is right. Personally, I doubt the election was stolen. I know of a handful of cases of voter fraud both anecdotally ("My mom [in a retirement home] told me to vote for McCain, but I know she really wanted to vote for Obama, so that's what I put.") and numerically[1].

I would not be surprised if one or two of the very razor thin House district elections in 2020 experienced enough fraud to flip the decision. This doesn't mean that I believe all of the Dominion voting system hack nonsense or anything like that. I just think only a Sith deals in absolutes.

1: https://apnews.com/article/ohio-voters-citizenship-referrals...

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

#22

Post by llamaimperative »

tupolef wrote: post #20
llamaimperative wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

Take risks like having their husbands beating them to death after an election because they voted for the wrong person?

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

#24

Post by tupolef »

llamaimperative wrote: post #22
tupolef wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

Take risks like having their husbands beating them to death after an election because they voted for the wrong person?

If there is a risk that a husband would beat his wife in this case and that she could not leave him, there is no way that any form of electronic vote would change her life, or even her childrens. People who protect this system will probably rig the votes to keep it or a similar one.

I don't know any big change in the past, anywhere, like a big social progress, a regime change, a revolution or a coup that was enabled by a mass or anonymous voters. I think that if you look into it, you will find that it's always with a large consent or when a group of people takes action openly to push for it.

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

#25

Post by llamaimperative »

tupolef wrote: post #24
llamaimperative wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take risks like having their husbands beating them to death after an election because they voted for the wrong person?

If there is a risk that a husband would beat his wife in this case and that she could not leave him, there is no way that any form of electronic vote would change her life, or even her childrens. People who protect this system will probably rig the votes to keep it or a similar one. I don't know any big change in the past, anywhere, like a big social progress, a regime change, a revolution or a coup that was enabled…

> If there is a risk that a husband would beat his wife in this case and that she could not leave him, there is no way that any form of electronic vote would change her life, or even her childrens. People who protect this system will probably rig the votes to keep it or a similar one.

What? There are people in America who live under this threat today, and yes voting can actually change important parts of their lives.

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

#26

Post by mFixman »

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.

"Prove that you voted for Putin or you are out of a job".

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

#27

Post by Spivak »

aftbit wrote: post #21

I hate the narratives around voting security in the US. One side says that it is totally secure, basically 0 fraud, most secure election in history, etc etc. The other side claims that the election was completely stolen from them by voting machines. Neither of these claims is right. Personally, I doubt the election was stolen. I know of a handful of cases of voter fraud both anecdotally ("My mom [in a retirement home…

This is a wild amount of both-sidesing in a case where one side has evidence and the other is literally an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory at a scale where you could not keep the secret.

Most secure in history is (in my state) is correct. There are more pointless safeguards than have ever existed. If you were willing to go with the results of any election pre 2020 then you should be overjoyed at how much more "secure" the process is. That's the point that's being made, the amount of provable voter fraud that bypasses the checks and is only discovered after the fact is nil

The article you cited is literally the system working. There's 11 million people in Ohio, the number of illegal registrations is several orders of magnitude less than the lizardman constant and they were nonetheless caught.

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

#28

Post by brandonmenc »

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.

[flagged]

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

#29

Post by brandonmenc »

aftbit wrote: post #21

I hate the narratives around voting security in the US. One side says that it is totally secure, basically 0 fraud, most secure election in history, etc etc. The other side claims that the election was completely stolen from them by voting machines. Neither of these claims is right. Personally, I doubt the election was stolen. I know of a handful of cases of voter fraud both anecdotally ("My mom [in a retirement home…

> One side says that it is totally secure, basically 0 fraud, most secure election in history

Additionally, the sides have completely flipped. Utterly bizarre.

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

#30

Post by Molitor5901 »

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.

I think random, serialized paper ballots are the way to go. When the polls close you know the serial numbers of every vote cast, so no new serial numbers should be added to that unless a very good reason. Keep them or destroy them afterwards is another issue, but it's a step in the right direction.

I have some distrust in the American voting system, first with the computerized systems, but also that federal elections are run at the state level. With so many states and jurisdictions, I can't help but feel that fraud is happening. If the federal elections process was truly federalized, and funded if it is not already, managed and controlled by the federal government, then I think there could be greater control and security.

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