Obligatory reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ#t=18s
I was surprised to see how similar it was.
Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
231–240 of 659 posts
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#232This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you're in the U.S. I highly reccomend being a poll worker in a contentious district in a swing state if you ever get the chance. I was in a suburb of Denver last election and saw all kinds of shenanigans, from people pulling fire alarms to clear out the polling places to people walking aaround with laptops "checking voter registration" (actually just lying to people to g…
Isn't denying someone the right to vote a crime?
Oh, absolutely. But whether these things get prosecuted is a highly partisan affair.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CEO's of the companies making these voting machines are all die hard Republican supporters, especially Diebold. Being that none of these machines are open-source, that's really the important factor, the political persuasion of the companies manufacturing the machines. The essence of democracy is an essential distrust of power, so yes, I'm concerned.
The machine in the video was made by iVotronic, not Diebold. none of these machines are open-source, that's really the important factor This is the least important factor.
iVotronic is the name of the voting Machine, not the company.
In fact, the iVotronic Machines were indeed created by and originally manufactured by Diebold, though it was sold to another company in 2009.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#234Is it too much to ask to just completely open-source these voting machine? These machines decide the future of our country and affect the entire world. The least we could do is allow everyone to verify for themselves whether the machines are secure.
Make sure you open-source the compiler, the firmware, the hardware manufacturing process, the assembly, the drivers, the software that built the compiler, and the software that built the compiler that built the compiler.
Or just operate under the assumption that some of the machines are compromised and make sure you have ways of recognizing faults after-the-fact.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that the current implementation is not reliable doesn't make the whole idea of electronic voting bad. We've had electronic voting for general elections in Brazil since 2000, with very few accusations of fraud.
But there are very significant issues with the principle of electronic voting: Ideally, every voter would be able to verify their own vote after the fact via some cryptographic mechanism. But on the other hand, this mechanism should be such that the government (or another individual trying to coerce our voter) would not be able to verify the vote -- an almost contradictory, difficult requirement. I am not aware of su…
Of course the existing systems take these into consideration. There are a dozen security measures in place here:
1) The software is exactly the same for the whole country (138m voters). All software that runs on it is encrypted and signed, and the box is physically sealed to detect intrusion.
2) You verify your vote before it's committed to disk on the voting machine. See next point.
3) Every ballot box records votes to a flash card that is physically taken to the nearest court house, where a judge is responsible for the equipment that can decrypt, compile and transfer results to the federal system, using a private network. At no point a ballot box is connected to any network or external devices.
4) The equipment is programmed to only function during official voting times, and only after running a test suite and integrity verification
5) At the end of the day each ballot box prints it own vote report, archived locally, and keeps a copy of the results in it's internal flash memory
If you remove 10k votes from one machine, the numbers won't match: every voter is registered, and you have to sign a small declaration if you don't vote - the number of voters is always known beforehand. Voluntary elections like in the US pose an interesting problem, maybe you could require pre-registration?
I think bypassing all the security measures undetected would be one hell of an achievement.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. It's hilarious when Americans use that as an excuse for things being sub-par in their country. I see it all the time for health care, roads, schools etc. Yes, your country has lots of people in it, but it also takes in an enormous amount of tax, and has enormous government agencies to organize this kind of thing. Everything should scale up appropriately, but you…
You are right. Countries scale up linearly just like websites do. How stupid of us to think otherwise.
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Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other." Since when have Democrats been passing laws to prevent old white people from voting?
Democrats have tried to increase the length of time early voting happens, increase the hours, and increase the number of voting locations. All of these changes make it easier for people who were on the fence about voting to vote. They do this because they know that people who might or might not vote are much more likely than not to vote Democratic. Thus adding these people to the vote advantages themselves and disadv…
You can't be serious.
More people voting == voter manipulation??!??
I would call that a MORE REPRESENTATIVE democracy.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which candidates you voted for.
There is plenty of research and sample implementations of electronic voting schemes in which the final outcome is verifiable without anyone being able to see anyone else's vote. As an example, I worked with Michael Clarkson on an implementation of Civitas: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/papers/civitas-tr.pdf
Agreed. There are a couple of other papers as well.
The problem is they are far too complicated to explain to voters which makes them unlikely to be adopted and unlikely to be trusted. Having a secure vote is obviously the primary goal, but having a vote that people trust is pretty important too.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look, we get it that you have strong political opinions. That's great. Have fun expressing them as well or as poorly as you like. But for many, many reasons-- for example, that this is a technology site, or that this is a site that tries to cultivate a community of thoughtful commentary-- it isn't a good idea to post this kind of thing here.
I'm not really being political. The OP said democrat fraud isn't getting attention on here, I simply pointed out it's more likely republicans would be committing fraud. That is all. I get it that republicans would "feel" offended, but that doesn't counter the likelihood of which party would harbor the unsavoury characters.
That assumption is political, and if you don't understand that then you're not a good match for this community.
Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes
#240If there were one aspect of electronic voting I could change it would be the following: allow electronic votes to be reviewed by each individual at a later date, from two independent organizations. Each vote gets sent to two independent electronic counting organizations, and each let you verify your vote after the election, with an (anonymous) confirmation number issued at voting time. If enough people cry foul to ru…
You could give voters a receipt with the time, machine, and candidate they voted for. Checking for voter fraud would be as simple as comparing some receipts against the voter logs.