The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets • Hacker News Board

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#21

Post by dan-robertson » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:11 PM UTC

MontagFTB wrote: post #9

So the bug where the first voting sheet shown to a user was from the same 10% of the photos turned out to be a feature, serving as a CAPTCHA of sorts to weed out the bad actors from the good. If memory serves, some CAPTCHA techniques include showing two numbers to transcribe, where one’s value is already known. If that number is transcribed incorrectly, then the other number’s result isn’t used, and the CAPTCHA fails…

I think the bug was that your first sheet came from a small set and the people entering bad data would refresh instead of doing the actually random next sheet, so entries for most of the sheets came only from people who had long sessions who were apparently more likely to enter good data.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#22

Post by public_defender » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:11 PM UTC

jgtrosh wrote: post #18

The context should be dated to 2020, not 2023 Edit: it was now corrected, no need to downvote Great story! Looking forward to some follow up

I don't understand. The article says the SARS protests started in 2020 and the election was in 2023. This seems correct.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#23

Post by dec0dedab0de » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:14 PM UTC

This would have been a good use for hn style shadow banning. Especially if they didn't publish the current tally, then the original easy to detect bots may have never realized you were on to them

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#24

Post by thread_id » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:17 PM UTC

Fantastic story. What an excellent example of democratization from technology. And also a perfect example of how the blade cuts both ways. Digital warriors battling it out in real time and the stakes are enormous. Great respect for Mark and his ingenuity and adaptive responses!!!!

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#25

Post by mmmuhd » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

Elupee 75, To be frank, you did a great job and i am proud of someone from my country pulling this off, but the bitter truth is President Elect Bola Ahmed Tinibu won this election. Peter Obi's youth support is predominantly in the south, and Christian majority parts of the country, he clearly lack support in the Muslim north, where I am from. I voted for Kwankwaso though.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#26

Post by nivenkos » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

This is a great example of why electronic voting is important and can help secure democracy.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#27

Post by SergeAx » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

Pdf is a very unfortunate format. It is proprietary, it is paper-oriented, its almost single goal is to keep precise printing layout. But for the last 30 years world didn't come up with anything that could compete.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#28

Post by londons_explore » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

Isn't things like this the reason that the UN provide election observers?

By spot checking just a random 100 votes are correctly tallied, you can be pretty sure the outcome of the election is legit in a > 10M voter country.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#29

Post by churchill » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:24 PM UTC

Oh, and Mark didn't mention that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was indicted for heroin charges in the US in 2003, forfeited $460k & is just too old to run a democracy this size.

Atiku Abubakar (second candidate) was a former VP and the president he served under (Obasanjo) still insists the dude remains a monument to corruption.

There's been a coordinated campaign at all levels to rig this election massively and we saw voter intimidation, manipulation in broad daylight, and the acquiescence of foreign governments to it all.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#30

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 23, 2023, 12:26 PM UTC

mmmuhd wrote: post #25

Elupee 75, To be frank, you did a great job and i am proud of someone from my country pulling this off, but the bitter truth is President Elect Bola Ahmed Tinibu won this election. Peter Obi's youth support is predominantly in the south, and Christian majority parts of the country, he clearly lack support in the Muslim north, where I am from. I voted for Kwankwaso though.

[deleted]