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Microsoft Politics

Microsoft Teams Up With Voting Machine Maker To Let Voters Track Ballots (bloomberg.com) 108

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Hart InterCivic Inc., one of the largest voting machine makers in the U.S., will incorporate Microsoft's vote-tracking system into its in-person machines, adding a layer of security that may help reduce heightened attacks on the legitimacy of U.S. election results. The program will allow people to confirm their votes were counted after they're cast. The partnership makes Hart the first manufacturer in the U.S. to allow local voting jurisdictions to incorporate ballot-tracking software into machines, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement. The program will let voters track their choices and offer security experts using Hart's system the opportunity to independently audit results using Microsoft's ElectionGuard software.

The technology would not change the process for voters. In most cases, voters would still fill out their ballots the same way they did in November 2020, either using a touchscreen or by hand-marking a ballot. Once they submit their ballots, voters will receive a piece of paper with a verification or QR code, which they can input into their local election jurisdiction's website to track their ballot through the tabulation process. The process is done without revealing the content of the voter's ballot while maintaining the privacy and secrecy of their selections, according to the statement. The system will also allow third-parties, including political parties or news organizations, to write their own programs to confirm election tallies.

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Microsoft Teams Up With Voting Machine Maker To Let Voters Track Ballots

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  • Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @04:45PM (#61451756)

    The company that just had the embarrassing SolarWinds hack? Why do we trust them to run software on voting machines?

    Can't wait for MS Vote 2024 that votes for you based on your browser history.

    • without telling you for your own safety. And according to "Your browser history" No! by what "your browser history should be"
      • This is ridiculous. Pretending that you can validate your voting choice "without revealing the content of the voter's ballot" doen't validate your voting at all.

        Yes, I know that evidence of a voting choice allows votes to be sold... but this is theater pretending that no other vulnerabilities exist.

        The only way is for the voter to see and verify a punched card with their voting choice - but no identifying info - before going into a general hopper for machine counting. Security only involves the hoppers. The

    • What could possibly go wrong?

    • I fail to see how ballots can be counted using any method that keeps the vote secret. No matter how you do it, if you place a vote and can't reconcile each vote to the person that made it, in SOME way the method can be gamed or controlled by those in power in ways that cannot be traced. Examples using the current system of paper ballots counted by machine. There is no TRUE way to verify the machine count. Someone pwned the machine software? Ok.. count the ballots, then it's possible ballots were added or re

      • This at least allows each voter to verify that their vote was counted as they marked it. So that's a step in the right direction.

        • This at least allows each voter to verify that their vote was counted as they marked it.

          The real question is who else can verify that the vote was counted.

          Never mind that you won't know for sure just how your vote was counted anyway.

          If the bad guys really want to fuck up an election, all they have to do is tell you that your vote was counted as a vote for whoever you voted for, while really counting it for whoever the bad guys want to win the election....

          • There are many sophisticated ways to cheat. But they all require sophistication.

            An unsophisticated way to cheat is to take a box of ballots from an opponent-leaning precinct and toss it in the trash.

            This at least makes low-tech ballot dumping harder.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Most of the cheating happens long before election day. Gerrymandering, taking away polling stations, making the queues excessively long and preventing people helping those waiting in line. Requiring ID that your opponent's supporters are unlikely to have.

              Most of the cheating is done openly and brazenly.

        • This at least allows each voter to verify that their vote was counted as they marked it. So that's a step in the right direction.

          No. It allows each voter to verify that their vote was recorded as marked. It does nothing to indicate if the vote was counted correctly.

        • How do you know the system counted it as you marked it, or... if it isn't just telling you that is was counted as you marked it? Any computer system without physical ballots is open to fraud.

        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          What happens if the vote was counted and then the vote verifying software screws up? Peoples votes are counted and they're left believing they didn't get counted.

      • There's no perfect system, but physical ballots, always kept within sight of poll watchers of all parties, is about as good as it gets.

      • I am betting you are not good at math. There are a ton of ways to check ballots, all of which check for fraud, all without revealing the vote.

        Here is one example. You take your ballot to a voting machine. It displays the current total for each canidate before you vote. Then you feed the ballot in. It updates, and prints 2 copies of your receipt, listing the time, ID number for your machine, and total AFTER you have voted.

        You keep one copy of the receipt. The other copy, along with your ballot is pla

        • by catprog ( 849688 )

          I require my workers to vote together and show me their receipts.

          By looking at the totals it gives me a good idea of who they voted for.

        • by catprog ( 849688 )

          Benford's law does not work for elections.

          I split the voters up into area of about equal population lets say 10000 each

          In a two party system I would expect the votes counts to be somewhere around the 4or 5 for the first digit. I would not expect to see many 1s.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        You could give everyone a receipt with a cryptographic hash on it, that can later be collected and verified. Another nice feature is that the voter can verify their vote was correctly counted via a website by entering the hash.

        One possible issue is coercion, i.e. someone could demand to see your receipt to check you voted the way they wanted you to. That could be mitigated by not showing which way you voted, only that your vote was counted.

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        There is no TRUE way to verify the machine count. Someone pwned the machine software? Ok.. count the ballots, then it's possible ballots were added or removed or changed

        That is why there are things like multiple poll workers, poll watchers, chains of custody, etc. Nothing's perfect, but if we had a multi-party politics, it would be fairly hard to game the system.

