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United States Politics

DHS Official Claims 2020 Will Be 'Most Secure' Election in US History (axios.com) 122

The 2020 election will be "the most secure, most protected election in the history of the United States of America," Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said on Tuesday. From a report: State and local officials, even before the start of party primaries, have voiced concerns that outside interference could disrupt elections in 2020. The recent outbreak of coronavirus has also impacted some state primaries. "People need to keep in mind that [election security] is something that we've been plugging away at for a long time. Get out there and vote. That's the best defense against any sort of interference," said Krebs. Krebs said the Trump administration is working with state and local election officials to develop contingencies for elections in communities affected by the virus.
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DHS Official Claims 2020 Will Be 'Most Secure' Election in US History

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @05:25PM (#59816140) Journal

    They must have gone back to paper

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      No, they'll just shut down all polling places due to Covid-19, maybe allowing only those who are at an approved open polling place to vote. And the only open polling place will be in the White House. Now that's how you get a very secure election!
      • I have no doubt that even if Trump would vote alone inside a radiation shielded isolated welded shut 30 foot walls metal bunker, ... it would still get hacked.

        PEBSAH -- Problem Exists Between Senses And Hands.

        • I'd give you the funny mod if I ever had the mod point...

          However I think this entire topic is the dumbest joke I've seen in a while. Does ANYONE think Trump will agree that it was a "secure" or "fair" election if he doesn't "win"?

          Color me tinfoil, but I think the real questions are elsewhere. Examples: Will Trump leave if he loses? Will Trump start screaming and throwing things at ghosts the next time he's on camera?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by raif11152 ( 6642838 )
            The best part of the 2016 election is everyone was raging that Trump wouldn't accept the election results. And after the election, the Liberals said "Hold my beer".
            • by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @07:51PM (#59816526)

              The best part of the 2016 election is everyone was raging that Trump wouldn't accept the election results.

              He didn't accept the election results. One of the first things he did after the election was argue that Hilary only won the popular vote because of voter fraud conducted by millions of illegal aliens.

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by eaglesrule ( 4607947 )

                Pew: 10.5 million "unauthorized immigrants" in 2016
                Concentration of foreign born persons per county [pewresearch.org]
                2016 election results map [publicbroadcasting.net]
                No voter id requirements.
                'consultants' such as Scott Foval on tape bragging on how to get away with massive voter fraud. [realclearpolitics.com]

                I'm not suggesting Trump is correct. Just that it's probably safe to say that there were at least some shenanigans involved.

                • by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @09:48PM (#59816796)

                  I'm not suggesting Trump is correct. Just that it's probably safe to say that there were at least some shenanigans involved.

                  What, you mean like this? [washingtonpost.com]. That image screams shenanigans like nothing else I've ever seen, no matter what your opinion of the WaPo.

                  • I completely agree. Neither Blues nor Reds should be trusted with the cookie jar that is the ability to redraw district maps.

                    Perhaps the best solution we can agree on would be to have an open-source algorithm draw the districts out once the redistricting rules are agreed upon by a super majority, and hosted by some arbiter with certified hardware.

                    • by shanen ( 462549 )

                      That kind of solution approach has been tried in various jurisdictions, and it sometimes works. However, you went pretty far into the mechanics, and they don't matter much if either side is determined to cheat. More complicated rules just change the angles of the cheating.

                      My favored solution approach would involve guest voting. Voters who don't like their districts could instead vote as guests in a neighboring district. The more gerrymandered the district is, the more districts the voters could pick from an

                • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Trump ordered an investigation into voter fraud in the 2016 election. He quietly lost interest in it when it failed to find more than a few isolated cases, many of them by Republican voters.

                  • I know it may be shocking to suggest that the side that would benefit the most from illegal voting would be the least agreeable to cooperate, but did Democrats obstruct and sabotage the effort to look into voter fraud at every opportunity?

                    When the conditions are ripe for fraud and abuse, it doesn't seem fair to cite an investigation that wasn't even allowed to be conducted as evidence towards something.

            • "Liberals" don't drink beer.

              They drink wine, in a cave [cnn.com]...

          • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

            I'm sure he'd follow the pattern that Hillary and Gore set.

          • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

            Or, will he steal the China and all the B's off the keyboards if he loses?

          • I'd give you the funny mod if I ever had the mod point...

            However I think this entire topic is the dumbest joke I've seen in a while. Does ANYONE think Trump will agree that it was a "secure" or "fair" election if he doesn't "win"?

            You mean like how some people kept whining about how unfair it was that the candidate with the most votes still lost the election?

