Georgia Defends Electronic Voting Machines Despite 243-Percent Turnout In One Precinct (arstechnica.com)

"In Chicago, it used to be claimed that even death couldn't stop a person from voting," writes Slashdot reader lunchlady55. "But in the Deep South, there are new reports of discrepancies in voter turnout with the approval of new electronic voting systems." Ars Technica reports: [I]f any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.) Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues. "George is one of four states in the U.S. that continues to use voting machines with no ability to provide voters a paper record so that they can verify the machine counted their vote correctly," the report adds.

Comments

What good is the paper?

[jfdavis668]

The machine could be faulty, print out exactly who you voted for, yet still record your vote wrong. How would having a piece of paper help? You can't go back and change your vote.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

The machine also doesn't store the votes. Each voter gets a single card as he walks in and has to return it to the pollsters as he walks out.

Re: What good is the paper?

[alvinrod]

Assuming you get to keep the paper, it makes it possible to audit the results to a much higher degree of certainty.

Re:What good is the paper?

[OrangeTide]

print out a blockchain and use the paper receipt as proof of work.

(I don't think any machine does that, just throwing out what is theoretically possible if a voting machine did give you some paper)

Re:What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would having a piece of paper help?

My voting place just uses plain scantron like paper ballots. Fill in the oval, stick it in the machine, done.

Keep all the ballots for at least 8 years or something, and if you ever need to verify the vote, take them out and check them by hand. (This assumes they are stored securely.)

Once the storage period ends, recycle them into new paper, cellulose, whatever.

While I could design something secure that uses touch screens and such, I still wouldn't trust it as much as this plain simple system. Sometimes simple wins. I doubt your going to improve on this design much, no matter how much you try to do so.

If you want you can place issue information by making a paper divider wall insert that is laminated. No need for technology there either.

Seriously it just is not possible to get fancy here and be sure its secure. Even if your sure about the chip design of every chip and every line of code, did you also secure the chip factory, and all the employees and all the rest? Its just not realistic or cost effective and even if you did all that, well not all vulnerabilities are disclosed and you can bet the major nation states have their own stacks of them.

Re: What good is the paper?

[ShanghaiBill]

Assuming you get to keep the paper, it makes it possible to audit the results to a much higher degree of certainty.

Not really. It is just a receipt, not a list of who/what you voted for. You can use it to confirm that your vote was counted, but not that the vote was recorded correctly, nor that additional fake ballots were not also counted.

Opponents of electronic voting talk about "paper ballots" like they are some magical thing than ensures fair elections. That is nonsense.

It is easy to have a verified vote.

It is easy to have a secret vote.

It is very, very difficult to have both.

Re:What good is the paper?

[AHuxley]

The paper results can be seen by different election observers and a much more city and state wide tally can be created.

Re: What good is the paper?

[currently_awake]

Make your choices on the computer. Print out ballot. Verify choices printed. If wrong do over or complain. Once satisfied put ballot into ballot box to be counted. There is no need to have the computer count the votes or transmit them to a central location or be connected to a network.

Re:What good is the paper?

[cervesaebraciator]

My voting place just uses plain scantron like paper ballots. Fill in the oval, stick it in the machine, done. Keep all the ballots for at least 8 years or something, and if you ever need to verify the vote, take them out and check them by hand. (This assumes they are stored securely.) [...] While I could design something secure that uses touch screens and such, I still wouldn't trust it as much as this plain simple system. Sometimes simple wins. I doubt your going to improve on this design much, no matter how much you try to do so.

+1. People miss the importance of expense and effort. The important thing isn't that a system like this can't be compromised. It's that it is much, much more cumbersome to compromise it than an electronic system. It also has the deterrent effect of leaving a fair bit of evidence (paper trail, numerous co-conspirators needed, etc.) that it has been compromised.

Re:What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

In my precinct, they print the voting results out on paper, the voter can look at it, verify that it is correct (or discard it and try again) then the paper result gets stored by machine. That gives you a full paper trail if you want to go back and verify.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

The machine also doesn't store the votes. Each voter gets a single card as he walks in and has to return it to the pollsters as he walks out.

That's not correct.
The token you hand in does not contain your vote for an obvious reason. It used only to verify that the number of votes cast is the number of votes recorded, and that the voter is a valid voter (having been given the token).

The voting machine store the votes cast on that machine, and the votes are extracted from the voting machines locally to a memory card after the polls close. Each counties memory cards are taken to a tabulation computer (not internet connected) that reads the voting machines memory cards and tabulates the totals. The tabulation machine's totals are then put on a memory card and loaded into an internet connected server that uploads the totals to the State of Georgia's central server.
The memory cards are encrypted with a unique key for each county so the state knows that the upload is from a valid device.
No voting machine is ever connected to the Internet. Actually, I'm fairly sure they are never connected to any network.
The totals are uploaded to the States web server where it is published for anyone to see, and also for each counties voting commissioner to verify that their counties votes are recorded correctly by the state. There is considerable detail in the result spread sheets.
general results:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/63991/184321/en/summary.html
detailed results by county, type of ballot (provisional, advance, absentee, polling place):
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/63991/184321/en/reports.html#

There are some obvious holes in the system.
For each election, the local county downloads a config file from the state that contains what election, who is running, the screen layouts etc.
Then the local county manually installs that onto each voting machine using memory cards. At some point the memory card used to update the voting machines is placed in a computer that has shared a device with a computer that is connected to the internet. So if the internet connected computer is infected, then it could infect the memory card used to update the voting machines.

Also, if a voting machine is bricked, then the votes from that machine are irrecoverably lost.
This happened frequently when using mechanical voting machines back in the Jim Crow days, but usually only machines in the polling places of Black neighborhoods would fail.

Also, the other thing about electronic voting machines is that every voter has physical access. If no one is watching, a person could break into the voting machine (they do have a lock), connect a memory card and load malware. or brick it.

Re:What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

The "proof of work" is only meaningful in the presence of more computing power than any one person can control. If the computers providing the power of the proof of work is provided by the voting office, then the proof of work could be forged by the exact same computers in the amount of time it took to calculate the proof of work in the first place.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

I agree with your final statement, and most of the first few statements, but human vote counters are a huge vulnerability and weakness. It is better to have a computer count them, and then if there is any suspicion of fraud, require the paper ballots to be scanned and put on the internet for anyone to count.

Re:What good is the paper?

[OrangeTide]

depends on the implementation details. you're making a lot of assumptions.

Re:What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Right. The important thing is that you realize what "proof of work" means.

Re: What good is the paper?

[whoever57]

That's how it works where I vote.

Fill out paper ballot, it is then scanned and kept. I can't audit that my vote was accurately counted, but an audit can be done globally.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

I can't audit that my vote was accurately counted,

Yeah. And there's probably not any way to do that while maintaining anonymity.

but an audit can be done globally.

Which is an ideal Georgia is obviously still working towards.

Re:What good is the paper?

[OrangeTide]

well theoretically if I have a printer I can print whatever I want. So given that a voting machine is supposed to be a trusted system that has been audited. Then my receipt needs to have a quick way to verify that it is correct. The first part is a counterfeit machine can't offer an authentic print out, so something as well known a a digital signature would be sufficient if that was the only concern. The second part is that would like to have some high confidence that the work you requested the machine to do (record your vote) has been performed. And finally if information is lost, due to corruption, lack of connectivity, or malicious state actors, then a secondary record that a particular person voted is useful in an investigation and in legal proceedings. But recording a person's identity and their votes is not considered acceptable here.

That I had to explain all this to you is a bit disappointing. You don't need to be "that guy" that is always right on the Internet.

Re:What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

So the proof of work is there to verify that the machine actually recorded your vote? Is that what you are saying?

Re:What good is the paper?

[quantaman]

In my precinct, they print the voting results out on paper, the voter can look at it, verify that it is correct (or discard it and try again) then the paper result gets stored by machine. That gives you a full paper trail if you want to go back and verify.

Better yet you should be able to watch it drop into a transparent box under the voting machine. That way you know your paper result is being stored and that extra votes aren't being added.

Really, this isn't a hard problem to solve. The first requirement for any electronic voting machine should be that it is difficult to compromise the results even if you let the attacker write the damn source code.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Michael Woodhams]

It is important to voting integrity that you not be able to prove to anyone else how you voted. Otherwise people can buy votes, and check that the voter has followed through before paying up - or abusive parents/spouses can demand a voter vote in a particular way and punish them if they didn't.

In a perfect system, everyone can see what the votes are (so they can verify the count), everyone who voted can see that their votes are included in the tally correctly, and yet they can also provide fake proof of a different vote to anyone trying to influence them, such that this influencer has no way to know whether the provided proof is fake or not. Also, you need to separate votes in different races for the public record - otherwise Influencer can supply a 'how to vote' card with a distinctive pattern of votes in races the influence doesn't care about, but can be used to prove the voter voted as demanded.

I've seen some amazingly clever uses of cryptographic methods, so I wouldn't say this is impossible, but it certainly is hard.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Z80a]

You kinda can.
Assuming enough people actually kept their piece of papers, you could make a manual recount by those.

Re:What good is the paper?

[grasshoppa]

The machine stores the vote and produces a scantron-like receipt which the voter then turns in at the registration desk. This receipt is easy to read, meaning a voter can have confidence that they really voted as they intended.

Then these paper receipts are scanned by a low-tech machine which tallies the votes, while the voting machine/network itself tallies it's votes, and they are compared. The votes from the machines themselves are considered "fuzzy", while the paper scantron-ballot is considered the primary source.

There are a lot of tricks you can do with the scantrons to ensure integrity in the process as well.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Zalbik]

So....you want to use a very expensive pencil for electronic voting?

Re: What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't audit that my vote was accurately counted,

Yeah. And there's probably not any way to do that while maintaining anonymity.

but an audit can be done globally.

Which is an ideal Georgia is obviously still working towards.

And being more American, and less like the other Georgia: When I first read this on hckrnews, I thought they meant that the former Soviet Georgia had a 243% voter turn out! Surprise...

Re: What good is the paper?

[Zalbik]

I support this idea, but nobody would ever go for it.

Why? It just increases the cost of voting.

You would need to audit every vote to ensure the counting machines weren't tampered with. If you are auditing every vote, it costs at least as much as a paper/pencil election.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Zalbik]

Fill in the oval, stick it in the machine, done.

So I assume the machine counts the vote? How do you verify that it is counting the votes correctly?

Re: What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the paper ballot goes into the box then counting accurately is remarkably easy.

This is why the count is done in the presence of scrutineers representing the candidates. The candidates and their representatives will always put their case more strongly than a casual observer.
The local returning officer opens the box.
The ballots are counted and placed into a pile(s), one for each candidate, one for invalid ballots and one for disputed ballots.

Each ballot is then, one by one, declared by the returning the officer and accepted or challenged by the scrutineers.
If a ballot is not challenged in the first pass then it cannot be challenged later unless their is a full recount as may be ordered by Court of Disputed Returns (or equivalent).

When all the clearly valid votes are placed (and counted) then the challenge pile is looked at. Scrutineers and the Returning Officer may declare the vote for a candidate if they agree it is a legal ballot and the intention of the voter was clear. If not, it is placed aside only to be considered again if the election is close enough for those votes to make a difference. They are stored separately for that purpose. A judicial or statutory authority may be the final arbiter.

All ballots are kept for one year and one day after the seat is officially declared. All ballots are destroyed on that date.

It is simple. It is accurate. It is open with many eyes watching the count. It is remarkably fast. IT SCALES. It works and has been tested by time.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Once the paper ballot goes into the box then counting accurately is remarkably easy.

If you are talking about hand-counting ballots by people, it's just not true. People make mistakes, and sometimes they do it on purpose. It scales by adding more people, assuming you can find volunteers.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Where do you get the idea of human vote counters being a huge vulnerability/risk?

Basically from a long history of humans manipulating the vote.

Re:What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

I think it's a state of insanity and we are all here.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Hognoxious]

People make mistakes, and sometimes they do it on purpose.

GP mentioned scrutineers/observers.

Protip: read *all* of something before responding to *any* of it.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Hognoxious]

It is easy to have a verified vote.

It is easy to have a secret vote.

It is very, very difficult to have both.

Not even with a blockchain?

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Are you saying scrutineers/observers will prevent all problems in human vote counting?

Re:What good is the paper?

[vtcodger]

Of course. But at least giving out a receipt will likely detect stuck keys/levers and many other mechanical issues.

OTOH, maybe elections are something that really should not be automated.

Re: What good is the paper?

[vtcodger]

"If you are talking about hand-counting ballots by people, it's just not true."

Cross-check. Recounts are often made in very close elections. My impression is that it is uncommon for the recount to exactly match the initial count. Conclusion: Indeed, people are not, in fact, 100% accurate counters.

Note. Some places use OCR to tally paper ballots. I've never seen data on how repeatable those counts are. But I imagine the data exists.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Cederic]

My precinct takes a slightly more efficient approach. Rather than using a machine to capture the vote and print it out, the voter marks their vote directly on the paper.

This provides the voter with certainty on the candidate(s) their vote will support, is its own inherent paper trail and also removes any digital vulnerabilities from the process.

I'm surprised your precinct hasn't considered this proven and effective option.

Re: What good is the paper?

[AmiMoJo]

Voting is one of the few times that a blockchain could actually make things better.

You vote on the computer and get a receipt with a secret transaction ID on it. You can then verify your vote against the public blockchain any time you like using that transaction ID (which is anonymous), and anyone can verify the overall count and integrity of the chain too.

Some care will be required to make sure the votes remain anonymous. The most obvious risk is correlating people's visits to the polling station with transactions on the blockchain, but there are ways to prevent that.

