Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by BenjiWiebe » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:16 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #329

sadeshmukh wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!).

>machines are going to be more accurate Says who? Also, what does "accurate" here actually mean? Speaking as someone who actually understands computers and machines: I agree with the commons (who are simpletons with regards to computers and machines) that machines cannot be trusted to be "accurate" (whatever that means) or even trusted in general. Especially when a simpler, confirmable-by-anyone method exists: Having…

Machines are amazing at counting things without losing their place. I'd trust an ATM's counted stack of bills over a human's (for sure if they only each got one try).

I've written some code at a previous job to simplify data entry. The previous method was adding numbers from a stack of papers, with a calculator. I trust my code to add up the numbers on the computer over a human reading them from a printout and entering them in a calculator.

Humans make mistakes. A lot.

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

#342

Post by wannacboatmovie » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:20 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #326

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also believe Walmart is marketing chocolate cookies to hate groups or is the price an unfortunate coincidence when they do it? https://www.walmart.com/ip/President-s-Choice-The-Decadent-C...

How many products does Walmart sell, though? I don't think they advertise on 'right side broadcast network', which also inexplicably advertises 'Trump combat knives' during his rallies.

You can't accuse something of being a dog whistle only when Person A says it, but not Person B. It either is or isn't. To do otherwise would be applying a double standard.

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

#343

Post by ytpete » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:22 AM UTC

gotoeleven wrote: post #295

ForHackernews wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/08/vg-2024-how-your-vote-gets-co... Colorado ballot envelopes already have a bar code - essentially your "serial number". I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because everyone who thinks there's widespread election fraud seems to not know anything about how elections work.

Oh hey looks like I found one of the ballots sent to everyone in the state and filled it out and sent it back in. It's literally that easy in Colorado.

No it's not. Your signature would have to match the one on file.

Further, if the person the ballot rightfully belonged to actually wants to vote, they'll either request a new one or vote in person - either one of which would invalidate the earlier mailed ballot.

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

#344

Post by echoangle » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:24 AM UTC

prophesi wrote: post #205

echoangle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of just counting in public and having other people vouch is that it is easily understandable by everyone. If you use the blockchain, how many people can be convinced that the election was stolen with some techspeak? Do you think the average citizen understands enough cryptography to validate that the election was legit?

This has me wonder if highschools should start teaching the basic concepts of cryptography so that we eventually do end up with a common understanding of blockchains, password managers, passkeys, or any other technologies that we end up using in our day-to-day lives for crucial tasks.

It probably wouldn’t hurt, but you can’t really rely on Highschool education for election security. There are many people that don’t go to Highschool, and those that do probably forget half the stuff after a year. For an election, you want it to be basically obvious how it works in my opinion, anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to explain makes it easier to create doubt in the election.

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

#345

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:27 AM UTC

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…

> Everything else is a scam.

There is no evidence of voting systems in the US being "scams".

This monster under the bed mentality is getting tiresome.

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

#346

Post by ytpete » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:31 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #181

tzs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before 2020 the only allegations of significant fraud or other shenanigans I remember were immediately after elections and were dropped shortly afterwards when no evidence could be found for them. Note that the Bush/Gore election issues were not allegations of fraud or any intentional shenanigans. The issue there was a badly designed ballots and/or badly designed voting machines that let to a large number of spoiled…

What I meant was, the security of electronic voting machines in general . Prior to Trump, it was afaict an accepted fact among software people that closed source electronic voting machines were sitting ducks ripe for hacking. We went from "don't trust Diebold" to "how dare you question Dominion." Whether or not an election has actually ever been hacked at the voting machine level is a separate conversation.

The Help America Vote Act passed in 2002, adding important mandates such as a hand-recountable paper trail for every electronic voting machine. Concerns predating that mandate were a very different beast than the unfounded claims one party is making now.

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

#347

Post by wannacboatmovie » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:34 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #293

pstrateman wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wide scale fraud isn't necessary when elections are decided by 10k votes.

The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. As such getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases like gerrymandering or voter suppression. The vote may be rigged before people started casting ballots, but that doesn’t make voting useless. It’s the strongest signals that are most important and that…

> getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases

History lesson: The 2004 Washington state governor's election was decided by a mere 129 votes, and only after multiple recounts and repeatedly "finding" boxes upon boxes of supposedly uncounted ballots in the weeks following election day kept altering the totals and overturned the original result. The election was extremely controversial and not decided until two days before Christmas. Due to these irregularities, many people did not accept the results for years afterward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_...

Even more bizarre, the election closely shadowed the plot of the movie Black Sheep, which was released 8 years before.

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

#348

Post by ytpete » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:36 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #194

Spivak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "secu…

Junk mail democracy is the most insecure model for an election I could possibly conceive. Other than entrusting closed source software companies with tabulating votes.

Almost every state lets you vote in person instead if you prefer. And if you do, any mail-in ballots that were sent out under your name are null and void. So if you don't trust it, just vote in person and problem solved.

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

#349

Post by the_gipsy » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:37 AM UTC

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #341

Dalewyn wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>machines are going to be more accurate Says who? Also, what does "accurate" here actually mean? Speaking as someone who actually understands computers and machines: I agree with the commons (who are simpletons with regards to computers and machines) that machines cannot be trusted to be "accurate" (whatever that means) or even trusted in general. Especially when a simpler, confirmable-by-anyone method exists: Having…

Machines are amazing at counting things without losing their place. I'd trust an ATM's counted stack of bills over a human's (for sure if they only each got one try). I've written some code at a previous job to simplify data entry. The previous method was adding numbers from a stack of papers, with a calculator. I trust my code to add up the numbers on the computer over a human reading them from a printout and enteri…

If the technical problem was solely about counting then obviously everywhere in the world we would be using machines by now. But we don't. Because the technical problem is trust, not counting.

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

#350

Post by ytpete » Sun, Nov 03, 2024, 7:40 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #47

Spivak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "secu…

Yes drop boxes and mail in ballots with no signature verification and the counting done largely by one side of the partisan divide (county/state employees) is totally 100% secure what could go wrong? Those conspiracy nuts just don't get it.

Every polling place and every vote-counting center is open to observers from both parties, by law. Your idea that one party is shut out of this system has no basis in reality.