            • by shanen ( 462549 )

              Your question is unclear. Which whiners are you referring to, which election, and whose votes?

        • Having Trump in the election is a sure sign that the electoral system has been hacked, not just the counting of votes, hanging of chads, and inking of fingers (or however you prevent double-voting in your country), but the choice of candidates and choice of parties too.
      • They're already onto it, having shut down the polling places in the poorer areas of Texas during their primary, forcing people to wait inline for hours or not vote at all.

    • "I'm 'Landslide Lyndon' Johnson, and I approve this message.
    • They must have gone back to paper

      In a way, yes. I voted in the primaries in my state, and was pleasantly surprised they had upgraded to voting machines that just printed out a human-readable paper + barcode. Then you took that to the ballot box, which had a scanner on top. You deposited the paper, it scanned the barcode, kept the human readable ballot, in case a recount is needed.

      Hopefully this is a trend. My state had insecure no paper-receipt voting machines for 20 years.

      • Out of curiosity, what's the method to show that the barcode that was printed actually matched your paper ballot?

        Would it be possible to hack a machine such that some percent of the time, it just ignored your vote and prints a barcode to say you picked the other guy?

        • My thoughts exactly. Seems like printing a filled-out "scantron" sheet would be just as easy, augmented with a human-readable selection printed next to the bubbles. The counting hardware already exists with decades of real-world testing under its belt. Heck, an old one is probably straight electronics with no software to be compromised.

          It also doesn't address the other elephant in the room - why do you trust the machine counting the votes? Doesn't matter if every paper ballot is recorded perfectly if the

          • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            No vote is secure until you can see how your vote was counted **after** it was counted. To see how it was cast, but not counted gave us Florida.
            • A fair point, and there are a few options that still manage to preserve the secrecy of the vote from outside observers.

              However, if you can validate how your vote was counted, then you can prove how you voted to someone else, which greatly increases the appeal of buying or coercing people's votes, which is something we've had problems with in the past even without being able to provide proof.

              • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                We had open voting for the first 100 years, and it worked fine, until the Civil War. We also supposedly have a stable country, so armed guards at polling places demanding to see your secret ballot before it's cast doesn't happen like it did around the Civil War (secret and closed ballots had no effect on that, though Australian ballot was adopted to combat it, and simply failed).

                Vote coercion isn't popular now, and would be trivial to do today, if anyone really cared. If I wanted one and only one person
        • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          I would presume the recount would count the human readable number.

          What I always found strange about usa is that Usa is the richest country in the world basically as far as average income goes over a large population, yet somehow can't manage to hold the elections on a day that everyone has a free day and somehow can't manage to count the votes by hand unlike countries that have much less money per voter. I mean democracy and hand counting them should scale to any population density or amount. Somehow in

        • The purpose is that you'd be able to spot the mismatch using spot checks or a full recount. Yes, it's theoretically possible to flip some votes and go undetected, but you'd need to flip a low number of votes. Too many and your ruse would be spotted.

          To give an example, let's say that Jim and Tom are running and the results are 100 for Jim and 200 for Tom. Spot checks are performed and they see that 50% of the ballots examined had human readable text that said "Jim" but which scanned as "Tom." A full hand rec

        • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          The assurance is that there is a human readable paper trail. It doesn't really matter what the barcode reader reads (to an extent) as long as the human readable portion matches what you voted. Assuming there is no restriction on why you can ask for a recount and the recount manually recounts the votes based on the human readable portion of the voting slip the bar code reader reliability isn't all that important.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Out of curiosity, what's the method to show that the barcode that was printed actually matched your paper ballot?

          Would it be possible to hack a machine such that some percent of the time, it just ignored your vote and prints a barcode to say you picked the other guy?

          Easy. You take the box full of barcoded receipts, you dump them on a table. You gather a whole pile of volunteers and have them read out the printed part that's readable by humans to a person doing the tally. They do this while being observed by

        • Out of curiosity, what's the method to show that the barcode that was printed actually matched your paper ballot?

          Spot checks. Random boxes of votes are hand counted, and the results compared to the computer calculated totals for the same set of votes.

      • was pleasantly surprised they had upgraded to voting machines that just printed out a human-readable paper + barcode.

        Of course, if you're the kind who really worries about voting irregularities, you've got to keep in mind that fudging the barcode so it doesn't necessarily agree with the human-readable part of the printed ballot is certainly possible....

        • Of course, if you're the kind who really worries about voting irregularities, you've got to keep in mind that fudging the barcode so it doesn't necessarily agree with the human-readable part of the printed ballot is certainly possible....