Re:What good is the paper?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Assuming enough people actually kept their piece of papers, you could make a manual recount by those.

Assuming EVERYONE actually kept their piece of paper, you mean? Otherwise, your "manual recount" is only going to be a partial recount, with no way of judging whether it had any real similarity to the original vote.

Re:What good is the paper?

[reboot246]

We still have them where I live. I think it's the best way to vote.

Walk in, get verified, mark ballot by filling in the ovals, feed ballot into machine, machine scans and counts, and the paper ballots are there in case you need a recount. Why don't all polling places use this method?

The only thing you need then is voter ID, and we have that here. Every polling place should.

If voters can't trust that the election was fair and honest, there's no reason for anybody to vote.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I assume the machine counts the vote? How do you verify that it is counting the votes correctly?

You don't need to verify it unless you have reason to doubt the outcome of the election. When would you doubt the election?

• First, you always choose 1% of random precincts and do a full count. Any discrepancies, you do a full state-wide recount.
• If the results are within a certain amount (say, 1-2%), or are significantly different (10%+) than polls in that district
• If there is evidence of a foreign government trying to influence your election

The point is, with paper scantron ballots you can do a manual recount if you're not sure. In Georgia, you can't -- whatever the machine comes up with is what you have to take.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Hognoxious]

They certainly go a long way to prevent intentional tampering.

If party A's stooges are doing it party B and C's observers will see them, and so on.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

I think it's also reasonable to demand that the ballot machines be open source. Machine makers will complain but it's a fair requirement.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Paper ballots have all kinds of problems, though, including people marking two different candidates, and sometimes needing recounts.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Yes.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no longer a truly anonymous vote.

Consider: How does your proposed scheme prevent someone threatening me unless I give them the receipt that proves I voted the way they wanted me to?

Re: What good is the paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

You vote on the computer and get a receipt with a secret transaction ID on it. You can then verify your vote against the public blockchain any time you like using that transaction ID (which is anonymous),

Bad move.

This also means I can use the transaction ID to prove how I voted, for the gangster who bought my vote. I secure my little payout, the gangster have confirmation that I deserved my bribe. The ID is not anonymous if I don't keep it anonymous - so you just ruined the anonymity of the election.

With the paper ballot system, I cannot sell my vote because the gangster has no way to know I actually vote the way he wants to pay for. So it is impossible to put pressure on the voters - through payments or threats of violence.

Re:What good is the paper?

[RavenLrD20k]

Also, if a voting machine is bricked, then the votes from that machine are irrecoverably lost.

12 years ago I did a few rounds as an election tech in GA shortly after they first started using the electronic machines. Back then the machines had the capability to each print out a record of votes counted with a built-in printer that had memory independent from the unit's main memory. This was done so there was still a way to retrieve the votes from the machine both as a fail-safe if the machine became disabled as well as an audit trail in case of discrepancies. It was a matter of procedure that the precincts had to generate the "receipt" print-out from each machine and send them into the county Board of Elections office with the memory card and stack of tokens so the officials could make sure there was at least a card for each vote according to the printed totals. While they did that, I was inserting the memory card and dialing up the Secretary of State server for the uploads.

Re:What good is the paper?

[thegarbz]

How would having a piece of paper help?

Have a think about how votes currently work and what role a piece of paper may have.

Re: What good is the paper?

[thegarbz]

There is no need to have the computer count the votes

So remove the only benefit of electronic voting?

Re:What good is the paper?

[Type44Q]

Are you fucking kidding me?

How would having a piece of paper help?"

The answer to that has been repeatedly explained on here for twenty years; the fact that you'd feel the need to ask would be a dead giveaway that you should be reading (do they even do that in Georgia??) and not posting on here.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Paper ballots have all kinds of problems, though, including people marking two different candidates,

This at least shifts the source of the problem to 'idiot who marks two candidates' and away from 'random programmer somewhere unknowable, who can do unverifiable things to the software.'

and sometimes needing recounts.

This is a feature, and a very desirable feature at that.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Tyrannosaur]

The scenario that US secret ballots attempt to mitigate is rather vote buying, not coercion. Although they are very related. And I think you would be very naive to assume that neither of those could ever happen in america. there is no reason why it wouldn't happen more if we didn't take steps to make it infeasible, like secret ballots

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

It's Peter Gutmann's principles of best practices: nobody knows wtf they're talking about, but somebody says it's best practice. Paper ballots are considered secure for reasons.

People think silly things, like that the voter keeping his own paper ballot somehow makes the system auditable, or that paper ballots recounted days or weeks later can't be tampered.

We can get stronger guarantees of integrity out of EVMs than paper, if somebody actually works out an election security model as a starting point. Actually implementing it all costs money.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

You can solve those problems without using a pencil or pen. Advocating for a return to hand-filled ballots is a quixotic quest: we're not going back to that world.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

You can validate that secret ballots cast are untampered. Non-secret ballots don't actually solve that problem, as people with buyer's remorse can lie about how they voted and accuse the election authority of tampering.

Peter Gutmann is particularly aware of this in the security industry, although IanG brought it up.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Put the ballots on the Internet to be validated by the public as part of the voting process. You have to demonstrate integrity, not audit when questioned.

Re:What good is the paper?

[dehachel12]

hat's not correct.The token you hand in does not contain your vote for an obvious reason

Why wouldnt that contain the vote ? The Belgian system is as follows:
hand over your ID and voting invitation to the secretary of the voting location, receive a card allowing you to vote.
go to a computer in a booth.
insert card, cast your vote, the vote is printed to a little piece of paper (encoded).
exit the booth with card and paper.
insert the paper into a transparant box with a reader, return the card to the president of the voting location, receive your ID. the voting computer doesn't store any information, the box with reader contains all votes; and the pieces of paper are kept is a paper trail.
There's also another computer you can use to verify what's on the paper.

Re: What good is the paper?

[c6gunner]

With the paper ballot system, I cannot sell my vote because the gangster has no way to know I actually vote the way he wants to pay for.

Sure you can. Everyone has a smartphone these days. You use it to record a short video of yourself filling out the ballot and putting it in the box.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Maryland spent $65 million on electronic voting machines in 2002, and replaced them for the 2016 election with $28 million of optical scanning machines. Ballots, oddly enough, cost millions of dollars each election (the ballots end up costing you more than the machines). Maryland estimated reprinting Baltimore County primary election ballots (1/6 of Maryland population) at $3 million when there was an error; that means Maryland spends $30 million in 12 years on machines and over $400 million on paper ballots.

I'm working on starting my own elections consulting company, building EVMs and using a strong elections integrity model. A prototype EVM would cost $150; I expect them to cost $120 in mass production, and a braille interface would cost $1,000. That's $2 million of EVMs (10 year lifetime) and another $2 million of braille interfaces with one per polling place.

I don't intend to get into the business of selling EVMs or software; I want support from gifts (donations, but it's a private B-corp), private services (notably Internet voting for parliamentary groups), and public elections consulting (carrying the marginal costs of the business). That means I can keep slim margins on the EVMs.

As for paper ballots? Pointless. Your EVMs need to be verifiably-untampered--every last one of them--at open. You have to demonstrate a verifiably-untampered wipe and install on the EVM at poll open, and demonstrate a verifiably-untampered vote count (or something that can prove a given ballot set is identical to the one collected) at close. That gives you perfect election integrity.

If your machines are tampered, you lose that integrity--paper ballots or not. If you let the ballots go out of sight before getting counts, you lose that integrity--which means all recounts are suspect of tampering. We accept these risks for a subset of ballots (mail-in ballots) because the alternative is disenfranchisement; we do not have to accept it for on-site polling, and we can even get perfect election integrity at a mobile polling center (a van with EVMs inside).

If you're that hard-up for paper ballots, we can encode the ballot data into large QR codes and display them one page at a time on a large screen before copying them from the EVM (yes, you have to carry the votes from the EVM to the Internet-connected machine that sends them to the Board of Elections--you don't plug EVMs into networks and you don't put wireless radios in them). Take photographs. You all have cameras in your phones. Cryptographic signatures built right into the output will prevent tampering, and we spend another $0.6 million on big LCD TVs instead of $500 million on paper ballots.

Paper ballots are useless security theater; that doesn't mean I can't implement requirements. Doesn't mean I won't get creative with ways to save half a billion in taxpayer money, either.

Re:What good is the paper?

[rtb61]

Once you add in electronics, tranparency dissapears. The only sound way to vote, get ballot, get pencil, put 'X' in appropriate box, put ballot in poll box. After voting over, representatives from those running for the election along with government officers, open each box, one at a time, empty out and count each ballot individual, with representatives from each person running for the election checking each and every vote. Voting is about people, not machine. The one and only reason for electronic voting is mass voter fraud, last election was so bad, even when recounts were paid for they were actively blocked. US voting is a corrupt as any third world tin pot dictator voting and it's not Russia hacking, it's the deep state and shadow government hacking.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

This means that there is no way to have verification that what is in the database is what people actually voted for (refer to the Robin Williams movie "Man of the Year" for a nefarious, yet likely scenario).

You can make the probability approximate zero; you can't make it zero, ever, via any method. Even two judges counting the votes can occasionally make a duplicate mistake. That's almost-impossible; computers can do even better than that, but the marginal difference is meaningless: an election can be one or five votes away, with the likelihood of error being one-trillionth of a vote (i.e. the machine will make a bona fide recording error once every 20 years--remember they're used every other year for a few days).

You need integrity to show that the machine is, in fact, doing what the authority says it does. Your risks in an election are a malicious actor controlling the vote counting, not a faulty machine.

That's achievable; high-profile election administrators have suggested that the methods required to achieve it are "unfair to voting machine manufacturers, who have to make money". Tell those people they're stupid and tell your State legislature to pass laws overruling their broken opinion.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Americans are afraid of lots of things that never actually happen; however, voter coercion actually happens. A lot. Even our mail-in ballots carry issues with spouses and employers forcing people to vote, or to give them a signed blank to fill out for them (yes, employers have done this--when they get caught, everybody involved suddenly learns why this is an extremely bad idea).

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

This is also why my EVM proposal requires ballot sheets to break up into races, and races to be randomly numbered, and races to be stored sorted in order of ballot ID: you can't identify the order in which the ballots were cast or reconstruct a ballot sheet from individual votes.

You know the full individual ballots for governor, mayor, delegates, senators, congress, President, etc; but you can't put together a single sheet to say some unknown person cast these particular votes in each of these races.

You also can't observe that someone was the third person to enter the booth and recover that person's specific votes from the EVM. It doesn't work that way.

This is why I've considered heavily how to centralize voting in the polling place, such as by having one EVM with 8 displays so everyone votes on one display, or by copying the votes (via removable media) all to one EVM (they're not networked; this is the price you pay for foregoing computer networks) and only producing a single batch of ballots for the polling place. I want a large pile of ballots to conflate who may have cast which vote.

I'm even considering integrity for mobile polling places (yep!) and whether or not I can maintain integrity by using the mobile polling place to collect ballots from separate polling places and then tally them together. The problem is you weaken the handling chain: I don't want to pare down the final public observers. There's no way I can fit all public observers at 8 or 12 or 15 polling places on a bus to follow all the votes around as they tally.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

I don't intend to make profits from the machines or the code; it's all consulting and non-government services (e.g. Internet voting--which is designed to meet Government election needs but targeted to private parliamentary groups, because why would I ever move to a lower security model?).

Re:What good is the paper?

[rickb928]

By 'party', I assume you intended to write 'candidate'.

There is a difference.

Re:What good is the paper?

[rickb928]

QR codes, online registration, post-election confirmation with QR code receipt and previously entered secret something.

This will leave the poor and uneducated behind, which is reason enough to avoid electronic voting and stick to scanned paper ballots.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Registered Coward v2]

My voting place just uses plain scantron like paper ballots. Fill in the oval, stick it in the machine, done. Keep all the ballots for at least 8 years or something, and if you ever need to verify the vote, take them out and check them by hand. (This assumes they are stored securely.) [...] While I could design something secure that uses touch screens and such, I still wouldn't trust it as much as this plain simple system. Sometimes simple wins. I doubt your going to improve on this design much, no matter how much you try to do so.

+1. People miss the importance of expense and effort. The important thing isn't that a system like this can't be compromised. It's that it is much, much more cumbersome to compromise it than an electronic system. It also has the deterrent effect of leaving a fair bit of evidence (paper trail, numerous co-conspirators needed, etc.) that it has been compromised.

You compromise it before the actual vote. In GA this was done by the county boss handing out the government check and filled out ballot at the same time to ensure a correct vote. For reference, see Jimmy Carter’s book An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Yeah good point, it should be automatic. Randomized so as to not reveal the order the ballots were received.

Re: What good is the paper?

[nitehawk214]

It's almost like voting is one of the most important things in the country and we should spend some extra money to make sure we get it right.

And we would only need to audit suspicious or close elections, not every single one. Maybe spot check a few precincts at random, too.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

No, i replied "Yes" to Hognoxious. The threading looks funny.

Re:What good is the paper?

[dehachel12]

the little paper is the ballot.

Re: What good is the paper?

[swillden]

It is very, very difficult to have both.

But possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: What good is the paper?

[thegarbz]

Not never happen, but rather in a country with a functioning rule of law it should be insignificant enough not to make a difference.

Re: What good is the paper?

[thegarbz]

Americans are afraid of lots of things that never actually happen; however, voter coercion actually happens. A lot.

