Ransomware Hit a Georgia County. That Didn't Stop Its Ballot Counting. (nbcnews.com) 58
A Georgia county has reverted to matching some absentee ballot signatures to paper backups, rather than an online system, after a ransomware infection spread to part of its election department. From a report: Poll workers in Hall County have since caught up on a backlog of absentee ballots, state officials said, and said there's no danger of the ransomware extending to systems used to cast or count votes. But the infection is the first known example in the 2020 general election of opportunistic criminal hackers incidentally slowing the broader election process, something that federal cybersecurity officials have warned is a strong possibility. But the attack does not indicate any broad effort to tamper with U.S. voting or show systemic vulnerabilities to the U.S. election system. "They switched over to their paper backups, which is required of them," said Jordan Fuchs, Georgia's deputy secretary of state. "It took a little bit of work on their part -- I think they had 11 days of catch-up to do -- and they completed their task," she said.
Paper ballots work for Canada (Score:2, Interesting)
Why can't they work for the USofA?
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Yes I know that's not necessary a comparison of the number of people of voting age, and maybe there are other reasons, it's honestly a guess.
Re:Paper ballots work for Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't it scale? (paper as a backup method like the used here in the article)
each voting district has the same number of people in it (as determined by census), more population means more districts means more election workers. if anyone district was compromised, then election workers/officials from other districts can come in and help.
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They also have 10x the population to count the votes.
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Maybe because it has 10x the population of Canada and it doesn't scale?
If only the US also had 10x the vote counters, right? Surely that's a pipe dream...
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You can easily get more people for counting ballots and easily open up buildings for polling places. If there's not enough, do what they do for jury duty and say to randomly-selected people "You're on ballot counting duty as part of your civil responsibilities."
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The right and left wing nuts would have a field day.
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The US has 10 times the population but they also have 10 times the number of potential vote counters. I think the two balance each other out and would account for any scaling problems. 8^)
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Hell dip your thumb in ink like third world countries do.
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That only solves a trivial problem that is not at all widespread. We already know how to prevent someone from voting twice in the same polling station, and we already know how to catch duplicates when someone also votes provisionally at a different polling station. We're not a third world country that does not have voter registration and procedures. The reason they dip a finger in ink is because there is no official registry of all the voters, they don't have signatures because many are illiterate, they d
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If ransomware affected (Score:4, Insightful)
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Paper works. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed - paper works rather well for this.
Every time I've gone in person to vote, they have rows of names they check, on paper, to let you vote. Easier than an IPad app for their use, and works to check other lists comfortably for folks that have voted using other methods.
By the way... because in these threads, there's always someone that goes off on "dead people voting hurf hurf" - yes, they check the lists of deaths for every voting area exactly for this, matched with address, and the lists of people that requested mail ballots.
The whole reason we have statistics on how few of these issues pop up is because it's so easy to catch. That's how it became a joke to begin with, because you only record the names and details of a vote when it's forced to be a provisional vote - which makes it real easy to catch the perp.
Voter rolls are really handy tools, even in an anonymous voting system.
Ryan Fenton
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Same in my country. You're told where to vote, say your name and address, and you're crossed off the list. You cast your vote, put it into the shredder labeled "ballot box", maybe get a little sticker.
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Except in my country the polling place isn't a single building on a street with no name behind a door that says "Danger 500 volts no unauthorized entry" in the middle of a city's "bad part of town".
Bit of an exaggeration but a single person finding voting to be inconvenient is a sign of suppression.
Georgia?! CORRUPT!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was then redistricted to BLUE. Now it is an hour plus for fucking MID-TERM elections.
Who is at fault? Brian Kemp. Our governor and former secretary of state. A fucking lying corrupt mother-fucker who has molested children for a campaign ad.
Now, this anti-American mother fucker is causing many people to lose faith in America. I have lost faith in America. Torch the fucking Constitution and the flag and let us start all over again!!
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Torch the fucking Constitution and the flag and let us start all over again!!
Democrat confirmed. Everyone else: vote accordingly. Here is a tip, Brainiac: complain to your local election commissioners. The Governor doesn't run the elections.
No, motherfucker - no. America is broken. My local election officials are all Republican whores. There is no honest voting while Republicans are in charge.
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Canada won't take him. They actually enforce their immigration laws.
Re:Georgia?! CORRUPT!! (Score:4, Insightful)
>Now, this anti-American mother fucker is causing many people to lose faith in America. I have lost faith in America. Torch the fucking Constitution and the flag and let us start all over again!!
Did you miss the last two decades?
That is exactly the Republican playbook now.
1. Get into government positions.
2. Promote private interests ahead of any public interests - not silently, but with as many active betrayals of public trust as you can make.
3. Retire to a life of lobbying to further promote this process.
The whole idea is to maximize loss of faith in any process that involves people governing the rich and powerful.
