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New Bill Could Finally Get Rid of Paperless Voting Machines (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments. "With the 2018 elections just around the corner, Russia will be back to interfere again," said co-sponsor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). So a group of senators led by James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to shore up the security of American voting systems ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections. And the senators have focused on two major changes that have broad support from voting security experts.
The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots. The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome). The Lankford bill would encourage states to adopt more statistically sophisticated procedures to count as many ballots as needed to verify an election result was correct -- and no more.
The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots. The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome). The Lankford bill would encourage states to adopt more statistically sophisticated procedures to count as many ballots as needed to verify an election result was correct -- and no more.
Ballot images should exist, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As long as they are talking about making voting more secure, they should add into the bill voter ID requirements
People should realize that the vote tabulators for paper ballots are still ancient computers with very little oversight too.
We have paper ballots and unconnected standalone tabulators. The more tech, the more chance for issues, problems, etc.
;)
Tighter voter ID would also be on my list for Voter Roll integrity. I am amazed when people just laugh about the number of dead individuals still voting
This is such a knee-jerk reaction from people who don't understand tech. Why not simply.. 1/ Stop the ability for having physical access to the inner computer, NO USB ports, no wifi, Ethernet module inside the case so you only have one cable trailing (POE) - or two if AC is required to power a small touch screen (really?), go all Apple with custom torque screw drives and lots of them to open these machines. 2/ No internet access for these devices or the server ever, voter lists are loaded into an onsite server which provides DHCP for the voting machines (anything with an incorrect MAC address gets dropped on to a blackhole VLAN).
If I've missed anything...
You have missed the point that the people that operate elections in the field rarely understand tech. It is very common for volunteers who have no knowledge of computers to be election officials. Because of this you cannot rely on a secure configuration at the polling places. Using technology to assist the voter in generating a machine (and human) readable anonymous paper ballot and then using technology to tabulate that same ballot is the way to go. Actually vote by mail is the way to go, but that is a different discussion...
It's a defacto poll tax combined with voter suppression. Anywhere it's been implemented it's instantly become expensive and difficult to obtain the necessary Id. It's a trick by your friendly neighborhood aristocracy to give you the illusion of Democracy without all the nastiness of the 'wrong' people voting.
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At my last job exam scores were calculated with Scantron machines. Though the Scantron was faster than grading by hand, it is unreliable, so every sheet had to be double-checked by a human. The people had to correct the Scantron results rather often.
One Scantron machine was noticeably less reliable than another; perhaps some maintenance, aligning and cleaning it, makes a big difference.
now end Gerrymandering and repeal Citizen's United with a few well targeted laws and maybe we can talk about America being a Democracy.
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... and USPS, and landlines, and fax, and credit card imprinters.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I don't see how having people manually count ballots could possibly be more reliable than having it done by a machine.
It makes election tampering more difficult to pull off.
Ehhh......
In the interest of understanding, you should know a bit of my background: I used to build robots, and these days I do a lot of work automating manual processes.
I see it as a mixed bag. On the one hand, a manual recount is more error-prone on the surface, but it's also less error-prone in that a manual review can account for more inconsistency. Where a smudge on the paper might confuse an optical reader, a human would have no problem determining the correct result. Yes, that can be resolved with high-end visual sensors (essentially cameras), but those single-purpose devices are also far more expensive than a human's time. Using statistical analysis also means that the one vote wouldn't matter, but such a situation could be problematic if, say, paper ballots were stored incorrectly.
Having humans involved also drastically reduce the attack surface if interference is considered a viable threat. Having a farm of 500 vote-counting machines means one attack can be repeated 500 times with expected success. Having 1000 humans means that 1000 individual corrupting attacks must be executed, and there's just a slim chance they'll succeed... and a good chance they'll alert authorities. As a check to validate a machine-generated initial count, humans are certainly a safer option.
As with any system, defense in depth is the best option. We expect the machines will handle the initial count correctly, but it needs to be verified by the humans. We expect they'll handle the recount properly, but to ensure the correct methodology, the statistical parameters are being prescribed by law, open to public review and criticism. To ensure the law matches society's expectations, we have the democratic process allowing new representatives to revise the law as needed.
