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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

#561

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

wtcactus wrote: post #459

I don’t know why this is so hard in America. All other developed countries make this work, what are Americans lacking? The system is just: - Keep a list of citizens allowed to vote - Print paper ballots with the names of the candidates - ask for a proper ID with photograph - collect the votes - count them by hand with the oversee of representatives of the candidates That’s it, that’s all there’s to it and we count 99…

Ah yes, the old rest of the world reduced to a single system.

> - ask for a proper ID with photograph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws

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

#562

Post by efitz »

vlovich123 wrote: post #536
secabeen wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to recognize that the US system involves many more races and questions on the ballot than in other (especially parliamentary) systems. Electronic-free counting in many states would significantly extend counting times; many voters have 20+ choices to make, and each of these choices would have to be counted and tracked, which introduces failure modes of their own. Counting by hand makes sense when each b…

I would suggest that the solution is less voting. Ballots are insanely complicated and there’s absolutely zero knowledge the average person has about whether any of the people are good candidates. So then they turn to their favorite voting guides which just shifts the power to unaccountable political groups instead of making the single representative you elect responsible for figuring it out. And there’s too many ele…

Re: FPTP vs ranked choice/condorcet/instant runoff/etc

In US elections, any alternative voting system would essentially require computers. With all the complexity, problems and mistrust that they bring. Also those alternative systems are subject to gamification as shown in recent elections in Alaska and France. No fraud or illegality, but the will of the people was arguably thwarted by introduction of confounding candidates.

Re: parliamentary vs US representation

US was designed to have a true republic (not a democratic republic) but with a democratic lower house as a counterbalance to a non democratic upper house. The 17th amendment screwed us as it made sure that all the drama from the lower house spread to both houses, and now our congress is entirely captured by lobbyists as every legislator now has to worry about financing campaigns. It wasn’t supposed to work that way.

The US was not supposed to be one big country with uniform laws. It was supposed to be N number of mostly independent states with a common currency + a common defense + a safeguards against states taking advantage of each other. The basic assumption is that most laws are not one-size-fits-all, and that each state should be largely autonomous and figure out the laws that work best for that state’s citizens.

The more people you try to put under the same set of laws, the more likely it is that the weak will be taken advantage of by the strong. Take California water management- the populous cities, in true democratic fashion, determine what farmers can do with the water on and under their land, and special interests can contribute to campaigns for favor and end up getting water rights to water on your land, because democracy!

But all these are the “why” of the US election system, which is kinda orthogonal to how we vote and count.

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

#563

Post by Sparkle-san »

blibble wrote: post #558
Sparkle-san wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this defeat doing a statistical hand sampling of the ballots to verify the electronic counting is accurate?

what's the failure point? then you work inside that I know a guy who did this for a job for a company that produced food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_sign his entire job was to allow the company to push up as close to that line as possible without going over when checked randomly saving them tens of millions a year

Depends on how many ballots you sample, but the number you could change would only matter in an extremely close election and in my state, if a vote is within 0.5%, it triggers an automatic recount. These systems have layers of auditing and validation to prevent these errors whether intentional or not.

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

#564

Post by alistairSH »

gotoeleven wrote: post #285
elmomle wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.

You mean the system we have already? The number of ineligible voters actively voting is inconsequential. Yes there are a few. Literally a few. It’s not the booger man the GOP would have is believe.

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

#565

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

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.

https://www.cisa.gov/topics/election-security/rumor-vs-reali...

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

#566

Post by alistairSH »

briandear wrote: post #401
SubiculumCode wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So is she unable to vote? Virginia has same day registration, so it would seem like a non-issue for a citizen.

In theory, yes, she can re-register at her polling place But that isn’t real-time - it’s a provisional ballot that gets certified later. This whole purge process (and related “citizen only” measures which are literally redundant) is designed to create friction and uncertainty among immigrant populations and marginally reduce their turnout.

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

#567

Post by jonhohle »

dambi0 wrote: post #489
mensetmanusman wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From a IS centric POV, are there communities where voting is looked down upon?

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

#568

Post by alistairSH »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #257
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

> To what end? You'll know what to do. I worked a total of eleven elections, from primarily elections to general elections. I even worked a special recall election where the recall was the only thing on the ballot. I was a volunteer for all of them. I worked as a "Polling Place Inspector", which means I was 'in charge' of a single polling place: I did the setup & teardown, reached out to the other polling place's pol…

My point was that despite all the training, some whack job was still allowed to work and question voters’ rights. How many did he successfully turn away? Hopefully none, but we don’t know.

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

#569

Post by JumpCrisscross »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #423
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has anyone done a ground up exercise of rethinking the process and the involved technologies from a cybersecurity standpoint? Chesterton’s fence.

This feels a lot like the people who simply tell others to become a poll worker when they start asking hard questions about the system. I get the wisdom in this but it can also be a waste of time. In other (non electoral) situations, many big improvements can and have happened without needing to endlessly understand existing things. In this case it is clear we don’t have verifiable elections - you don’t need to under…

> you don’t need to understand anything deeply to know this, since it is apparent with your own ballot

Are you giving up the secret ballot in your scheme?

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

#570

Post by alistairSH »

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.

Exactly.

Non-citizen voting is illegal already. We don’t need new laws re-banning it.

The numbers of non-citizens voting is small so any effort to purge them is as likely to disenfranchise legitimate voters as remove illegal voters. That’s a net negative.

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