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CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

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Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#171

Post by Jayschwa »

timmaxw wrote: post #168
Jayschwa wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I have removed the link because someone else found errors in it. Original: AP claims there's no evidence of "dead voters", but this list seems to indicate otherwise: [redacted] It's obituaries matched with returned absentee ballots. I've inspected a dozen or so entries and it seems legit.

These aren't dead voters, they're living voters who happen to have the same name and birth month/year as a dead person. As evidence: I spot-checked three random entries. In all three cases, I could find a Whitepages.com entry for a person with the same first & last name, in or near the zip code where the ballot was for; but the obituary was for a different city. Entry 962: The voter is registered in zip code 48602 (S…

Thank you for pointing out errors in this data. Out of an abundance of caution, I have removed the link from my original post.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#172

Post by pontifier »

josephcsible wrote: post #50
sicromoft wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are banks auditable? (Yes.) Do they have paper backups of everything? (Not that I'm aware of.) What's the difference? Honest question.

If your bank account balance is wrong, you can tell for sure that it's wrong and then explain it to the bank and get it fixed. If your vote was counted wrong, you'd never know. For them to be equivalent, the secret ballot would have to be abolished.

Maybe each ballot could include a one time pad that you keep to verify the vote.

You could verify your own vote but nobody else could.

It could be very simple to use, like a qr code that links to a public api showing the encoded ballot data, and a second qr code that you scan to decrypt it.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#173

Post by jariel »

jkhdigital wrote: post #161
jariel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I haven't seen anything controversial in the news" It's literally on every page of the news. The Trump campaign is trying to discredit the results of the election by any means possible. The issue of 'electronic voting' is only a concern were there to be an election among regular people, interested in determining the actual truth. It's much worse when people in positions of power just make up the truth 'because they…

Don’t forget about the other 20% who will believe anything sourced from an anonymous intelligence official

You mean like Wikileaks?

No, the 20% not 'believing' just the 'Anon. Official' - they are believing the information on the basis of verification by a journalistic institution with supposed credibility.

'Anonymous Sources' are a mainline source of journalistic information, and journos basically put their entire credibility on the line when they vet info and then communicate said information.

The press didn't lie when representing 'anonymous officials' in 2016 rather, they communicated the information. Where the press did a 'bad job' was misrepresenting the nature of Russian-Trump relations, which basically were nill.

The MSM seriously cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump for a long time, frankly I think 'everyone actually believed it' and it was a surprise when it turns out Trump and his ragtag team were lying to the FBI for really no good reason at all and in fact had really no direct connections to Russia. Too clownish even to be actually corrupt, unless they actually were in some cases - as remember some major figures in Trump's campaign were eventually indicated. Trump's campaign manager, buddies, personal lawyer - all ended up in jail. That's not 'nothing'.

Ironically, if Trump & Co. acted responsibly during the Mueller investigation - his pleas of 'Unfair!' might have actually worked, but he's such a liar that he only makes himself look guilty.

But Trump's lies, in contrast to media spin, are a whole other level of falsity - he literally invents facts without any basis whatsoever.

He's not 'spinning' the facts, he's literally inventing them.

On election night when he said 'If they count the good votes, I win, the fake votes, they win' - this was probably the most dangerous statement he's ever made, he was verging on plunging the US into a garbage African Republic. At that moment it was clear that he had to go, he's a greater threat to the Republic than any foreign invader. He's willing to destroy democracy for his own power and vanity.

His world view is literally: "If I win it's because I'm great, if they win, it's because they cheated" irrespective of any reality.

Fox News, in the lat few days, has had to pull away from his statements quite a few times, it's shocking.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#174

Post by rswail »

bitwize wrote: post #35
Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

I don't think you can avoid the politics of the situation because when it comes to presidential candidates, when the R candidate wins, much will be made of how broken the system is, from vulnerabilities in voting machines to fatal flaws in the Constitution itself (viz., the Electoral College). When the D candidate wins, we are assured that election security is airtight, there's no evidence of significant irregulariti…

While you've been downvoted, just to answer your points, this was an announcement by CISA, which is the government department specifically entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring the system was secure from fraud.

