Seattle-Area Voters To Vote By Smartphone In 1st For US Elections (npr.org) 115
A district encompassing Greater Seattle is set to become the first in which every voter can cast a ballot using a smartphone. NPR reports: The King Conservation District, a state environmental agency that encompasses Seattle and more than 30 other cities, is scheduled to detail the plan at a news conference on Wednesday. About 1.2 million eligible voters could take part. The new technology will be used for a board of supervisors election, and ballots will be accepted from Wednesday through election day on Feb. 11.
King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company providing the technology. Once voters have completed their ballots, they must verify their submissions and then submit a signature on the touch screen of their device. Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. That will be the way people are caught if they log in to the system under false pretenses and try to vote as someone else. The King County elections office plans to print out the ballots submitted electronically by voters whose signatures match and count the papers alongside the votes submitted through traditional routes. "Voters who use the smartphone portal also have the option to not submit their ballots electronically," notes NPR. "They can log in, fill out the ballot and then print it to either drop off at designated drop-off locations or put in the mail."
King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company providing the technology. Once voters have completed their ballots, they must verify their submissions and then submit a signature on the touch screen of their device. Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. That will be the way people are caught if they log in to the system under false pretenses and try to vote as someone else. The King County elections office plans to print out the ballots submitted electronically by voters whose signatures match and count the papers alongside the votes submitted through traditional routes. "Voters who use the smartphone portal also have the option to not submit their ballots electronically," notes NPR. "They can log in, fill out the ballot and then print it to either drop off at designated drop-off locations or put in the mail."
Name and birthday alone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name and birthday alone? How many data breaches do we have per year?
Are you even trying?
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Voting for a two week period is fine, with requiring employers to give 1 or 2 hours off during work hours doing that two week period.
Voting is arguably the most important activity a average citizen can participate in to affect our government.
WHY THE HELL ISN'T "VOTE DAY" A NATIONAL HOLIDAY?
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This is why places are reducing extended voting hours and closing precincts as their population expand with the "wrong" demographic distribution.
Not just name/birthday... (Score:3)
Name and birthday alone?
They claim that the signature (also required) is easily checked to be false (using the same mechanism they validate mailed in votes with) and therefore acts as authentication...
I am personally a bit dubious myself.
Signature provides no security. (Score:5, Interesting)
The number of people who are skilled enough at handwriting recognition to recognize a fake signature is very low. Even amount trained professionals.
The ability to compare a signature on paper with the mess a person can produce on a phone's touchscreen? That's zero. If anyone's signature on a touchscreen looks anything like a signature on paper, then that signature is faked by computer, guaranteed.
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And when you physically show up to the polls, they can recognize you?
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That's a much better system than it sounds, and leaves a paper trail. Cell. phones, not so much on either count.
Re:Not just name/birthday... (Score:4, Informative)
It's also a touch screen signature which lacks any and all of the finer details needed to properly verify signatures.
When someone hands me a tablet or phone and I have to sign it, it's always basically just a nonsensical scribble, no where near my real signature.
On the surface this is a really stupid idea, see quote in article, but it's probably designed to inflict some type of voter suppression, I'm just not sure what. The article doesn't give much information in this regard.
citizen: *sends in vote on their phone with a scribble*
state: *scribble doesn't match proper signature, ignored*
citizen: "Look at my "I voted" Facebook post!"
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On the (Microsoft) surface this is a really stupid idea,
I see what you did there!
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You would hope they would do some simple checks like making sure they don't get 10,000 votes from one IP address.
On the plus side it should be more noticeable if there is fraud because people will get a "you have already voted" message. With other types of voting fraud it's largely invisible to the victim.
Not that there is much voting fraud.
Re: Not just name/birthday... (Score:2)
You would hope they would do some simple checks like making sure they don't get 10,000 votes from one IP address
So when 10,000 people cast votes while stuck in rush hour traffic, you're going to invalidate them because they're sourcing from the same NAT drain as everyone else on the cell tower next to the Interstate.
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Isn't using your phone while driving, even sat in traffic, illegal?
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I can't sign the same signature twice for the life of me. And that's with a pen. On a touch screen (which mind you does not record pressure the way the dents in paper do) I might as well just scribble. It's ironic since I'm old enough to have gone through many (truly physically painful) hours of practicing cursive writing in elementary school (never use it anymore, I always use print letters)
What this system does is put a bunch of "signature verification experts" in charge of which votes get counted. Su
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hanging over you to check that you voted for "the right person"
would put a damper on democracy.