Maybe you need a functioning rule of law to actually attack the root cause of the problem. That's my point really. It's not that it should never happen, but rather that society should function as such that it should never have a significant enough impact. Rather than creating the perfect system accomodating all problems it's best to identify the root of the problems.

issues with spouses

Is something that can't be fixed by any voting system.

employers forcing people to vote

Any any functioning democracy that employer will find themselves heavily fined, and the person legally protected from retaliation. A far bigger underlying problem in America is that such power exists over people in the first place. I just don't think the design of the polling booth is where these problems need to be addressed.

Re:What good is the paper?

[Rhipf]

Its kind of too bad then that mass voter fraud has never been proven even with electronic voting. Even the 243-percent percent turnout in one precinct" from the topic title was shown to be an error in the number of registered voters not in the actual percentage of voter turnout.

But I guess if the president says that there is massive voter fraud it must be true (despite no evidence to back up the statement).

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Is something that can't be fixed by any voting system.

It is impossible to perfectly monitor someone and prevent them from compromising your ability to control their vote. I've been able to solve this problem with Internet voting, but I don't want to deploy government Internet voting at this time due to other integrity concerns (integrity is reduced nearly to that of a paper ballot, and a theoretical malicious state can demonstrate integrity while freely manipulating the vote).

We can half-solve it by allowing an individual to opt-in for a vote-in-person only restriction, which drops your vote if you send an absentee ballot but cannot be verified even by the individual voter (i.e. you can tell them to remove the restriction, but not check if the restriction is set in the first place). We can almost solve this by doing the same but with a valid voter PIN (optional), such that a ballot mailed in without a PIN or with an incorrect PIN is silently ignored; this requires the voter to have access to additional ballots, however (Internet voting is infinite ballots). Either is almost equivalent to Internet voting with certain additional protections.

I'm seriously considering mobile voting rather than mail-in and Internet voting for public elections. You can put public observers and an EVM on a bus and drive around to bring in-person voting to people instead of bringing people to in-person voting. That reduces the number of ballots without strong election integrity guarantees.

Re: What good is the paper?

[kenh]

The paper receipt is a non-issue in this case, since the problem a paper receipt is intended to address is an inaccurate vote, the issue raised in this Georgia district is that of turnout, that well more than double the number of voters in the district placed votes.

The issue isn't the 'old technology', it isn't the lack of a printed receipt/audit trail, it is voter registration - how could a district reasonably take legitimate votes that so vastly outnumber the number of registered voters in the district? Provisional ballots? Same-day registration?

Re:What good is the paper?

[dryeo]

The other important thing is that the voting system is easily understood by the average person. Doesn't help having a secure system if people don't understand it enough to trust it.

Re: What good is the paper?

[CaffeinatedBacon]

No polling station in a civilized country is going to let you do that.
Just get n ballot papers video yourself voting for all n gangsters. Sell your vote to all n. Then pick the one ballot you actually want to cast to really put in the box.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

AND have picture ID voter ID laws. I've seen enough vote cheating while queuing at the polls in my lifetime to want to hurl my cookies.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Ballot sheets have multiple races. You break out the races and give them random IDs; you sort them by ID. Now you can't even assemble a ballot sheet, so you can't say that some unknown person filled out a piece of paper (or a form on a touch screen) that looked like something in particular.

It took me about one pass to figure that one out. First pass I considered whole ballots secure; I iterate quickly but there is still some reflection involved.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

I think you probably want scans of the full ballots, not just portions. In any case you want to keep the full paper ballots on hand, that's for sure.

Re: What good is the paper?

[liquid_schwartz]

I already see a form of this. Before anything can be said that might even hint at not being 110% party Democrat faithful you must first point out that you voted for Hillary and second you must disparage Trump. If you could be required to show your receipt then it would absolutely be a requirement for all acting jobs, most newspapers, and many other areas where intolerant liberals group together. They wouldn't want to accidentally befriend a *gasp* non-liberal or they will be punished like this guy https://variety.com/2018/film/...

Re:What good is the paper?

[AlwinBarni]

How about:
* storing votes locally in a non-erasable memory, once the module is full it might be replaced (which is more a theoretical option)
* each voter receives a printout to verify that machine registered his choice properly
* a vote is committed on request of a voter only once he verifies the printout
* a voter places the printout into a voting machine for later random (statistically based) manual verification
* each voting machine has its unique ID and after elections are done random voting machines are selected and both: local raw and received state data are published for selected voting machines for public to review
* a voting machine also permanently registers any access to its USB port and signals it to avoid tempering during voting

One might say "too complicated", but lets remember, that voting is the essence and roots of democracy - if it does not work, the whole idea of accountability of elected officials does not as well.

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

_Nobody_ disputes that Trump's 'shithole' characterization is _accurate_. Just that he was supposed to be more diplomatic than that.

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

If you can check it, your union boss can be over your shoulder checking as well. Not acceptable.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

What this we shit, American? I'm from a sane country that believes that ballots should be verifiable, rather than a country that believes it's OK for people to poke buttons on a screen, then a machine decide who should get the vote.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

In this case the ballot sheet is an electronic concept. I don't envision starting with or scanning in paper ballots; and keeping paper ballots doesn't offer additional integrity.

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Much easier to just start the day with ballot boxes half full of pre filled out 'votes'.

I still say just adopt UN best practices for elections. But that would be racist or something (per the Ds).

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

Oh yeah? What country are you from? Latvia?

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Tell that to Detroit. Hint: That's not how it works in practice.

In practice: They go to recount the ballots, find only about 25% of the votes, quickly stop the recount and hushup. Two years later, they deny it happened.

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

They claim that's how they ended up with only a small fraction of ballots in 2016 (one district in Detroit). It's not a plausible story, but the Ds have to accept it. Cognitive dissonance in action.

Re: What good is the paper?

[c6gunner]

Right, they're going to search you before you step into the voting booth.

OK, OK, you live in some weird place that does strip searches before elections. No problem. Most places allow voting by mail. Get the special ballot, sit down with your gangster pall, fill it out, and have him mail it out for you. Problem solved.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Catbeller]

Somehow Canada manages a manual pencil-check paper ballot They have counters from opposing sides witness the manual count. Works fine and is done very quickly, and it can be recounted at any time. No way to cheat. No electrons necessary. If you suspect one side has figured a way to infiltrate both witnessses, increase the number of counters. No limit on the number of eagle eyed buggers that can watch.

And addressing the 2000 fiasco, that was one party intentionally sandbagging the audit, dragging it out so that the Supreme Court could find a way to kill the recount. Hanging chads weren't the problem. It was hanging Republicans challenging everything and anything - there was no penalty for false challenges.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Catbeller]

Canada has as many volunteers as they need. The have opposing sides witness the count. No mistakes get made with that many jealous eyes locking their lasers on that counter.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Canada, actually.

Want to see something funny? Look at the voting requirements the US uses in places where it's running elections that aren't the US, then ask yourself why they're so much more rigorous in other places than in their own home country.

Re: What good is the paper?

[rsborg]

> , but human vote counters are a huge vulnerability and weakness.

I disagree. It's the computers and the companies that own the unaudited code that are the weakness - we can audit human counting (multiple counters, with adversarial checks/balances like in courtrooms).

Once you have a codebase owning an entire election or multiple elections, it's just too tempting to not sell that vote to the highest bidder. Our election auditing process isn't even as good as what we mandate for casino machines!

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

How often do Canadian ballot counters make mistakes? If you can't answer, you have no business advocating "just do what Canada does" as a solution.

Re: What good is the paper?

[rsborg]

Where do you get the idea of human vote counters being a huge vulnerability/risk?

Basically from a long history of humans manipulating the vote.

Name when and where voter fraud has actually happened in the past 10 years. I'll give you the quick answer: it's statistically negligible.

Now tell me how bad it would be if an entire state or country's voting system were hacked or (more likely) sold in advance for the highest bidder?

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

You can disagree, but you've also set up a false dichotomy fallacy. Both humans and machines can be vulnerable, that can happen.

Re:What good is the paper?

[JesseMcDonald]

It doesn't seem all that hard. Consider this scheme: Each choice on each ballot is secretly associated with a unique code. You record the code for your choice on a separate piece of paper and place that paper in the ballot box, optionally keeping a copy for later verification. The page with all the codes on it is then destroyed. If you want to "prove" that you voted a different way, you record the code for that choice and then request a new ballot (without putting anything in the box). The first ballot is set aside. When the voting period is over all of the codes in the ballot boxes *and* all of the codes on the discarded ballots are shuffled together and publicized, along with the choices they represent—since the discarded ballots include one code for each choice these extra codes do not favor any particular position and can simply be subtracted from the final tally. Anyone who wishes to verify their vote can check that their code is present and associated with the correct choice. However, only the voter knows whether the code they recorded was the one they actually submitted or the one on the discarded ballot. To an aspiring vote-buyer these appear identical, but only the real code increases the tally for that choice relative to the other options.

In a perfect system, everyone can see what the votes are (so they can verify the count)...

Check. The votes themselves (the unique codes and the choices they represent) are public, and the total can be checked against the number of votes cast (excluding any invalid/spoiled votes) and the number of discarded ballots.

...everyone who voted can see that their votes are included in the tally correctly...

Check. Just need to look at the public results and confirm that the code they wrote down is included in the correct group.

...and yet they can also provide fake proof of a different vote to anyone trying to influence them, such that this influencer has no way to know whether the provided proof is fake or not.

Check. Just write down the code for the influencer's choice and then request a new ballot.

Also, you need to separate votes in different races for the public record - otherwise Influencer can supply a 'how to vote' card with a distinctive pattern of votes in races the influence doesn't care about, but can be used to prove the voter voted as demanded.

Check. Each choice is reported separately, so there's no way to correlate votes across different races.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Green Mountain Bot]

Interesting that you only comment on the 10% of workers who have union bosses, and not the 100% who have boss bosses.

Re: What good is the paper?

[Merk42]

I'm pretty sure a non-zero amount of people dispute its accuracy.

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Fair enough: Nobody with a functional brain...

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Because the Ds claim the UN best practices for elections are 'racist'.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

So clearly now that the Rs control all three branches of the government, there's change incoming?

Re:What good is the paper?

[Registered Coward v2]

Much easier to just start the day with ballot boxes half full of pre filled out 'votes'.

They did that too but accident;y left them rubber banded together and in alphabetical order. They couldn’t even get fraud right.

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Elections are run at state level.

But yeah, good news, voter ID is coming, the legalities are all worked out. Just not in the state where it's really really needed (CA). But the founding fathers were smart, electoral college protects us from the shenanigans.

Finger marking will likely take a little longer.

Re: What good is the paper?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I can't audit that my vote was accurately counted, but an audit can be done globally.

Unless, of course, someone decides to replace a few (or a lot, of course) legitimate ballots with neatly printed versions with different votes....

Paper ballots have never been the panacea that some people seem to think they were. Which they'd know if they read enough history about voting shenanigans back in the days when paper ballots were the only option.

ShanghaiBilly is right - you can have a secret vote, or a verifiable vote, but having both is hard, if it's even possible (myself, I tend to believe it's not possible, but I tend to be paranoid about some things)....

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

UN best election practices are not considered secure 'for reasons'.

They have been tested against some of the worlds best election cheaters, not always successfully, but generally successfully enough that all but 'true believers' know the election was a sham when it was (e.g. Venezuela).

We'd be better off if we adopted them, but that would make us racist, or something.

Re: What good is the paper?

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Yes that idea would work. Glad I got you to think about it a bit, instead of the nonsense you wrote the first time.
But what place allows you to secretly put a ballot into the ballot box without anyone looking.? Seems an easy way to just stuff in as many votes as you like. Why even bother with the farce.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

There was a case in 2006 or so in Inyo county or Mono county where paper ballots were kept, scanned in, and put on the internet. Citizen investigators were able to look at the ballots, count them, and were able to find irregularities. It was reported here on Slashdot, but I can't find it right now.

Keeping the paper ballots is essential. There's no other way to verify that the correct vote was cast.

Re: What good is the paper?

[AmiMoJo]

Nothing, same as if you have a postal vote or they demand you take a photo of the ballot paper with your phone.

Another option would be not keeping the receipt, but depositing it in a secure box like a ballot paper. You lose the ability to check it for yourself unless you can memorize the ID number, but it fixes your problem. Take your pick which one you prefer.

It doesn't have to be perfect, just not worse than what we currently have.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

So here's an honest question for you: in the modern era, does the EC still make sense, or does it simply change which states become battlefield states?

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

UN best election practices indeed have been tested well; this doesn't mean anything except that they work. Handling of the ballots makes more difference than of what the ballots are made.

Tampering with an election is quite difficult when you have even the most minimal protections in place; I'm targeting integrity, not resistance, however, which means I need a handling chain that demonstrates tampering cannot occur or is sufficiently-unlikely to occur. Many election procedures allow for paper ballot recounts by hand days later; how do you know there was no collusion to alter the ballot counts? The ballot box hasn't been under public observation and you cannot prove its contents.

You don't switch 40% of the votes around. You switch a handful around. The county executive race here was such that changing 15 votes would make the second-place runner-up the winner; changing 400 would make the third-place runner-up the winner. With 40 polling places, you only need to miscount ten votes during the recount--and you can engineer a miscount.

With EVMs, you can demonstrate the integrity of the EVM and then emit data that can later prove the same ballots published by the Board of Elections are the ballots cast on the EVM. This requires strict handling procedures; it's more resistant to the kind of sleight-of-hand you can pull off in a hand-counted election, and doesn't leave questions about what really happened overnight when you begin a recount 2 days later. The public at large can also count and compute the election independently.

Re: What good is the paper?

[c6gunner]

Yes that idea would work. Glad I got you to think about it a bit, instead of the nonsense you wrote the first time.

