Ask Slashdot: Should The DHS Designate Elections As Critical Infrastructure? (politico.com) 279
The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly looking at designating elections as critical infrastructure, on par with the electricity grid or banking system, to help protect against cybersecurity threats. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said during a breakfast with reporters on August 3rd, "We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure. There is a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others as critical infrastructure." Demerara writes: I'm fascinated to hear the opinions of Slashdotters on the practical implications of any decision to designate "elections" as critical national infrastructure. For those of you who have worked on systems that are already under this regime: given that there are just over 90 days to the November elections, what can be achieved with respect to elections and in particular to electronic voting machines (whether direct-recording electronic (DRE), touch screen etc., or precinct ballot scanning machines)? What might the designation require of state and county boards (the buyers of these systems) and what would the vendors have to do?
If I thought it would help... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be all for it. I just don't take DHS as being competent enough to actually make a real difference. In fact, I suspect they'd just add layers of policy and procedure that would further interfere with making sure our elections are fair.
Yes, elections are critical, but NO, DHS isn't the right people to try to make it any better.
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Classifying it as "critical infrastructure" would mean the introduction of voter ID laws. Which is good. I mean for fucks sake, what kind of third world country is the US when it doesn't even know who's voting and if they're even citizens?
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Requiring IDs for voting before you actually have a national ID program is putting the cart before the horse.
Re:If I thought it would help... (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to make a national ID program before you do that, so every citizen has easy and free access to an ID.
No, you don't. You just need to mandate that the states provide it. Which would be a good idea, in general.
Most (maybe all) states already have a very low cost "non-drivers ID", what we used to call a "drinker's license". If people are complaining that voter ID laws discriminate, then fix the difficulty in getting the ID, and leave the very sensible requirement to reduce vote fraud.
Though, really, in-person vote fraud is likely to be peanuts compared to electronic vote fraud this year. The Russians have already demonstrated their willingness to hack US systems in order to help Trump. It's not like anyone has a right to be surprised if Trump wins with 100% of the electronic vote, since we will of course ignore security until it's too late.
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Bringing your ID to vote is not an undue burden, any more than successfully finding your polling place or being able to wait in line, etc. There are a few legit objections to requiring an ID, since they can be hard to obtain, but that one doesn't fly.
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Try being poor sometime and being unable to get a driver's license or state issued ID card, unable to take time off of work to get one, unable to pay the fees, etc.
Just vote by permanent absentee ballot. No ID necessary.
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People without driver's licenses are the most likely to forget a special ID used only once very two years. And that tilts towards poor people more often than not, and towards urban core areas (rich or poor). And those people tilt more Democrat as well. So there's a bias built into the statistics that way too.
The way we have it now works. You show up. Your name is on the list. If it's already been scratched off then there's been a problem, and you should NOT be turned away from voting but instead be al
Re:If I thought it would help... (Score:5, Informative)
People without driver's licenses are the most likely to forget a special ID used only once very two years. And that tilts towards poor people more often than not, and towards urban core areas (rich or poor). And those people tilt more Democrat as well. So there's a bias built into the statistics that way too.
Are you kidding? I had a non-driver's license for ages. Try cashing a check without some form of legal ID. Try walking into a courthouse without that. Try getting a new copy of your social security card--so you can get a job--without one. (Most of the things they accept other than legal photo ID can't be obtained easily without it--and if you think keeping track of a card 'used only once very two years' might be hard for some people, most of those you will use even less...)
Oh, and you can totally use one of those things when buying beer & cigarettes, at the adult store, and at the pharmacy to pick up medicine. I'm not even sure it was noticed when I did do...parts of that list while using that ID that it wasn't a driver's license.
There's a lot of things you actually do need a legal ID for, and the thing you really ought to be concerned about is that nobody has complained about those requiring ID because it discriminates against the poor--and at least two of these I'd say are ultimately going to be more important to them than voting.
