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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

#131

Post by herbstein »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #97
rsync wrote: post #37

Paper ballots have very boring failure modes and need no explanation or technical support. When you see a system more complex than paper ballots, know that the additions are not there on your behalf .

I disagree. I believe there are people who want results sooner rather than later. The greater the delay, the more annoyed folks become. Recording votes in _both_ paper and electronic form allows for the auditability of paper and the speed of electronic calculations. (Side note: I also believe that hand-counting of ballots can be tedious, and humans performing tedious, repetitive tasks are prone to error. See [1].) [1…

> I believe there are people who want results sooner rather than later

In Denmark all ballots are hand-counted. It takes about 6 hours from polls close to every precinct reporting a preliminary result. Wanting it faster isn't really necessary, other than to feed the 24/7 news machine.

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

#132

Post by batch12 »

gruez wrote: post #118
batch12 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>If it's no big deal, just post the same comment with the word mosque or synagogue. Why only "mosque or synagogue"? Are you singling out Abrahamic religions? What about shrines and temples? Words have meanings. If it's no big deal, just post the same comment with the word "places of worship" to be inclusive. :^)

I mentioned temples above. Feel free to choose any alternative you'd prefer. :^)

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

#133

Post by roenxi »

gruez wrote: post #79
quercusa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get to feed the ballot into the (literal) black box yourself, it beeps and tells you your vote has been recorded. What did it record? Who knows?

> What did it record? Who knows? How is it any different than traditional voting, where you drop your ballot into a black box and trust the poll workers would count it correctly? You can do random spot checks select boxes to make sure the machine is tabulating correctly. If they're all correct, you can be reasonably sure the others are correct as well, unless your adversary has incredible luck.

In traditional voting, there is a pretty decent chance you know the person who does the counting or can find someone in your community who can personally vouch for them. Living in my small town at one stage, I knew several of the tabulators personally and all of them by reputation. That is an extreme case, but even in a city these people are somewhat known quantities.

With a voting machine that wasn't verified by a hand count it'd be relying on who-knows-who, who-knows-where with an uncertain risk profile.

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

#134

Post by Cthulhu_ »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #101
endgame wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use paper, and count by hand on the day. You need to present an election system that will convince Joe Q. Public, who is almost certainly not as tech-literate as this forum, is probably not even white-collar or university educated, and likely also suspicious of globalisation. "Tamper-proof Indian system-on-a-chip" does not have that property. Otherwise you get increasingly unhinged arguments over the election re…

Unfortunately, hand-counting causes more errors than electronic counting, except in very small communities. Ref.: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...

It's not so much about errors tbh - paper votes can be re-counted as often as needed. The fear is that voting machines are insecure, its input or results tampered with, and then you can't do a recount. Unless they generate a paper receipt as well that the voter has to confirm before the vote is counted.

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

#135

Post by zmgsabst »

crooked-v wrote: post #112
gruez wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once you look past individual anecdotes, the actual rate of voter fraud with mail voting is tiny compared to the voting population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of- ... that's hardly reassuring given how close this election is going predicted to be. >The median scenario from our forecast has Ms Harris winning her pivotal 270th electoral-college vote by less than half a percentage point. h…

Half a percentage point is orders of magnitude bigger than a 0.0025% fraud rate.

That fraud rate is obviously wrong:

There’s more than 4000 questionable ballots in the entire US election.

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

#136

Post by decremental »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #103
ForHackernews wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of "Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works."[0] Mailed ballots are verified against voter registrations and signatures are checked against the signature on file. This woman with a bunch of ballots for former residents of her apartment would gain essentially nothing and open herself to serious criminal penalties if she tried to vote as anyone except herself. [0] https://www.…

[flagged]

[dead]

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

#137

Post by Cthulhu_ »

saxonww wrote: post #72
Molitor5901 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you do when duplicate serial numbers start showing up? I'm assuming you won't know who was issued which serial number, and if it's truly randomized you wouldn't even know where they were sent.

Then you have clear proof of election fraud and the FBI, NSA, etc can get to work. Invalidate the election results and do a new one.

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

#138

Post by gruez »

InvaderFizz wrote: post #126
gruez wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>About the best I can come up with is a QR code displayed on the screen and on a printout that you can compare with a third party phone app. That's definitely not secret. If you can audit it on your phone, baddies can force you to show your phone to verify that you voted "correctly".

It's not, but I'm saying you have the option to compare the two with an outside reference at the time of voting. You keeping the result on your phone after would be entirely your decision.

>You keeping the result on your phone after would be entirely your decision.

And what happens if baddies come to your house before the election, and say that after election day they'll check up on you, and if you don't they'll beat you up?

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #124
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I believe there are people who want results sooner rather than later. The greater the delay, the more annoyed folks become. Recording votes in _both_ paper and electronic form allows for the auditability of paper and the speed of electronic calculations. (Side note: I also believe that hand-counting of ballots can be tedious, and humans performing tedious, repetitive tasks are prone to error. See [1].) [1…

Why should you compromise on security because you're impatient? Have the voter vote on paper; since it's only two candidates, this can be postcard-sized. Scan the postcards for the fast results, check and double check by hand (or visual if there's a picture taken by the scanner).

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by zmgsabst »

loteck wrote: post #127
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Virality is not an indicator of accuracy or authority. Do you dispute this?

I don’t understand your comment.

Are you claiming that the video is fake? — if not, what’s your comment referring to with “accuracy”? — how is “authority” relevant at all, when discussing video of a malfunction?

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