As long as an independant review was done (Score:1)
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so if I am in the Dem square mile my vote is dem, and another for Trump
Washington doesn't have a Trump square.
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No? WA has motor voter, mail in ballots that are opt out. This is very intentional situation in a state full of sanctuary cities and recent immigrants of all sorts.
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I don't understand why vote registration cards don't have a random 12 digit number printed on them that would act as voting authentication.
It wouldn't even truly matter if they were unique. But it would certainly slow down UserA from voting as UserB.
The voting system wouldn't even need to store that value, a hash would work just fine.
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Trying to do what;
Improve election results by replacing the weakest link: the voter. Seems reasonable given that the average phone is much smarter [youtube.com] than the average US citizen.
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What you actually mean is votes should be indoctrinated and vote as they're told to.
This "educated and informed" crap comes up every time the DNC loses.
You immediately smear the people who didn't agree with you as stupid and ignorant.
Cut that shit out. It just makes you look like an asshole.
In 2015, some people voted the way they did for very good reasons.
In 2015, some people voted the way they did for very bad reasons.
And these two camps are completely bipartisan, with no one party holding dominance in ei
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This is not, or at least should not, be a partisan issue.
I agree this should not be a partisan issue, but it's hard to keep a straight face when
Democrats: Election security is paramount! Hackers are stealing our elections! [ed note: but the voting machines are offline]
Also Democrats: Let's fucking vote with a cell phone, and all you need is someone's name and birthday!
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Politicians are partisan (Score:2)
Who would have thought?
And the first thing that they consider about any proposal to fiddle with the voting system is whether it will benefit them or work against them.
They care almost as little about being fair, reliable, open, effective as the average citizen. Normal people do not care at all about democratic processes, they just want their man to win and voting is a chore.
This is just Natural Selection. Politicians that are good at getting themselves elected get elected.
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I believe you left out a small but critical caveat:
"rightists argue that making it easier for voters to vote in a highly untraceable, unverifiable, and unmonitored (meaning no method to prevent external pressures from impacting your vote) way is a bad thing because it might elect more democrats."
You may want to question why Democrats want to remove all protections from the voting booth that allow a free and fair vote?
This is Seattle ... (Score:2)
I for one can't wait for the Seattle area supervisor write in winner,, due to hacker, Mr Hitler-twat McBoat Facehead.
This is Seattle: Bill Gates.
Touch screen signatures! (Score:5, Insightful)
-So can they just 'throw out' votes for signatures they didn't like?
Re: Touch screen signatures! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yes, they can throw out votes they don't like. My signature contains zero letters and would be impossible for most to replicate, but a touchscreen has few pixels and I'm sure a minimally proficient forger could get close enough.
I'm equally certain that I sign very differently depending on my mood.
There's no way this is secure.
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Let me be the first (Score:5, Funny)
Let me be the first to congratulate the new Board of Supervisors Boaty McBoatface, Ronald McDonald, Captain Picard and Chewbacca.
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Given that Boaty McBoatface is a pure science type guy, he gets my vote.
sewer rat might might taste like pumpkin pie (Score:2)
It's not just that absurd results might happen. The system might never be hacked at all. But sewer rat might might taste like pumpkin pie, but I'll never know. And you'll never know if the system was hacked.
But the thing is, unexpected election results will always occur. If they didn't we'd never need elections in the first place.
The purpose of elections is to convince people that the unusual is the public will and therefore to accept it.
You can't convince anyone if the elections are made hackable.
Vote
GoodSpaceGuy 2020! (Score:2)
You laugh, but it might finally be the year for GoodSpaceGuy!
Write-in candidates (Score:1)
Verify voting (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't check how your vote was counted, then assume it was counted for "the other guy". Open voting worked fine for the first 100 years, and only ended because the Civil War caused some issues. Being able to see how your vote was counted is more important that being able to hide your vote from your employer. It's time to go back to Verified Voting.
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Being able to see who you voted for is how authoritarian regimes give themselves a veneer of democratic respectability. No need to rig the vote if you can just intimidate people into voting for you.
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There are cryptographic designs that would allow only the voter to be able to see their own ballot. Of course, if we end up in a really bad place politically these schemes would have to involve a walk-in one-person privacy booth with no cameras allowed such that nobody can be forced or coerced into showing their exposed ballot to anyone.