If nothing else? If you're registered to vote you can be called jury duty, and as far as I can tell it's your problem if you don't have the ID required to make it through security--but you can be in legal trouble for not showing up. That ought to have been enough to require the state make at least some extra effort to ensure everybody can obtain one...
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then we will know how often voter fraud happens at the polling locations which would indicate whether voter ID is even necessary or not. Meanwhile wholesale voter fraud is a bigger issue.
I think this last part is technically incorrect. "Voter fraud" (as I understand it) is when the voters are cheating (you can call it "stuffing the ballot box"). What you're worried about is "election fraud", which is where the elections themselves are rigged, by the people running the elections. That is indeed the real
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Don't you guys have voters lists? ID by itself only proofs that you have ID with a picture of yourself on it. Drivers licenses and such are as easy for a non-citizen to get as a citizen and I'd assume State ID is similar. Just go to the right bar and pay $20 and you'll have ID that is good enough for the volunteers at the polling station.
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How are they voting? They're not on the voting lists. If they ARE figuring this out then we should be seeing stats of how many times someone shows up to vote only to find that they're already checked off the list. All this is just fear mongering, and you hear it over and over, some nutcase will swear he saw several buses of illegals showing up and filed through the polling booths, and then the idiots believe it, repeat it, and it turns into accepted truth.
Have you ever been to college? Fake IDs are triv
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Funny, I've heard from DAs tales of people who don't exist or did but are very, very long-dead who are (were?) on the voting lists, and every so often it hits the news that a cat/dog/dead-for-a-looong-time person got found out as being on the voting lists. I know distinctly that the cat was supposedly registered to vote simply to show how little effort is made to ensure that, well, the individual is a living person old enough to vote--and it ought to have been painfully obvious that the cat was, in point o
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That's the problem, the rumors of voter fraud as the polling stations have spread so often that the a lot of people just accept this as fact, enough so that a state run by fiscal conservatives was willing to waste a huge amount of tax payer money to investigate. Today they're probably still convinced that voter fraud is rampant and that they must have done the investigation wrong.
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No, he thinks every state ID costs $20,000, requires dozens of trips to the state capital of three states, and require the person to name the latest Superbowl champions.
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Which is good. I mean for fucks sake, what kind of third world country is the US when it doesn't even know who's voting and if they're even citizens?
Some third world countries have tighter voting regulations and higher voter turnout that put the US electoral system to shame.
Re:If I thought it would help... (Score:4, Informative)
It costs a whole ZERO dollars to go get a State ID in any state [...]
Under CA law, a state ID card cost $29. If you're on public assistance, it costs $8. Seniors can get a state ID card for free.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/dl/fees/idCard_fees [ca.gov]
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Under CA law [dmv.org], you need ID to actually register to vote. Kind of hard to argue against presenting ID at the voting center if you're legally registered, eh?
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Under CA law, you need ID to actually register to vote.
That's under existing law. When I first registered to vote nearly 30 years ago, I had to prove my current address by presenting a piece of mail with my name. That was a different time. Americans were only under the threat of nuclear annihilation. We didn't have time to nitpick each other over voting.
Kind of hard to argue against presenting ID at the voting center if you're legally registered, eh?
Kind of hard to argue against my comment when you took my comment out of context, eh? OP wrote that getting an ID card in ANY STATE was ZERO dollars. Not true in CA.
Since 2015, it seems ID is free in California (Score:2)
At least in certain circumstances.
"Effective July 1, [2015] AB 1733 requires county recorders to issue free birth certificates to any person who demonstrates he or she is homeless. On Jan. 1, the law also will require the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a free original or replacement identification card to anyone who can verify homelessness.
Re:If I thought it would help... (Score:5, Interesting)
This. There are good reasons that poll taxes were found unconstitutional fifty years ago. And this is basically a poll tax. Adjusted for inflation, those unconstitutional poll taxes were about the same cost as California's ID card. If it was unconstitutional then, there's no reason it shouldn't be unconstitutional now.
