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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

#331

Post by cm2187 »

breatheoften wrote: post #249
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hear some people say "but we use paper ballots". Then why do you have a BIOS password? If it's all paper where does the computer fit in? All of this is honest curiosity, I'm not sure how the voting system works. Not sure about Colorado specifically, but in many jurisdictions voters mark paper ballots, which go into a machine to be tabulated, and are finally deposited into a box for safe keeping/future recounts.

I voted early in person in Colorado a few days ago. Use a machine to entry my votes. Votes were printed onto a piece of paper. I checked to make sure the marks on the paper matched what I entered into the machine and then dropped it into the ballot box (not a machine just a box that collected the ballots). It was pretty sane and didn't seem like there was a lot to worry over related to the electronic entry system. As…

If it was compromised, it wouldn't flip all the votes, it would flip just enough to change the result while staying credible. So the question is how many people double check the paper ballot. Because if it randomly flips, say 1 ballot out of 15, and the paper ballot is consistent with the tally, it could very well go unnoticed.

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

#332

Post by Slava_Propanei »

runako wrote: post #311
EGreg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify stuff without being able to prove it to others But honestly, I think the whole idea of being able to prove how you voted being dangerous is overblown. The same people who say you don’t need an ID to vote because it’s a non-issue then come up with fantasy scenarios of masses of people being forced to prove how they voted, or bribed to do it LOL.

> masses of people being forced to prove how they voted, or bribed to do it LOL Would you believe that in some households, the husband considers his wife's vote as his property? And that there are lots of households like this? It doesn't have to be a singular mass of people being coerced by a single entity. Lots of wives being coerced by lots of husbands is also corrosive to elections.

[dead]

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

#333

Post by btreecat »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #259
alistairSH wrote: post #216

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 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.

Over the last 20 years there's no record of a non citizen voting in VA.

As a poll worker myself, there's nothing we would check election day that was that wasn't already checked during registration. Asking me to "verify" day of, beyond what we already do, isn't really feasible.

Recommend you work the polls and educate yourself on how your particular locale operates.

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

#334

Post by ajb »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #324
Dalewyn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of absolute transparency is why nothing will beat paper ballots written and marked in plain English counted by hand with anyone and everyone who cares about election integrity watching the process.

I mean, if you're willing to spend that much, and it'll be very expensive, then sure. It's just technophobia - machines are going to be more accurate than a human (who also can make a mistake!).

We do it in the UK Volunteers count the votes because they want to see a fair election (and there are ways of checking if someone partisan slipped some votes into the wrong pile).

I agree with GP. Transparency is more important than precision in democracy.

Good engineering is about choosing the right technology, not just the more recent one. Sometimes the right technology is paper.

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

#335

Post by fsh »

wbl wrote: post #323
riffraff wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy has 60M people and paper ballots, results are out the next day. Population does not matter since polling stations can be scaled up proportionally. I've been in voting where we had a dozen ballots per person (referendums) so this would be more than the total paper ballots in the US, it works fine. Minor miscounts happen but nobody has ever seriously questioned the overall vote results.

Uh no. This election I had a president, two senators, a state senator, a state assembly, a county executive, city council, school board, prosecutor recall, and half a dozen ballot measures. It took four legal size paper surfaces.

Some of the regional elections in Germany have comically large ballots with dozens of options and a very complicated counting system (16 votes that can be split between individuals or party lists). The hand-counted results are generally available by the next morning. There is really no excuse for using electronic voting. In Germany it has been ruled unconstitutional since it cannot be checked by the voters.

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

#336

Post by Dig1t »

muglug wrote: post #151
anigbrowl wrote: post #68

Interestingly, a website set up to document voter fraud by Mike 'My Pillow' Lindell has collected hundreds of election law violations, many in Colorado. For some reason they are all dated for the future though. Might be a warning signal about not populating your database where the public can watch you doing it. https://archive.ph/smlSQ (capture of https://electionnexus.com from earlier today)

Same guy has been running a $14.88 promotion for a month (14/88 is a recognised US far-right symbol: https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1488 )

He’s also selling pillow cases for $24.98. Which secret hate symbol is that one?

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

#337

Post by Dig1t »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #324
Dalewyn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of absolute transparency is why nothing will beat paper ballots written and marked in plain English counted by hand with anyone and everyone who cares about election integrity watching the process.

I mean, if you're willing to spend that much, and it'll be very expensive, then sure. It's just technophobia - machines are going to be more accurate than a human (who also can make a mistake!).

[flagged]

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

#338

Post by bongodongobob »

hobs wrote: post #220
anigbrowl wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's his real site afaik. I'm guessing they put in some fake data for testing purposes but are not very competent. I'd hate to think that they were just making shit up.

Then you don't know anything about the election denier and liar that is Mike.

I don't know why this is down voted. The dude has 0 credibility and is for sure making things up.

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

#339

Post by tsimionescu »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #324
Dalewyn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of absolute transparency is why nothing will beat paper ballots written and marked in plain English counted by hand with anyone and everyone who cares about election integrity watching the process.

I mean, if you're willing to spend that much, and it'll be very expensive, then sure. It's just technophobia - machines are going to be more accurate than a human (who also can make a mistake!).

Almost every democratic country on Earth today does it like that, and all democratic countries have done it like that for the last 100-200 years. Counting paper ballots is just not that hard. Machines are infinitely more complex and exploitable.

Plus, you have the extra layer of public perception: it's much easier to convince a chunk of the public that all the machines in some area are miscounting, than it is to convince them that all human vote counter in those areas are miscounting, and all in the same direction.

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

#340

Post by worstspotgain »

cm2187 wrote: post #331
breatheoften wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted early in person in Colorado a few days ago. Use a machine to entry my votes. Votes were printed onto a piece of paper. I checked to make sure the marks on the paper matched what I entered into the machine and then dropped it into the ballot box (not a machine just a box that collected the ballots). It was pretty sane and didn't seem like there was a lot to worry over related to the electronic entry system. As…

If it was compromised, it wouldn't flip all the votes, it would flip just enough to change the result while staying credible. So the question is how many people double check the paper ballot. Because if it randomly flips, say 1 ballot out of 15, and the paper ballot is consistent with the tally, it could very well go unnoticed.

Not with a randomized audit, such as this one for the 2022 primary [1]. If it flipped just one vote out of 100, and you drew an audit sample of just 1000 votes, the probability of detecting it would be 99.996%.

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2022/07/13/colorado-counties-begin-audit...

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