Top Voting Machine Maker Reverses Position on Election Security, Promises Paper Ballots (techcrunch.com) 184
Election Systems & Software has championed electronic voting machines in the US. Now it has had a change of heart about the need for paper records of votes. From a report: TechCrunch understands the decision was made around the time that four senior Democratic lawmakers demanded to know why ES&S, and two other major voting machine makers, were still selling decade-old machines known to contain security flaws. ES&S chief executive Tom Burt's op-ed said voting machines "must have physical paper records of votes" to prevent mistakes or tampering that could lead to improperly cast votes. Sen. Ron Wyden introduced a bill a year ago that would mandate voter-verified paper ballots for all election machines. The chief executive also called on Congress to pass legislation mandating a stronger election machine testing program. Burt's remarks are a sharp turnaround from the company's position just a year ago, in which the election systems maker drew ire from the security community for denouncing vulnerabilities found by hackers at the annual Defcon conference.
We Need Both (Score:1, Informative)
Re: We Need Both (Score:1)
What horrors?
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Complying with customer requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
Top Voting Machine Maker Reverses Position on Election Security, Promises Paper Ballots
And coincidentally more and more voting jurisdictions are requiring paper trails. Amazing, manufacturers complying with customer requirements.
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no problem, election fraud with paper ballots is art perfected well over a century ago.
This public service announcement brought to you from Chicago, where the dead vote early and often, for over a century.
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Yep. I once bought my mom a T-shirt for voting day that said, "I'm from Chicago... TWO BALLOTS PLEASE".
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but that's the best part, the fraudulent paper ballots are already in the hopper, whether actual voters show up or not is irrelevant
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Re: Complying with customer requirements (Score:2)
Perhaps they come from the same place as the paper ballots that are sometimes found floating in San Francisco Bay?
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Around here, ballots that are "floating around" wouldn't be valid, since ballots are all uniquely numbered, and all the ballots in some range are only accepted as valid in the ballot box for which that range is recorded.
A person intending to vote with a ballot that they found "floating around" would generally have no way to know which specific ballot box a ballot with a given number has to go into. The voter is handed their ballot by one of the people manning the ballot box that particular ballot needs
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fraudsters and bribed people
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you're talking about getting "caught" by very corruptible and corrupted Chicago cops. Money all around. Anyway, old story not just for votes but other parts of "democracy" and "procedure", whether restaurant and building inspections or licenses.
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Yeah, a computer can print out all the receipts they want, it still does not mean the vote was counted that way. Entirely meaningless precaution, unless they actually count that paper ballot itself and then why bother.
Clearly the whole plan behind electronic voting was cheating elections, and that is exactly what they have done, as often as they can get away with it.
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The problem is there are too many black boxes, and the electorate, has learned it needs transparency in actual counts.
Voting has become increasingly important, as a lot of elections lately have been won by narrow margins. Including Presidential Elections getting elected via Electoral Majority vs Voter Majority. Bush 2000 and Trump 2016. There is a general risk to people getting in power without the Majority Mandate behind them.
THis doesn't mean what you think it means (Score:5, Informative)
This is a weasely distinction. What people need and thus think this means is "hand marked paper ballots". What they mean is, a touch screen that records electronically then prints out the votes on a CVS style receipt tape. Huge flaws with that
1. If the voter can see it, they can photograph it and prove how they voted. Ballot sales ensue
2. If the voter cannot see it, then it's not a record of their vote
3. It's nearly impossible to recount ballots streamed on paper tape by hand. People have tried and it was a disaster
4. these things jam and this takes a votoing machine out of service-- long lines ensue
hand marked paper ballot read by optical scans have none of these problems, and when they jam you can still collect the ballots in a box.
This is NOT what they are offering.
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Why can't the voter photograph their hand-marked ballot before feeding it into the optical scanner?
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Why can't the voter photograph their hand-marked ballot before feeding it into the optical scanner?
Good question. And the answer is clear and unambiguous. You are free to write and take photos of as many handmarked ballots as you like in the privacy of the polling booth. But you only get to insert one in the slot. And you are not allowed to photograph anything as you walk across the room to put it in the slot. So a photo proves nothing at all. thus it cannot be used for coercion or for sale or for any other purpose related to proving how you voted.
However the way the paper tapes on touch screen ma
Re:THis doesn't mean what you think it means (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't the voter photograph their hand-marked ballot before feeding it into the optical scanner?