The argument about the Electoral College is one about the process, not the mechanisms. By definition, the Electoral College is undemocratic in that for a choice of a national leader, people in smaller population states have a greater say than those in larger states.

You can argue that as the United States of America, that is a majority of the States that get to vote for the President, but not even the original writers of the Constitution thought that. The reason for the Electoral College was to put a break on the possibility of a populist being elected.

So the original purpose has proven to be unachieved, the argument that States should vote for the President instead of people is completely undemocratic.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#175

Post by emerged »

josephcsible wrote: post #50
sicromoft wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are banks auditable? (Yes.) Do they have paper backups of everything? (Not that I'm aware of.) What's the difference? Honest question.

If your bank account balance is wrong, you can tell for sure that it's wrong and then explain it to the bank and get it fixed. If your vote was counted wrong, you'd never know. For them to be equivalent, the secret ballot would have to be abolished.

It's utterly insane to me that you can't even verify your vote was counted and for which candidate. But a communities of hackers defends the security of voting.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#176

Post by rendall »

Someone1234 wrote: post #8

Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…

Can I read your thesis?

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#177

Post by rendall »

aw1621107 wrote: post #78
nmlnn wrote: post #5

TIL, electronic voting machines are CLOSED SOURCE (hardware and software) - that should be completely unacceptable in an open democracy. It makes me wonder how a statement like this can be proved. > There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised When it comes to something as important as elections the mantra should be: don't trust. verify.

> It makes me wonder how a statement like this can be proved. >> There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised I suppose it might depend on how you read that statement. One person might read it as "There is no evidence (that exists/that will exist) that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised", in which cas…

I was just about to make an obnoxious, downvotable joke to that effect!

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#178

Post by rendall »

There are lots of good ideas to make US elections more secure and trustworthy that are low-hanging fruit, easily implemented.

Here's my prediction: None of these excellent ideas will be implemented by either party, and so people will continue to be baffled by the US system. "How is it possible that the US has such chaos every election season?"

The potential for bumping up "our guy" in a close race is way too appealing to the party in power. When the reigns change hands, the new party could take the time to tighten election security, but to what benefit? They are now in control. Making things more fair to the other team would only hurt their chances.

Election fraud is deeply ingrained in the long democratic political history of the US, from the very beginning. Direct democracy was an untried, unknown concept when the country started. No one but a few ivory tower eggheads who read dense philosophy books really understood what it was all about: "You mean if our guy gets more pieces of paper into that box than the other guy, we can award ourselves all of the government contracts?" It didn't even necessarily start out as nefarious or unethical, just clueless.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#179

Post by ric2b »

emerged wrote: post #175
josephcsible wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your bank account balance is wrong, you can tell for sure that it's wrong and then explain it to the bank and get it fixed. If your vote was counted wrong, you'd never know. For them to be equivalent, the secret ballot would have to be abolished.

It's utterly insane to me that you can't even verify your vote was counted and for which candidate. But a communities of hackers defends the security of voting.

> and for which candidate

That's by design, it's an important feature to prevent people from being pressured into/persecuted for voting a certain way, or selling their vote.

If there's no way to verify your specific vote you can just lie about who you voted for.

Re: CISA: The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

#180

Post by ric2b »

pontifier wrote: post #172
josephcsible wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your bank account balance is wrong, you can tell for sure that it's wrong and then explain it to the bank and get it fixed. If your vote was counted wrong, you'd never know. For them to be equivalent, the secret ballot would have to be abolished.

Maybe each ballot could include a one time pad that you keep to verify the vote. You could verify your own vote but nobody else could. It could be very simple to use, like a qr code that links to a public api showing the encoded ballot data, and a second qr code that you scan to decrypt it.

Not being able to verify who you voted for is by design, it's an important feature to prevent people from being pressured into/persecuted for voting a certain way, or selling their vote.

If there's no way to verify your specific vote you can just lie about who you voted for.

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