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Public trust demands open-source voting systems

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Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#121

Post by someothherguyy »

mariusor wrote: post #92
teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

Posting those links without any insight from your side is just quoting dogma and, to me, it shows that you haven't really spent any time to consider the arguments. In my opinion shows that you lack imagination. Every problem Tom mentions can be worked on and overcome. Maybe not today, maybe not by the next big election, but we should still start now, rather than later. We need to do everything possible to increase pa…

> Posting those links without any insight from your side is just quoting dogma

It would certainly be exhausting to share an opinion on every single resource you want to share with someone.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#122

Post by mariusor »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #105
mariusor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting those links without any insight from your side is just quoting dogma and, to me, it shows that you haven't really spent any time to consider the arguments. In my opinion shows that you lack imagination. Every problem Tom mentions can be worked on and overcome. Maybe not today, maybe not by the next big election, but we should still start now, rather than later. We need to do everything possible to increase pa…

>We need to do everything possible to increase participation in the democratic process Do we? Participation should be made easy for those eligible and inclined to do so, but I don't see the benefit of encouraging participation from people who can't be bothered to put some effort into it, or are ignorant of the issues and candidates and are easily swayed by trashy campaign ads. I've seen the statistic thrown around th…

That's what democracy is though. If only the right people are allowed to vote then you have a problem because their definition can change on a dime.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#123

Post by AfterHIA »

It might be an aside but it would be, "really groovy" if the general public started to realize that, "democracy" is a way of life and a set of considerations that furthers an open public discourse and attempts to maximize human felicity and reduce cruelty. In an oxymoronic sense it's the public voting on things that actually kills real democracy.

https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/Antirepresentationa...

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

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#124

Post by saulpw »

ericmay wrote: post #27

My preference (I think) is we have a federal holiday "America Day", (call it Trump day for all I care) where we celebrate, hand out cookies, friends and family get together, etc. and we all vote in person . One of the weaknesses in our democracy is the insistency of doing things virtually - it's the same weakness exposed by social media. Electronic systems are always going to be subject to hacking and manipulation, a…

I agree with paper ballots, completely. But requiring voting to be in-person: how do you deal with citizens who are homebound, traveling, or working? Not literally everyone can get the day off--even if you suggest "shifts", there will be some people who won't be able to, whether because the hospital is understaffed and people will literally die, or because they don't have the resources to get to the voting hall on their lunch break.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#125

Post by ItsHarper »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #61
bogwog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.

I wouldn't trust any democracy that uses electronic voting. It is not possible to secure voting machines and make them democratically accountable.

Particularly where the machines are all of the same type or connected to the Internet. If

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#126

Post by saulpw »

tuesdaynight wrote: post #77
Spivak wrote: post #47

The technology forum that despises technology, what a world. We should be expanding voting access, not taking it back to the 19th century. Vote with whatever means you have: wanna show up physically and hand-write your ballot, great!, wanna mail it in, go for it!, wanna vote via website or app, have fun! Who gives a shit man, it's not going to be the end of the world or even substantially change things no matter what…

It's frustrating, honestly. Everyday we trust some tech with our lives, but voting? It's unacceptable. Oh, you can have this cryptocurrency that you can use to buy things without the government or anyone else getting to spy on you! But voting should be only with paper and pen because you can not trust machines!!!

You can trust machines. You can't trust computers.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#127

Post by supportengineer »

ncr100 wrote: post #24
teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

(META: Anyone want to summarize the 20 minutes of video, and make it more relevant to this conversation than simply, "No." ?)

This isn't a technology problem, really. It's a problem of corruptible humans. In US elections, there are billions and even trillions of dollars at stake. Observe the grifting being done by the current administration. Thus, humans are extremely incentivized to corrupt the process. Technology just makes the corruption easier. Technology enables the grifter.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#128

Post by supportengineer »

floweronthehill wrote: post #78
shadowgovt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, that results in worse count accuracy. Humans are actually quite bad at hand-tallying hundreds of millions of datapoints. Our eyes go glassy but we press on anyway. Machines are very good at doing that kind of tedious labor accurately. Whether human beings will put more trust in a system that we know will be wrong , but it's wrong for comfortable meat reasons, over a system that might be compromised but wi…

I've counted paper ballots for multiple presidential elections in my country. People who think it's not safe should really spend some time learning how it works. It's impossible to cheat at scale. Each ballot is verified to be correct my multiple eyes. A person is reading, one is writing down the name, one is verifying and some other things I don't remember. To cheat you need to have everyone in on it. A whole town i…

>> It's impossible to cheat at scale

Elon did it, and they both bragged about it, publically.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#129

Post by lynx97 »

As the CCC has stressed almost 20 years ago already, "public trust" demoands pure analog, no software at all, voting. Whenever someone comes back and tries to introduce some sort of voting machines, they are trying to fool you. Never EVER trust an electronic voting machine, no matter WHO is trying to sell it to you.

Re: Public trust demands open-source voting systems

#130

Post by ItsHarper »

estimator7292 wrote: post #91
teddyh wrote: post #13

No. Public trust demands no software or programmable hardware in the election process. • Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI > • Why Electronic Voting Is Still A Bad Idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs >

Aren't most paper ballots processed by machine anyway? Every ballot I've ever cast has gone through something akin to a Scantron machine. The cost of human labor to count all ballots by hand will be enormous. Probably worth it I suppose, but this really is something that should be primarily automated. But again, trust in software. Sigh, why can't we just have nice things?

I'm much less concerned about automated vote counters, as long as they are not connected to the Internet, enough ballots are hand-reviewed to make sure that the values from the machine don't seem way off, and the specific type of counting machine isn't uniform across the whole election.
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