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I generally file this mode of rhetorical sentiment as "good at law, bad at thinking" though on a grumpy days it's s/law/shallow legal bickering/.
Let's take a closer look.
Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections [wikipedia.org]
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Let me take a second shot at that.
Back in 1937, a large constituency of the economically marginal blacks in the deep south would have been involved in subsistence farming, which in the extreme case can almost function as a cash-free economy.
I think your standards of affordability need to be a little bit more sophisticated that applying the aggregated, long-term national inflation rate.
Would the Court also take that view? My guess is that they definitely would, hue of wig notwithstanding.
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I would argue that things are worse for the poor now. Subsistence farmers could trivially raise a small amount of extra income by raising their prices slightly. They had some degree of control over their income, albeit not infinitely (because of supply and demand). Most of the poor now don't have that
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In theory, sure. In practice, shifts in the court have almost invariably resulted in laws that were previously seen as constitutional to be seen as unconstitutional after presentation of additional justification for overturning those laws. I'm not aware of any case where the courts later decided that the constitutional issues with a law no longer mattered. More to the point, if the courts did so, we should worry, because that would almost invariably mean that our rights are being eroded rather than stre
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You must have had some form of ID already if you've got a job that you'll be taking time off from without pay.
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a) I've never had to show ID to work - and even if it were true that people today have to show ID to get a job - that only means that they have to HAD ID at some point. You ever lost your wallet?
b) there are multitudes of under the table cash-paying jobs out there, many of which are filled by people who are eligible to vote.
Or are you happy to disenfranchise them as well?
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I guess I'm happy for you that you cheat your taxes but remind me why that gives you a moral right to whine about the difficulty of getting an ID to vote.
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I have never shown ID to work. Never.
I am a US citizen, born here a very long time ago.
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I have never shown ID to work. Never.
I am a US citizen, born here a very long time ago.
Since your last job (or retirement) a host of new laws have gone into effect requiring employers to verify identities of new hires. Pretending you don't know about any of that is all very libertarian-chic but doesn't mean much for the scope of the topic at hand.
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Every employer is required to ccomplete an I9 under federal law since1986 or so . That requires ID that wwould satisfy all voter ID laws i am aaware of.
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Yeah, dems need to check their history and I hope all of the minorities check their history too.
History is irrelevant. All that matters is what the parties stand for today. That fact that the Democrats were the party of segregation a century ago doesn't matter one iota.
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Remember, the Democrats used to be the favored party of segregationists, until Nixon enticed them to become Republicans. The whole reason for property ownership was the keep blacks in their place and out of the polling station.
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Not to mention there are indirect costs involved - such as taking time off work to waste half a day waiting at DMV.
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You can't get a job without an ID
Want to bet on that?
You want to know how many times I've shown ID or a SS card in the last thirty three years I've been employed?
Exactly zero.
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Do you have an ID card to show if needed?
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Then your employers after 1986 have been in violation off federal Law. After 1986 every eemployer is required tossubmit an I9 which requires enough types of ID to qualify for voting inevery state I am aware of.
wel, unless you have had the same employer for 30 years.
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No, I'm a W-2 employee, I'm a US Citizen, and it's my recollection that I've never presented an ID to work - and I know for a fact that I've never shown an SS card, because I lost it in the 1980's and never replaced it.
Are people paid on 1099's somehow fit for disenfranchisement?
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*I* do - but concerned with *other people* who don't have the means to obtain one.
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No, I'm a W-2 employee, I'm a US Citizen, and it's my recollection that I've never presented an ID to work - and I know for a fact that I've never shown an SS card, because I lost it in the 1980's and never replaced it.
Are people paid on 1099's somehow fit for disenfranchisement?
You are either a liar, or your employer is breaking the law.