          Sure, but it's easy to check that. You just need to do a random sample of ballot boxes to do a manual count to confirm what the scanners are getting. Which yes, I doubt they're doing, but first you fight for the paper receipt, then you argue for the check.

      • The human readable paper should be used for the official count, not a "recount". The electronic count is to feed the tabloid media, for entertainment value only.

    • They must have gone back to paper

      Yes, and then they added ROT26 encryption for extra security.

    • 1) All allegations will be directed to the round filing cabinets without reading 2) Strict orders to turn a blind eye 3) All inspectors on notice that nothing is expected and not to rock the boat 4) Enhanced masks with blindfolds - just to make sure 5) No open sourcing or software or procedures 6) Las Vegas gaming machines not allowed to do any 'audits' Yes, secure because there will be no one to say otherwise.
  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @05:35PM (#59816174)

    Come on, now you're just challenging everyone on the planet!

    Also ... like the DHS doesn't have its own agenda and favorites and full access to nudge it in the "right" direction ...

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by spun ( 1352 )

      Absolutely. DHS would be the only ones to support Trump in a coup if he refused to leave office. I don't trust Chris Krebbs as far as I could throw him, he's one of Trump's hand picked toadies.

      • You know ... to gain ... trust. O:-)

      • Rather than fret about if Trump would leave if he lost, I'm still waiting for the Democrats to actually recognize that he won last time... It seems just one side has a problem accepting the results of the election...
        • by spun ( 1352 )

          Yeah, it's you guys and Obama. Remember how Republicans stole a supreme court pick from him? Merrick Garland remembers.

          • Wait, who stole what? I didn't realize that judicial picks were guaranteed.

            I guess if Obama was a better President and the Democrats had a better position to sell to the public, they would have retained control of the Senate. I guess when you break your word and lose the Upper Chamber, you get to reap what you sowed. And that means judicial picks only at the pleasure of the opposite party.

            Meanwhile, still wondering when many Democrats and those on the left will accept that the President IS Donald John Tr

            • Meanwhile, still wondering when many Democrats and those on the left will accept that the President IS Donald John Trump...

              When Trump wins the popular vote in 2020, and all the states that formed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact find themselves having to tear up the deal or give their electoral votes to the Orange Menace.

              The popular vote margin was only around 4M last time around with Clinton, and Trump is currently near his peak approval. Sanders may not even live long enough to compete, and Biden is apparently running for a senate position.

              I will have my popcorn ready.

        • by Khyber ( 864651 )

          " I'm still waiting for the Democrats to actually recognize that he won last time"

          No, the actual winner was "neither" by a fucking landslide as demonstrated by the actual vote record.

          • No, the actual winner was "neither" by a fucking landslide as demonstrated by the actual vote record.

            Not sure where you get your numbers, but "neither" only got 5.7% of the vote, and both got 94.3%

          • Of the 538 votes for President in 2016, there were 304 for President Trump, and 227 for Hillary Clinton. That looks like a pretty darn healthy majority for President Trump.

            You do, of course, recognize we have an electoral college? That you vote to direct another person to take your vote - and that of hundreds of thousands of others - and bundle them together to create one vote? Or are you like one of those guys who complains his football team lost because they had more total yards, even though they had f

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              There are efforts to nullify the Electoral College so that the popular vote is what counts.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              They are about 75% of the way to getting enough EC votes on board to make it happen.

              • See the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10. The US Congress must approve any Interstate Compact. The States can try to do a popular-vote end-around run, but it's patently unconstitutional and will get tossed.
  • Rudy Juliani is on the case!!
  • "Most secure eeever, believe me! It's so secure even Jiiihna can't hack it. It's more bullet proof than my toup...hair. I invited my buddies Putie and Kimmie to bust in, and they assured me they can't get in, and personally told me it's the best security they have ever seen in the history of the solar universe. Sent me a really nice letter, very decorative. People are surprised how much I know about security. I don't even need to ask Barron for help anymore. He's so impressed. I keep all the passwords up h

  • "It will be very very goo,,,, you know our elections will always be the best elections. We got good peo... SMART people working these elections and they will be very very great indeed."
  • I think he picked the wrong Krebs for the job if he wanted it to be secure.

  • I hear DHS Official Claims tend to ages like milk.

  • If it's people, they're dishonest.
    If it's computers, they're hacked.