Yeah, with cell phone cameras what you do in the voting booth should not prove your vote. I think the Norwegian system is pretty much fool proof, after passing ID check you go into the voting booth. It has stacks of pre-printed ballots for each party + blank ones, you pick one and you can also give personal votes to individual politicians. But you don't deposit them in the voting booth, you fold it double so the vote is on the inside and the outside is identical for all of them. Then you go outside, get a stamp from an election official - that way folding multiple votes inside each other wouldn't work as only the outermost would get the stamp - and deposit it in the ballot box.
The key element here is that you don't do the deposit in private. You can like totally go into the voting booth and snap a photo/video of you picking up a vote for party A, then put it back down and vote for party B instead since you can't film yourself leaving the booth, getting the stamp and actually putting that ballot in the box. Technically speaking taking a photo inside the voting booth is illegal too, but it can't really be enforced and lots of people want to put their vote on Facebook. Oh and since they're pre-printed they are easily optically scanned and counted. The only sabotage is that sometimes people take all the ballots for a party they don't like, forcing people to either fill out a blank vote or ask election officials to restock. Which they regularly do anyway so it doesn't ordinarily run out, it's only in cases of sabotage.
P.S. We have relatively little influence on individual representatives, the parties make their ordering and it's rare that the general public will go against it. But unlike the US we have a real selection of parties since it's proportional representation (once you're above a 4% minimum, though some get a representative or two without it). From what I've understood several of the fractions inside the D/R duopoly would probably be their own party here, then form a coalition after the vote instead. Biggest party's leader usually gets to be prime minister and then they distribute ministers by share of the vote, it's not a separate race like becoming POTUS.
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3. It's nearly impossible to recount ballots streamed on paper tape by hand. People have tried and it was a disaster
This is the most serious of all the issues you listed.
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That is pretty strange, as paper ballt counting is the norm in europe.
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the font is small ...so the voter can see whole ballot through a window at time of casting.
In my precinct, the font size remains the same. The machine just shows me one "page" at a time and I click "next" until it is done.
they preserve the order of voting in an immutable serial record
In my precinct, I am free to chose one of 20 or so machines, somewhat scrambling the order.
I get that you prefer ballot sheets, but they too have their downsides. For example, it is much harder for a ballot to be improperly substituted in the middle of a tape. Also, tapes tend to be associated with systems that prevent voters from unknowingly under/over voting.
Part of the pro
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I don't see why you Americans make voting so difficult. In Canada, we conduct our elections with paper ballots, marked with a pencil by either a check, x or similar mark. Ballots are counted, by hand, in triplicate, under the scrutiny of representatives from all parties on the ballot, and the results are available within a few hours of the polls closing. Recounts do happen, automatically if the margin is less than a certain fraction of a percentage, but rarely do they change the results.
Yes, the US has 10x
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Americans like to overwhelm their voters with a lot of votes to be cast at once. Everything from President to dogcatcher with prosecutors, judges, sheriffs and dog catchers all politicized. Here we vote one day for a MP, a different day for a MLA or whatever your Provincial representative is called and a different day for the town positions. This also enables different parties on each level or here, no parties at the municipal level (excepting the big city). Which also allows other parties to form and succe
Voter ID too (Score:2, Insightful)
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Both parties, but mostly California where the Democrats gave themselves permission to do it.
In other words, both sides are bad!
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I've been repeating myself for years about this.
The idea is that a voting machine creates a paper ballot with the same information in both human & machine-readable format. The voter then looks at this to verify the human-readable portion and puts it in a ballot box. It has no identifying information on it. When the ballots are counted, you feed them through a machine tabulator that reads the machine-readable code, so you get fast and accurate ballot counting.
Ideally I would like to see the voting and
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The idea is that a voting machine creates a paper ballot with the same information in both human & machine-readable format. The voter then looks at this to verify the human-readable portion and puts it in a ballot box. It has no identifying information on it. When the ballots are counted, you feed them through a machine tabulator that reads the machine-readable code, so you get fast and accurate ballot counting.
Why bother with a machine at all? just hand count. It's what many advanced nations do, and it works quite well.
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Not in any Canadian election I've voted in. You enter the polling place, show your registration card, get pointed to a table where they check your ID against the voting list, give you a ballot, which you take into a booth, mark, fold and give back and watch it put in the box. You're also free to hang around and watch the whole process including the counting at the end of the day.