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The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)
Pub. L. 99-603, 100 Stat. 359
Prohibits employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized
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Every election we hear about one or two cases. This election we have seen literally Millions of cases of election fraud, and everyone says we have toi focus on making sure Trump doesn't win.
What people who make idiotic arguments like yours are oblivious to are the many frauds that ALREADY happen through mail-in votes. Why do you think conservative states are all about mail in voting? Shutins in nursing homes get ballots. People who haven't had a connection to reality in years are sent ballots, which their A
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What? Where?
There are many examples around the world of successful measures against voting fraud. One interesting example in India is very cheap voting machines with a very low maximum vote count. If someone steals a machine and spams the result it's a drop in the bucket. The simple design and price makes the Diebold shit look like the pork it is.
Personally I like the idea of paper ballots with electronic scanners to read them. It
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Since you say that voter fraud is "well known" and "documented every goddamn election", perhaps you can share some of these documented cases that have been investigated and found to be true and describe the prison sentences the criminals who committed this fraud received.
But anyway, if you wanted to steal an election, I don't think voter impersonation would be the way to do it. Attacking electronic voting machines that have lax, minimal, or no security wo
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1)Odds are the TSA has left a bad taste in the mouths of the upper brass of the DHS, so they may not be as eager to jump into things as they once might have. Better to
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nothing more government employees can't fix (Score:5, Insightful)
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I disagree. Perhaps you've heard of tbe TSA. . .
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Perhaps you've heard of tbe TSA.
The last time I took an airplane trip, all the TSA agents were standing up and doing their jobs.
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Which, of course, is exactly the problem.
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Which, of course, is exactly the problem.
Not every government job can be a desk job.
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Vulnerable (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/27/by-november-russian-hackers-could-target-voting-machines/
https://followmyvote.com/us-electoral-process/voting-system-vulnerabilities/
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/04/16/399986331/hacked-touchscreen-voting-machine-raises-questions-about-election-security
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People raising issues about electronic voting go way back further than that. Here is a search on Risks List for Electronic Voting [ncl.ac.uk] (oldest is at the top)
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The first line of defence, of course, is to make sure all voting machines have a permanent paper record of each vote.
For that to be an effective defense, you also need to make sure that the electronic vote matches the paper vote. Since paper ballots are easily human- and machine-readable and more difficult to discreetly tamper with, what advantage do electronic voting machines bring to the table?
If hand-counting ballots takes too long for our ADD society, we should standardize on a ballot layout and let many companies offer ballot scanners to speed up the process.
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Not so many vulnerabilities in pencils and paper [wikipedia.org].
Oh, hell yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not only should voting be considered critical infrastructure, it should be mandatory and a national weekend holiday.
I'm not sure if Americans could cope with compulsory voting (Oh noes the gubmint is forcing my voice to be heard. That's a first amendment violation!!!!).
However there is a movement to shift voting to the weekend: Why Tuesday? [whytuesday.org]
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Link really should be Why Tuesday? [whytuesday.org]
Re:Oh, hell yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, hell yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Party affiliation only matters for states with closed primaries where only those with a stated party affiliation can vote in that party's primary election. Which is sort of reasonable if you accept that political parties are private organizations that can regulate who votes in their primary.
Of course, there are larger problems with this process -- like why does the state sponsor an election for a private organization's leadership? Why do the winners on the Democratic and Republican side automatically advance to the general election?
I'd like to see a primary election that was party neutral and where the top 3-4 polling candidates advanced to the general election, regardless of party. In many cases, the runner-up in one party is actually a more desirable candidate than the winning candidate in the other. In districts (municipal all the way to state level), a single party may dominate so thoroughly that there's no good way for a rival bearing the banner of another party to successfully challenge the dominant party, especially if they're forced to adopt unpopular stances of the rival party.
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Once everyone has equal access to voter ID, then the courts won't object to it, since that was the basis of rejecting voter ID in the first place.
