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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

#61

Post by michaelfdeberry »

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…

|A bad guy gets their hand on a single empty ballot and writes the...

I am sure there are many reasons to prefer electronic voting, but that just seem logistically impossible when you are talking about millions of people. No way that wouldn't go unreported or undetected.

Whereas, with voting machines, if compromised has much more reach and would be difficult to detect.

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

#62

Post by mjcl »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #10
sopooneo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why not scan-tron? It seems like that is the best of both worlds. Start with a simple physical paper that everyone can understand and audit as the primary record, but then have each voter feed their own directly into a scan machine that can tally and send counts in quickly? That's how we do it around me, and it seems like a strictly superior approach. What am I missing?

The scantron machines are expensive and it's not really feasible to have at every polling location. Lots of polling locations are at churches a d such anyways. Additionally, scantrons can be fairly slow depending on the machine.

They do in some counties. I'm a pollworker in Alameda County and every precinct uses an optical scanner (made by Sequoia). At the end of the night the memory pack is removed and taken back to a return center to be counted. The paper ballots are boxed and sealed in case there are any problems with the electronic tally.

Speed-wise, it only takes the machine about 1 second per ballot card.

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

#63

Post by krapp »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement? I can't believe we still rely on trust for this kind of thing.

> Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement?

How do you verify that your vote is actually "taken into account?"

You may be shown that your vote matches what you intended, but then it can be manipulated or discarded somewhere else in the process, beyond your ability to verify. It's like reading open source code without validating the operating system or physical machine it runs in - the entire environment contains the potential for hostility, and it's too complex for one person to comprehend in its entirety.

Also, any such system, assuming it works as intended, may also give interested third parties a way to spy on someone's voting habits. Historically, knowledge of a person's vote has been used by governments and employers to coerce votes and to retaliate against political opponents or supporters of unpopular causes.

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

#64

Post by tehwalrus »

an_account wrote: post #5
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…

Every state in America (and even different counties within states) vote differently. I voted on paper and it was put in a box to be counted in a central location. This takes forever and they just now are finishing up counting. Electronic voting is a lot quicker and cheaper to count. I'd argue that the best system is one in which you vote on paper but it's counted electronically at the polling booth. That way there's…

In the UK we use paper ballots and manage the count overnight after the election (some seats come back the day after, but the overall parliamentary majority is usually clear by then.)

Our population is only 1/6th yours, IIRC, and you subdivide more heavily into states already.

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

#65

Post by EvilTerran »

sopooneo wrote: post #8
an_account wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every state in America (and even different counties within states) vote differently. I voted on paper and it was put in a box to be counted in a central location. This takes forever and they just now are finishing up counting. Electronic voting is a lot quicker and cheaper to count. I'd argue that the best system is one in which you vote on paper but it's counted electronically at the polling booth. That way there's…

But why not scan-tron? It seems like that is the best of both worlds. Start with a simple physical paper that everyone can understand and audit as the primary record, but then have each voter feed their own directly into a scan machine that can tally and send counts in quickly? That's how we do it around me, and it seems like a strictly superior approach. What am I missing?

Scantrons are a big improvement over electronic-only counting, but they can struggle with imperfectly-filled-in ballots... another good alternative, which avoids that particular problem, is to have a machine where you make your selections by button-press - but it prints them onto a physical card, lets you verify the printout through a window, then drops it into a built-in ballotbox.

The machine itself can keep count, or the cards could be designed for scantron-esque machine counting - regardless, in case of a disputed result, the cards can be counted the traditional way (by hand, with observers from each party present, etc).

Not my idea, BTW, but I don't recall where I read it - nor whether it was a description of something actually in use or merely a proposal.

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

#66

Post by rpearl »

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,…

Potentially, a canary id, "show this one and it'll claim you voted for ____ and also alert the state election board that it was accessed"

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

#67

Post by HarryHirsch »

joncrocks wrote: post #51
mavhc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The one I was thinking about was probably this one from Bradford: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/06/men-jailed-...

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

#68

Post by tehwalrus »

DanBC wrote: post #4
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…

The UK system wouldn't stop conspiracy theorists because it's not strictly anonymous. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,0...

Thanks for posting this, really interesting/terrifying and I hadn't seen it before.

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

#69

Post by pdkl95 »

habeanf wrote: post #48
pdkl95 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Nothing is secure from all known threats.

Of course. That's why it's important to reduce the attack surface. Adding electronics (or worse, software) adds a huge amount of attack surface. The attack could be at any point from the CPU-internals to the software.

> the voting protocol doesn't provide a means of verification

Yes. That's a feature. Any new system cannot re-enable voter coercion.

> Homomorphic encryption

I already mentioned[1] that video yesterday. It's an interesting idea, but even Prof. Rivest in the video isn't claiming it's ready for use.

More importantly, the reply by marten-de-vries[2] brings up a very good counter argument to any voting system based on fancy math: the general population won't accept it. The voting process doesn't work unless the population considers it legitimate, and it will be hard to convince them if they first have to learn enough math to understand homomorphic (or public-key) encryption.

This is still interesting research that may evolve into a new type of voting protocol in the future.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020917

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13021517

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

#70

Post by throwaway420 »

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 don't think most people understand how bad relations between the US and Russia have gotten in the last year and how badly they would have spiraled out of control if Hillary won.

Hillary's favored no fly zone policy in Syria would have unavoidably led to armed conflict between the US and Russia/Syria.

It remains to be seen what will actually happen, but Trump's rhetoric is mostly about working with Russia to take down ISIS. Putin might be a thug, but he's not insane and doesn't want to go to war with the US. He can work with somebody like Trump who wants to talk and take down a common enemy.

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