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White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

reuters.com

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Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#41

Post by jfengel »

caseysoftware wrote: post #31
jfengel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have missed the 2000 election. We hung for weeks on the vagueness of paper ballots. Both sides filed motion after motion to exclude some batch of ballots or other. There was a huge number of extremely unlikely votes in a place with a badly designed paper ballot. The system right now is a security nightmare, a bad implementation of a bad idea. But anybody who lived through 2000 remembers that as even worse.

I paid close attention.. and agreed that that particular approach was broken. My question was: what's the argument in favor of using a proprietary electronic system?

I think just the fact that it was the first thing on offer that wasn't the thing they were already using.

There are better alternatives, and if legislatures were designed to come up with optimal solutions, we'd probably have use one of them. Instead we have inertia, because the Sainted Holy Founders thought inertia was good for a country, so they optimized legislative branches to be useless.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#42

Post by tzs »

rayiner wrote: post #36
js2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both sides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot Gore probably won that election. I can't help but wonder about an alternate history where he became president and there was no 9/11 due to smoother handoff between administrations.

WaPo did a recount many years later and found that Bush would have won with further counting. (EDIT: It was a CNN meta-analysis, not WaPo: https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-elect... ) Gore attempted stochastic cheating in that election. There were a large number of uncountable votes because of incompletely punched out cards. That wasn’t a problem because, statistically, the errors would be random…

What about the butterfly ballots? The errors those likely caused would not be randomly distributed.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#43

Post by pclowes »

what wrote: post #39
rcpt wrote: post #4

Seems to be an exclusive article that's also paywall. Anyone know the story? Ensuring secure elections and auditing extensively seems like good practice. However the issue has become political and neither party is interested in that. The right claims fraud with no good evidence, in response the left has decided that our elections perfectly secure and to suggest otherwise gets you a sound "tsk tsk"

> the right claims fraud So does the left every time Trump wins.

This is not comparable. A couple groups on the far left is not the same as the leader of the party. I don’t see any major figure on the left: Bernie, Obama, AOC, Biden, Hillary, Pelosi etc claiming fraud.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#44

Post by pclowes »

Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important.

Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud should be punished severely. Politicians who baselessly erode confidence in elections without providing timely evidence should be ineligible for political office at least and potentially tried for treason.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#45

Post by TimorousBestie »

rayiner wrote: post #36
js2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both sides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot Gore probably won that election. I can't help but wonder about an alternate history where he became president and there was no 9/11 due to smoother handoff between administrations.

WaPo did a recount many years later and found that Bush would have won with further counting. (EDIT: It was a CNN meta-analysis, not WaPo: https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-elect... ) Gore attempted stochastic cheating in that election. There were a large number of uncountable votes because of incompletely punched out cards. That wasn’t a problem because, statistically, the errors would be random…

You either misremember or misrepresent WaPo’s reporting.

> In all likelihood, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency last year if either of two limited recounts -- one requested by Al Gore, the other ordered by the Florida Supreme Court -- had been completed, according to a study commissioned by The Washington Post and other news organizations.

> But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins.

So on this basis, GP has the right of it: Gore probably won that election.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#46

Post by Perenti »

gcau wrote: post #37
XorNot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of the problem is that you have to have mandatory voting. Sending someone a $30 fine because they didn't vote serves a very important function: it gets you an independent check that they were aware they didn't vote, or didn't turn up. It's one of the core superpowers of the Australian electoral system: you can be fined for not voting, but also just about _any_ excuse will get you out of the fine - the fee it…

>just about _any_ excuse will get you out of the fine Hilariously wrong, and if it were true it defeats the purpose of making it mandatory.

In my experience, ringing the AEC and saying "I thought I might have flu, and thought it best to avoid crowds" is enough to save AUD$50.

A huge difference between here in Oz and there in the USA _as I see it_ is that we are conditioned to vote, whilst you are conditioned to vote if you care enough. The fine here is just enough to be annoying, and given the streamlined process at most polling places (you still get queues) it's usually much less hassle to go to the local polling place (town hall or primary school usually) for half an hour. Given the existence of early polling and postal votes there's really not much excuse for _not_ voting unless you're religiously opposed - although I have avoided fines by calling ill-health.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#47

Post by rayiner »

1shooner wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do you only secure your computer networks after they’ve been hacked? We should have transparent, verifiable election infrastructure, like Taiwan: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo .

https://web.cec.gov.tw/english/article/23550 >Taiwan has a comprehensive household registration system. The compilation of the voter list/electoral register is handled by the Household Registration Offices 20 days prior to the Election Day. Hence, citizens do not have to actively register to vote, with the exception of citizens residing overseas during the Presidential and Vice Presidential election. I don't think th…

Taiwan’s system is like voter ID on steroids. The key part of your quote is that voter lists are compiled by “Household Registration Offices.” In Taiwan, everyone has to register with a household registration office within 30 days of moving. You have to show up to the office in person with your national ID card, household certificate, and proof of address. So it’s actually more stringent than voting registration in the US.

This is a fairly common system. Many countries don’t have voter registration as such because they already have a mandatory system household registration they use to track exactly where everyone is and verify citizenship and ID. For example, Germany: https://handbookgermany.de/en/registration

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#48

Post by readthenotes1 »

pclowes wrote: post #44

Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important. Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud should be punished severely. Politicians who baselessly erode confidence in elections without providing timely evidence should be ineligible for political office at least and potentially tried for treason.

Doing such is probably as old as elections.

Without going too far back, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/factchecking-clintons-vote...

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#49

Post by rayiner »

pclowes wrote: post #44

Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important. Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud should be punished severely. Politicians who baselessly erode confidence in elections without providing timely evidence should be ineligible for political office at least and potentially tried for treason.

Faith in elections is a two-way street. The election system must also be fully transparent, minimize the degree to which voters must trust election administrators, and keep records that would allow evidence of voter fraud to be detected. You can’t punish people for not providing evidence if you’ve designed an election system that fails to keep the information that would allow anomalies to be detected.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#50

Post by xethos »

jfengel wrote: post #41
caseysoftware wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid close attention.. and agreed that that particular approach was broken. My question was: what's the argument in favor of using a proprietary electronic system?

I think just the fact that it was the first thing on offer that wasn't the thing they were already using. There are better alternatives, and if legislatures were designed to come up with optimal solutions, we'd probably have use one of them. Instead we have inertia, because the Sainted Holy Founders thought inertia was good for a country, so they optimized legislative branches to be useless.

This is entirely unrelated to your point, but as you brought up the sanctity some Americans hold their founding fathers to:

How do some assume the American founding fathers thought ahead, and had it all planned out, with good solutions (instead of merely solutions),

...while also being aware of the Flynn effect?

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