Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day • Hacker News Board

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#111

Post by Fej » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

mikejholly wrote: post #68

jadedhacker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Voting requires ID in almost every other western democracy, including Canada. The rest of the world see it as very reasonable to identify yourself at a polling station. It's odd that this is so contentious in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws

Almost every other Western democracy also has national ID cards, which the United States does not.

It sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice - specifically in the United States - requiring ID for registered voters at the polling station is used by the Republican Party for the sole purpose of disenfranchising Democratic voters.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#112

Post by User23 » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #34

User23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly I smell FUD virtually every time a security engineer opens his mouth. Yes there are some great ones, but I’ve never worked with one directly. Part of my skepticism is rooted in the prevalent ignorance of basic computing theory. If you can’t define the operational semantics of a system then you can’t rigorously convince yourself or anyone else that it is “secure.”

> If you can’t define the operational semantics of a system then you can’t rigorously convince yourself or anyone else that it is “secure.” Well. This means no one can provide any security guarantee for any remotely realistic system because no modern stack has a completely understood&formalized operational semantics. But I definitely know that some systems are much more secure than others! So this seems like a situat…

There are realistic systems that are operationally secure by the given standard. Nuclear launch systems are the obvious example.

“Best practice” is a euphemism for whatever it is the majority does. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. That’s not even reasoning.

Finally, your paragraph about sandboxing is ill considered, but not that wrong. First all programs have operational semantics, the only question is how well understood they are. Second sandboxing is a constraint that is easily formally expressed by way of the logical consequence. I’m surprised you’re taking issue with that since you give a great example thereof.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#113

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

mikejholly wrote: post #68

jadedhacker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Voting requires ID in almost every other western democracy, including Canada. The rest of the world see it as very reasonable to identify yourself at a polling station. It's odd that this is so contentious in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws

Government-issued ID in general has a long history of being contentious in the US, and is consequently a complete goddamn mess. As a country, we really aren't in the habit of setting things up with the assumption that every citizen has an official ID. So not requring ID to vote looks strange compared to other countries, but not compared to how we treat ID generally in the US.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#114

Post by flyingcircus3 » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

mikejholly wrote: post #86

rectang wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDs are not issued automatically in the US; they take money and effort to acquire. Therefore as implemented in the US, voter IDs are a poll tax. Unsurprisingly, this makes voter ID a political issue: those who benefit from poll taxes support them, and those whose voters are suppressed by poll taxes oppose them.

You also need to wear clothes and shoes into the polling station. Are those expenses considered poll taxes as well? Straw man, but requiring ID is not really a direct poll tax. I certainly don't feel like I'm being unreasonably taxed when I vote with my ID.

You've conflated your feelings with the government's propensity to provide protection for all Americans. Voting is a right, unlike driving an automobile, which is a privilege. Rights have no prerequisites to enjoy them, unlike privileges. We all agree that many people do have the means to acquire government IDs. Just like all goods and services, the amount of money required to purchase an ID might be a pittance to you, but a significant expense to someone else. This, coupled with what I assume is a track record of not being disenfranchised, might explain why you have no frame of reference from which to appreciate why its a poll tax.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#115

Post by jadedhacker » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

sharpercoder wrote: post #81

propman wrote: post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

Sorry to say this, but the US has bigger systemic problems to fix. Voting is a small one compared to the 2-party system. The US always boasts about how it is so democratic; while in reality there isn't much democracy. In fact, the 2-party system looks suspiciously a lot on the 1-party system in existence in many other countries. Sure, you have a choice, but what value is that choice?

For what it's worth, changing the voting system to, e.g. ranked choice or theoretically superior variants would automatically open up the viability of third (and fourth) parties.

Right now, if a popular movement becomes so excited that they put forth multiple candidates, it divides the vote and they lose.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#116

Post by cmurf » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

mikejholly wrote: post #68

jadedhacker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is a good idea, but the second is not. Voter ID cards are historically used to make it harder to vote and thus compromise elections. In person fraud is very uncommon, and it would be very difficult for a foreign government to pull off a large scale interference without being detected. After all, we struggle to get people to show up to vote once already! The idea of mass ballot fraud seems difficult to count…

Voting requires ID in almost every other western democracy, including Canada. The rest of the world see it as very reasonable to identify yourself at a polling station. It's odd that this is so contentious in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws

What's contentious is the versions used by Republicans: make the required ID a kind of ID you can only obtain in certain locations, and then close most all of those locations in predominately black counties, or make the ID expensive or obscure or difficult to obtain for working folks. And even when it isn't racist, it's very clearly there to preserve GOP majorities:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Vot...

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0730/Voter-ID-mo...

By all means make voter ID required, just make sure the burden for obtaining it is identical across all demographics.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#117

Post by igitur » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:08 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #78

kilroy123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about finger paint, like most other countries use? You just simply get an unwashable ink on your thumb. It does a few things. It shows you voted already. Also, puts a little bit of social pressure on people you see who don't have the mark.

Never heard of that... fascinating! I don't think it's used in Croatia, Bosnia, US or Canada. Can you provide examples? Thx!:)

We use it in South Africa. https://twitter.com/aminahmather/status/760788698560622592

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#118

Post by rasz » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:08 PM UTC

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #6

What does "hacking attempt" even mean? I smell FUD.

ICMP packets, like Zone Alarm just to scare users back in ~2002.

Edit: holy crap Zone Alarm still does this, I guess scaring clueless clients still works as a sales tactic https://support.zonealarm.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001808551...

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#119

Post by hrktb » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

propman wrote: post #21

Paper ballots, no machines and especially no machines connected to the internet...if we were able to get that crazy bug into Iranian nuclear reactors without direct transfer from Internet, then you can bet North Korea, Russia, Israel, and China will pour billions to do the same thing. Voting ID cards too, though I admit I don’t know enough about that. Even if it costs billions to get it done, confidence in fair and f…

I am a bit sceptic that paper ballots were as good as we want them to be. I remember every elections the bunch of dead people voting reported on the news, and that must be the tip of the iceberg.

For comparison, in the payment world we have the paper cheques and credit card, and though credit card fraud is strong in the mind of the public, most entities accepting payment gave up on paper cheques a while ago because of how hard it was to secure and everything that was involved in processing them.

If it didn't work for money, I can't imagine it's a good idea to keep for voting.

Re: Utah voting system fending off 1B hacking attempts per day

#120

Post by tzs » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #84

s2g wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mostly cause the laws get abused to target mostly democrat voters.

Likewise, Democrats turn a blind eye towards voting id because they benefit from non eligible voterw voting, because they usually vite Democrat. There, I've made my point and provided as much evidence as you have towards your point

> There, I've made my point and provided as much evidence as you have towards your point

The difference between your point and his point is that he could easily provide evidence for his, since there have been numerous lawsuits over these laws by civil rights groups, and the evidence was well publicized in those cases, and there have also been academic studies of these laws. Some links: [1] [2] [3].

There are ineligible people who vote, but almost all of them do so by means that would not be stopped by voter ID laws, most commonly absentee ballots. This makes it very hard to find evidence that supports you points.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/how-vot...

[2] https://now.tufts.edu/articles/proving-voter-id-law-s-discri...

[3] https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...