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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

#481

Post by jmull »

someonehere wrote: post #355

The whole voting process is fundamentally broken in this country. One side argues we need to fix this and is told it’s fine. I then see articles like this and can’t help but reaffirm they’re right.

Confirmation bias in action: accepting as true information that confirms your preexisting beliefs while ignoring information that contradicts them.

E.g. this article has information in it that refutes the idea that the voting process in CO is fundamentally broken; it describes aspects of their security-in-depth which show how a single vulnerability doesn’t lead to compromised election results. (Not to mention the auditing process which would also have to be fully compromised for the results of even fully hacked voting machines to be accepted.)

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

#482

Post by cvwright »

tsimionescu wrote: post #359
prophesi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That wouldn't help for this case. Even a PhD in cryptography and computer science doesn't help you in any way be convinced that a particular machine is securely counting your votes. If you want to be convinced of that, you have to audit the code and the hardware specs and the network code and everything in between to ensure that the system: (a) implements the claimed algorithms, (b) does so correctly and free of side…

I have a PhD in CS, with peer reviewed publications on using cryptography, and all I learned in my studies is that it’s practically impossible to build a secure voting machine.

I even took a class from a professor who regularly testified to congress on the topic.

Paper ballots all the way.

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

#483

Post by themaninthedark »

_heimdall wrote: post #458
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Gore lost the initial vote count in Florida. He wanted to recount. That was fine. He lost the recount, but it was closer. Then he wanted specific recounts - to recount the precincts where he thought he would gain the most votes in another recount, and to not recount the ones where Bush would gain votes . Also there were calendar issues - the December date where they have to cast…

Thanks for the added detail, that's roughly what I remembered as well but definitely a better timeline. I don't actually remember hearing people describe the election as stolen at the time. I know people weren't happy about it, but either I just lost that memory over time or "stolen" is a newer description of 2000 now that its become so commonplace today. Either way, I have a hard time seeing an election that was rec…

I was in High school at the time, I definitely remember a feeling that the election was stolen and that Bush was not rightfully elected. I don't remember the general feeling going away until after 2001. There was a large partisan divide at that time.

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

#484

Post by Robin_Message »

sethammons wrote: post #405
pessimizer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate. There are currently many heads of household voting for their entire families, and even aside from mail-in ballots, there are pe…

And now the abuser can just say "show me a picture of your ballot" since we all take our phones into the booth. And the abuser might stand in line and watch to see if you get a second ballot. And you could quickly use photo editing software to fake it, but the abuser might run analysis... Where is the line of accepted risk?

Photos of ballots are a criminal offence in the UK, which obviously is imperfect in an abusive relationship, but does help set a general norm that the vote is secret.

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

#485

Post by wtcactus »

Timon3 wrote: post #479
wtcactus wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m arguing it’s not a factor. In Portugal vote by mail is negligible and we get the results late the same night.

I'm genuinely not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously processing mail-in ballots won't take long if there aren't many. But as I've shown, countries with uncontested elections have many people voting by mail, so unless you're contesting the German elections this by itself isn't suspicious. And since states have rules about when counting is allowed to start, it's also obvious that counting them will finish later.…

My point is that other developed countries are perfectly able to have a transparent electoral process and present the results in very little time, even doing everything by paper voting.

Arguments that you need voting machines, or extensive mail voting, or pre voting, or not check a valid photo ID to be able to carry out the process in due time, are completely against what the reality shows in all other developed countries.

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

#486

Post by Timon3 »

wtcactus wrote: post #485
Timon3 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely not sure what you're trying to say. Obviously processing mail-in ballots won't take long if there aren't many. But as I've shown, countries with uncontested elections have many people voting by mail, so unless you're contesting the German elections this by itself isn't suspicious. And since states have rules about when counting is allowed to start, it's also obvious that counting them will finish later.…

My point is that other developed countries are perfectly able to have a transparent electoral process and present the results in very little time, even doing everything by paper voting. Arguments that you need voting machines, or extensive mail voting, or pre voting, or not check a valid photo ID to be able to carry out the process in due time, are completely against what the reality shows in all other developed coun…

And yet other developed countries are perfectly able to have a transparent electoral process and present the results in very little time, even doing both paper voting and mail-in voting. Why deprive your citizens of mail-in voting when it's not necessary for safe elections? If you remove the laws that make mail-in voting take longer to count, it will not take as long to count.

Additionally, you seem to be willfully ignoring the differences regarding photo ID between the US and most other developed countries. Why?

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

#487

Post by gedy »

saagarjha wrote: post #403
briandear wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except non-citizens have voted. And the Democrats found Virgina over removing confirmed non-citizens from the voter rolls. Why would anyone support keeping illegible voters on the rolls? We all know why.

Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls. They are going to be upset if your method for taking them out is too coarse and removes legitimate voters, though.

> Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls.

There are plenty of folks who think illegal aliens* should be allowed to vote.

* not sure what the political correct term is now tbh, double-plus-unnaturalized maybe, ha?

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

#488

Post by ndiddy »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #168
pessimizer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate. There are currently many heads of household voting for their entire families, and even aside from mail-in ballots, there are pe…

Couldn't a church just require congregants to send a picture of their ballot from inside a voting booth? Is there any basis in reality for this?

I'm not sure how the laws are in all states, but where I am it's illegal to use a camera or cell phone within 100 feet of a voting booth so if you tried to take a picture of your ballot, you'd likely get asked to put the camera away by a poll worker. This was done with the specific intent of protecting the privacy of people's votes.

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

#489

Post by dambi0 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #446
dambi0 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what problem that solves that crossing voters of a list doesn’t already solve. What about mail in and early voting?

It’s a fun way to add flare to voting day.

It’s only fun if you want people to know you voted. Not everyone does.

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

#490

Post by bdndndndbve »

saas_sam wrote: post #470
ytpete wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the idea is that random audits check whether the barcode matches the human-readable part, and in the extremely unlikely even problems are found they simply hand-recount _all_ the ballots ignoring the barcode.

Can you find any website or document that validates that these "random audits" are done? By whom and on what cadence? I've not been able to find anything like this. Just hand-waving, assertions that "someone does something," and so on.

If you don't trust risk-limitjng audits, you're never gonna trust any voting system. Someone has to administer the system, do the counting, sum up the totals, etc.
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