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Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

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Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#41

Post by saint_fiasco »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #32
erichocean wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In California we were able to vote at home with a mail-in, paper ballot and I much prefer that. I guess you trust the mail service and the people on the receiving end to properly record your vote. I prefer the day of (also in CA), where you get to put it into the counting machine yourself—at least then I know it was counted at my polling place.

"At least then I know that I put it in a machine physically, which gave me psychological comfort, but no actual verification that my vote was counted." ^-- Fixed that for you. But seriously, at some point, unless everyone sticks around to watch everyone else's votes being counted, there has to be some level of trust with the system. The only thing we can do better is to make vote counting machines' code open sourced…

In my country some people stick around in the voting place to watch how the votes are counted. As long as somebody from your preferred political party stays, you don't have to stick around.

The paper system is very open source already. So open that even non-developers can understand it.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#42

Post by knlje »

twright0 wrote: post #19
ajf3 wrote: post #9

Why hasn't some state used a hash to allow trustworthy online voting? They could add a unique id on the back of your driver's license and then allow you to use your unique id to generate anonymous/one time use id's. They could then have a publicly accessible server that at all time displays a column with anonymous id, vote and every person can verify that their personal vote is correctly displayed.

In general, any process that allows an individual to verify their vote after the fact will enable coercion over voting. For example, in your proposal, an unscrupulous boss could make a demand before the election: "You must tell me the one-time ID you're voting with. If you choose not to, or if that ID doesn't show up in the registry having cast a vote for , you're fired." I think that, no matter what the process is,…

what if an ID was generated and printed just before voting with an option to print an arbitrary number of additional ID's of already voted people. the boss never knows what ID(s) he'd receive.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#43

Post by mavhc »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #24
Procrastes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Hacker_9. In Texas, where I vote, the machines don't even print paper. We just have to trust that the machine correctly recorded our vote. The reasons for the machines are, 1. cost cutting over manual counts, 2. profiteering by well connected companies, 3. And potentially making sure only the "right" votes count, although that part isn't proven. In California we were able to vote at home with a mail-in, paper ball…

Mail-in ballots are the devil, they allow vote-buying. It happens with regularity that elections are annulled in ethnic enclaves in the UK over that. Elections don't have to be convenient, first of all they have to be safe.

Which elections were annulled?

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#44

Post by nindalf »

strathmeyer wrote: post #34
HarryHirsch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are the devil, they allow vote-buying. It happens with regularity that elections are annulled in ethnic enclaves in the UK over that. Elections don't have to be convenient, first of all they have to be safe.

In America we prefer the Clinton "walking around money" type of vote buying?

> In America we prefer the Clinton "walking around money" type of vote buying?

Is it just me or does this sentence not make sense?

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#45

Post by gedy »

[deleted] wrote: post #23

[deleted]

Why exactly would Putin prefer Trump? Honest question as both Hillary (as SoS) and Bill Clinton have been rather soft on Russia - Trump favoring domestic oil production, etc seems would be less preferred. Look how aggressive Russia has become in the past 8 years.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#47

Post by pdkl95 »

lacampbell wrote: post #27
emiliobumachar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scheme seems vulnerable to vote buying, e.g., $20 to vote for my candidate, but you have to show me your number so I can check.

But vote buying is already rampant. Politicians already buy votes - promising benefits to key voting demographics, promising more or higher paying jobs for civil servants or the military, or promising lobby groups favourable laws/taxes/aid. Democracies are practically based around vote buying already. So your concern seems strange.

Making promises that might be implemented isn't "buying" a vote. As you said, that is an intended part of democracy. Promises are not guarantees. Instead, vote buying is giving an explicit quid pro quo such as paying $10 for every "correct" vote receipt.

Yes, this doesn't fix every problem, but it does fix some problems that used to be common.

> So your concern seems strange.

Then I strongly suggest reading more about the history of voting methods and technology. (the talk in my other post has a nice overview)

We no longer have problems like offering whisky for votes or employers that threaten to fire anybody that doesn't vote a certain way (although occasionally they still try).

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#48

Post by habeanf »

pdkl95 wrote: post #38
ajf3 wrote: post #9

Why hasn't some state used a hash to allow trustworthy online voting? They could add a unique id on the back of your driver's license and then allow you to use your unique id to generate anonymous/one time use id's. They could then have a publicly accessible server that at all time displays a column with anonymous id, vote and every person can verify that their personal vote is correctly displayed.

> trustworthy online voting That doesn't exist. See this[1] talk by Andrew Appel (CS Prof. at Princeton) for a very nice overview of the technology in the traditional pre-printed secret ballot and an why electronic/internet voting cannot be secured from all of the known threats. TL;DR - Adding anything that can be used as an identifier enables vote buying or coercion. Adding computers introduces "Trusting Trust"-styl…

That's not a valid argument. Nothing is secure from all known threats.

The question is how (in)secure is the system. In this case, the voting protocol doesn't provide a means of verification.

Secure voting protocols have been around for quite a few years. jjuhl left this comment above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032602

Dan Boneh's Crypto 2 coursera course (https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto2#) covers the concept.

There are voting protocols that use the same foundations as public-key crypto to allow for vote verifiability - you can validate that your vote has been taken into account in the tally without sacrificing the privacy of your vote. There are solutions for voter fraud too.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#49

Post by woah »

lacampbell wrote: post #27
emiliobumachar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scheme seems vulnerable to vote buying, e.g., $20 to vote for my candidate, but you have to show me your number so I can check.

But vote buying is already rampant. Politicians already buy votes - promising benefits to key voting demographics, promising more or higher paying jobs for civil servants or the military, or promising lobby groups favourable laws/taxes/aid. Democracies are practically based around vote buying already. So your concern seems strange.

What a strange straw man argument you make. You feel that any time the government does something that benefits someone it is "vote buying". We're discussing the physical mechanism of voting here and you've redefined basic terms to make some kind of off-topic political point.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#50

Post by [deleted] »

mavhc wrote: post #43
HarryHirsch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail-in ballots are the devil, they allow vote-buying. It happens with regularity that elections are annulled in ethnic enclaves in the UK over that. Elections don't have to be convenient, first of all they have to be safe.

Which elections were annulled?

[deleted]
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