Note that last Federal election, the Conservatives changed the ID requirements to attempt to disenfranchise certain people. My wif
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Interesting. Of course the Provinces are in charge of their own elections and can do it how they like, at least to a point. I've only ever voted in BC.
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No, separate human- and machine-readable sections are exactly what you *DON'T* want. The voter must be able to verify the same marks that are being counted. Otherwise a compromised machine could print one thing in the human-readable section and something else in the machine-readable section. Scantron (fill in the oval) type ballots are good for this, regardless of whether the human or machine fills them out. The human can verify the exact same marks that the scanner is going to count.
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The problem is that most Voter-ID regulations are used to suppress certain classes of voters. By restricting the forms of acceptable ID to those that are (more) difficult for the poor and otherwise disenfranchised to obtain (driver's license etc...) and then they also make it difficult to obtain that ID (closing DMVs before the election and other dirty tricks).
In Canada, we do require ID at the polling stations, but the range of allowed ID is pretty extensive. Driver's license, credit card, bank card, bank
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There are far more poor and marginalized people who don't have the "acceptable ID" then people trying to commit voter fraud. But they're the "wrong kind of people" I suppose.
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Tens of millions of fraudulent votes vs your entirely fictitious guy who can't get a free ID issued to anyone. Well, my assertion is as valid as yours.
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My wife (of the wrong race), who has always voted with her maiden name and only has ID with her maiden name had her registered name changed on voting day to her married name (look at list the day before, right name, show up and wrong name), which fucked up her voting as planned by our government on the advice of your republicans.
Changed my opinion about ID.
Someone smarted up (Score:2)
They realized their job is not to convince people to buy their product, but to make a product people want to buy.
First principle of capitalism.
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They realized their job is not to convince people to buy their product, but to make a product people want to buy.
In other news, four million advertising executives were found dead today. Each of their heads had exploded. In addition, they all had their browser open to gurps_npc's comment.
Hand counted paper ballots! (Score:1)
Electronic voting (Score:2)
Couldn't each person who votes be given a unique number that is associated with their ballot that would enable them to verify their vote was counted correctly? In the interest of secrecy, you might not want to use your home or phone internet connection to do the verification, but public terminals could be set up for the purpose. Enter the number and make sure that the vote was counted for the candidate you selected. I suppose such a system would still have weaknesses, and there's always the nuisance fact
Re:Electronic voting (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the anonymity of the ballot is making it such that an individual's vote cannot be bought. If you can prove how you voted then you can sell your vote.
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Politicians have been buying votes without any proof of how the ballot was cast for centuries. I don't think that would be any more of an issue if people could verify that their vote was tallied in the right column.
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Vote By Mail FTW! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vote By Mail FTW! (Score:4, Informative)
Oregon and Washington have been doing it for many years. It has proven to be reliable, convenient, and cost-effective
It's only convenient. There is nothing else good about it. It allows vote buying, vote harvesting, and is not verifiable.
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No system is verifiable because then we'd be really having a system that can buy and sell votes.
Verifiable is mostly about ensuring your vote was cast properly. In other words, you know that your ballot made it into the ballot box. After that, chain of custody and multi-party supervision ensures that everything in each box is counted.
The bit that impedes vote selling is that you are able to scratch your ballot and request a new one, introducing the possibility that your selfie does not match what you put in the box.
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It has proven to be reliable, convenient, and cost-effective.
It also facilitated the 2018 election issues [google.com] in North Carolina's 9th congressional district.
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It's convenient as it makes it easy to verify the wife and employees are voting the right way. can't allow people to vote in secrecy, they might vote for their choice instead of mine.
Remember kids... (Score:2)
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That's why you have the option of watching the count here.
Of course (Score:2)
It's time for ES&S to sell another complete round of voting machines with new flaws in the name of election security.
Governments should blackball vendors that have a track record of producing flawed product, particularly when it comes to voting machines.
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Is Net Connectivity Required? (Score:2)
A big part of the drive for this seems to be not a reduction in effort, but part
Re:Don't let Russia steal another election for Tru (Score:4, Informative)
Worse states like Texas and NC are actively trying to suppress voter roles with questionable practices. And of course both parties have learned how to draw congressional boundaries. Both. To me a simple rule would be boundaries can contain no concave edges except along the naturally occurring state boundary edge. Texas has some truly funky boundaries that look like bell bars.