I like how you keep insisting that stuff you don't understand is nonsense. It's adorable.

But what place allows you to secretly put a ballot into the ballot box without anyone looking.?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

You also need to make sure the votes are secret.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Keeping the paper ballots is essential. There's no other way to verify that the correct vote was cast.

The EVM image is public. It's put online by the Board of Elections months ahead of the election. Any defects are logged and updates have a change description, all published.

The EVM hardware is public, and easily-accessible by everyone. The ones I'm designing will cost around $150 for the prototype and $120 in mass production.

The EVM software source code is open, although that matters less than you'd think (how do you know the software in the image isn't tampered? You have to test the actual software).

The EVM has no media when the polling center opens. You put a read-only media in to install, and it asks you to insert system media (e.g SD card). It wipes and installs. You distribute the read-only media to public observers afterwards, who make copies and validate that it matches the published image.

So maybe the pens used in the elections are actually of a particular chemistry erasable by some manner, and colluding elections officials tamper with the ballots, and you'll never know. That seams about as likely as the software somehow magically gaining the ability to misrecord votes when it's been validated.

Johnny O won county executive by 9 votes. Recounting the same ballots, he won by 27. Human counters, natural error. Do you think a few election judges could manage to miscount 15 or so votes in the district and make Jim Brochin the winner? Brochin has endorsed our governor for re-election; I'm sure we could find some... favorable volunteers.

Now imagine what happens when you're counting ranked ballots--which are complex. How much sleight-of-hand do you think a human counter can pull off "misreading" the votes?

Paper ballots aren't essential; they're theater. At the moment, they only matter as a security blanket to make voters feel safe. People are still complaining that the elections were hacked even with paper ballots. One of the methods endorsed by Bruce Schneier--Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails--protects the voter by letting them check their ballot matches the paper ballot produced...except the machine can print additional paper ballots when there are no voters observing, and can add those votes to the database, stuffing the ballot box. Basically, we can cancel your vote by computing a nullifying ballot, and the paper trail says the votes are all legit.

Paper audit trails are also generally printed in order, which means I can sit in a polling place, note which people vote at which machines, and then identify who cast what vote during vote counting. Your votes aren't secret anymore; they're public knowledge.

You can only verify your voting system through independent software certification, logic and accuracy testing, and clear-box voting (the EVM must be something anyone in the world can dissect and examine). Even humans and paper trails are manipulable black boxes--unless you can read minds.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

It's OK to have the machine count the votes, but you need a paper trail. See also http://blackboxvoting.org/ball... That way you don't need to worry about making in hackable voting machines, which is hard.

Re: What good is the paper?

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Ahhh you crack me up. Did you not notice the glass fronted box with the slit on the top. In case you didn't realise that's where you put your ballot paper, in full view of everyone, after using the voting booth in private.

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

UN best practices call for immediate public vote counting, securing the voting boxes with seals (during the vote and after) and clear voting boxes (to prevent the box starting the day half full).

If a side can rig the count/recount, it's over. That's true for any ballot type.

The ID requirement in UN best practices make it a non-starter in the USA. It's 'racist', or some other equally stupid claim.

To say nothing of finger marking, that would seriously fuck up the 'get out the vote' buses.

Re: What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

That way you don't need to worry about making in hackable voting machines, which is hard.

Voting machines don't have radio and aren't attached to a network.

Voting machines don't allow authentication without a hardware token.

Your attack surface is a sliver. In a technical sense, it's feasible to make that unhackable; in this case, "feasible" is an interesting word because this requires a lot of discrete mathematics and graphing of program logic, and it's "feasible" if the program logic over which you cannot prove the scope of inputs is sufficiently small that you can perform that exercise.

Achieving that guarantee is not in scope. There's a simpler method: you demonstrate the logically-valid inputs and how the inputs are validated, showing that no manipulation is possible by program logic rather than by rendered mathematical model of machine instructions. That's also rarely done, but significantly easier and is considered a critical coding practice nobody follows.

To put this simply: you have a touch screen with some buttons which list candidates. You can mark a candidate or put the candidates in order. The write-in field is limited to alphanumeric characters. Hacking this interface requires triggering undesired behavior via checking boxes, dragging candidates into an ordering, or entering an alphanumeric string into a text box. You'd have to jump through some hoops to make code that allows that (assuming you length-limit the write-in box and filter out any non-alphanumeric characters).

Authentication of the election judge via a FIDO U2F credential blocks access to other functions, notably collecting ballot counts. Functions which can manipulate votes are simply not in the program code (separate assemblies, removed from the machine). You of course need to prevent attack on the U2F protocol code by people who jam random USB devices into the machine; and you can have the machine alert (loudly) when somebody inserts a USB device prior to doing anything with it, so you can't covertly attack the machine (you're going to get arrested). The USB ports can also be behind a locked panel (can't physically reach them).

So those additional routes of attack are only available when under public observation.

A paper ballot box is an unhackable voting machine--allegedly.

As for your link:

A linkage between ballot and ballot image should exist, in the form of a serial number. Not a fancy QR code which can contain hidden identifiers leading back to the voter ID of who cast the ballot. Just a simple unique number, like 10548626. This number appears on both ballot and ballot image. If you want to check whether ballot images are real, you simply examine the actual ballots using your Freedom of Information rights, comparing to make sure the image matches the original.

Print another ballot with a duplicate serial number. Who do you think the attackers are here? Where do you think the paper ballots reside? How do you know the paper ballots weren't untampered? The recount period is 30 days; they have a month to produce false ballots and re-image them. For that matter, why can't you use extra ballots? Linear serial numbers will trace back to ballot casting order and machine, allowing identification of unique individual voters and linking of identity to ballot.

By contrast, a non-tampered EVM can produce information which absolutely proves a set of ballots is the same set cast on that EVM--before the ballots are exposed to any opportunity for manipulation. The ballot sets must be published, and the public can independently verify the entire election. This data is a mathematical fact, not a paper ballot and an image that should match up to the ballot. You can't prepare false images and false ballots ahead of time and distribute them on request--more sleight-of-hand ballot stuffing using paper ballot audit trails as avenues of attack that themselves provide credibility

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Still makes sense, for all the reasons it always made sense.

The nation just can't be ruled by NYC, Chicago, Miami, LA, Dallas and SF.

If they wanted to change the deal, they would have to expect the rural states to leave the union. Just a disaster all around.

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

We count votes immediately in the public. We also recount votes for 30 days thereafter. There's error in normal human counts, and colluding volunteer vote counters can manipulate the apparent human error (which can swing close races readily; nobody's fooled when you muck about with a wide victory margin).

With the ballot boxes taken out of public view, how do you know parties aren't trading a delegate for a senator, or manipulating the primaries? In my locale, the Democrats don't like the more-progressive candidates--and one of those beat another candidate by 9 or 27 votes in the recent primary (depending on whether you believe the original count or the recount). The candidate he beat has endorsed the Republican governor and was more-favored by the Democratic Central Committee.

So you tell me: with a 9-vote margin of victory, what would you think of a recount finding that the second-place winner is actually the first-place winner? You only have to flip 5 votes (-1 +1, that's a span of two), and you can do that by "accidentally" misreading a ballot after a string of the same vote (25 votes for candidate A, the next vote for candidate B but you announce for A and everybody is just nodding along at this point, then the next for candidate B and you announce that correctly). The Republicans like the candidate the Democratic party would have preferred. They're in agreement. Would the Republicans scrutinize this too hard?

securing the voting boxes with seals (during the vote and after) and clear voting boxes (to prevent the box starting the day half full).

An EVM image published ahead of time can be inspected by third-parties and tested to ensure proper logical behavior. It can be reverse-engineered. It can be taken apart and put back together again.

That image, installed at poll open from read-only media which is then distributed so public observers can make copies and validate that it is untampered, represents a ballot box which starts empty, which has seals on it, which is untampered. You don't plug these things into a network.

Each vote cast increments a visible public counter, so you know how many people voted (clear ballot box: you can't screw with it by stuffing votes mid-day). Just like ballots, you may get different ballot counts per race: there are 20 races on the same paper ballot, and many people don't vote at all in down-ballot races, or may skip a congressional race, or whatever else they fancy. You have 100 voters voting but 93, 97, 82, and 14 ballots cast in various races. You get a lot of "no votes cast" when counting.

At poll closed, you collect the votes on the EVMs, displaying tallying statistics. You have ballot sets--identifiable to the local polling place--which will only generate the exact same tallies if they are the same sets. You know X ballots were cast and the particular results of a tally of X ballots; no modification with X ballots will produce the same results.

The public observers watch this happen. They now have something you don't get with paper ballots: non-human-intervention in a known-good ballot tally process, and the power to audit the published ballots to validate them as being the ballots cast.

You don't have a State recount for this. Every security firm and local news agency does their own recount. Richard Stallman publishes a recount 15 minutes after the election is over. Someone on Twitch is live-streaming the ballots and photos on Twitter of the election counts, and computing the election results in real-time.

You might notice I work out ways to attack things, and ways to prevent those attacks. It's not like our elections aren't highly-resistant to ballot box attacks (they're exceedingly-vulnerable to all other attacks); the weaknesses are minor, but do exist. The same goes for the integrity procedures I keep describing: I'm not looking for ways to attack and alter the votes, but for the possibility that you could do such a thing. I'

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

Even if you can make an electronic system secure. You can't demonstrate that to 99% of the population. Hence it won't happen.

You _can_ secure physical ballot boxes in ways that everybody can understand.

Downside? Messed up ballots that don't get counted, but morons are going to moron. You can still match total counts, just one more category, f ups.

Re: What good is the paper?

[whoever57]

You are correct that paper ballots do not eliminate the possibility of fraud. However, they do make it significantly more difficult, assuming that there are multiple people with different ideologies watching the storage of the ballots.

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

But in the modern EC, why can the nation be ruled by Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin?

Given that most of the rural states take in more federal money than they give, why would that be a 'disaster' for the Union as a whole?

Re:What good is the paper?

[Peter P Peters]

US voting is a corrupt as any third world tin pot dictator voting and it's not Russia hacking, it's the deep state and shadow government hacking.

The simple fact that felons cannot vote is enough to consider the US democracy a fraud. All you have to do to manipulate the polls is target voters of the opposing team and get as many of them as possible of convicted and presto you've given yourself an automatic swing. And hey what do you know, as if it's a surprise the US just happens to also the highest conviction rate in the world.
C-O-R-R-U-P-T

Re: What good is the paper?

[Peter P Peters]

You can disagree, but you've also set up a false dichotomy fallacy. Both humans and machines can be vulnerable, that can happen.

It's less about human vs machine and more centralised vs distributed.
The manual/human system has vulnerabilities but it's a lot harder for thousands of humans to suffer the same vulnerability at the same time than it is for one computer system. Humans also only suffer form or two possible vulnerabilities which makes those risks much easier to mitigate. Computer have nearly unlimited ways of being compromised, including all the same ones that affect humans (because you can attack the human admin of the computer and apply the same attack).

Re:What good is the paper?

[Zeekort]

This system sounds just and fair to me. Only problem is getting people to accept using your official ID since that's been fought against tooth and nail claiming it was somehow "discriminatory". Personally I think any voting system MUST include the use of your official ID that can be verified and have reasonable protection against fake IDs. Nothing will be 100% but it's better than no verification at all.

Re: What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

You need to double check the oft repeated red state payer, blue state taker derp.

It's a statistical lie. Done by not counting payments direct to state citizens.

Swing states move around, if it was just raw vote, it would always be the most broken cities that pick the president.

The basic point is that the EC was a compromise to get the rural states to agree. Philadelphia and NYC were in the same position in 1776.

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

Care to prove that?
Trey Gowdy couldn't.
Trump Couldn't.
Kris Kobach was sanctioned in court for making that claim without evidence.

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Even if you can make an electronic system secure. You can't demonstrate that to 99% of the population. Hence it won't happen.

You _can_ secure physical ballot boxes in ways that everybody can understand.

It's doable, but only because it's a different problem than you're examining here.

Securing physical ballot boxes requires complex handling considerations that the general public can't understand without a little study. You should know that: you've argued we don't follow the right handling considerations, which indicates the public doesn't understand the need.

In a similar sense, securing ballot boxes requires demonstrating to the public that they can trust they are secure, not that they are secure. There are only a handful of public observers at each polling place: each member of the public cannot be at all polling places to observe all ballots 100% of the time. That means they trust that other people have observed the process, and they believe the protection measures are sufficient.

People believe physical ballots are tamper-proof, for example, when they're clearly not. Although most people will accept the risk of tampering (stuffing, editing, coercion, and deletion) in mail-in ballots when you explain why we have absentee ballots, they often think the process is secure.

As a politician, I've been sent surveys with questions that opened up explaining that the US Postal Service is well-known as the most-secure thing in existence, thus all voters should be allowed to vote by mail in every election if they so wish--a pitch that says "vote by mail is tamper-proof, so we should increase voter turn-out by letting everybody vote from home!" Internet-based voting is slightly more-secure (you can make it impossible to prove you have voted, so coercion and vote-buying go away), but does not resolve the integrity issue (you can't prove the total vote counts at all, or that anyone in particular has or has not voted, to the general public); nobody is buying into Internet-based voting.

So what do we do about securing EVMs in a way the public can understand?

Well, first of all, we need to educate the public on election integrity--just like with paper ballot boxes. Currently, as you've observed, we haven't educated them on certain integrity deficits our elections carry, and they believe the elections are secure. The same is true of EVMs: we need to explain the integrity model.

