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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end? Local to me, an “trained” election volunteer was still questioning voter’s citizenship at the polls. I’d say this was a fluke if the GOP hadn’t spent the last umpteen months pushing all this non-citizen voting nonsense. https://wapo.st/3AsIvnf

Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship.

Virginia also purged my sister-in-law from the voter rolls, a naturalized citizen. Let's just say, I am not amused.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One side says that it is totally secure, basically 0 fraud, most secure election in history Additionally, the sides have completely flipped. Utterly bizarre.

Not bizarre at all. It's BS, but it's not bizarre. Politics has become trench warfare. Everything is a battle to the death to keep the other side from gaining an inch anywhere. And, as is often the case in warfare, truth is a casualty. Both sides will say absolutely anything to keep anyone from thinking that the other side has a valid point. It's advertising, but without any truth-in-advertising laws. Or, if you pref…

This is the kind of boring "both side-ism" that I just don't understand. I have no great love of either party, but one side is openly speculating about all sorts of things that cannot be described as anything other than outright authoritarian, and the other party ... is not. And no, some disagreements on free speech or the 2nd amendment or whatnot is not even close. And no, "oh, he's not really serious about it" doesn't fly either.

And with one party transformed in the Monster Raving Loony Party, the other one can't do anything else but push its own agenda through when it can, so compromise becomes rarer and rarer. And it's not just Trump – remember the madness and obstructionism of the Obama years?

And yes, there have been times the Democratic party could have done better. No doubt. But it's absolutely not a "both sides" issue.

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

#273
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…

The last thing we need is to Federalize voting. Our system is robust BECAUSE it is local. The last thing I'd want is a Federal system under a President's influence.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship.

One person voting who is not allowed is as bad (in terms of fidelity of the vote to legal voters' intentions) as one person being kept from voting who is allowed. There is copious evidence that these purges, and the atmosphere of fear they create, cause far more harm than they prevent.

From one of the articles about what happened in Virginia[0]:

> “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez.

> A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day.

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...

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

#275
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For one duplicate?

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

#276
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…

Can you think of a reason why the people who wrote the rules we have now would want to avoid putting federal elected officials in charge or running federal elections?

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically America's fragmentary and incoherent electoral system makes it extremely hard to steal an election there.

The 2000 election was decided by 500 votes. You think it would be unfeasible to flip 500 votes in a critical swing state with such a system?

Moreover the problem there isn't the distributed/local control of voting, but the College.

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

#278

Electronic voting is a horrible idea. We should reform the voting system to something that doesn't require counting massive numbers of votes. But also, the idea of a president or prime minister is dumb. In fact, nobody needs a federal/national government. We should just have a mayor for each city or region and if they need to decide on something which affects the nation as a whole, the mayors of all cities/regions sh…

According to what I remember from government class in grade school, that was more or less what the Articles of Confederation established, and it didn’t work too well especially regarding interstate trade and organization of militant forces, largely due to state’s endless bickering.

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

#279
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

It’s pretty clear that he is saying that Liz Cheney is a war hawk but might change that stance if she found herself on the other side of said hawking. Your statement is technically correct but like many other interpretations of his statements, forgoes context and intent to make an easy point.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we fixed the hanging chad issue. Did Republicans anywhere try to "secure elections" in a way that didn't involve curtailing voting rights? Improving voting machines, systems, counting, etc. in a way that partisan leadership couldn't mess with? Georgia, I predict, will be a shitshow this year.

I live in one of if not the most critical county in the entire country this election. It's going to be insane here. This week alone we've had Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Tim Walz stumping here. https://newrepublic.com/article/187597/pennsylvania-election...

I’m in the opposite scenario - my vote will not matter since my county/state is not close to 50/50.

It’s a laughably depressing system. I think (without any supporting evidence) the national election system was designed to fit to the standards of transportation and communication 200+ years ago. It was actually feasible to vote per state then send one dude on horseback to DC to cast the vote for the whole state. That’s an OK system for the time.

But the fact that each state is given an approximate weight for its vote (electoral college system), is evidence to how we are trying get to something that looks like a nationally counted winner take all election. We’re just doing it terribly.

If we fixed these issues then election campaigns couldn’t just focus on swing states and ignore everyone else. The game theory would then shift to just needing to convince a majority of all voters to vote for you.

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