    Why people still vote, is a mystery to me. I guess it makes them feel like their vote counts, even though they have no way to determine if it was counted or not, or how, or anything else that would apply to any other aspect of their lives. The voting system isn't rigged - it's impossible to accurately count, and this is totally due to the lack of human ability to be truthful. Each election cycle, the Americans seem to have more and deepe

    • Why people still vote, is a mystery to me

      Encouraging people not to vote seems like a strange solution to any electoral problems we may have. I don't know about you, but I don't think that our leaders should be exclusively selected by residents at nursing homes.

      Is it "impossible to accurately count" the vote? Perhaps, if you expect a precise count. But I think our system is accurate enough that we can confidently say that in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the necessary states to win the electoral college. Or that in

      • I think voting also entitles one to complain about politics.

        Ok, so complain away. That's not helping anything get better. Anyway why do you want a reason to complain? I don't vote (I did this last election and I'll never do it again, it was a waste of time. Am I saying that because I didn't get my way? No. I'm saying that because it was a waste of time). But, All I have to do is tell people like you that I DID vote, and now, what... you'll listen to my heart melting about how I think politics is a religion where man is god?

        The whole political configuration th

    • Canada uses paper ballots and has all their elections counted in a matter of hours. The rest of your Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts are also easily addressed by having members from every party present for counting every ballot. Everything is counted and reported right out in the public for everyone to see.

  • They've outsourced airport security to felons.
    They steal money and goods from people on interstate highways ("this road is used by drug dealers") and rural roads ("drug dealers use this road to avoid us").

    They have DENIED that ANY ELECTION EVER was tainted by ANYONE.

    And now they say "It will the most secure election ever."

    I know who wrote that line - it was the idiot in chief. Most perfect statement ever.

    We have the least transparent government and the stupidest non-science denialists since the 1960s.
    This

  • by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @06:11PM (#59816300)
    Right up there with:
    “the virus is contained”
    “Vaccines will be available in a couple of months”
    “I have a hunch the death rate is much lower”
    “biggest ever inauguration audience.”
    “the noise from windmills cause cancer and are a ‘graveyard’ for birds.”
    "People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”
    "We’ll be going to Mars very soon,"
  • by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @06:13PM (#59816302) Journal
    Without them - the vote is not secure.
    • We can have Voter ID laws once the government ensures every eligible voter has been issued an ID, free of charge. Otherwise you are running afoul of the "results" test in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bans laws that have a discriminatory (whether intended or not) effect on voting. And all data points to voter ID laws having a discriminatory effect.

      • Should voter ID even be offered for free in every single state, then the narrative will change that it isn't "free enough", as in, not personally delivered and forced into their hands. That said, ID should be free so that at least there is one less excuse for not doing the bare minimum to secure election integrity.

        Now I'm off to the store to present my ID just so I can buy cough syrup.

      • Which States do not offer a free means or alternative to a voter ID?

        And, conversely, to your argument, until the Government can ensure not just the integrity of the votes casts, but the right of each person who cast that vote exists (that they are, in fact, legal voters), then it doesn't matter and is discriminatory towards the citizens of These United States.

        • by barakn ( 641218 )

          States are required to provide free voter id. So instead they charge money for all the other pieces of identification required to obtain a voter id. They limit the hours of offices that provide voter ids. Trying to get an id in Sauk City, Wisconsin? It's only open on the the 5th Wednesday of the month - roughly 4-5 days a year. Your employer will fire you if you don't show up on one of those few days? Too fucking bad. And this: "In the 10 states with restrictive voter ID laws: Nearly 500,000 eligible v

          • Sauk City is a "city" of 3000 people. And there are 5 day-a-week DMV offices in Baraboo and Madison, both about a 15-20 mile trip. And you only need to go ONCE, to get your first State ID card - after that, they can be renewed online.

            You're going to find tens of thousands of similar examples - if you want to look at suburbs that don't have a dedicated DMV.

            So here's a question back to you - how do you ensure the integrity of the voter roll - that everyone who votes actually has the right to vote? Failure

    • In person vote fraud is so rare it may as well not exist. You're talking dozens of Mickey Mouse votes out of billions cast in the United States over the course of a couple of decades. Telling people who live in Florida that they need to prep defensive measures against polar bears is as defensible as wanting voter ID.

      Voter ID isn't about securing the vote. It's about SUPPRESSING the vote.

      All you shitkickers supporting this farce, put your ID where your ideological mouth is. Walk into your local DMV and say y

      • So you'd be OK with me getting a few hundred million "votes" from overseas to elect my own candidate? With Bloomberg going to India and paying 100 million Indians each $100 to vote for him? After all - there are no ID requirements, they can register and cast a ballot by mail, no problem...