We also need to educate the public on how to exercise the integrity model--every election. We don't go out and remind everyone to engage in this part of the election process now, and you'll notice polling places usually contain two election staff, an election judge, and whoever is voting. The press shows up during vote counting for big races and recounts, but stays out of it for things about which nobody much cares. People are out there in polling places counting votes with basically two pre-selected volunteers and two party observers who may all be colluding: a small set of possibly-compromised people are opening paper ballot boxes and handling ballots. Even my EVM procedures can't protect against that (the best I can do is install a live streaming camera to watch and record certain critical things).

For EVMs themselves, the software and hardware must be accessible. I'm designing EVM software to run on a Raspberry Pi. Seriously. The EVM itself might be a modified Pi with 8 displays, or a Pi Zero, or a Pi 3 B+ ordered in a batch without the Wifi/Bluetooth chip soldered on (it's not part of the SOC); it will run the same SOC, same bootloader fused into the SOC. The whole EVM will cost around $120; if you want to configure it with EVM and "Ballot Box" using a smart card, you're looking at $300 of off-the-shelf hardware--or you can order the core systems (about $25 each), bring your own displays (7-inch touch screen, or KVM if you want), and use a 50 cent smart card and a $10 smart card reader to set up a test rig.

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

By the by, do you know why we moved to mechanical voting machines in the first place?

Re: What good is the paper?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Ok, so get rid of the EC, and I fail to see why any given state suddenly gets an advantage. Yes, the US of A was originally conceived as a UN type coalition of sovereign states, kinda, sorta, nod nod, wink wink. In reality, it never has been, and the Civil War really put a nail into that particular idea.

So, for federal positions, move to a straight-up vote, not a vote for shares of your state.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

Prove it? I watched it whilst waiting to vote. I'm sorry, it just isn't possible for THAT MANY people to come in and say 'Oh! I just moved here and need to vote." But when have fraudsters ever left any possibility of proving things like this? The dead vote in elections in this country and have for more than 100 years and nothing has been done. Why will it change now?

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

So, another Russian Troll says "I saw it, so take that"
Enjoy the redass tovaritch!!

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

Me? A Russian Troll? I'm sorry but you and I can't be on the same planet. Jeez. Grow up and get a life. Obviously you have probably never voted in your life, and may not even be 18 yet.

Re:What good is the paper?

[HornWumpus]

The public understands the need just fine. But the partisans are all following directions from their party, throwing everything into herp/derp gridlock.

Mechanical voting machines were supposed to be more tamper proof. I haven't suggested going back to letting 'LBJ' run the elections. If you think corrupt local election bodies aren't still a huge problem, you haven't been paying attention to Washington state. Just open about it, keep 'finding' ballot boxes.

To me it goes back to UN best practices. Why aren't those for cryptographically secure electronic voting? Last I looked the competent cryptographers were going rounds and rounds of shooting down each others ideas for strong crypto, secret secure ballot systems that worked. When that community settles on a solution, we can talk about e-voting.

You can't observe everything, neither can you code all the machines, Adversarial, representative observers is the best you are ever going to do, that number doesn't have to be small.

Have you ever shipped commercial code or hardware? I'm guessing...no.

UN best practices! That's all I'm asking for.

Re:What good is the paper?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why aren't those for cryptographically secure electronic voting? Last I looked the competent cryptographers were going rounds and rounds of shooting down each others ideas for strong crypto, secret secure ballot systems that worked.

Well of course. You don't use cryptography to secure elections; it's about non-repudiation.

You can't observe everything, neither can you code all the machines

Wanna bet?

You post the EVM image online months ahead of the election. Any corrections are posted as well, with difference summary. This allows anyone and everyone to examine the image, do logic and analysis testing, and so forth. The general public can acquire hardware and build a mock election (this costs about $500 based around my prototyping, but something like $20,000 with current systems).

So here's the first point: the software to be used on the machines is now known. It's known forever. It can be tested by random people on Twitter 20 years from now. You can't hide it.

You do the same weeks before the election with the candidate data.

You put the code on an SD card. This card has an eFuse on the WR line leading into the write array. Flip a write protect switch and apply power and it is physically-impossible to write to the array ever again. It's read-only now.

You demonstrate this. Your election judge puts the SD cards into a Lexan case with multiple lock-outs, and locks it. Cables lead out of this case with an SD connector: you can plug this into an SD slot. Judge plugs it into the EVM, demonstrates imaging, demonstrates loading of the software. This copies the SD card to the voting machine's memory; for the Ballot Box (later), the judge inserts an SD card (when prompted) which the machine erases, images, and configures to store votes.

Then: the election judge locks the transparent software box to a desk and calls for a volunteer, preferably a member of the press.

Anyone, at any time, can come up to this box, verify the non-writability of the SD card, and copy the data to their system. They can upload it. They can hash it. They can do whatever. We know THIS is the software on the EVMs; we know THIS is the candidate data. Does it match the published image?

That's also non-repudiated.

At this point, you have programmed every voting machine with known software, and this can be proven forever. They don't go into a warehouse 30 days later and have their tampered image replaced with a "Certified" one. The image is online; the image that was actually used is also online; and everyone who wants it has a copy. We the people inspected these things during polling.

No cryptography so far.

The EVMs stick your votes onto a Smart Card, which you carry to a Ballot Box--an EVM that reads the Smart Card, displays the votes to be cast, then wipes the card and records the votes and your voter ID.

At poll close, the Ballot Box displays statistics. For plurality ballots, the total number of ballots cast and the count of votes represents exactly one unique set of ballots. For ranked ballots, a ranked ballot is mathematically-equivalent to an exact set of pairwise plurality ballots: you generate statistics for pairwise races. The public observers record these.

Each polling place's ballots, reported online, must calculate to the same numbers. If they don't, the ballots have been tampered. That's not cryptographic, but it is mathematical.

The ballot sets are non-repudiated.

That means you have non-repudiation of the actual logic the machines use to record and tally votes and non-repudiation of the ballots as recorded and tallied by the machine. You can never hide this information away. You can never alter it. You can never remove the capability for the public to mess with these votes.

No cryptography involved.

Have you ever shipped commercial code or hardware? I'm guess

Re:What good is the paper?

[EmptyHead]

He'll be of the party of "you can't prove it!" and "even though they need ID for several other aspects of modern life, it is too much of a burden to require one for voting".

To be fair, every once in a while they'll catch a dummy on the other side illegally voting too.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wisnoskij]

Lets not overstate it. No type of misinformation is is helpful. We have proof that these thridworlders are corrupt and the citizens votes simply do not matter..

The only thing we know about The American system is that it can easily be corrupted, and there are little safeguards, and even when huge irregularities are caught, no one seems to care. The last thing I heard about the attempts made on recounting the last presidential election that pretty much all for Chicago could not be verified because all the votes were either tampered with or originally stored wrong.

But given all that, the results seem to show that any corruption that goes on is still not hugely significant to the overall outcome. Their does not appear to be any direct foreign influence, and the only one in America who wanted Trump to win were lower middle class citizens, people without the power to influence the election in an underhanded manner. Sure, the election has huge problems like for example any use of electronic voting machines, or how the Democratic party spends 1000 times the amount on trying to win elections then any of their opponents, and yes we can be pretty much sure that millions of illegal votes get cast, but most elections are not won by a few percentage points.

Re: What good is the paper?

[wisnoskij]

I will present you with two scenarios featuring your idiot and you can decide which system correctly dealt with him.

Scenario 1 (Electronic Voting Machine):
> Idiot arrives at polls.
> Passes out
> Head slams down on Bernie as he collapses.
> Vote counted.

Senario 2 (Paper Ballots):
> Idiot arrives at polls.
> doodles on ballot.
> Vote counters throw out his ballot.
> Vote not counted.

The problem is is not that certain methods can lead to invalid votes, but that certain methods make invalid votes impossible, and that a herd of dogs are just as capable of voting as a human using these methods. to create a valid vote, you should have to demonstrate that you were at least aware that you were voting, could read and understand the ballot, and had the ability to make a pen do what you want it to do.

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

Obviously you have no evidence, yet planted another fake meme.
Not russian?
O.K., just a trumptroll
Still bringing support-free claims

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

The R's have a long history of being caught double voting
Like Fla. 2000.
Ann(thrax) coulter voted in person and by absentee. Paid a fine
Notice Voter ID has no effect AT ALL on REAL illegal voting?
Just a voter suppression scam.

Re: What good is the paper?

[phantomfive]

How often does that happen? I'll bet it's more common that hand-counters make a mistake.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

How many times do I have to say to you - but of course, you're a leftist zombie so perhaps you can't read - "I stood in the queue at the polls and watched as more than 10 people made this claim within a 10 minute time period." Jeez.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

Personally I do not believe in absentee voting. Go to the polling place, with your ID, and queue. Period. And the Rs don't have nearly the history of the Ds - the cesspool known as Chicago, and the one as New York prove that.

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

And just so you admit you have NO EVIDENCE, just an unsupported claim tovaritch.

Re:What good is the paper?

[AutodidactLabrat]

Wrong, wrong, wrong as in actual PROVED cases involving prosecutions and courts, R'S top the lists
There are no cases EVER of proven fake voters casting votes in anything like numbers necessary to change an outcome.

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

Wrong. https://www.nationalreview.com...

Re:What good is the paper?

[wyHunter]

here ya go, which about 5 seconds of Google use showed: https://www.nationalreview.com...

What is this trying to say????

[Anonymous Coward]

A 243-percent turnout sounds DAMN FUCKING GOOD. What exactly are these people outraged about?

Re:What is this trying to say????

[AHuxley]

That 276 registered voters could do 670 ballots and the need for an audit.

Re:What is this trying to say????

[Hognoxious]

Break with tradition and read right to the end of TFA.

Re:What is this trying to say????

[Opportunist]

The last time I heard a turnout like that from Georgia, it was still part of the Soviet Union.

Re:What is this trying to say????

[fedos]

It used to be we'd admonish people for not reading TFA. Now they don't even bother reading TFS.

Re:What is this trying to say????

[HornWumpus]

When? /. has never had any use for FA readers.

Obligatory xkcd

[Ly4]

Obligatory:
https://xkcd.com/2030/

Re: Obligatory xkcd

[TimMD909]

See also https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[SirAstral]

It is very much worth noting that the problem with the XKCD article is comparing Aircraft and Elevator safety with Software... why? Because of the law. If you design a bad machine and people die you can be very easily sued out of existence or go to jail. Just imagine that every plane and elevator had a sign posted saying, ride at your own risk because we are not responsible for a malfunction taking your limbs or life... a lot of folks would be taking the stairs and driving places instead.

Write software and you just say, not responsible for my shitty work because we have no standards for expediency and cost purposes.

Changing the law so that software is not allowed to escape a law suit with a simple tos agreement would change a whole farking load of things.

"I don't quiet know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us, everyone will die."

Making the field as culpable for its fuck up like manufacturers would change that shit real fucking fast. Shit programmers would be tossed very quickly and several of those "awesome" programmers able to cut corners super fast would fall from grace with some epic face plants into the concrete below.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[AmiMoJo]

So the joke is that software engineers and computer scientists think that everyone else in their field is terrible at it?

Voting with blockchain for verification sounds like a good idea. When we look at other blockchain systems they do get compromised sometimes, but the key thing is that the compromise is always publicly verifiable and easy to detect. The public nature of the blockchain and established cryptographic rules governing its behaviour mean that even if it is "hacked" in some way people will notice and be able to prove it.

That seems better than the current paper ballot system where there are all sorts of difficult to detect attacks.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[HornWumpus]

I would NEVER get on an elevator that had software controlled emergency brakes.

But good news, at least for now, they would be illegal as fuck.

BTW the most typical way to build safety critical software is not to prove it mathematically, rather to build 3 completely independant versions using best practices, then have those 3 vote on what to do.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Hognoxious]

A blockchain stops you changing things afterwards but it doesn't solve the "garbage in - garbage out problem". If I frig the voting machine at source so a random 15% of votes for Commie Bastard go to Fascist Twat how does a blockchain help?

If you can name one of these "difficult to detect attacks" on paper systems that can't be countered by proper chain of custody and scrutineers I'll be impressed. Can the Russkies rearrange ink remotely with satellites? Does Trump have swarms of highly trained mites that only eat Democrat votes?

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[AmiMoJo]

The machine prints off the cast vote and a Blockchain transaction ID. The voter checks the print out has the correct candidate listed. Later the ID can be checked to make sure the transaction matches.

There could be duplicate copies made (on carbon paper) and a random sample checked.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Dirk Becher]

The problem with this comic is that just because a *part* of the system is theoretically safe (the blockchain principle) doesn't mean the rest of the system can't be tampered with. Software industry has a long history of malicious people circumventing security measures in the most creative and unpredictable ways, so software engineers have a much lower self-esteem when it comes to security than mechanical engineers have. If people started sabotaging say elevators for the lulz the trust into those kind of devices would drop fast (pun intended).

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[wisnoskij]

Yes and no. Any software malfunction that elevator has is just as liable as any material malfunction. It is like unlikely that the programmer screws up so badly that someone ends up decapitated,

The problem with election commissions

[Darinbob]

The problemwith election commissions in the US are that they don't care so much about accuracy as they do about the budget and keeping drama to a minimum. So when they see a report of a clearly impossible number, their first instinct is not to investigate and see how this happened and try to correct it. Their first action is to try and make the perception of the problem go away, thus reducing the chance of drama occuring (recounts, bad press, the wrong party winning, etc).

So when the predicted problems with electronic voting machines showed up it was also predicatable that excuses would be made: we're out of budget since we just bought these election machines; at least they're better than the butterfly ballots; we'll look into it, honest; and "look, a Squirrel!!"

Re:Told yâ(TM)all

[Tyger-ZA]

The South would rise again!

