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Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

arstechnica.com

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Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#291

Post by gotoeleven »

dragonwriter wrote: post #267
pessimizer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate. There are currently many heads of household voting for their entire families, and even aside from mail-in ballots, there are pe…

> Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don’t participate. Firing people for not cooperating with something that is a crime under both federal and state law is a strategy that…doesn’t…

And what a diversity of election results those states have had since then!

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#292

Post by inlined »

Groxx wrote: post #200
harimau777 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the Blockchain, by design, record what is entered into it? So couldn't someone then figure out how you voted?

(without making any claim about "block chains for voting are good/bad") Not really. Generally if you want to privately check something like this, you encrypt it for the recipient (government), and sign it with something that only you know. So the contents are hidden from everyone and nobody knows anyone's signature, but you can prove that your item is in the list, unmodified, and is therefore counted. And then the ch…

Traditionally, you would sign with the government’s public key so that only they can decrypt it. But ballots are so low entropy that I’d be worried about brute forcing it (maybe some significant nonces can be added?) a solution where you use the block chain signed with certificates held in a central database is just… another case of people pushing blockchain without understanding it

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#293

Post by Retric »

pstrateman wrote: post #270
dghlsakjg wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side; it makes it incredibly difficult to pull off wide scale fraud. Instead of having to compromise a single system, you are forced to compromise dozens or hundreds of systems run by people with opposing ideologies

Wide scale fraud isn't necessary when elections are decided by 10k votes.

The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest.

As such getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases like gerrymandering or voter suppression. The vote may be rigged before people started casting ballots, but that doesn’t make voting useless. It’s the strongest signals that are most important and that’s still preserved.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#294

Post by floating-io »

breatheoften wrote: post #249
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hear some people say "but we use paper ballots". Then why do you have a BIOS password? If it's all paper where does the computer fit in? All of this is honest curiosity, I'm not sure how the voting system works. Not sure about Colorado specifically, but in many jurisdictions voters mark paper ballots, which go into a machine to be tabulated, and are finally deposited into a box for safe keeping/future recounts.

I voted early in person in Colorado a few days ago. Use a machine to entry my votes. Votes were printed onto a piece of paper. I checked to make sure the marks on the paper matched what I entered into the machine and then dropped it into the ballot box (not a machine just a box that collected the ballots). It was pretty sane and didn't seem like there was a lot to worry over related to the electronic entry system. As…

In my locale there is a header on the physical ballot that contains a bunch of barcodes, presumably to make your votes machine readable. It then prints the votes in text below.

I absolutely hate that fact. I am a human, I cannot read barcodes without a computer. Therefore, I cannot tell if the important part of what was recorded is correct.

Not sure if Colorado's are the same...

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#295

Post by gotoeleven »

ForHackernews wrote: post #93
Molitor5901 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think random, serialized paper ballots are the way to go. When the polls close you know the serial numbers of every vote cast, so no new serial numbers should be added to that unless a very good reason. Keep them or destroy them afterwards is another issue, but it's a step in the right direction. I have some distrust in the American voting system, first with the computerized systems, but also that federal elections…

https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/08/vg-2024-how-your-vote-gets-co... Colorado ballot envelopes already have a bar code - essentially your "serial number". I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because everyone who thinks there's widespread election fraud seems to not know anything about how elections work.

Oh hey looks like I found one of the ballots sent to everyone in the state and filled it out and sent it back in.

It's literally that easy in Colorado.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#296

Post by biimugan »

Ultimately, people who complain about what methodologies, technologies, and procedures x, y, or z states, counties, or precincts are using need to contend with the fact that the only surefire way to reliably solve these issues is with federal standards, funding, and now, seemingly, physical security for poll workers and officials. But this level of centralization and funding is almost assuredly never going to materialize in the U.S. And the people who wield election security as a political cudgel know it's not going to materialize. How awfully convenient for them.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#297

Post by EGreg »

roenxi wrote: post #197
EGreg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You are saying that you just trust some people not to manipulate the votes? Why not use a Merkle Tree or a Blockchain to verify that your vote was included in the total ? They were invented to remove trust in middlemen. Mutually distrusting parties can maintain the vote tallying. That’s how elections should be done.

That seems like it'd be impossible to implement. Either I'd have a record that I voted with no way to confirm who my vote was counted for, or I'd be able to prove that I voted for a specific candidate which opens a Pandora's box of problems (either coercion for voting for the wrong candidate or bribes for provably voting for a specific candidate). I mean sure, if someone can come up with a workable blockchain-based s…

First of all zero-knowledge proofs allow you to verify stuff without being able to prove it to others

But honestly, I think the whole idea of being able to prove how you voted being dangerous is overblown. The same people who say you don’t need an ID to vote because it’s a non-issue then come up with fantasy scenarios of masses of people being forced to prove how they voted, or bribed to do it LOL.

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#298

Post by fulladder »

inlined wrote: post #292
Groxx wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(without making any claim about "block chains for voting are good/bad") Not really. Generally if you want to privately check something like this, you encrypt it for the recipient (government), and sign it with something that only you know. So the contents are hidden from everyone and nobody knows anyone's signature, but you can prove that your item is in the list, unmodified, and is therefore counted. And then the ch…

Traditionally, you would sign with the government’s public key so that only they can decrypt it. But ballots are so low entropy that I’d be worried about brute forcing it (maybe some significant nonces can be added?) a solution where you use the block chain signed with certificates held in a central database is just… another case of people pushing blockchain without understanding it

Nah, not a problem. You generate a random number R and encrypt R || V where V is your vote.

(Or, equivalently, use something like CBC mode with a random i.v.)

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#299

Post by testfoobar »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #120

I think all US folks reading this should volunteer at their county's Registrar of Voters (or equivalent agency for their county). Spend one election working at a polling place, and another election working at the RoV HQ. See what it's like to go through the training, and what things are like on Election Day, and in the days leading up (for places that allow early voting, drop-off, etc.).

What are examples of things one might learn doing this?

Re: Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak

#300

Post by w4 »

Retric wrote: post #293
pstrateman wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wide scale fraud isn't necessary when elections are decided by 10k votes.

The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. As such getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases like gerrymandering or voter suppression. The vote may be rigged before people started casting ballots, but that doesn’t make voting useless. It’s the strongest signals that are most important and that…

> The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest.

This is also a good argument in favor of decentralized voting management, as much of a shitshow as it may be. Centralizing the management of voting under the authority of the people voting intends to kick out of power is potentially self-defeating.

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