It leaves people always angry, but never trusting themselves to do anything of any complexity to fix any of the circumstances.
It's 'clever' in one sense... but it takes a nation of 300+ million, and turns it functionally into a nation of a few hundred rich people as the only ones able to accomplish anything of any medium-to-large scale scope.
It's a complete waste of humanity, and our shared potential and resources - just to shift a relatively small percent of those resources and potential to a very small number of people.
Ryan Fenton
They want you to lose faith in America (Score:3)
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I mean you can literally go anywhere else and be happy, right? Canada is only a couple of hours away by plane.
After the pandemic is under control the Canadian government will let Americans visit here. Being allowed to stay here will take some doing, just as if Canadians want to live in America.
I'm stating something that seems obvious only because in my experience there are some American folks to whom it isn't obvious.
Unless you have an advanced degree (Score:2)
Oh, and America is using it's economic, political and military power to spread it's stupidity. Both Canada & the UK are moving right, following our example of exploiting rural voters and wedge issues to take away healthcare and worker's rights.
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Trolling is a art!
..and clearly you're utterly and completely artless.
You have to GO BACK. [4chan.org]
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I used to live in a Red district. IN and OUT in under 20 minutes to vote.
I was then redistricted to BLUE. Now it is an hour plus
So you bring a battery pack for your phone and find something entertaining to watch for an hour. People manage to wait in long lines at theme parks, but suddenly when it comes to doing their civic duty, the whining starts.
The poll worker checking my registration asked me how long I waited. I told her "Technically? About four years, so the hour outside the building here really didn't seem so bad."
This is why we can't have nice things! (Score:3, Informative)
Internet? Nice thing, originally. Humans? Ruined it, by using it for crime, fucking with governments, etc.
The Internet was a mistake to have this early in the evolution of our species, clearly. Should've waited a few hundred years more.
Same goes for guns, bombs, nuclear anything, computers, and pretty much all technology beyond agrarian-level tech. The Amish were right, all except the 'God' part, that's just more bullshit screwing with us.
Two things:
1. Ever wonder why we don't detect alien civilizations? Simple: because we're an embarassment to the rest of Galactic civilization.
2. We deserve a near-extinction-level event. Take us all the way back to hunter-gatherer ways, start over, not go so damned fast with the technology. 'Using fire' is about as much as I think humans can handle without screwing everything up.
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We deserve a near-extinction-level event.
Well we do not need to wait for one, we are creating such an event right now
But the biggest thing with the US is the legal bribing, all donations should be strictly limited and all companies are banned from donating anything to a politician
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I'd suggest a Constitutional Amendment that makes it clear that companies and originations are not citizens and that they may not participate nor contribute to elections or politics (kill lobbying).
Enforce individual donation limits.
Candidates are free to spend their own money as they wish, they are citizens.
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While I agree with your premise in principal, and most probably would, how do you get a policy change like this to fly? I mean, you literally have to take the people that have money going hand-over-fist into their pockets and convince them to make it illegal for them to take money hand-over-fist. There's no fixing that system with our current political structure in place. You can't tell people raking in millions of dollars a year to stop it for the greater good and expect them to do anything other than p
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I meant to mention that it's a pipe dream. Ugh... Forgot the last sentence.
Re: This is why we can't have nice things! (Score:2)
Torches, pitchforks, guillotines.
Same as every system
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What we humans are, more often than not, is careless. If things were secured properly, if people would just think about what they're doing, what could go wrong, how something could be compromised, we just might not have problems like this.
Of course if some humans weren't power-hungry and greedy for material gain we wouldn't have even half the problems we have currently, now would we?
If everyone worked tow
Paper Ballots Rule!!! (Score:1)
We/They did use voting machines the last election cycle (mid-terms) but have switched to paper ballot printed for each voter's districts and the paper ballots are read by a ballot reader.
Very simple process and quicker than using the machines.
This is a much preferred system, IMHO. My state also requires a state or federal government issued Photo ID license. My state also issues state IDs to people who don't drive, are temporary or permanent
Am I the crazy one here? (Score:2)
"It took a little bit of work on their part -- I think they had 11 days of catch-up to do -- and they completed their task."
I can't think of many jobs or tasks where 11 days of catch-up from a single incident is considered "a little bit of work".
Digital Only states! (Score:1)
Signatures suck. (Score:2)
Matching signatures is a terrible method, likely resulting in more disenfranchising than fraud prevention by several orders of magnitude. Signatures change, a lot. Married women often have their freshly minted new last name/signature on file, which rapidly devolves from cursive to signature squiggle in short order, resulting in questioning from officials (happened to my wife a few times). It is also very subjective. Some states have laws that do not require they contact you if your ballot is set aside,