Only if you consider fucking up to be a rise. "rise" and "up" refer to the same direction so I can see how that would confuse you.

Vote early and vote often!

[mveloso]

Looks like some electrons in Georgia took that saying to heart.

I think we could make electronic voting secure

[rsilvergun]

I also think we don't want to. America is not and has never been a Democracy. And no, I don't mean "We're a Republic". Our entire political system (most notably the Senate and the Electoral college) is built to lesson the effects of Democracy and disenfranchise the 'wrong' type of voter.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[bidule]

*lessen

Nice typo, but it's also true that the lesson of Democracy is to disenfranchise the 'wrong' type of voter.

Re: I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Opportunist]

You are aware that the examples you offer are essentially mob rule? Just because you put the mobster into a suit and call him president doesn't make him any less of a criminal.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[JBMcB]

Our entire political system (most notably the Senate and the Electoral college) is built to lesson the effects of Democracy and disenfranchise the 'wrong' type of voter.

How, precisely, do the senate and electoral college disenfranchise people? They dilute the power of larger states, but how does that correlate to disenfranchisement?

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[drinkypoo]

How, precisely, do the senate and electoral college disenfranchise people? They dilute the power of larger states, but how does that correlate to disenfranchisement?

Your vote doesn't count if you live in a state which is guaranteed to elect a particular senator. Your vote for pres doesn't count if you don't live in a swing state, unless you live in one of the states which assigns EC votes in proportion. Even then, it doesn't count for much.

The EC was literally designed to keep the proles from electing the president, and the senate was literally designed to give smaller states (all of which are on the old money East Coast) undue influence in government.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[rickb928]

Perhaps your education has failed you. The Electoral College was designed to lessen the impact of populous states, minimizing their ability to rule the less populous states. I always thought it was a convenient process in the day of horses, but no, I was wrong. And even then, the Founders and authors of our Constitution had given much thought and demonstrated great wisdom, for indeed Presidential election results prove their fears were warranted. The most recent election shows voting results by county support the contention that urban areas tended to vote in one way, less-urban and rural areas voting in another. As the United *States* of America, we are a unique nation in many ways.

Likewise, the House of Representatives was constituted to minimize the impact of 'slave' states, where it could not, with a straight face at least, accept that slaves could vote, and therefore the 'free' non-slave 'permitting' states) would have had disproportionate representation but without actual votes of free men.

Ultimately it took, what, three Amendments to the Constitution to resolve these errors? Or four?

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Whorhay]

To be fair, when the Senate was created the East Coast was all there was to the Unites States. Certainly the point was to give less populous states a bit of extra influence, and interestingly the difference between states then wasn't as drastic as it is now. This makes sense because at the time the focus was on the power of the individual States and limiting the Federal Governments power. There isn't any census data available until some time after independence but in 1790 the least populous state of Delaware had a population of 59,094 while Virginia had 747,610. So Delaware had about 8% of the population of Virginia. As of the 2010 census Wyoming has about 1.5% of the population of California. While the East Coast states do represent in the bottom of the population chart disproportionately, they still only make up half of the bottom 10, and a quarter of the bottom 20.

The state vs federal government is interesting to me because while I have an affinity for the state I was born and raised in I don't feel I owe it any allegiance. If I were a sports fan I would probably have more pride in my favorite team than any particular state.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Dragonslicer]

How, precisely, do the senate and electoral college disenfranchise people?

A vote in a high-population state counts less (i.e. is a smaller fraction of one senator or EC delegate) than a vote in a low-population state. It isn't total disenfranchisement, but it certainly reduces the voting power of certain people relative to other people.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Dragonslicer]

And even then, the Founders and authors of our Constitution had given much thought and demonstrated great wisdom, for indeed Presidential election results prove their fears were warranted.

So are you arguing that tyranny of the minority is better than tyranny of the majority?

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[JBMcB]

A vote in a high-population state counts less (i.e. is a smaller fraction of one senator or EC delegate) than a vote in a low-population state. It isn't total disenfranchisement, but it certainly reduces the voting power of certain people relative to other people.

Sure, in the senate. It's equalized out in the house. That's the whole point. Otherwise people in low population states would be completely disenfranchised. If California had 60 reps and Maine had one, do you think ANY legislation Maine needed would ever get passed?

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[drinkypoo]

To be fair, when the Senate was created the East Coast was all there was to the Unites States.

Sure, but extrapolation was a thing. The goal was to keep power with those who already had power.

The state vs federal government is interesting to me because while I have an affinity for the state I was born and raised in I don't feel I owe it any allegiance.

In theory, it has positive aspects, and negative ones. In practice, it's almost all negative. Look at the situation with California's emissions laws. California has had to have a waiver in order to set stricter emissions laws than federal. It seemed like a working system all this time... until now. What was really needed was California's emissions laws for the whole country, whether other states liked it or not. Instead, California is likely to lose its right to set standards due to 45.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Dragonslicer]

Otherwise people in low population states would be completely disenfranchised.

That isn't at all what disenfranchisement means here. Each vote would count exactly the same. If you can't get enough other people to vote for your proposal, well, that's how voting works.

Sure, in the senate. It's equalized out in the house. That's the whole point.

Yes, that was supposed to be the idea. There were two problems that weren't predicted, though: ludicrous gerrymandering and the importance of the modern executive branch.

If California had 60 reps and Maine had one, do you think ANY legislation Maine needed would ever get passed?

If we stick to the original theory, what federal legislation could a low-population state need? They might vote certain ways when it comes to things like foreign relations and interstate commerce, but anything that only affected a single state would be legislated by that state, not the federal government.

Re: I think we could make electronic voting secure

[rickb928]

I'm arguing neither. Our republic regularly permits either to occur.

ps-i heard your dog whistle...

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[JBMcB]

That isn't at all what disenfranchisement means here. Each vote would count exactly the same. If you can't get enough other people to vote for your proposal, well, that's how voting works.

If we are talking about the political power of your elected officials, it's absolutely what it means. I think people keep shuffling around the definition of disenfranchisement which causes issues.

Yes, that was supposed to be the idea. There were two problems that weren't predicted, though: ludicrous gerrymandering and the importance of the modern executive branch.

Gerrymandering is a state issue, and should be fixed by the states. As for the executive holding too much power, you'll get no argument from me, but I don't think the solution is to mess with the underlying structure legislative branch, or how the executive is elected.

If we stick to the original theory, what federal legislation could a low-population state need?

Let's say New York imposes a federal tariff on all maple syrup being shipped out of Maine to the advantage of their own maple syrup producers. With direct, proportional representation, what would be Maine's recourse?

Let's move into modern times. Lets say Texas doesn't want any other state to be allowed to draw water from the Rio Grande. Or California wants to build a pipeline to pull water out of the Great Lakes. Are those fair proposals? With proportional representation, how would aggrieved states be able to block those proposals?

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Dragonslicer]

If we are talking about the political power of your elected officials, it's absolutely what it means. I think people keep shuffling around the definition of disenfranchisement which causes issues.

Yeah, there are several slightly different definitions. That's why I tried to limit it to just the value of a single vote.

Let's say New York imposes a federal tariff on all maple syrup being shipped out of Maine to the advantage of their own maple syrup producers. With direct, proportional representation, what would be Maine's recourse?

The Constitution explicitly forbids that, so the recourse would be the Supreme Court.

Let's move into modern times. Lets say Texas doesn't want any other state to be allowed to draw water from the Rio Grande. Or California wants to build a pipeline to pull water out of the Great Lakes. Are those fair proposals? With proportional representation, how would aggrieved states be able to block those proposals?

These are not scenarios that were considered 250 years ago. At the time, you could more or less take whatever water flowed through your property without regard to people downstream.

What about the inverses of your proposals? Should Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota be allowed to band together and build a pipeline to pipe all of the water out of Washington?

One possible general solution to those scenarios is to prohibit laws that target specific states in the way you described. You could argue that such laws should be considered bills of attainder, which are already prohibited by the Constitution. Of course, no solution is perfect. If there's a proposal with two choices, with 55% of the population favoring one choice and 45% favoring the other choice, one of those two groups has to get their way, regardless of what voting system you use.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Whorhay]

On the positive side the feds might have to accept legalizing marijuana eventually if the trend continues of states legalizing it.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[Hognoxious]

Well there's the all-or-nothing nature of the electoral college in most[1] states; that means that even if they're 49-point-a-lot-of-nines% of the electorate, those who voted for the other candidate might as well have stayed home.

Then there's that fact that the electoral college members can ignore the vote anyway.

[1] Aspies, shut up already. There's what - two that don't with about three people between them.

Re:I think we could make electronic voting secure

[HornWumpus]

Brief history of American water rights laws west of the Mississippi...dams and aqueducts are _much_ easier to blow up than build.

Many people died in the range wars that led to the current legal water rights system. Only ignorant children think they can come in centuries later and just 'fix it, make it fair.'

Why not just count them?

[hawguy]

Why not just count paper ballots like Canada does? Each precinct tallies up their counts and reports them upstream where they are aggregated. The manual counts are supervised by representatives from each party. Publish all of the counts and subtotals so they can be verified. Even if there are a 100 million ballots to count, by distributing the work, it can still be done in a timely manner.

Re:Why not just count them?

[SirSlud]

The US is founded on the principle that if there's a right way to do something, they have the freedom to also do it 49 worse ways.

Re:Why not just count them?

[whoever57]

Why not just count paper ballots like Canada does?

Do you vote on 20 or more different races and propositions at once, twice a year?

Re:Why not just count them?

[geekmux]

Why not just count paper ballots like Canada does? Each precinct tallies up their counts and reports them upstream where they are aggregated. The manual counts are supervised by representatives from each party. Publish all of the counts and subtotals so they can be verified. Even if there are a 100 million ballots to count, by distributing the work, it can still be done in a timely manner.

Why do we not use paper you ask?

I have two words for you on that topic.

Hanging chads.

Re:Why not just count them?

[hipp5]

Why not just count paper ballots like Canada does? Each precinct tallies up their counts and reports them upstream where they are aggregated. The manual counts are supervised by representatives from each party. Publish all of the counts and subtotals so they can be verified. Even if there are a 100 million ballots to count, by distributing the work, it can still be done in a timely manner.

Why do we not use paper you ask?

I have two words for you on that topic.

Hanging chads.

Huh? We don't use punch vote systems so there are no chads. We get a printed paper with the candidates and literally just 'x' off a box for our preferred candidate. Then each individual polling box is counted by a poll observer, and each candidate is allowed to have an observer for each box. The observers get to see (but never touch!) each ballot, and can challenge any one that looks like it was improperly marked. These are noted, and if the final vote is close and gets appealed, the first thing they'll look at is the challenged ballots to see if they swing the vote at all.

The main downsides of this system are that if a candidate drops out, you can't remove them from the ballot (not a huge deal; they just inform voters as they go into the booth); election results aren't instant (is it so bad to wait 12 hours for results?); and it takes a lot of volunteers to observe (seems like a good price to pay for democracy).

Washington state is all paper ballots

[93 Escort Wagon]

We are 100% vote by mail.

I actually miss going to a polling place, though. It made voting and democracy seem very real, somehow.

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[93 Escort Wagon]

The state of Washington, in the US.

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[Anonymous Coward]

WA? Here so often our votes get thrown in the trash. It's a terrible system with no accountability.

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[thegarbz]

We are 100% vote by mail.

Wait what? How can you have a democratic system of government by mail vote. If you do that you don't get a democracy sausage

I don't understand America.

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[drinkypoo]

Wait what? How can you have a democratic system of government by mail vote. If you do that you don't get a democracy sausage
I don't understand America.

We don't get democracy sausages, but our laws are made like sausages. Especially when we've got to pass them to see them.

Also, America is not a Democracy. It's an Oligarchy. There are structures placed in our constitution which guarantee this.

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[thegarbz]

We don't get democracy sausages

Low voter turnout explained in one sentence :-)

(Before I get a lecture, this is an obvious joke, the appropriate answer is ha ha).

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[rickb928]

As in reading a real physical newspaper made the news real somehow?

Re:Washington state is all paper ballots

[93 Escort Wagon]

Wait what? How can you have a democratic system of government by mail vote. If you do that you don't get a democracy sausage

Back before we went 100% vote by mail, our polling places were generally well stocked with muffins and coffee. You have to realize that most of our poll volunteers were little old ladies...

I like the democracy sausage concept! I also like the compulsory vote. Unfortunately neither one is likely to ever catch on in America.

Difference Teaches

[cervesaebraciator]

Don't knock diversity of approach. Different people trying something many different ways can be the best way of finding the right way. That's one of the best features of freedom.

Re:Difference Teaches

[currently_awake]

The old saying: "Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing, after they have tried every other choice".

Re:Difference Teaches

[Zalbik]

It's also an awesome way of finding a bunch of really stupid ways to do something....like with electronic voting for instance.

The freedom to try different approaches shouldn't override our rights to have fair elections.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what every attempted form of electronic voting I've heard of does.

Re:Difference Teaches

[Anonymous Coward]

During Ww2 they had a saying .
When the Germans shoot, the British duck.
When the British shoot, the Germans duck.
When the Americans shoot, everybody ducks.

Re:Difference Teaches

[Dragonslicer]

Don't knock diversity of approach. Different people trying something many different ways can be the best way of finding the right way.

Only if people stop doing something the wrong way once it's clear that it's the wrong way.

243%

[Tablizer]

Multi-core bots are people too.

Hmm, 243 is Venus's rotation period. Coincidence?

Re:243%

[sfcat]

Multi-core bots are people too.

Hmm, 243 is Venus's rotation period. Coincidence?