These fall apart because A) all computer security falls apart when it involves securely distributing digital keys to users, because nobody ever, ever, wants to put in the e
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You keep saying this without any evidence.
How do you determine that there is no voter fraud? Because, none is found? How would one determine that a vote was fraudulently cast in the current environment? And yet, Democrats keep pulling out all the stops to remove any possibility of gathering evidence, claiming that a normal part of modern life ( a picture ID) is somehow making it harder to vote.
Before you spout the nonsense that someone did an investigation, or some academic did a study, what evidence is
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It's been investigated. Trump had it investigated most recently but didn't find anything.
You can't seriously be suggesting taking action that disenfranchises people when there is no evidence of a problem.
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And no one collected or investigated these reports?
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Also, with the secret system, stuffed ballots can't be investigated. By design.
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The only reason I can see to oppose verified voting is that someone thinks the current level of "massive fraud that has stolen many local elections and possibly 3 or more presidential elections" is that they feel the fraud benefits them, which it does, until it doesn't.
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Any reports detailing this massive fraud? How come Trump's investigation didn't find any?
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Secret vs open ballots had no effect on a complete disregard of law.
Your claim that lawlessness would taint the system is absurd. Already, I target a 90% democratic county, and print some large (but not too large) number of ballots that are marked for the Republican.
The secret ballot system allows two ch
"Verified Voting" is a HORRIBLE idea (Score:3)
Verified voting is the only solution to the current fraud.
Verified Voting will lead to punishing the losing side in elections. No matter what its adherents say, it'll inevitably result in being able to identify individual voters and their choices.
"You voted against our guy? Now we know where you live, where you work, where your kids go to school. Now the reprisals begin."
The American ballot is anonymous for a damned good reason.
Re:"Verified Voting" is a HORRIBLE idea (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed.
I don't know why so much of the country just can't do it the way I've always done it, in the 3 different states I've lived in, in the small towns and the moderate sized cities.
You walk in, talk to the helpful staff, and sign next to your name and address on the voting roll. They give you a numbered ticket. You walk over to someone else, hand them your ticket, and they hand you a paper ballot.
The candidates have broken arrows next to their names. You fill in the shaft connecting the tail and the head for the person you want. It takes a fair bit of ink to do this. Or, it's a simple bubble fill.
Ballot goes into the scantron. That counts the votes.
Why is this so good? First, if someone tries to vote as you, there's going to be a signature on the books when the second person comes in. That immediately puts the person in a 50/50 situation of being discovered on the spot. If you're the 2nd person, they might not be able to catch the 1st, but they at least know it happened.
The election staff have numbered tickets for the number of voters, a book of signatures, and a stack of counted ballots at the end. If all of those numbers don't match, there's something funky. That makes auditing pretty easy. It also makes auditing the results helpful as well. The total number of votes for all candidates should be damn close to the total number of voters.
You can also hand-count in the days after the initial results are released, if you don't trust the machines. That's not a bad way to balance the desire to have results quickly along with the ability to certify that the machine counted correctly.
Lastly, this system is designed to keep voting fairly anonymous but control access to voting to who is legally allowed to.
The downsides of this are fairly minor. You do need to be physically present to vote. You do need a pile of paper ballots printed ahead of time, and a stash of markers. You do need a scan-tron machine deployed and configured if you want the quicker results. But that's an OK price to pay for democracy, I feel.
And pretty much all of the problems with this are at least as bad or worse problems with any other method of voting.
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Ballot goes into the scantron. That counts the votes.
Does it let you see which candidate the vote was cast for? Does it allow you to change your ballot if the system somehow counted it for the wrong person?
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The numbered ballots make it possible to match people to votes.
In Australia, the number of ballots is carefully monitored -- start with a number of blanks, subtract number of votes, end up with number remaining. But they are not individually numbered.
They are counted by hand in front of scruiteneers selected by the candidates. Takes about 1 hour after polls close. No machine counting needed. And we vote 1, 2, 3, 4, not just X because most Australians do know how to count.
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Nothing in my post indicated numbered ballots, because there aren't any.
There's a numbered ticket, to prevent someone slipping in and getting a ballot. And there's a separation between the name checkers and ballot givers due to our party system, where in some instances (party primaries, mainly) in some states you have to choose which party's election you vote in.
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The American ballot is anonymous for a damned good reason.
Yes. Because the open ballots were abused in the Civil War. When secret ballots were forced on the south, the armed poll workers would help those minorities vote, and would check it was properly marked. Oops, you secret ballot was marked for the wrong guy? Must be a mistake. And the ballot was destroyed, and the voter killed.