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Re: Don't let Russia steal another election for Tr (Score:2)
Ooooh, ooooh, ooooh - can I sit on this "impartial" government body?! Just think of the opportunities for lawful-bribery... er, I mean, for honorable disinterested public service.
Re:Don't let Russia steal another election for Tru (Score:5, Insightful)
A paper trail is in everyone's best interest except "the bad guys" and would have been useful in the elections last time where the swing states showed electronic machine areas leaning Trump and paper ballot areas leaning Hillary. We would have known if this were just statistical noise causing something innocent to look suspicious, or if there really were anything to worry about.
If the votes were legitimate then it would have proved that Trump deserved to win and there wouldn't be so many question marks over their authenticity... so helps Trump. If the votes were tampered with, then it would have proved that Hillary should have won- and people's votes would have been counted as given. Either way- it helps whoever legitimately wins (and therefore America) - only loser would be people trying to defraud America.
This isn't a partisan issue, it is in everyone's best interest, it either confirms a winner, or confirms fraud, whichever the truth may be.
We have Trump because Dem Primary 2016 rigged (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump won because the Democrats picked the candidate that the Clinton Political Machine wanted. Not the candidate that rose from a competitive primary process, ie the most capable, as in 2008 when she first lost. And I'm not necessarily referring to Bernie. Major Democrats were kept out of the 2016 race to clear the decks for Hillary. We could not have another robust primary like in 2008, she might lose again. So we had the dufus who mostly agreed with Hillary and the Democratic Socialist (aka Marxist) outsider who was not really a Democrat as alternatives. A complete sham. This is why we have Trump, not because of Russia. "Rigging" the primary is not simply the stuff with Bernie, it was quietly telling legit Democratic Party contenders to sit this out, "you don't want to be the Man who derails the first Female President do you? Its her turn."
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Party bosses behind the scenes choosing candidate (Score:3)
Parties are free to hold elections as they like. They cannot be legally rigged.
When party leadership creates rules that devalue party memberships votes and augmented their behind the scenes influence on the outcome, that counts as rigged too. Little different than the old local party bosses is smoky backrooms picking the candidates as in past centuries.
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Which Russian security agency do you work for?
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Which Russian security agency do you work for?
LOL. Another Russian Conspiracy to avoid facing the truth, the uncomfortable truth about the clinton machine that has been running the DNC for decades. Wake up from your delusions or risk Trump winning again. You have to face and recognize you errors if you want to win.
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Does anyone say that $50k in ads swung the election, or is it perhaps simply a strawman?
The IRA did far more than place $50k in ads.
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Does anyone say that $50k in ads swung the election, or is it perhaps simply a strawman? The IRA did far more than place $50k in ads.
The "millions of impressions" made to facebook users cited are based on these ads and their juvenile memes being reposted / reused. These juvenile memes did not change votes, they amused those who were already decided and unmovable in their position.
Re:We have Trump because Dem Primary 2016 rigged (Score:4, Informative)
She was targeted specifically because she made it clear she would actually stand up to Putin.
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She was targeted specifically because she made it clear she would actually stand up to Putin.
LOL. She got played by Putin over and over as Secretary of State, Putin did not fear her. Do you think Trump's (admittedly advisor influence, he is himself an idiot so doing the right thing is likely someone else's idea) killing hundreds of Russians in Syria or opposing Russia's growing influence in Europe (Nat Gas etc), or laying sanctions on various oligarchs is part of the Putin's plan? That's some game of chess there, sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice.
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Angry, aren't we?!
Who isn't? Trump is President.
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That's all completely correct. The Democratic donors wanted her for various reasons and made sure there was no way to beat her in the primary.
But that's not why she lost entirely. It's foolish to point at one cause and say "See, that. Nothing else exists." Her crappiness as a candidate made her VULNERABLE. Russia could not have swung it if it had been a decent candidate. She would not have lost if Russia hadn't gotten involved. Both were necessary, neither sufficient.
"She would not have lost if Russia hadn't gotten involved" that is an article of faith of Clinton fans. Not an established fact.
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Russia successfully hacked into voting systems in Florida and other key swing states
Eh, a bit of real evidence would be very helpful...
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Our intelligence agencies are all lying together. Or telling the truth Everyone one of them has admitted this. So that means they are either telling the truth, or all 17 are lying.
Hacking into various state voter databases is something quite different than changing voter records or changing votes. None of the latter occurred. Accessing the systems is all that those agencies claim.