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You can make people check a box but you can't force them to educate themselves about the issues and find out where the candidates stand on them. There's enough people that blindly vote for the party because their family always have or because X looks better or votes for Y because Z is a woman/black/etc. Now you want to add a bunch of people who will go in and just pick the best sounding name? Please don't bring in mandatory voting.
There are lots of people that want to vote, especially in the US, but are bei
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You can make people check a box but you can't force them to educate themselves about the issues and find out where the candidates stand on them.
If people have skin in the game, they will take voting seriously.
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I served in the goddamned military for six years. If I don't want to vote, I figure I paid for my freedom already.
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If too few people vote that freedom you paid for goes away.
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I've done enough for 'democracy' without someone forcing me to vote against my will.
Voting is a civic obligation. Serving in the military doesn't cancel that obligation. If anything, serving in the military should have reinforced your obligation to vote.
So the current party in power has control (Score:5, Insightful)
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Check out this link. Romney is wearing a blue tie and Obama is wearing a red tie. By your logic, Obama is a conservative.
http://www.tie-a-tie.net/obamas-winning-necktie/ [tie-a-tie.net]
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wtf? I haven't mentioned conservatives or liberals. What are you talking about?
YOU WROTE: "The biggest difference between D's and R's is what color tie they wear."
Democrats are considered the liberal party and wear blue ties. Republicans are considered the conservative party and wear red ties. However, Republican Romney wore a blue tie and Democrat Obama wore a red tie at a debate in 2012.
By your COLOR-CODED LOGIC, Romney is the liberal and Obama is a conservative.
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No I did not. Liar.
My comment was directed to the AC. You replied to my comment as if you were the AC disputing my comment. Perhaps you forgot to post anonymously?
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Correction, you guys started talking about partisan crap when I was talking about current administration, which is whatever party it happens to be, and changes as the years go by.
You stuck nose into someone's thread and you thought it was relevant to your own thread. You must be new around here.
[,,,] but maybe you were arguing against yourself as an AC.
I stand behind my own comments. The good, the bad, the ugly. Less confusing that way.
If it just means (Score:3, Interesting)
If it just means one more place for TSA agents to stand around and pat me down, than no thanks.
I am sure that is all that it means coming from this administration as well. I mean its the DOJ under this admin that has been basically pushing to prevent any voter id laws from staying on the books, and suing an states that try to restrict vote by mail ( a security hole you can drive a truck thru ) at all. They then insist there is not voter fraud ignoring the fact that they have pretty much prevented the implementation of any effective audit mechanisms that might detect it.
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If it just means one more place for TSA agents to stand around and pat me down, than no thanks.
Don't forget about the likelihood of being arrested and charged as a "terrorist" if you happen to fire up a network analyzer within 500 yards of the building.
Yes, this critical infrastructure concept is absolutely loaded with potential abuse.
not happening. (Score:2)
The model of government today in the US is to outsource every bit of work that needs to be done to contractors who have to get their margins and aren't interested in
Re:not happening. (Score:5, Informative)
Take the choice of election technology, ballot design, and security out of the hands of 5,000 different jurisdictions, and replace it with well-designed, thought-out, and implemented hardware+software that a dedicated, concerned group of experts is responsible for -- that's what this would take. And is impossible.
Or, you know, do what Canada does. Keep the voting process pencil and paper and count ballots by hand. Canada typically has the results in from a general election within 4 or 5 hours of the polls closing, and recounts rarely change the results by more than one or two ballots. Every ballot is counted at the polling station, and every candidate has the right to have scrutineers present to witness that counting.
Yes, Canada has 1/10th the population of the US, but on the other hand this is a problem that scales linearly. You have 10x the population, so you have 10x the polling stations, 10x the returning officers, scrutineers, etc... It works, it's reliable, and is pretty resistant to any kind of interference. Any "attack" (in the computational sense) would have to be carried out on a widely distributed basis.
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... ...
