Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability • Hacker News Board

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#61

Post by nashashmi » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:46 AM UTC

peterarmstrong wrote: post #37

Dear America, This all sounds complicated and insecure. Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada? Yes, you have 10x the people, but just get 10x the human counters and scrutineers. Counting is parallelizable. We run elections and get accurate, verifiable results in the same day. Ours aren't as nasty as yours are, and we still have better anti-fraud than you do, since every paper ballot…

In Florida in 2000, we had these old voting machines where the voter would go into the booth, hit a bunch of buttons, and submit the vote. The voting card in the back would fall. There were often errors on them via ineffective button pushes, incorrect push, last minute mind change, and it would result in dubious votes. Some votes were discarded. There is no doubt that sometimes the vote went to the wrong candidate.

During the very close presidential election of 2000, these voting machine issues clearly showed the need for electronic voting machine booths with the added feature of instant vote count.

The current problems that are appearing are temporary and fleeting. With enough time and research these problems will become obsolete and resolved.

But your point of paper ballots requiring greater participation of people is interesting. Indeed, when more people participate even in mundane and simple tasks, there is a healthy feeling that spreads among the community.

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#62

Post by cperciva » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:47 AM UTC

peterarmstrong wrote: post #37

Dear America, This all sounds complicated and insecure. Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada? Yes, you have 10x the people, but just get 10x the human counters and scrutineers. Counting is parallelizable. We run elections and get accurate, verifiable results in the same day. Ours aren't as nasty as yours are, and we still have better anti-fraud than you do, since every paper ballot…

Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada?

As much as I like Canada's easily audited voting system, there's a good reason for the US to not use a simple way of counting votes: They don't have simple ballots. Rather than just voting for one MP, as we do, a typical American might be asked to vote for a President, a Senator, a Representative, yes/no on 17 state propositions, a State Senator, a State Representative, the BART Director, the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, the San Francisco Public Schools Board of Education, a Superior Court Judge, and yes/no on 25 city measures.

In order for those to be counted the same way as we do in Canada, you'd need to hand the voter a book of 51 ballots and have them dropped into 51 separate boxes...

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#63

Post by mpweiher » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:50 AM UTC

rblatz wrote: post #57

mpweiher wrote: post #33

I really don't see what problem these machines are solving, except for "as an operative, I would like additional vectors to manipulate the election". In Germany, we get (a) a paper ballot (b) a pen Works perfectly. And quickly.

How are the paper votes tabulated? If it's by machine you've just kicked the can further down the road.

By hand.

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#64

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:55 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #25

wybiral wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are digital records more than just a tally. Sure, maybe it's possible (with physical access) to destroyed or altered them, but the same holds for paper.

It's much harder to undetectably destroy or alter large numbers of paper records than it is to do the same to digital records. It's also sometimes possible to do this to digital records without ever being physically present in their vicinity. Once again, this is much harder with paper.

It's very easy to forge paper records, though. I seem to recall reading about a rigged election in a questionable democracy where the ballot counters were given several file boxes full of fake ballots in addition to their local precinct ballots, with official anti-tampering seals intact.

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#65

Post by sfifs » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:57 AM UTC

I wonder why countries don't use India's simple and scalable electronic voting systems. The latest ones have voter verified paper audit trails. They even have pooling systems to prevent counts from any single voting booth become known to prevent voter intimidation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_India

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#66

Post by gcb0 » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

gergles wrote: post #12

Shank wrote: post #2

I worked as an election judge in the 2012 general election in Arapahoe County, Colorado. We had these exact machines. What isn't pictured is the physical security performed with them. Typically, tamper seals that are identifiable as broken are placed on all access doors (including the power switch, data load slots, etc), access panels, and openings on the device. All seals were verified in tact before and after the e…

> It's preposterous to think that election judges aren't actively verifying seals during election day and making sure nobody is tampering with them. I've been an election worker around the country and have never been in a jurisdiction that did seal checks during the election - only once at the beginning and once at the end. Granted, I've never been in a jurisdiction using DREs, but still. I agree physical security is…

also trivial for attackers to have replacement plastic seals is their pockets

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#67

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 7:04 AM UTC

peterarmstrong wrote: post #37

Dear America, This all sounds complicated and insecure. Why can you not just do paper voting with simple ballots, like in Canada? Yes, you have 10x the people, but just get 10x the human counters and scrutineers. Counting is parallelizable. We run elections and get accurate, verifiable results in the same day. Ours aren't as nasty as yours are, and we still have better anti-fraud than you do, since every paper ballot…

[deleted]

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#68

Post by pdkl95 » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 7:11 AM UTC

wfunction wrote: post #42

Shank wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Arapahoe County, everything we did was in pairs of republicans and democrats, to ensure that it was a fair election as far as we could. This included seal checking, logging the zero counts, etc. Everything had a paper audit trail for who interacted with what, who signed off on what, and what was going on. I don't know how it worked when the machines were picked up for counting, but I assume similar measur…

> everything we did was in pairs of republicans and democrats Question: What constitutes a Democrat or a Republican? Is registering as one enough? What guarantee is there people aren't lying about the parties they identify with?

> What guarantee is there people aren't lying about the parties they identify with?

You, when you volunteer to work at the polls or as a party observer, thereby increasing the redundancy of the checks.

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#69

Post by jackweirdy » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #63

rblatz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the paper votes tabulated? If it's by machine you've just kicked the can further down the road.

By hand.

Same in the UK. Anyone who can vote can also take part in "The Count", where groups of volunteers count the votes in regional centres.

Re: Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability

#70

Post by mixologic » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 7:32 AM UTC

Shank wrote: post #2

I worked as an election judge in the 2012 general election in Arapahoe County, Colorado. We had these exact machines. What isn't pictured is the physical security performed with them. Typically, tamper seals that are identifiable as broken are placed on all access doors (including the power switch, data load slots, etc), access panels, and openings on the device. All seals were verified in tact before and after the e…

What happens if they find tampering of the seals? Does all the votes of that particular machine become questionable?

If someone were to tamper with the seals on many of the machines, and they target precincts that tilt heavily in favor of one party or the other, couldn't they theoretically invalidate a lot of ballots that are likely to help their opponents?