Live data from Hacker News

White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

reuters.com

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#81
post #27
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.

> 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.

Gore did win that election, but SCOTUS illegally decided it instead of a fair ruling requiring Florida to recount ballots using the same methods in all districts. Americans should have done general strikes and rioting.

I don't know about 9/11, but I doubt Gore's SCOTUS appointees would have made the incorrect decision on Citizens United. America would be in a better place today.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#82
post #41

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.

[deleted]

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#84
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives in multiple states looked under every rock to find voter fraud in the 2020 election and largely came up empty handed. In Arizona they even forced a quasi-legal audit with their own citizens brigade, spending weeks pouring through records, then quietly admitted there was no systemic fraud. All the cumulative fraud uncovered nationwide, most of which was mistaken registration, discovered through existing…

I don’t get this. Isn’t it weak, two point out that no one can find evidence after the fact, versus the proper alternative that no one can prove that they’re actually-secure before the fact? Let’s just say that you were a bad guy and manipulating elections, wouldn’t you be bad at your job if someone could detect it after the fact? How many people would a conspiracy even take to pull of? I don’t get the US system. The…

> Isn’t it weak, two point out that no one can find evidence after the fact, versus the proper alternative that no one can prove that they’re actually-secure before the fact?

Isn't it weaker, to claim fraud so vast it changed a presidential election, while presenting no evidence?

Then, to ask for billion-dollar changes to voting, which also suppress voting, and when asked why, to shrug and then repeat the same debunked claims? I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I don't get it: the people mad at voting advocates and 2020 brush off proof that their claims are unfounded, yet they just repeat the same claims. At some point, it's malice, not ignorance.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#85
post #57
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. From https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum... , among literally hundreds of other instances claiming the election was stolen, rigged, Russianed, whatever.

It's very much on record that the Trump campaign reached out to the Ukraine to see if they'd dig up dirt on Hunter Biden and the Biden campaign in general, and that's what Clinton is referring to.

Unless of course you think incumbent leaders should be able to use foreign intelligence services as a part of their campaign strategy to attack their oppoosition?

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#86
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Herring* - it's a fish, not a rabbit

You’re right, but that’s a distraction from the bigger misconception — it’s actually “Read Herring”. The idea is that the herring has already been documented (and “read” back), no longer deserving of additional discussion.

I have never heard that suggestion... if you can document it, the wiki entry would need an update[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring#History

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#87
post #56
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My states system is very transparent and has many systems for detecting fraud but people on the right claim otherwise and they are either ignorant of how it worked or just lying.

What’s your state?

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#88
post #34

I'd love to hear the steelman - what's the argument in favor of using a proprietary electronic system? There have been legit complaints about closed sourced voting systems for ~20 years and DEFCON has done a "Voting Village" for ~10 years demonstrating numerous issues, some of which were not addressed by the next elections. Transparency doesn't appear better either. Is it speed to tally? Cost? Easier to screw with re…

It’s cheaper in the short term because these are COTS products. But that’s not a good reason. Voting security should be “zero trust.” We should count votes the same way the Taiwanese, without reliance on technology: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo . Voting should be

Super interesting, thanks for the insight.

I'm 100% onboard with transparency and auditablility are table stakes and any methodology that doesn't address those should be disqualified.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, but that’s a distraction from the bigger misconception — it’s actually “Read Herring”. The idea is that the herring has already been documented (and “read” back), no longer deserving of additional discussion.

I have never heard that suggestion... if you can document it, the wiki entry would need an update[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring#History

I can’t tell if you’re serious, but my definition was certainly not, lol. My claim was that correcting “red haring” to “red herring” distracts from a bigger misunderstanding (thus making the correction itself a red herring! Please laugh.) I completely made up my claim about the true meaning. For better or worse, my brain finds that humorous.

Edit: i am honored that you found my origin story believable enough for serious consideration.

Re: White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

#90
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…

I'm not opposed to making voting mandatory, but making election day a national holiday should come first. While I'm aware many (most? all?) polling locations allow for early voting, the reality is that many people wait for election day, and the combined hassle of having to work that day and deal with sometimes multi-hour waits (due to Republicans repeatedly closing and limiting polling locations) inevitably leads to…

> I'm not opposed to making voting mandatory, but making election day a national holiday should come first.

How about having elections on Sundays instead of on Tuesdays?

Post reply on HN