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Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

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Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#631

Post by DennisP »

eli wrote: post #238
scottmp10 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not necessarily so complicated. For example: you get a receipt, check it, and put it in a box. Another voter takes it home and can validate it against the official count.

This system was designed by a couple cryptographers, one of them Ron Rivest of RSA fame. For details on this and a couple other simple voting systems, see here: http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#632

Post by bdunbar »

thomasz wrote: post #619
bdunbar wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you know libertarians that I don't. The ones I know are well armed, but about as non-violent as you can be and not be a Quaker.

Just to make it clear: This was sarcasm. I never have dealt with armed libertarians beating somebody up because he supported unionization. The point is: Neither has he encountered union thugs beating somebody up because he was against unionization. It's a ridiculous myth.

I missed the sarcasm at first - my bad!

But I don't know about 'union thug' being a myth: lots of actual violence back in the dark days of the last century. Carnegie brought in an army to bust up the union and it wasn't because they were meek lambs.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#633

Post by Dylan16807 »

bruceboughton wrote: post #610
danielweber wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the link in tokenadult's post about Minnesota. Paper is hardly easy to count when you get to the dolts who don't know how to mark a ballot. What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Lots of people really don't like the fact that the senator is chosen based on how 3 people sit down and decide what that means, or whether this chad…

>> What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Spoiled ballot. Vote not counted. What else would it mean?

If they don't check 'other' then it shouldn't matter what they put in the write-in spot. I would have accepted it as a perfectly valid ballot.

Even if there is no checkbox next to the write-in spot you could reasonably argue that it still shouldn't matter what's written there unless none of the candidates have checks.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#634

Post by ZachPruckowski »

specialist wrote: post #337
scottmp10 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I haven't looked at Civitas. The other crypto based voting systems I did study don't actually hide voter's identity in real world elections. The trick to these systems is there's some one-way hash done. This requires a lot of ballots, with enough hash collisions to ensure one's ballot gets lost within the herd. Alas, elections in the USA are precinct-based, typically 1 to 1,000 voters in size. And our ballots are com…

> "So combinatorially, it's very likely my ballot will be utterly unique within my precinct."

I don't think this is true, since there's a massive correlation between ballot positions and they're not randomly distributed. Since the parties tend to take positions on amendments, bonds, and issues, that correlation extends to those as well.

There are certainly going to be unique ballots per precinct, and really tiny precincts like Hart's Location and Dixie Notch or whatever are subject to it too, but it's not "very likely" for the average US voter.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#635

Post by webXL »

polymatter wrote: post #545
erichocean wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voters can sell their vote with or without a receipt. Furthermore, they can sell with a reasonable degree of certainty (if the buyer demanded it) already by submitting to a lie detector test. There is no valid reason, moral or technical, for preventing voters from verifying their votes were accurately counted, and verification does not enable any new crimes – but it does prevent the current crime where someone's vote…

If voters are given a receipt, buyers of votes can demand to see said receipt to verify they voted the correct way. boss/abusive family member/mafia can demand to see the vote receipt on threat of your job/safety/family returning safely tonight. The potential for a vote receipt means that these 3rd parties can reward/punish you based on the way you voted. Without it, they have no way of knowing if their coercion/blac…

Make the receipt optional for each voter. Assholes will still be assholes regardless of the existence of receipts. If someone is extorting you to vote a certain way, I doubt the outcome of an election will affect your life very much. You have bigger problems.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#636

Post by TallGuyShort »

sakopov wrote: post #561

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have some sort of automated remote monitoring system which would randomly ping each machine for diagnostics data and shutdown machines if any issues discovered?

If someone had enough access to tamper with the regions of the screen and their linking to voting options, what makes you think a remote monitoring system would be trivial?

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#637

Post by oh_sigh »

dubya wrote: post #571
oh_sigh wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. You can combine a personal secret code with the output of the vote-teller in order to determine who you voted for. The vote-teller would have no way of determining who you actually voted for without your personal code. Even more secure would be to have two personal codes, one a "real" code, which outputs the actual candidate you voted for, and one "duress" code, which outputs a candidate you didn't vote fo…

Wouldn't the person with the gun just demand both codes? And typically a ballot has multiple offices to elect. Would you flip all of them for the "duress" code? It seems like it gets complicated really quickly.

The duress code and real code would be indistinguishable. You could simply tell the person your duress as your real one, and your real one as the duress.

Another possibility is to make the duress an option. You can fill out a fake ballot for your duress code if you want, but you aren't forced to(since most people don't need to worry about it)

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#638

Post by imglorp »

incongruity wrote: post #465
danielweber wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the bubble isn't fully filled in? What if it's 50% filled in? What if it there is a stray mark in another bubble? I'm not trying to play Loki's Wager -- there really have been incredibly close elections where you have puzzle out just what the voter intended and it's just not clear. Nor can you make the boundary be "well if it's not clear throw it away," because you can't tell when it doesn't become clear. Thi…

>What if the bubble isn't fully filled in? What if it's 50% filled in? What if it there is a stray mark in another bubble? Count it before the voter leaves, reject any ambiguous ballots with feedback about what's wrong and have the voter fix it before they leave. Repeat until it's accepted.

My polling place does this. The voter stands by as the machine scans their bubble sheet and reports success or failure on a little display.

The downside of all this is that the machine is still free to slant results if its software has been tampered with.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#639

Post by finnw »

thomasz wrote: post #619
bdunbar wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you know libertarians that I don't. The ones I know are well armed, but about as non-violent as you can be and not be a Quaker.

Just to make it clear: This was sarcasm. I never have dealt with armed libertarians beating somebody up because he supported unionization. The point is: Neither has he encountered union thugs beating somebody up because he was against unionization. It's a ridiculous myth.

> This was sarcasm

No, it was irony.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#640

Post by finnw »

gordonguthrie wrote: post #539
grey-area wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no ambiguity about a spoiled ballot. It's a legitimate protest with a clear outcome - the vote is not counted. A simple system of slips of paper marked by hand and counted by hand works better than anything involving chads, touch screens or electronic counting. Paper ballots are really the best solution we have at present and I'd argue the involvement of as many people as possible in counting and supervision…

I have been a candidate (in Scotland/UK). Here all rejected ballot papers are shown to all the candidates and their agents and if a paper is technically invalid (in the UK that means any mark other than a cross) but where the intent is clear (ie yes in the box against Mrs McGinty) are counted as if they were valid votes. Very rarely is there disagreement about what is a valid vote - but they can be very ambiguous. Th…

So what is to stop you making a deal with me, that if somebody writes "ARF" in your box on the ballot paper, that you will pay me £1000? It will obviously be disputed, so it will be shown to you as a candidate, and it is unusual enough that you can identify the vote as mine with >=90% confidence, but you have a good chance that if you show it to your opponents, they will agree that my "intention was clear."

I was under the impression that (in the UK) all ballot papers containing anything other than "X" in one box were always rejected for that reason.

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