Yes. Also, all of these. Put away the tin foil.

Never forget

[PopeRatzo]

Habersham County’s Mud Creek

Mud Creek is overwhelmingly one party. It is the same party as the Secretary of State, who is now running for governor of Georgia. He's being sued for disenfranchising minority voters, elderly voters and young voters. I'm going to let you guys guess which party it is. Here's a hint: it's the party that is constantly crying about voter fraud that doesn't exist.

Also, to the AC in this comments thread who redundantly posts that it was actually 670 voters of 3,704 registered voters, you should know that on election day, the aforementioned Secretary of State's own website showed that Mud Creek only had 276 registered voters. Magically after 670 votes were cast in Mud Creek, the Secretary of State's website was changed to say that there were actually 3,704 registered voters and not 276 as previously stated. Mud Creek's total population as of the 2010 census was fewer than 2,000 souls (men, women and children).

Re:Never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Mud Creek voting district is not the same as the Mud Creek census area. In this case it is the name of one of the five voting precincts in Habersham county.

What happened is that Habersham county changed the voting districts twice in the last few years. It went from 14 to 2 and then in 2016 to 5 voting precincts.
In the 2016 election, Habersham county had 20,380 registered voters of which 13,890 actually voted. Voting districts tend to be areas containing the same number of people, so a fifth of 20,380 registered is about 4,166, and a fifth of 13,890 would be about 2,778.

The 276 on the state's web server is was probably left over from when Habersham county had 14 precincts or may be just a typo. That number is supposed to get updated by the local people. The low turnout is due to the fact that it was a primary election.

Re:Never forget

[PopeRatzo]

What happened is that Habersham county changed the voting districts twice in the last few years. It went from 14 to 2 and then in 2016 to 5 voting precincts.
In the 2016 election, Habersham county had 20,380 registered voters of which 13,890 actually voted. Voting districts tend to be areas containing the same number of people, so a fifth of 20,380 registered is about 4,166, and a fifth of 13,890 would be about 2,778.

That's entirely conjecture. All I did was state the facts clearly. Your narrative doesn't match up with reality.

First, the Habersham voting districts are not equally divided. Second, the census most certainly measures voting districts. Since Mud Creek is in the most rural area of Habersham, it makes sense that it would be a smaller population than the other voting district. Third, it is most definitely NOT up to the "local people" to update the Secretary of State's website. The current voting age population of Mud Creek voting district is just over 2100. That either means they're registering children to vote in Mud Creek or there's shenanigans going on.

Re:Never forget

[Daralantan]

Mud Creek's total population as of the 2010 census was fewer than 2,000 souls (men, women and children).

Are you trying to say that the soul-less aren't allowed to vote? :(

Re:Never forget

[Registered Coward v2]

Also, to the AC in this comments thread who redundantly posts that it was actually 670 voters of 3,704 registered voters, you should know that on election day, the aforementioned Secretary of State's own website showed that Mud Creek only had 276 registered voters. Magically after 670 votes were cast in Mud Creek, the Secretary of State's website was changed to say that there were actually 3,704 registered voters and not 276 as previously stated. Mud Creek's total population as of the 2010 census was fewer than 2,000 souls (men, women and children).

The Secretary of State is clearly just following the long standing tradition of letting dead people vote.

Re:Never forget

[PopeRatzo]

So voter fraud doesn't exist but "shenanigans" are going on?

Voter fraud implies fraud by voters. That's not happening. What we have in places like Georgia is election fraud. The government itself is cooking the books.

Re:Never forget

[PopeRatzo]

At least be consistent with your bias. If voter fraud implies fraud by voters, election fraud implies fraud by election workers, which are not "The government" they are local volunteers and workers.

No, you've got it wrong again. The fraud is being perpetrated by elected officials and their appointees, not "election workers" in the sense of the people who show up to work polls. It's happening from the county level right up to the statewide official level. Just look at two secretaries of state that are currently running for governor: Kris Kobach of Kansas and Brian Kemp of Georgia. Both men are as corrupt as the day is long and are barely staying one step ahead of the courts (who are closing in, nonetheless). Kobach is now overseeing a recount in his own election. The self-dealing, fraud and outright theft with these guys is astonishing.

https://www.kansascity.com/new...

https://www.kansascity.com/new...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re:Never forget

[wisnoskij]

He's being sued for disenfranchising minority voters, elderly voters and young voters. I'm going to let you guys guess which party it is. Here's a hint: it's the party that is constantly crying about voter fraud that doesn't exist.

You realise that that is a completely politically neutral statement. No one will be able to guess what party you mean without some information on which one you prefer.

Your first statement leans moderately Republican, but then your second seems to heavily favour Democrat.

Irregular voting ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be all those dead people, turning up to vote.

Today's XKCD is relevant here

[raymorris]

https://xkcd.com/2030/

Re:This is clickbait

[evil_aaronm]

I'm from western NY, which is about as "red" as you can get in a "blue" state, and, yes, we absolutely don't use photo ID where I vote. But that's likely because for at least 20 years, the same voting place monitoring folks have watched while I sign the voter registration book. They know me. One of the monitors lives four houses up and has known me since my family moved in in 1972. I don't know if she's [R] or [D], but it doesn't stop her from using common sense: she knows who I am - she knows everyone who votes at that polling place - so she doesn't need to see photo ID.

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[evil_aaronm]

Yes, the recently concluded "blue chip" investigation into the massively fraudulent 2016 election proved all of that. Oh, wait...

RTA, here's what happened to the 'Georgia' evidenc

[Anonymous Coward]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activists-sued-georgias-election-server-was-wiped-clean/

They wiped the drive and degaussed it two days after a lawsuit demanding the data was filed. Suspicious as fuck. What the investigator found was the voting information was public, together with passwords, login details for the machines. In other words, anyone could set any election result and they had no way of verifying it.

I'll say it again, don't show "unity" over the result of the vote, challenge it, force checks and verification until there is no reasonable doubt possible over the result. You only need one fraudulent election to lose a democracy forever, because all subsequent elections will be fraudulent.

It's worth the effort to challenge and verify the data. "One man one vote", not "One Russian hacker, one million votes".

Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[CptJeanLuc]

Here is how one could set up electronic voting. The challenge: votes are anonymous, but transparency in the voting process is needed. How to handle both. Here is the process as I see it:

TL;DR: A public ledger of non-person-identifiable votes that were cast, a system for voters to identify "their" vote and prove whether it was registered correctly, as well as a public register of who casted votes (the vote is still secret) in order to help prevent fake votes from being cast. All enabled through some randomness and cryptographic signatures.

• There needs to be a public register of "who voted". Though voting is anonymous, the fact that you voted does not need to be. This enables accountability because the system cannot produce "fake votes" without significant risk, as they have to produce a person for each vote that is case, and this can be checked later.
• You enter the voting booth. You select your vote (candidate X, abstain, pro/con Brexit, ...).
• The system gives you a (very long) unique receipt number for the vote. You have to add some digits to that number yourself (so the system is not allowed to cheat in choosing a number). The resulting number becomes the "vote ID" for that vote.
• Upon confirming the vote, the system signs the vote (vote ID + vote), and provides a signature to the voter (also available in the form of e.g. a QR code), signed with a private key for that voting maching (which is at the end point of some trust chain). Also, it provides a signature of only vote ID
• If the voter wants, (s)he could e.g. use a mobile app to scan the signatures, to store them and to verify it has been signed, as proof that the signature is valid, so that it can be used as proof that (a) the vote was delivered (vote ID only), or that a vote was cast in a particular way (vote ID + vote).
• The vote ID, the vote and the signatures are printed as a paper receipts for the voter and for the vote handling organization, to ensure there is a paper trail that cannot be tampered with. If tree hugging is an issue, print on recycled diapers or something like that. Voters are requested to retain their receipt (helpful in case of later having to do some random checking of the integrity of the election).
• When voting ends, all votes are published publically in the form of (vote ID + vote). This allows counting votes and identifying unique votes, however only the voters know which vote is his/her vote.
• There is now accountability, because voters can find "their" vote in the ledger, and check whether it has tracked the correct vote. If not, they have proof (in the form of a cryptographic signature) that it is invalid.
• Post-election, notifications are sent to all registered voters, that they have been registered in the system (which helps prevent fraud that people are casting votes in your name, in the name of dead people, etc)

So this kind of setup would make it very risky to try to generate fake votes, as well as allowing the integrity of the votes to be verified after the fact.

Not bad for 5 minutes of thinking (plus some time to refine the idea while typing it up). I am sure some really smart heads could cook up something even better, but this is already miles beyond whatever they have going on in Georgia.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is now accountability, because voters can find "their" vote in the ledger, and check whether it has tracked the correct vote.

Show me you voted the way I ordered you to or face the consequences. If you can verify your vote someone willing to threaten people can influence the elections. That is not what you want, and the anonymity requirement should cover this situation. Your idea is not good enough.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[martyros]

The vote ID, the vote and the signatures are printed as a paper receipts for the voter and for the vote handling organization, to ensure there is a paper trail that

What you've described is pretty close to what most people actually have now, just the reverse (i.e., now people take a scan-tron and pass it into a scanner, rather than filing out a screen and printing a receipt). The main difference is that your system has the additional possibility of verifying the result of your own vote after the fact. But there's still a lot of paper, and it assumes most people still have to physically show up at a polling station. That's not the "all-electronic" voting that people are decrying.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Any system that allows you to check if you voted correctly allows a third party to coerce you into proving how you voted. That allows family, friends, employers, religious leaders etc to demand that people vote the "right way", and encourages the buying of votes by allowing the buyer to verify that they are paying for a real vote.

For democracy to function, it needs to be anonymous, verifiable and SECRET. Paper ballots plus observers hit all three, and scales perfectly well to any size of population.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

What you just described is illegal in the US as far as I know, since it must not be possible for anyone to be able to verify who you voted for, or to make you show proof of who you voted for.
This is why secure electronic voting in the US is impossible.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

This system is essentially no different than printing your name next to what you voted. Any agent who has power over you (e.g. threat of force, threat to your employment, social pressure, etc) can coerce you into providing the vote ID that you were issued to them so they can verify your vote ("if you voted as you said you did, you've got nothing to hide, right?")

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you've just invented blockchain technology!

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[tajribah]

Not exactly. Nobody but you can verify that the vote whose ID you present was really cast by you. When asked for a signed vote, you can just pick one randomly from the public log.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[swillden]

Any system that allows you to check if you voted correctly allows a third party to coerce you into proving how you voted.

Not necessarily. End to end verifiability is possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[jittles]

The vote ID, the vote and the signatures are printed as a paper receipts for the voter and for the vote handling organization, to ensure there is a paper trail that

What you've described is pretty close to what most people actually have now, just the reverse (i.e., now people take a scan-tron and pass it into a scanner, rather than filing out a screen and printing a receipt). The main difference is that your system has the additional possibility of verifying the result of your own vote after the fact. But there's still a lot of paper, and it assumes most people still have to physically show up at a polling station. That's not the "all-electronic" voting that people are decrying.

In many areas it is illegal to take a picture of your ballot and other things that might be used to prove that you voted a specific way. The point being that it is pointless to try and buy votes when you have no way of verifying that the vote you paid for was actually cast the way you want it. This sounds exactly like a system that would allow buying / selling votes quite easily.

Re:Idea how to do robust electronic voting

[strikethree]

Not bad for 5 minutes of thinking (plus some time to refine the idea while typing it up). I am sure some really smart heads could cook up something even better, but this is already miles beyond whatever they have going on in Georgia.

The thing you are missing here is that "they" do not want reliable and accountable voting systems. I think they should be thrown in jail for treason, but meh. This is America, where the country can go to hell in a handbasket as long as someone profits off of it. Not many people seem to care about the country as a whole anymore. It is all special interests.

Never been there.

[SeaFox]

"George is one of four states in the U.S. that continues to use voting machines with no ability to provide voters a paper record so that they can verify the machine counted their vote correctly," the report adds.

I'm curious where this state of "George" is?

Re:Never been there.

[Digital Mage]

It's one of the "Four Corner" states right next to John, Paul and Ringo. :)

Re:Never been there.

[T.E.D.]

It used to be the state of "Georgia", but when it got taken over by the geniuses who instituted the current voting system, the first thing they did was what they'd always dreamed of doing when they got their own special state, they named it "George". Followed closely by "Hugging and petting him and squeezing him."

I have a great idea

[Undead Waffle]

Lets get rid of the electoral college so Georgia can decide our presidential elections. 10 billion votes out of 243, why not?

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[Zontar The Mindless]

The alternative is mandatory national ID that shows your citizenship status. Is this what you really want?

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the recently concluded "blue chip" investigation into the massively fraudulent 2016 election proved all of that. Oh, wait...

What is the narrative today, there is no election fraud or there was a precinct with 248% voter turnout? Both can't be correct.

Somehow people like you and many media outlets like arstechnica choose whichever one favors the DNC, sometimes switching "realities" mid sentence.

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[fafalone]

Maybe if Republicans weren't doing things like placing all the ID places in wealthier areas, poorly reachable by public transport from less wealthy areas, open only during weekday business hours, requiring a not-trivial-to-the-poor fee, disallowing comparble non-state IDs less likely to be possessed by whites, their voter ID whinging wouldn't get shot down as transparently racist.
If you're willing to reform those problems across the country, *then* we can talk about voter ID. Also the right has yet to present any evidence of large scale illegal alien voter fraud.

Re:This is clickbait

[Opportunist]

You know something who told you? That's almost hearsay.

No, wait, it is exactly hearsay. You say something you heard.