That's how good the secret ballot protects the voter.
The current system allows unlimited ballot stuffing. So long as ballots are secret and untraceable, there is no way of stopp
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When I vote (Canada), I have the option to hang around and watch the ballot box where my ballot was deposited right until it is opened and counted. There's always a few people from the major parties who watch the whole process like hawks.
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I'm pretty sure I'd be free to inspect the ballot boxes in the morning, at least in reason, it would be hard to allow 10,000 people to inspect them. It's all pretty open.
Elections Canada supplies pencils to mark the ballot though you are free to use your own marker and the way the simple ballots are designed, it would be hard to do the double printing. We only have a list of perhaps 6-12 candidates to choose one from and there's nothing stopping me from making a fancy mark that I'd recognize during the coun
Perils of Computerized Voting (Score:5, Interesting)
Computerized Voting is flawed, because it cannot meet the following criteria:
- Anonymity: a ballot cannot be traced to an individual, so there is no pressure or reprisal
- Auditability: ballots can be recounted with witnesses from various candidates/parties. Software on the other hand can be modified by one corrupt programmer or installer for a bribe, under pressure or for ideology. Even if a committee supervises the software release, this is a single point of failure (see next point), and there is no guarantee that "this software" is what ended up on the web site, or released as an app.
- Decentralization: ballots should not all go to one location to be counted (where it can be switched, or stuffed). Otherwise, you can bribe or threaten a few people to get a favorable result for you or your friends.
- Transparency: the entire process should understandable to a lay person
There is no problem with having a machine scan the completed ballot to make counting easier. The paper ballot is still the authoritative vote, and can be manually recounted if needed.
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Aren't the ballots just a list of names with a party symbol next to the name?
Another problem with America's voting system is overly complex ballots. Here (Canada), generally elections have one answer, who you want as your representative with Municipal, Provincial and Federal elections being separate elections, though municipal elections are more complex.
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Anonymity: a ballot cannot be traced to an individual, so there is no pressure or reprisal
Can be implemented.
Decentralization: ballots should not all go to one location to be counted (where it can be switched, or stuffed). Otherwise, you can bribe or threaten a few people to get a favorable result for you or your friends.
Can be protected against, but not in black-box voting systems. The votes have to be cast and counted in a way ensuring verifiable integrity end-to-end, and that requires observation from beginning to end in a manner ensuring tampering can't occur. This is doable (but complex) with computerized voting in a particular location, but not over the Internet. Whole batches of votes can then be verified by all observers and publications to have come from that location, allowing central counti
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: More stupid than stupid (Score:1)
Vote by mail is not necessarily anonymous. It enables coercion because it does not require the vote to be made in private. Someone could still demand to see you mark your ballot or hand you a premarked ballot to sign and mail as a condition of employement. Social pressure could also be used to vote a certain way or be unfriended.
Voting in private is necessary but not sufficient. End to end security of voting materials and machines is also needed. Widespread voter coercion existed in Chicago for decade
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"or hand you a premarked ballot to sign and mail as a condition of employement"
the ballots come to your home address. there aren't blank ballots your boss can fill out for you and give to you.
likewise, as much as someone like that would like to do this sort of thing, it risks going to serious prison for a long-ass time. this is the reason why this kind of voter fraud is so rare in this country; it just isn't worth risking years and years in prison to change a vote or handful of votes.
the stuff you need to w
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Why not just let someone vote for you... (Score:2, Insightful)
...if it's that much of an inconvenience?
This is the sort of nonsense that defines why the Electoral college is so important - it firewalls the rest of the voting system from stupidity to some degree, confining a state's dumb decisions to that state's votes only.
If you think this is a good idea, then I'd like to show you https://haveibeenpwned.com/ [haveibeenpwned.com] list of largest breaches and 425 pwned websites that thought their shit was reasonably secure.
Short of true biometric (DNA based) keys (which is still vulnerabl
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Problem with the Electoral College is that the benefits are very hard to measure but the down sides are immediately and blindingly obvious - the President often lost the popular vote.
Fortunately you are getting close to the point where enough states agree to subvert the system to ensure that the popular vote winner always wins the election too.
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The electoral college is a popular vote system (it's a proxy vote by popular vote). Like all popular vote systems, it's extremely-flawed and guarantees a large number of votes don't matter--and can even disenfranchise a majority of voters.
