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DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System (vice.com)
samleecole writes: For years security professionals and election integrity activists have been pushing voting machine vendors to build more secure and verifiable election systems, so voters and candidates can be assured election outcomes haven't been manipulated. Now they might finally get this thanks to a new $10 million contract the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched to design and build a secure voting system that it hopes will be impervious to hacking.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
The first-of-its-kind system will be designed by an Oregon-based firm called Galois, a longtime government contractor with experience in designing secure and verifiable systems. The system will use fully open source voting software, instead of the closed, proprietary software currently used in the vast majority of voting machines, which no one outside of voting machine testing labs can examine. More importantly, it will be built on secure open source hardware, made from special secure designs and techniques developed over the last year as part of a special program at DARPA. The voting system will also be designed to create fully verifiable and transparent results so that voters don't have to blindly trust that the machines and election officials delivered correct results.
Vote by mail also leaves a paper trail in the form of the ballot. I also find it very convenient to take my time researching the candidates, time that is better spent than waiting in line at a polling station. Personally delivering the ballot to the county clerk on election day also helps ensure it doesn't get 'lost'.
The US wants stability (because it is more profitable) so it promotes freedom and democracy around the world. A secure voting machine sounds like exactly what is required. Without some way of maintaining a democracy after the fact, what point is there in military intervention?
Good luck getting these machines used in the US. There is too much money pushing for existing proprietary solutions. So I think one should not assume that this system is designed solely for us. Their target will be global.
As for votes out counting the number of registered voters you are likely misinformed. I have spent a number of years investigating cases like that. What I find in most cases is that the reports in the news media are mistaken. To give you an example, it has been the practice of some state to assign the counting of absentee ballots to certain precincts resulting in more votes than precinct members. Another way this shows up is incorrect reporting of registered voters. There are often two lists of registerd voters. There's the list of voters including those who are still elegible to vote but are pending deletion from the list because it's been many years since they voted, and the list of expected active voters which is what all the polling companies report in the news since that's what's relevant to estimating outcomes or looking for suspected foul play . Some states have same-day registration. And finally there are the new multi-precinct voting stations-- typically used in early voting-- that let people fill out and deposit the ballot in a precinct other than their own. Thus the number of voters frequently is reported as larger the precint's expected registered voter turnout. But it's nearly always this and it does not happpen "many many times" as you think.
I have personally seen shuttle buses of non-English-speaking illegals being taken to more than one voting location in Spokane WA. In other words they voted more than one time, and should not have been allowed to vote in our elections at all. I have heard this practice also takes place in Seattle. They were not even trying to hide it - I asked what they were doing and they told me. I wanted to see where they came from so I followed one of the buses, which just went to another voting location - three different ones that I saw before needing to get back to work.
Until the media stops ignoring this kind of thing I think it will just get worse. Time for voter ID laws.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
The Department of Defense does a lot of things that are designed to promote democracy, under the theory that democratic countries just don't declare war on one another (or at least, are far less likely.) Notably, they were (are?) heavily involved in TOR.
Also, current voting machines are a clear threat to the US,and their job is to deal with those threats.
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