Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by joncrocks » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

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?

There was a fairly well publicised incident in Tower Hamlets (part of London) where a local mayoral election was declared void for reasons including "Voting fraud: ballots were double-cast or cast from false addresses" [1]

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32428648

Was this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Fal...

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

#52

Post by samastur » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

Zombieball wrote: post #33

hacker_9 wrote: post #3

Why do Americans use voting machines exactly? I mean, it just prints out their choice at the end right? What benefit do they actually gain from having pressed buttons instead of using a pen? It just seems to fuel the hacking conspiracy every time a president is elected. In the UK we turn up, go into the booth with the paper slip, and tick our choice with a pen. Then we fold it and post it into a container which later…

A former co-worker of mine wrote software for voting machines in Brazil. He described to me a few reasons why electronic voting machines are important. To be honest I forget the majority, but one story that stuck with me: One common scheme electronic voting machines help prevent is forced votes. A bad guy gets their hand on a single empty ballot and writes the name of the candidate he wants to win on it. He then come…

Color me unsurprised that a person who wrote software for voting machines also finds them useful.

The problem I have with this particular scenario is that it imagines a reality in which someone can afford to collect votes one by one with impunity but can't force these same bunch of people (and one or two simply aren't enough to matter) at the voting station itself.

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

#53

Post by Angostura » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #45

[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.

I think the suggestion usually is that Putin would prefer a disrupted, uncertain, inward-looking U.S

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

#54

Post by dmfdmf » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

theoh wrote: post #26

javajosh wrote: post #2

It's interesting to view recent events in the US as a crisis of measurement. The news media measured the voting public with polling samples, we then measured the voting public with a vast government apparatus. Clearly, the measurements did not agree. Logically there are three possibilities: the media was right, the polls were right, or neither were right. It's actually quite a good thing that we start to speak openly…

The idea that an electoral poll incorporates a random error (and maybe a systematic one too) is alien to the discussion about recounts etc.

Yes, this was one of my questions. What is the accuracy and error margin of the voting system itself (and each state seems to have different methods so its not even uniform). Of roughly 126 million votes cast, 1% accuracy would be 1.26 million votes which would be of the same order of magnitude of Clinton's "win" of the popular vote. I have no idea if 1% accuracy is close or wildly too high or too low but we can't have a meaningful discussion without it.

Correction: Actual total was 126M votes for the presidential election not 160M votes as I stated. But the question remains.

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

#55

Post by extra88 » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

Zombieball wrote: post #33

hacker_9 wrote: post #3

Why do Americans use voting machines exactly? I mean, it just prints out their choice at the end right? What benefit do they actually gain from having pressed buttons instead of using a pen? It just seems to fuel the hacking conspiracy every time a president is elected. In the UK we turn up, go into the booth with the paper slip, and tick our choice with a pen. Then we fold it and post it into a container which later…

A former co-worker of mine wrote software for voting machines in Brazil. He described to me a few reasons why electronic voting machines are important. To be honest I forget the majority, but one story that stuck with me: One common scheme electronic voting machines help prevent is forced votes. A bad guy gets their hand on a single empty ballot and writes the name of the candidate he wants to win on it. He then come…

Voter coercion is something to be concerned about but the scenario you describe won't keep me up at night. The number one problem is it's hard to scale up to a level that would actually sway an election. It only takes one hero to call the police while they're at the polling station or after their family is released and the sequence is broken. There's no need for the victim to actually submit the pre-filled ballot, they can throw it out or do something to it to make it invalid then come back with the blank one. The ballots where I vote are on a heavier stock paper that are not trivial to conceal bringing in and taking out; most could do it but one victim slips up and the scheme could fail.

Where I vote, my paper ballot in no way identifies me. I identify myself upon entering the polling station, they find my name on the list of registered voters and mark it. When I'm turning in my completed ballot, I again identify myself and my name is marked on a separate list. So there's a record that I voted but not for whom I voted. How would an electronic voting machine improve upon this?

BTW, where I vote, the paper ballots are the bubble scan kind and the voter feeds it to the machine themselves. This provides very fast tabulations with a paper record for security and recounts.

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

#56

Post by codesuela » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

Zombieball wrote: post #33

hacker_9 wrote: post #3

Why do Americans use voting machines exactly? I mean, it just prints out their choice at the end right? What benefit do they actually gain from having pressed buttons instead of using a pen? It just seems to fuel the hacking conspiracy every time a president is elected. In the UK we turn up, go into the booth with the paper slip, and tick our choice with a pen. Then we fold it and post it into a container which later…

A former co-worker of mine wrote software for voting machines in Brazil. He described to me a few reasons why electronic voting machines are important. To be honest I forget the majority, but one story that stuck with me: One common scheme electronic voting machines help prevent is forced votes. A bad guy gets their hand on a single empty ballot and writes the name of the candidate he wants to win on it. He then come…

he could just force him to make a video of him voting the way he wants with his smart phone (for both, paper ballot and electronic voting machine).

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

#57

Post by nemo » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #45

[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.

There are many, many reasons. Trump promised to be extra soft on Russia re:NATO, re:Ukraine, etc. His single contribution to the GOP platform was to soften the GOP's position on Ukraine. Some of his staff were also Russian clients. He's also expressed open admiration of Putin and Putin's style of governance, and emphasized that he wants the US to get along with Russia. His son secretly met with Russian reps before the election to discuss US policy in Syria and elsewhere. A Trump win would give Russia tremendously greater influence over Europe. Given Putin's open assistance to Trump in the election Trump would owe Putin favors, and it's likely one of the favors Russia would pursue wold be lightening the massive sanctions Clinton imposed on Trump. Trump's also incredibly easily manipulated which certainly serves Russia's interests.

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

#58

Post by donw » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

knlje wrote: post #42

twright0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you come into work on Monday thinking that everything will be peachy-keen, and get an all-hands email telling you that any employee that can not prove that they voted for the "correct" candidate will forced to resign.

Any system that can be abused, will be.

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

#59

Post by rpearl » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #35

This is missing the point though. The american voting system is actually very secure. It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect. 75% of them have paper trails which would require an even bigger achievement to change enough off as it'…

The election was decided in its totality by 107k votes in WI, MI, and PA (the sum total margin of victory in those three states).

You don't have to manipulate many votes to have an election-deciding effect.

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

#60

Post by extra88 » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

codesuela wrote: post #56

Zombieball wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A former co-worker of mine wrote software for voting machines in Brazil. He described to me a few reasons why electronic voting machines are important. To be honest I forget the majority, but one story that stuck with me: One common scheme electronic voting machines help prevent is forced votes. A bad guy gets their hand on a single empty ballot and writes the name of the candidate he wants to win on it. He then come…

he could just force him to make a video of him voting the way he wants with his smart phone (for both, paper ballot and electronic voting machine).

Which is a reason why in some locations it's illegal to photograph or video record voting. Where I vote, you do it in a curtained area so it would be easy to get away with but with setups like where Trump and family voted in New York, you're mostly out in the open with a short partition.