It works, it's reliable, and is pretty resistant to any kind of interference.
But it's just not sexy :-)
Seriously, I live in Canada and during the last federal election campaign my head almost exploded when I saw that the Liberal party (now the governing party) was promising to seriously look at online voting if elected. Online voting - a problem-ridden solution in search of a problem.
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Canada generally requires a photo ID to vote, which we in the US know is actually RACIST! So, I think we can ignore any other commonsense measures you may use.
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Until this year, you could show your registration card, a bill with your name on it, your photo ID, or you could swear an oath to Her Majesty and be done with it (the latter took some time).
Disband the DHS (Score:3)
Open It Up (Score:3)
Have DARPA hold one of it's challenges for companies to come up with a process and/or system to validate election procedures. Have the Air Force, the NSA and the State Department vet it. Open source the whole thing and make it available to any municipality who wants to use it.
I'm *not* talking about E-voting, by the way, but the process and/or software used to tabulate votes. It shouldn't matter what method is used to cast the votes. E-Voting could be included in the design, but it should be input agnostic.
Absolutely not. (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as the States elect Presidents, Senators, and Representatives, they are responsible for their election processes.
To enforce any Federal controls or processes beyond the civil rights of access is an overreach, and time to stop these. Examples of possible DHS overreach I would oppose are:
- Mandating electronic or paper-based polling.
- Supervision of vote counting and or a requirement of approval by federal officials of any sort. Court appeals are already conducted, and are tolerable.
- Federal handling of voting materials.
We've let the Federal government reach into too much already. If there is a groundswell of concern over federal elections, perhaps they should focus on the most recent Presidential election, and the glaring irregularities seen there. Plenty of work to be done in those limited instances, before usurping state management and control of THEIR OWN ELECTIONS.
Sure, put the fox in charge of the henhouse (Score:2)
Hello? You want to let the federal government control the process by which its own executives are chosen? Hasn't anyone ever done any game theory, AT ALL?
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Well it is critical but (Score:2)
It is critical but
The big "but" is what laws would they enforce that are not well served today.
Voter fraud has yet to be shown to be a real problem.
Perhaps because all the metrics are measured by German VW engineering services.
The current laws on computer hacking make the breaches of HC and the DNC servers
totally illegal. But wait the hackers were from off shore and the US has no jurisdiction.
Flaws in systems and applications are not getting fixed because TLAs at times see their
knowledge of flaws a bits o
Nothing to see here.... (Score:2)
For starters... (Score:2)
Better idea: Have the NSA do it (Score:2)
So, we all like to hate the NSA for all of their spying, but they really have a very high level of technical competence, and they are actually quite good at carrying out their mission (or what they perceive their mission to be). If the president were to issue a directive requiring the NSA to treat the integrity of US elections as a national security issue, and ask them to do a thorough evaluation of the systems and processes and to issue recommendations for how to fix or mitigate any perceived problems, I e
Nope, nope, nope! (Score:5, Informative)
DHS is a big waste of taxpayer dollars as it is. No reason to go giving it more justification to continue to expand.
Paper Ballots counted by hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Too late for number two and three, but number one is probably the most important anyway and is by far the most difficult to audit in case of chicanery. WHY do we need computers to vote? What is the rush in getting the totals? My guess is that having real time or near real time election returns is driven mostly by the media and has been from the beginning. Newspapers wanted the scoop (remember Truman vs Dewey?) and the 24 hour cable news channels live for election night so they can "CALL" the election before the polls close.
Call me a Luddite if you wish but the more people actually involved in the voting process, and especially the counting of votes, the less chance there is that one or a few people can put their thumb on the scale. My vote is to go back to PAPER ballots counted by people from EACH party or person in the election in an open counting room with live coverage. It might take a few days to know who won, but it isn't a ball game, it is an election and knowing who won or lost in record time is not the point. The point is that the vote MUST be honest and counted HONESTLY.