No, it isn't perfect, but it's the best the world has to offer.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I recall a few years ago (maybe 10 years?) during the GWB election, that there was an elegant proposal by voting researchers on how giving each voter someone else's anonymized receipt / code to check online via a website later was a very simple method that could audit the results with just a few % of people doing the checking. And people checking get the satisfaction of being part of the system, and/or maybe being rewarded if they find a mistake.
Does anyone else recall this method?
It sounds kind of like the method in China where, to help ensure that people ask for sales receipts and make everyone pay tax -- by looking afterwards for their receipt being a winning lottery ticket on the national website.
It's not that requiring IDs in and of itself is somehow racist. It's that minorities (as well as students and the elderly) are the least likely to have ID that meets the requirements of the law.
So if you don't currently have valid ID, you obviously need to get a new one. And since that costs money, requiring it is akin to a poll tax.
As a result, a federal court ordered Wisconsin to offer IDs for free at the DMV (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html). However, this has not been implemented very smoothly (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-voter-id/wisconsin-official-told-dmv-not-to-push-free-voter-id-cards-idUSTRE78713P20110908).
You could argue that the requirement of an ID is still ok, Wisconsin just did a poor job of implementing it. But really, you've just created an ADDITIONAL barrier to voting (in addition to getting time off work/waiting in a line/registering to vote).
The thing is, the whole voter ID movement is a solution in search of a problem (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html). There has never been evidence of voter fraud at any meaningful scale, and there is little reason to believe people would risk getting caught given the small benefit an extra vote would offer. However, as noted in one of the articles above, voter ID helps increase turnout among those who have proper ID, and decrease turnout among those who are less likely to have it to begin with (people who tend to vote Democratic). There are conservatives on record expressing their preference for lower voter turnout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw) and we're seeing them get their way.
I love paper ballots. Now let's make better readers. Suggestions for different designs:
1. Standalone reader that can be placed such that the exit of reader #1 can be placed next to the entrance of reader #2 (etc...) for immediate recount during elections.
2. Standalone reader that has 3 scanner heads. All 3 heads must read each ballot the same to exit to the verified bin. Any differences and the ballot is kicked back out the entrance to be attempted again. Voter is confident that if the ballot is accepted, the votes have been properly counted.
Any suggestions for secure ways to transfer vote totals from polling locations to state election headquarters?
For fuck's sake. The amount of personal effort involved in voting illegally so far outweighs the potential personal benefit that this is a waste of time that creates more of a problem than it solves. In person voter fraud is next to non-existent. But voter ID laws depress turnout, and typically are implemented in a way that disproportionately affects minorities and the elderly.
Ooo! I love these games!
1/ Stop the ability for having physical access to the inner computer, NO USB ports, no wifi, Ethernet module
Put a vampire tap on the Ethernet cable.
inside the case so you only have one cable trailing (POE) - or two if AC is required to power a small touch screen (really?)
I don't recall the details, but there are some attacks perpetrated by modulating power, essentially causing transistors to behave erratically, with a variety of effects.
go all Apple with custom torque screw drives and lots of them to open these machines.
Just like the TSA keys, right? The ones that can be easily fabricated and bought now that pictures of them were published in a news article?
2/ No internet access for these devices or the server ever, voter lists are loaded into an onsite server
...So I can hack the onsite server, or impersonate it.
which provides DHCP for the voting machines
DHCP is a broadcast-based protocol, though, so I can drop in my own server that will respond to requests with my own configuration.
(anything with an incorrect MAC address gets dropped on to a blackhole VLAN).
I first listen for an existing MAC address on the cable I've tapped, then spoof it.
If I've missed anything...
Yeah, you missed a few things. The main one is that you're thinking about how to lock down a system, rather than attack it. To use an analogy, you're putting a deadbolt on your front door while leaving the windows open.
Assume that every component of your system will be under attack. Not just the ballot counts, but the names listed, the user interface, and the infrastructure. Assume that it will be under attack at all times: In manufacture, storage, shipping, and during the election itself. Assume that your adversary has technology you don't, and will break anything that isn't proven to be impossible. Finally, assume that any knowable results of an individual's vote will be used to coerce or intimidate the voters.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The big question is, "Congress might mandate it, but are they willing to pay for it?" In most states the cost of the voting equipment falls on the counties. Any that bought voting equipment in the last decade are going to fight tooth and nail against having to replace it. I have a friend who works in the electronic voting machine business; she tells me that they're still doing repair work on 20-year-old machines because of counties who don't have the money to replace them.
