Russian Hacker Conspiracy Theory is Weak, But the Case For Paper Ballots is Strong (facebook.com)

On Wednesday, J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan's Center for Computer Security & Society and a respected voice in computer science and information society, said that the Clinton Campaign should ask for a recount of the vote for the U.S. Presidential election. Later he wrote, "Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don't believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other." The Outline, a new publication by a dozen of respected journalists, has published a post (on Facebook for now, since their website is still in the works), in which former Motherboard's reporter Adrianne Jeffries makes it clear that we still don't have concrete evidence that the vote was tampered with, but why still the case for paper ballots is strong. From the article: Halderman also repeats the erroneous claim that federal agencies have publicly said that senior officials in Russia commissioned attacks on voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. In October, federal agencies attributed the Democratic National Committee email hack to Russia, but specifically said they could not attribute the state hacks. Claims to the contrary seem to have spread due to anonymous sourcing and the conflation of Russian hackers with Russian state-sponsored hackers. Unfortunately, the Russia-hacked-us meme is spreading fast on social media and among disaffected Clinton voters. "It's just ignorance," said the cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr, who published his own response to Halderman on Medium. "It's fear and ignorance that's fueling that." The urgency comes from deadlines for recount petitions, which start kicking in on Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania, and the following Wednesday in Michigan. There is disagreement about how likely it is that the Russian government interfered with election results. There is little disagreement, however, that our voting system could be more robust -- namely, by requiring paper ballot backups for electronic voting and mandating that all results be audited, as they already are in some states including California. Despite the 150,000 signatures collected on a Change.org petition, what happens next really comes down to the Clinton team's decision.

Comments

In the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

We have paper ballots in the UK still. It's made somewhat more interesting by the counts racing each other to see who can finish first. All the counts have TV crews, observers and so on. They're kind-of public. Why screw up a system that's worked so well for so long? Electronic voting is asking for trouble.

Re:In the UK

[guruevi]

Clinton lost 232 - 290. Where in the world did the polls have a 20% error margin? The error margins on the polls were called at about 5-10 electoral votes, not 60. 60 is not an error margin, that's all the electoral votes of NY and FL combined, or about 4-5 entire states anywhere else.

The Dems realized they lost the vote before the entire vote was even in, the media ran the coverage and didn't call it until ~3am even though almost everyone realized by 10pm that Trump was going to be the winner. This wasn't close AT ALL. Recount, flip a state or two if you can by fraud and you still won't make it.

As far as the "popular vote", it's about 1M people difference currently, not 2M or more which the DNC keeps claiming and that's without even counting millions of mail-in votes that are typically overwhelmingly Republican. It also doesn't explain the Republican house and senate wins. People typically vote according to party lines, take away the presidential campaign and you'll see the same "problem" liberals tend to claim.

If you win elections on lies, you will wind up with a years of high crime and low production.
Yes, we've had that for the last 25 years now, people are sick of it and want real hope and change. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations in combination with Congress have effectively destroyed all remaining trust in the political system.

As far as Bernie talking out of his ass: he seems to be the only one that has any clue these days on the left about what people want. Had the DNC listened to it's people, you would have a democratic president.

Re:yea...

[Jhon]

"we proved many times before the election that many elections machines could be hacked. the election"

The three states in question (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) -- where it's claimed evoting had suspicious results:

Michigan is all paper ballots -- no evoting machines.
Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked
Wisconsin -- Evoting machines were only present in rural areas -- where Trump (and republicans in general) do better anyway.
(source: Business insider -- cited in the story summary from yesterday)

This really looks like a non-story.

The Democrats Conceded the Election

[Geoffrey.landis]

I just don't understand why the Democrats insist on blaming things like the electoral system, hacks, counting errors, or in this case the physical ballot mechanism,

Pay attention. The Democrats are not claiming hacks, counting errors, or the physical ballot mechanism are the cause of Trump winning. Not. The Democratic party accepted the election result. The discussion in question is other people saying that the Democrats should audit the election, not Democrats contesting the election.

see for example many many news stories http://learningenglish.voanews...

when it's patently obvious that the Democrats would have gotten a landslide win if they had gone with anyone but Clinton.

This is not clear at all.

Old doesn't mean unhackable

[Geoffrey.landis]

Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked

Just because they claim to not be on the network doesn't mean that they "can't possibly be hacked"!!

First, it turns out that some machines that the vendors say aren't on the network have, in the past, ooops turned out they actually did have undocumented wifi ports.

Second, machines have to be accessed to put the candidates into the machine. This requires access, and any time there's access, they can be hacked.

Third, the machines have to be accessed to get results out of the machine. This is another point at which that the results could be tampered with. Doesn't matter if the machine is reporting 1000 votes for Candidate X and 200 votes for candidate Y if the man in the middle alters that to 500 and 700 as it's transmitted.

Forth, just because a machine is "old" doesn't mean it's hack-proof.