Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
How to Hack an Election
71–80 of 96 posts
Re: How to Hack an Election
#72oh please. He didn't hack an election. They tried to influence public sentiment using social media. They hacked some phones and emails. But they didn't rigged the election.
Just so you know. The Mexican electoral system looks like it was built by paranoiac maniac. It has many locks. Everything is done manually, votes are counted by multiple citizens, they use transparent poll boxes, special election photo ids are issued for every citizen, even the voting lists have photos, people get their thumb marked with ink, the parties are allowed to have representatives at every place, results at every place are signed, they are published at the voting place and also electronically, etc, etc. One million people participate on the election.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#73> with a shaved head, goatee, and a tattoo of a QR code containing an encryption key on the back of his head. On his nape are the words “ ” and “ ” stacked atop each other, dark riffs on coding. Jesus, this guy sounds like he walked straight out of a bad cyberpunk story. On the serious side, this gets to me: > Sepúlveda says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met onl…
It is just plausible dependability for the candidate. This is traditionally how organized crime works.
I believe it is called "plausible deniability". ;)
Re: How to Hack an Election
#74This shouldn't be a surprise: I think most HN members know that it's possible; we know that the rewards (incredible power, status, and everything you can get with them includig the spoils of office) are worth the investment (only $600K for this solution!); we know that there are many people, including politicians, unsavory enough to do it. The question is, why do we pretend it's not happening until there's a smoking…
A few reasons I can think of: 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge numbe…
> The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results.
Not always. In the 2004 election, Kerry won in exit polls but lost in the official count. The discrepancy was especially large in Ohio--which, had it gone as predicted by exit polls, would have resulted in President Kerry.
A few days ago there were big gaps between official and exit poll results in Arizona, favoring Clinton over Sanders.
I wouldn't normally link to Democratic Underground, but this post has a great summary of exit poll discrepancies, voter suppression, and the evidence for election fraud both in the 2004 presidential election and in the current Democratic primary.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511568043
This is a very urgent problem that I think the tech community can help fix. We need open source, auditable voting machines and professionally run elections. Election fraud, or even just the appearance of fraud, is toxic to democracy.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diebold-like machines are not used very much anymore, I think because of all the controversy over how easily they can be hacked. Most of the country uses paper ballots that are counted by machine. Yes, polls can be wrong, but I think exit polls are rarely wrong. Another comment pointed out these can be wrong too though, so this might not be a useful point. Yes, as I mentioned in another comment, if you want to hack a…
> Most of the country uses paper ballots that are counted by machine. This machine then is the target, no?
Of course, but then it's much harder to secretly hack a machine when there are paper records to back it up. You need to tamper with the paper records, or be careful to only hack the machine in such a way that the paper records would not obviously prove fraud.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few reasons I can think of: 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge numbe…
Brazil use machines that can be very easily hacked. Also, the deviation in the last elections from the mathematically expected was about 4%... But the end results was 51% vs 49% meaning that if the result went as expected, the 49% candidate would have won (with 53%). So, in some situations is not that hard to cheat. EDIT: also even when there is blatant cheating going on, nothing much can be done about it... Example,…
Yes, I do not mean to say that hacking an election is impossible, or that it's never happened. My only point, which is quite narrow, is that it would be difficult to hack a US presidential election by means of literally hacking voting machines. I do not know the Brazilian election system, but I believe it would be quite difficult to steal a US election in this way.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#77Reminds me of a meeting I sat some years back with someone whose role was to run 'dirty tricks' campaigns for Microsoft in the early Apple vs. Microsoft days. He talked about stuff like ways they used to undermine Apple dev conferences so no-one would be interested to go the following year and generally white-anting their community, especially education environment. It was a bit of an eye opener.
I also suspect this guy is underselling his service. The article calls $20k/mth expensive. If your going to significantly affect an election I suspect there could be another zero or more there. And I wonder if he's ever worked for 2 sides simultaneously? Given the ethics involved this wouldn't be a stretch.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few reasons I can think of: 1) Hacking voting machines to a significant extent would require a team of people, not just one guy, which dramatically increases the risk of exposure. 2) The reported vote count is usually very close to the predicted vote count, and always very close to exit polling results. The hacked results would need to be very close to the real results, or be combined with control over a huge numbe…
You'd be surprised. Tight presidential elections can come down to a handful of districts. What you'd think would require a nationwide conspiracy can really be brought down to a group of 7 or 8 people. It boils down to the fact that most states are red or blue. They are going one way or the other and nothing is going to change that. In the contested states, there are tight votes and there are ones that are "in the bag…
I agree that elections can come down to a handful of districts, but I don't agree that anyone can know what those districts are in advance. Polling just isn't that good. You can fairly precisely target areas, but not exactly. You would either need to do fairly widespread hacking, or hack a few districts and hope for the best, which I think is an absurd proposition. Nobody would hack a couple districts "just in case", that's a massive risk with probably no gain. You either ensure victory, or do nothing.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diebold-like machines are not used very much anymore, I think because of all the controversy over how easily they can be hacked. Most of the country uses paper ballots that are counted by machine. Yes, polls can be wrong, but I think exit polls are rarely wrong. Another comment pointed out these can be wrong too though, so this might not be a useful point. Yes, as I mentioned in another comment, if you want to hack a…
> Most of the country uses paper ballots that are counted by machine. I'm not aware of this. Are you sure? Do you have any point of reference?
No, I'm not completely sure. Here's a potential reference: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state
I will try to do more research tomorrow, because this is quite interesting to me. I voted with a paper ballot that I fed into a machine, and at the time I assumed this was the standard. Now I'm not sure.
Re: How to Hack an Election
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of my points have anything to do with cost, I'm (realistically) assuming a campaign with huge amounts of cash. The problem, as with most conspiracy theories, is the number of people that need to cooperate and stay silent, and the number of independent safeguards that already exist. Spending more money actually hurts you, because it makes it harder to hide where that money is going, especially with all of the cam…
> The problem, as with most conspiracy theories, is the number of people that need to cooperate and stay silent, and the number of independent safeguards that already exist. It didn't seem like a problem for Diebold. The 2000 general election had a lot of awfully-convenient-for-Republicans scandals with their voting machines in place.
Yes, I agree that there were many issues with the 2000 presidential election. That's part of my point. Diebold sold their voting machine division for a huge loss, at least partially because of the controversies of 2000 and the many studies showing how easily their machines could be hacked. Most of the country today uses paper ballots that are counted by machine. Still exploitable, but it would be much more difficult.