It's fed in from a party nomination system, which is always severely flawed. Subsets of voters exclude other voters to deny choice: they remove sets of candidates from the choices given to non-party voters.
The most common popular vote system used in the US is plural
Sounds like it was written for 5-year olds (Score:5, Insightful)
"That will be the way people are caught". It sounds like they're talking to a kindergartener.
Because someone is literally going to go through every "ballot" and somehow verify a fucking signature entered on a fucking touch screen? Do they think we're in dreamland? Stop lying to grown adults faces.
Let's be honest, first of all it's Seattle. Does anyone think this is anything but voter fraud at this point?
I mean can anyone seriously, honestly, (NPR listeners included) look someone straight in the eye and say this is how we are conducting fair elections? I understand the need to be able to delete a few votes here and there in the swing states, but why even bother in fucking Seattle? Or is this just how they acclimate us to it to ensure we never have another fair election again and roll it out nationwide by 2024?
I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on. You can't be for democratic elections in a constitutional republic and also think this is an honest way to conduct an election. Either that, or just come right on out and tell everyone you're for a communist dictatorship so we can all be on the same fucking page.
Someone should be given life in prison for approving this.
Why not let the Russians count the votes? (Score:2)
Why not just let the Russians or Chinese count the votes while you’re at it?
Get Vote Now! (Score:2)
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No one is going to download an app with a name like that. How 20th Century to actually name it what it does, without any clever misspellings or omission of vowels!
No, you would have to call it Voht. Or maybe VOT with a line over the o to denote the hard vowel sound. Nah, but that's too confusing to most people they wouldn't understand.
How about Elctn? Lect? Or Elecshun. That last one is a little too "Idiocracy", but maybe we're ready for that now. Be on the cutting edge!
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KCD receives 5 million telephone votes (Score:3)
On an eligible population of 1.2 million...
Nothing to see here!
Easier to "find" ballots (Score:2)
Now they don't have to wait weeks to 'find' more ballots [wikipedia.org] to swing the election. A few hundred burner phone votes and we're in!
A piece of paper, a pen, and voter ID. It's really simple - unless you WANT to make the vote unreliable, fraud-prone, and worthless...
Oh, God. Oh, God. (Score:2)
Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail.
That statement is so dumb it is painful to contemplate. Verifying that the voter *made the original of a signature* is not the same as verifying that he *affixed that signature to the electronic record in question*.
Signatures really? (Score:3)
Secret voting (Score:3)
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This is the biggest issue by far.
My signature does not identify one individual. (Score:1)
Nope. *I* will vote via their smartphones! (Score:2)
All the best,
Major R. Ussian & H. Ackers
NSCIA department of Lolfuckyoucitizens
How are signitures "safe" (Score:1)
Only one way to vote, as XKCD knows (Score:1)
LOL (Score:2)
"Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. "
And they all signed with 'X'.
Voting online is a terrible idea (Score:2)
Voting over the internet is a terrible idea - it opens up the attack surface to anyone on the internet, instead of just anyone who can go into a physical polling station while being watched by poll workers, which makes attacks much easier. The constraints on election systems make them very hard to secure because you can't give voters any proof of how they voted or any way for election workers to determine how anyone voted, which is why it's so important to control who can physically vote.
Yes, voting by mail
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And there's the old trick of having someone "helpful" collect ballots, e.g. from an old folks home, and then open the ballots and "lose" or "fix" the ballots so that the votes are cast for the desired candidate.
This is called "ballot harvesting". In California, ANYONE can go to, for example, rest homes, and collect mail-in ballots and mail them. What happens between collection and mailing is anyone's guess. The law allowing this was passed before the 2018 midterm elections; the Republican candidates lost every race in which they ran, even in districts that have gone overwhelmingly Republican for many years. Probably no connection.
Dumb People (Score:2)
The title is not talking about the ones that came up with this but all the dumbasses that instantly say it's a bad idea. Cause making voting easier for people is a horrible thing.
Could it be more secure yes but so could almost every voting machine in the US, correction the planet. Most machines have horrible security and little to no way to tell if manipulated.
Reform takes time. No system was ever overhauled all at once. Pull your head out of your asses and try looking around.
Elected by... (Score:2)
Obligatory numberphile reference (Score:1)
Electronic voting is a bad idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Mandatory time off for election day is a better option. Increasing the time the polls are required to be open is even a better option.
Byoe (Score:1)