        Think about general security. The first thing to do is make sure anyone present is supposed to be present. It's why you have locks on doors and firewalls on computer systems. And the requirement for voter ID is less o

        • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

          So you'd be OK with me getting a few hundred million "votes" from overseas to elect my own candidate? With Bloomberg going to India and paying 100 million Indians each $100 to vote for him? After all - there are no ID requirements, they can register and cast a ballot by mail, no problem...

          Whatever shrooms you're taking to come up with that coco for coca puffs straw man, did you bring enough for everyone? What's next, you're going to blame Tulsi Gabbard for the JFK assassination? If you're going to make up

    • Replace voter registration with eligible voters just show up with ID and vote, fine with me.

      If voter ID solves the problem of who is allowed to vote, we don't need a separate, expensive process and databases for that.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Voter ID makes the vote less secure.

      It makes it very easy for those already in power to make it hard for certain voters to get the necessary ID. It's bad enough that they can close polling stations in areas where they have little support.

      Democratic votes are only legitimate if all those eligible can participate. Preventing participation is a form of fraud.

  • What they did was to plant fake news which influenced the electorate. This has been going on since the first elections. Look up muckraking and yellow journalism.

    Here's the thing: If you have been conditioned to view your political leadership and press as somehow morally superior, then this is problematic. Big government liberals have been trained to respond to the dog whistle. But if it's the wrong person blowing it (or one you trust acting at the behest of a foreign power) then they still jump. People wit

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      The systems that were hacked last time had voter registration information.

      It does make me wonder "most secure" against what particular threats? You could do a lot with just a denial of service attack.

  • DHS Official Claims 2020 Will Be 'Most Secure' Election in US History

    We're about to get owned, or boned -- probably doesn't make much difference either way at this point.

  • Trump will win. Worry about the next election.

  • Reading this I fell out of the chair, I was laughing so hard. I think I bruised something, and my diaphram muscles will be sore for days, now. Thanks so much for that, DHS, I needed a good laugh, but too bad it was sardonic laughter.
  • Here's my bold prediction: Like the 1918 Spanish Flu did, COVID-19 is going to fade away in the summer months and then come roaring back in the fall. Trump's poll numbers will be looking very bad, his loss to Joe Biden nearly certain, and he'll decide -- purely for public health reasons -- that the election must be suspended indefinitely, and will order all of the polling places closed. The order will be challenged, but the challenges will still be working their way through the courts when 2021 rolls aro

    • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

      Trump's poll numbers will be looking very bad, his loss to Joe Biden nearly certain

      Bold indeed. More likely that Trump could find himself placed in a medically induced coma and wake up this time next year, still president after winning 45 states in November. And it's not because Trump is an awesome candidate.

      It's because Dementia Joe is just that bad.

      • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Sigh, I thought Sanders might have a good shot at this one, I guess not.

        • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

          Oh, Sanders absolutely did - until establishment Democrats and the media got together to give an absolutely unprecedented boost to their favored candidate, and Bernie started playing to lose.

          Before South Carolina, Biden was running out of money, had zero voter enthusiasm, came in 4th or 5th in the first three contests, and hadn't campaigned in a Super Tuesday state for over a month. Then Obama made some calls, got Mayo Pete and Cloud Boot Jar to drop out and endorse Biden, along with critical support from U

          • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

            Yeah, it's a shame, he had some great big ideas that were inspiring. As a non-American, Bernie is a famous figure, Biden is like - who's he again?

            I'm going to be evil and hope Trump and Biden die of Corona virus, heh. Mr orange gets too much vit-d though, he'd likely survive it.

      • Dementia Joe vs Dementia Don. At least one of them has some clue to the limits of his own knowledge.
        • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

          Yeahno. Trump has verbal diarrhea because he doesn't give a shit about what he's talking about. Biden has verbal diarrhea because his brain is dying. Trump is the same now as he was in 2016, when he plowed through a couple dozen Republicans and then Hillary on the debate stage.

          If the Dems manage to force Biden through - and Bernie is playing along [youtu.be] for some unfathomable reason - it could make their '84 blowout loss to Reagan look like a close eleciton.

  • Likely Russia promised Trump that the new software they installed was totally secure and they should trust them on it.

  • "Most secure"... from the electorate. All of the lobbies and foreign actors will have no problem voting.
  • Trump cronie who heads CISA. Did his Russian handlers tell him to make this announcement?

    Trump has been very successful in his campaign to get Americans not to trust government. He has done so by appointing an army of unqualified sycophants to gut one agency after another. He's drained the swamp of anyone who knew what they were doing and wouldn't play along with his criminal activities.

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