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Hacking into various state voter databases is something quite different than changing voter records or changing votes. None of the latter occurred. Accessing the systems is all that those agencies claim.
So, where did you get your "None of the latter occurred" statement from, then?
Clearly not from these agencies.
Maybe somewhere from the bottom part of your body?
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Hacking into various state voter databases is something quite different than changing voter records or changing votes. None of the latter occurred. Accessing the systems is all that those agencies claim.
So, where did you get your "None of the latter occurred" statement from, then? Clearly not from these agencies. Maybe somewhere from the bottom part of your body?
Bad guess on your part. The agencies made it quite clear that they found no evidence that any vote was changed, no evidence that voting systems were altered. They were quite clear that they were only saying that some election department computers were hacked into, which is something very different than changing votes.
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Aren't a lot of these machines designed not to leave evidence of tampering? Not finding evidence doesn't say much beyond that if tampered, the tamperer knew what they were doing.
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Aren't a lot of these machines designed not to leave evidence of tampering? Not finding evidence doesn't say much beyond that if tampered, the tamperer knew what they were doing.
The various agencies were referring to regular computers / servers, not voting machines. For example the server with the states database of registered voters.
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OK, though there's still too many machines with no way to properly audit them
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What you said is 100% true, yet look how the drones have down-modded this all the way to "1 Troll".
Some people are so bound up in their political identity that they'll suppress the truth out of partisan loyalty. Here's a good explanation (I didn't write it, but it describes the current situation perfectly):
Identity Fusion - aka “Sports team” mode
A majority of the United States is confused by the behavior of ~34% of the rest of the country. To grasp what has happened, you just have to realize tha
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Re:Don't let Russia steal another election for Tru (Score:4, Interesting)
Add this one: Tendency to agree with all or most of the party platform. The party platforms are such a construct of compromise that only a psychopath or team player could agree with it completely.
Yep, and that's how he managed to get the brain-dead evangelicals to vote for him, by claiming he was against abortion rights.
Donald Trump is by far the least "godly" candidate ever fielded by any party, yet the magic phrase "anti-abortion" won them over like tipsy goobers at a county fair.
Re: Don't let Russia steal another election for Tr (Score:3)
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Conservatives are ruled by fear - of replacement, losing power, or disgust. Less regulation except for defining genders in marriage. Get the government out of my healthcare except women's reproductive health. Restrict access to everything, except guns. Smaller gov, taxes except spend loads on a huge military. The exceptions prove the rule.
Liberals chose one topic in particular to be Conservative on, guns. Why didn't one party make an exception and the other remain consistent?
Liberals are not based in fear,
Re: Don't let Russia steal another election for Tr (Score:2)
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Thanks for proving my point, AC!
You checked off most of the boxes, are you also wearing a MAGA hat right now?
Re: Don't let Russia steal another election for Tr (Score:4, Informative)
Russians DID successfully hack at least three states, though any vote total flip has not been proved.
Re: Don't let Russia steal another election for T (Score:2, Interesting)
Correction: there is no *unredacted* evidence in the report to support Russian hacking helped Trump. But, you know, appointing your own boot licking AG has it's perks.
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Russia successfully hacked into voting systems in Florida and other key swing states to help elect Trump.
This poster is delusional, please take him to the infirmary.
Found the partisan Trumptard who disbelieves all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, who all unanimously state that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.
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Show me a single one that maintains it was done to elect Trump.
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The propaganda failed (well except for you of course) demtard, it was four.
By the same standard the US media interfered in the 2016 elections.
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Russia successfully hacked into voting systems in Florida and other key swing states to help elect Trump.
This poster is delusional, please take him to the infirmary.
Found the partisan Trumptard who disbelieves all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, who all unanimously state that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.
Sorry, but you are the partisan person in the conversation. The 17 US Intelligence agencies were very clear that no vote was changed by the Russians. Sure the Russians spent tens of thousands of dollars on facebook ads, ads with juvenile memes, juvenile memes that were copied and reposted by many. But do you really think a image of Jesus support Trump and Satan supporting Hillary really swayed any open minded independent voters? The millions of "impressions" claimed by these Russian efforts did little more
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But it was ok when monkey bush believed em tho right?
Clapper wasn't proven to be a serial liar back then, by 2016 he was.
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Corporations can be made up of people from either party.
They can.
They aren't.
Ask WSJ.