Re: 670 ballots ?? demand a recount

[Opportunist]

Too bad it didn't happen in Alabama.

Re:Clear election roll manipulation

[Zontar The Mindless]

IMHO Heritage Foundation needs to face a proper criminal investigation.

You'll have no argument from me on that score. These are the folks who say the cure for poverty is to take money away from the poor and give it to the rich, and they're largely responsible for the making of The Great Global Warning Swindle.

Re:Not "despite", *Because of*.

[geekmux]

The ease of hacking, the lack of accountability due to several paperless models, the "technical failures", the stacked up judges at multiple levels to ensure that any complaints will be in favor of turning red... All of these are no less part of the GOP playbook than disenfranchisement and extreme gerrymandering.

So, there was never a single democrat that voted for electronic voting machines. This was always a republican idea, right?

Hate to point out the obvious, but finding shit security on a new electronic device isn't something you can logically pin on politics. We find all manner of devices to be easily hackable every single day, and no vendor is immune.

Of course they should support its use

[Chrisq]

180% of the Georgian residents questioned said that they were happy with it, so there you go - it's the will of the people

Million ways to fix this problem

[Karmashock]

Everyone knows a million ways to fix this and nearly all of them are better than what we're currently doing.

Re:Million ways to fix this problem

[Karmashock]

An example of someone that has no civic interest in the matter.

You're part of the reason why an obvious problem doesn't get solved. Congrats, you're cancer.

Didn't bother anybody in Detroit

[cascadingstylesheet]

They just stopped the recount when it got a bit embarrassing.

Re:Didn't bother anybody in Detroit

[bongey]

BeauHD has a clinical case of TDS. Not only that he posted a link to McClatchy the Alex Jones of the left.

So much for the US being a democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me like the US is just using the term Democracy as window dressing, while the actual process is manipulated on many levels, from gerrymandering, financing irregularities, fake news and other voter manipulation, active discouraging of classes of voters and now this.

Re:So much for the US being a democracy

[OYAHHH]

I'm sorry but your education has failed you. The United States is a Republic. Very different.

Re:"George is one of four states in the U.S"

[hazardPPP]

No, the other three are Virgil, Al, and Calvin...

If it isn't a paper ballot...

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a valid election result. Computers can't be trusted because there are too many exploits, special interests, etc. At least with paper ballots you can restrict a large portion of access to the votes better.

Vote verification

[zik0]

If any proof of how you voted can be in your possession, you can prove your vote to a third party and that party can bribe or blackmail you based on that proof.

Read history so you don't repeat it.

Democracy

[JBMcB]

Democracy is not absolute power. It is power to rule within the contraints of law, which are constrained by the constitution.

You are conflating a representative democracy with a constitutionally limited republic, which is the form of government the US has. The US elects some of it's representatives in government democratically, but that does not make it a democracy.

England has no formal written constitution. Technically it's Parliament can pass nearly any type of legislation it wants, but practically they are limited by various acts, court rulings, etc... However, they are still a representative democracy.

Gee, I wonder which party got most of the 243%

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...deep red state, a political party that has made stealing close elections an art form (2000, 2004, 2016, and who knows how many congressional, state, and local elections)...equipment that can't be audited, and a 243% turnout. I wonder who benefited (not). America should have stood up and pushed back against the results in 2000 (subsequent recounts showed Gore won Florida, but that was strangely under reported in the United States -- but not elsewhere!), 2004 (Ohio, using unauditable Diebold equipment whose company CEO promised to deliver Ohio to the republicans, had official results that deviated significantly from exit poles in a country where exit poles have a huge sample base and are extremely reliable at reflecting outcomes--except in Ohio in 2004, go figure) and yes, 2016.

We didn't push back, and that emboldened Republicans to continue stealing elections, ruthlessly Gerrymander congressional districts in ways that far exceeed anything anyone, Democrat or Republican, had ever done in the past, and now, even collude with an enemy power to steal the presidency, a supreme court appointment, and who knows what else. Appeasement never works, and it was a mistake to go along to get along going all the way back to Al Gore if not earlier.

And make no mistake, there's a whole lot more of this coming, and the Right Wing won't give a shit (in fact, if they stay true to form, they'll accuse Democrats of what they're doing this fall if and when Democrats take back traditionally red districts as American voters repudiate Trump, Republicans, and all they've come to stand for.

Re:Also the voter roll

[rickb928]

"Heritage Foundation, a neocon election rigging foundation with a stated aim of reducing the people allowed to vote as a means to winning elections."

Citation, please?

Re:This is clickbait

[rickb928]

So, if you were known to the 'monitoring folks' in more than one community, this would be pretty cool, huh?

Nice place you live in, with undetectable population change. I'm being 0) snarky - no, you don't live in such a place, and 1) supportive - living among lifelong neighbors is a huge blessing. Cherish that.

Paper helps with certain problems

[sjbe]

Opponents of electronic voting talk about "paper ballots" like they are some magical thing than ensures fair elections. That is nonsense.

I don't think anyone (rational) is claiming paper ballots are a cure all. But they do demonstrably help solve certain validation problems that are difficult to solve without them given the state of the art in computerized voting machines. Introducing computers into the mix does not make these issues go away and in fact makes validation of the process a fair bit harder in a lot of cases. Having a (literal) paper trail makes it easier to check and verify certain parts of the process are working as they should.

Frankly anyone who trusts a voting machine from a proprietary vendor with closed source software and undocumented hardware is an idiot. Everything about the design and construction of the machines (including source code) needs to be verifiable by the general public and the administrators of the voting system. Source code and hardware design should be open source and available to anyone interested. With paper ballots this is simple. It's harder (though arguably worthwhile) with computers but still needs to be done.

Headline is crap

[roccomaglio]

The article says "276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots ... later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct." So the issue is that a bad number of registered voters was reported. Actually 3,704 registered voters cast 670 ballots. So slightly less than 1 in 5 registered voters casted votes. The initial reporting of the wrong number of registered voters did not have any affect on the election, it is a non story.

"Mistakes"

[sjbe]

People make mistakes, and sometimes they do it on purpose. It scales by adding more people, assuming you can find volunteers.

True but the problem with computerized voting is that it only takes one person to scale the "mistakes" and they still sometimes do it on purpose.

Verification of counts

[sjbe]

Indeed, people are not, in fact, 100% accurate counters.

Unfortunately unless you have some way to verify the code and hardware and process you cannot claim with certainty that computers are either. All voting machines (software and hardware) should be open source and designed to be as simple and verifiable as possible. If they cannot be verified then they should not be used.

Problems either way

[sjbe]

My precinct takes a slightly more efficient approach. Rather than using a machine to capture the vote and print it out, the voter marks their vote directly on the paper.

There are problems with that too. People fill out ballots incorrectly with some regularity. A lady in my office administrates the ballot counting process in our town and she has told me some of the stupid things people do like literally filling in every bubble for every candidate (think like voting for both Clinton and Trump on the same ballot). Computers at least have the ability to restrict people from making invalid choices and ensuring their paper copy prints correctly. There is no perfect system and stupid people tend to find a way to be stupid no matter what you do.

Re:Problems either way

[Cederic]

I think everybody should be allowed a vote.

I also think that anybody too fucking stupid to understand, "Select one of the candidates below" is also too fucking stupid to know the difference between them, and if they fuck up their ballot paper then democracy hasn't really suffered.

Problems with any process

[sjbe]

Walk in, get verified, mark ballot by filling in the ovals, feed ballot into machine, machine scans and counts, and the paper ballots are there in case you need a recount. Why don't all polling places use this method?

Because it isn't perfect. People (no kidding) do things like fill in every single bubble for all candidates, they write personally identifying info on the ballot, they don't fill in the boxes adequately, etc. I'm not arguing that any other particular method is better but I'm not convinced the method you describe is necessarily the best possible. (and my district uses the same process as yours)

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[wyHunter]

What? Let's see, when I lived in Colorado every place I had to go to get voter ID done, well, let's just say I was happy I could lock my car. That was true when I lived back east, too. Personally, I think the left loves the situation they way it is because they can cheat, cheat, cheat by having people vote multiple times.

Skip the damn computer

[OYAHHH]

And just use paper. Be done with it.

So, Republican voter fraud

[whitroth]

Which we knew all along. They, just like Trumpolini, accuse everyone else of doing what they're doing. They're the ones purging voter roles, even though multiple studies show that actual voter fraud is a fraction of 1%.

It's Jim Crow, updated.

With a paper ballot, even if they're scanned, the physical record of your vote is still there, and a recount really is a recount. For all-electronic voting machines, a "recount" isn't - you press the button, and get exactly the same total, and there's no way to prove it wrong or right.

Years ago, the study led by Prof. Avi Rubin,and reported here on /., showed that Deibold was using FRIGGIN' M$ ACCESS, a bloody spreadsheet, NOT a real database, with records of every transaction.

No one should be seated from Georgia until they have a valid election that's verifiable.

Re:So, Republican voter fraud

[EmptyHead]

You well-reasoned, calm, documented comment is greatly appreciated. Thank you for maintaining a non-partisan discourse and setting an example for others to follow.

Re: RTA, here's what happened to the 'Georgia' evi

[HornWumpus]

Sauce for the goose...you supported the open crook...now live with it.

No surprise who the manufacturer is

[fedos]

Of course the machines were made by Diebold.

Re:Told yâ(TM)all

[HornWumpus]

Grandma Sherman always said her granddad should have finished the job!

Which way did he go George, which way did he go?

[T.E.D.]

"Tell me again about the ballots, George."

Is there any technically literate person...

[ConceptJunkie]

Is there any technically literate person who does not work for a voting machine manufacturer that thinks they are a good idea?

Non clickbaity details

[zioncat]

From Ars Technica article:

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.)

Mud Creek voting precinct is one of fourteen voting precincts of Habersham County, Georgia. You can check the location and area of Mud Creek precinct here. That page doesn't list the population data but this page shows population of each blocks in Habersham County. According to that data Mud Creek precinct (comprising three bottom left blocks) has a population of 5,864, so 3,704 registered voters sounds about right. I think this statement from Habersham County Election Supervisor is exactly what happened.

We learned today that an error was made in the reporting of the number of registered voters in the Mud Creek precinct during the May 22, 2018 General Primary Election. This typo, showing the incorrect number of registered voters, did not affect the vote count. The vote count was correct, and the percentage of voter turnout was also correct. This typographical error had no impact on the results of the election.

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[fafalone]

So, none of the states where these problems are reported? Got it. I'm in NJ, the liberal northeast, and even for me to get an ID, it's 90 minutes of walking/PATH to get there round trip, at a cost of $5.50 (add $3.20 for the bus if I don't want to walk 2 miles), and they're only open limited weekday hours. Not all people can take off work for minimum half a day to go do that; what if I had a kid to pick up and no one else to do it? It's a multi hour wait. Then the ID itself is $26, so now I'm out $31.50.
You seriously going to tell me with a straight face none of this has a disparate impact on poor, predominantly black voters? That none of that is any problem? Get real.
If the left loves the multiple voting so much, something involving huge numbers of conspirators, why isn't there a a shred of proof ?

Mandatory xkdc entry

[terrycarlino]

https://xkcd.com/2030/

Oh also this

[CaffeinatedBacon]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Inside the polling place will be an area (usually a voting booth) where the voter may select the candidate or party of their choice in secret. If a ballot paper is used this will be placed into a ballot box in front of witnesses who cannot see for whom the vote has been cast. Voting machines may be employed instead.

Re: Oh also this

[c6gunner]

Ah, I see. I misunderstood your objection due to the weird phrasing of the second bit (couldn't figure out wtf an "all n gangster" was supposed to be).

Yep, you're right, you probably wouldn't be allowed to record the actual drop. You could still do it (you can get tiny cameras disguised as pens if you really want to be sneaky) but it would be more difficult than filming the actual filling out of the ballot. May as well save yourself the hassle and sell your vote by mail.

Just wow

[easyTree]

If they can't cheat the voting system without it being obvious, maybe they aren't smart enough to be in charge of anything?

Re:100% the Dims' fault

[wyHunter]

In order to get public assistance, a drivers license, or anything else you have to visit the appropriate govenrment office. But, hint, organizations like the League of Women voters could no doubt be asked to help transport people who need transport. i'd even support giving people the money to do it, too. Hell I'll even write a cheque, if we can eliminate the endemic voter fraud we've had for decades.

Obligatory xkcd comic -- a fresh one

[eric_harris_76]

https://xkcd.com/2030/

Hand couting and verified.

[eionmac]

All 55 million votes in both local and 'General' (National) election in UK are a) placed by voter in a sealed ballet box, b)opened in front of representatives of all candidates in a counting place. c) counted by hand in front of these representatives. d) tally made, e) if a close vote a recount can be requested by representatives. Once in a vote with a single digit difference between two candidates in a 20 odd thousand electorate there were four of five recounts. If equal then the Presiding Officer in charge of counting settles it by a toss of a coin.
Verify is done by representatives. Voting papers are kept for a long time (usually the period of the term of office). Court can re-order a further recount if necessary.
The local counting offices pride themselves on being fast (except where remote islands are involved) In national elections some districts announce result within an hour!
Many hands make light work. Counters are usually civil servants or teachers or such like on a fee for the election work.
This has worked to ensure: you vote in secret, the count is public , and a check system is fully operational.
All done with a paper voting slip.
(Note slip carries a number identifying the voter, but unknown to counters)

The one thing that makes paper ballots preferable

[rcharbon]

Of course paper ballots have problems too. No system is perfect. The only advantage that paper ballots have is that they limit the number of people who can commit fraud to those who have physical access. No Russians, teens, etc... hacking from anywhere. That's a big advantage.