There is nothing really wrong with electronic voting systems that wasn't wrong with the old mechanical ones, punch cards or even the old paper ballots.
Well, the punch cards were always a terrible idea and remain so. And you're right that there is no perfectly secure method. That said, there are two things that make the electronic systems worse: they're easier to subvert (more points of potential failure), and if subverted, it's easier to make it unnoticeable and/or impossible to prove tampering.
Why should I, as a voter, trust that the company that makes these machines has not been subverted in some way? The problem with all electronic voting is that it can be subverted and no-one will ever know. There is no alternative audit record that can prove or disprove the fraud.
We should just follow UN best practices.
Which call for voter registration, picture ID, thumb marking, paper ballots, see through ballot boxes and immediate public counting.
It literally has all been worked out. But, for some reason, we're special.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Usually the district maps are drawn by bi-partisan groups and are routinely tested in the courts to make sure they are fair. What kind of rules do you think we need here that we don't already have?
That is definitely not the case in most states. In Pennsylvania, there is an ongoing court case that was recently taken up by the state Supreme Court that challenges the gerrymandered maps drawn by state Republicans using partisan voter data. Currently the state legislature simply approves the map, so the dominant party effectively gets to choose the map, and can of course make sure it is a favorable one.
Independent redistricting groups are a step in the right direction, but your word of "bi-partisan" shows the flaw in that system too. We don't want "bi-partisan" where the two major parties begrudgingly agree on a map that has "equal amounts" of gerrymandering. They're basically just dividing us up into gang turf at that point, "You take this district, and I'll take this district". We do NOT want that. We want NON-PARTISAN elections that are completely out of the hands of any party's decisions.
The way you do that is with Proportional Representation. We each elect a representative from a choice of all candidates -- no partisan primaries that get to tell us who to vote for -- and use a proportional ranked choice algorithm to determine the winners. The beauty of this system is that it works best when there's lots of choices, so you can at least establish a small number of static "super-districts" that don't need to be redrawn if not completely do away with districts in their entirety. This means our election process is no longer controlled by any party and is fair to all candidates of any party or even independent candidates, and therefore may the best candidate win according to voter interests.
Citizen's United seems like a good decision that upheld the 1st amendment to me. I don't think you can restrict companies and non-profits from making political donations or doing political activities w/o restricting free speech in the process. Maybe we can just require that funding of political activity can proceed with out any limits as long as the source of funding is 100% disclosed and must be 100% from USA sources? Seems to me that the issue isn't the amount of money, but that people may not be aware of the source of the funding. Full timely disclosure of who's donating what to whom would fix that.
Companies and non-profits are not people, they are not living breathing entities. They don't have thoughts, feelings, opinions, they can't serve jail time when they do something wrong. They are completely legal constructs, and as such should not have any rights under the Constitution.
The owners and investors of any company or organization have ALWAYS been completely free to donate to campaigns as individuals. They've never been restricted in that sense. The organization can even issue a statement of endorsement and encourage its members to donate to a particular candidate or party as individuals, that's not been restricted either. At least not in general, there's some basic rules like you can't donate to federal campaigns if you work for the federal government, etc., but for the most part there are no restrictions other than a limit on the donation amount. So this idea that organizations being able to contribute money as "free speech" is a completely invalid argument. They've always had "free speech" with their own personal money as individuals.
What those business owners and investors discovered is that they can use their organizations and businesses as shells to HIDE what they are doing. They can move around lots of money, they can claim tax breaks out on certain expenses. If they donate as individuals, their names are attached to the donation (as it should be transparent!), but then of course if you are a rich Republican or a rich Democrat you might turn off voters if they know you're supporting a candidate. So instead, you donate y
Just last month they were counting the votes in the Honduras presidential election. The sitting president tried to get a second term (despite a constitutional one term limit). While the vote was being counted it was announced the he was losing the election. Then all of a sudden there was a "computer glitch" and a pause in the counting. In the end it took more than two weeks for the votes to be counted. Of course he won. The Organisation of American States said there were irregularities and that there should be a new election. The US on the other hand congratulated his win and turned a blind eye to the irregularities and the 'minor' constitutional thing. A few days later Honduras was one of the 9 countries who voted in favour of of USA having it's embassy in Jerusalem. It's amazing what can happen when you use an electronic voting system.