    • Clippy will be glad to fact check your politicians' claims for you.

    • Please direct me to the company that will 100% guarantee security.

      *Universe achieves Entropy*

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      The company that just had the embarrassing SolarWinds hack? Why do we trust them to run

      And whose founder was involved in many 5g and chip implant conspiracies. I'm not saying he's guilty, only that this plan is a recipe for really bad PR.

      If MS were smart, they wouldn't touch any politics-related projects. Nadella, run!

    • There's no company or government I would trust. A good system is one where it doesn't require my trust, or at least I can confidently delegate the trust to poll watchers who know what is going on.

    • And what product are we supposed to buy to read this QRcode? Not everyone has a smartphone. There's still plenty of folks using the flipphone.
      Do we all have Internet access in the USA now?

    • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Solar Winds was the one with the compromised code. Microsoft discovered it.

  • Sooner rather than later, but this will end up suffering a blue screen of death or few.
  • Oh puh-leeze (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @04:46PM (#61451762)

    Microsoft is picked to diddle with voting machine? Really? 30 years of bad code, countless bugs and exploits in their own products isn't enough history to rule those guys out?

    • Dont forget test navy ships towed to port due to system crashes that endangered everyone onboard a combat vessel thats supposed to always maintain at least YOKE level of conditional readiness. Its fine to play Call of Duty. But not fine for real life call of duty type combat.
    • Microsoft is picked to diddle with voting machine? Really? 30 years of bad code, countless bugs and exploits in their own products isn't enough history to rule those guys out?

      What does business still run on?

      You have your answer.

      As for your other question, the answer is Yes. We're that fucking stupid.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I can hear the orange guy now: "I toldja it was all rigged, votes were flipped and now we get the Blue States of Death making job killing rules. Bigly sad."

  • by lazycam ( 1007621 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @04:50PM (#61451776)
    Based on recent events in U.S. elections, I hope we begin migrating to a blockchain based voting solution that is public, auditable, and can report results instantly.
    • Based on recent events in U.S. elections...

      Recent events? We have been questioning election integrity for as long as humans have known how to lie.

      ...I hope we begin migrating to a blockchain based voting solution that is public, auditable, and can report results instantly.

      Sounds great but I'm not sure what makes you assume ANY of that shit, is a priority for any elected representative.

      If it were, we would have fixed this many elections ago. If the government can mandate who and who cannot build encryption hardware to secure classified communications, they sure as shit can figure out a way to secure a damn voting machine that has one fucking job.

      They don't want to.

      • I completely agree with you -- I am also pretty cynical since I being educated on the electoral process as a child by my parents. I'm just hopeful that the technology will diffuse across governments outside the U.S. and create new international standards on what the definition of a "free and fair election."
        • by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Here in Canada, there is almost never any questioning the elections. One thing that helps is that they are simple. There's a Federal election where I vote for one representative, and there's a Provincial election on a different day where I vote for one representative.

      • There's a difference between a secure machine, and a machine that is seen to be secure. It's fundamentally important for the democracy that the counting is SEEN to be secure, and nobody except a few dozen boffins knows what the heck goes on inside those machines.

        • by lenski ( 96498 )

          Which is why they use paper ballots. The voter must be able to see that their choices are reflected in a ballot that can be hand-counted publicly and in a way that during the count, as many witnesses as wish to observe, can watch and validate the process.

        • There's a difference between a secure machine, and a machine that is seen to be secure. It's fundamentally important for the democracy that the counting is SEEN to be secure, and nobody except a few dozen boffins knows what the heck goes on inside those machines.

          Perhaps it's more fundamentally important for those wanting to "preserve democracy" to understand they're not fooling anyone but themselves at this point. Children have been hacking these voting machines for years. Who is dumb enough to even believe these are "SEEN" to be secure? And hell, who cares how secure they are when the other 90% of the corruption seems to happen outside of that little black box anyway. Lot more to fix here than a simple voting machine. You couldn't even go back to paper ballot

    • If we can't agree on people voting with ID, how the heck will you convince people they need to work with blockchain, with all the authentication that entails?

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @04:51PM (#61451778)
    and how it's being spread to Ga, I'd like to be able to track my ballot. We've got state legislatures, which tend to be hyper partisan, breaking chain of custody all over the place. It's to the point where I'm starting to wonder if they're going to steal elections. Some of them certainly tried with the last one but it wasn't narrow enough to get away with it.
    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      What are you seeing in Az?

      I'm aware that they have a forensic audit taking place, and I think that it's already identified breaches in the chain of custody, but it hasn't reported back yet so I wouldn't want to accuse the Secretary of State of breaking the law. Yet.

      I did notice though that the legislature have had to act to prevent her interfering with an audit of the election she oversaw. That's not a good look.

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )
        I'm aware that they have a forensic audit taking place, and I think that it's already identified breaches in the chain of custody . . .

        The "audit" they're conducting in Arizona is a breach in the chain of custody.

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          Given the number of legal challenges raised to try and prevent the audit taking place I think it's pretty clear that the audit is legal and being done in full accordance with the law.

          You may draw your own conclusions regarding the constant attempts to prevent it.

  • Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Srin Tuar ( 147269 ) <zeroday26@yahoo.com> on Thursday June 03, 2021 @04:56PM (#61451804)

    The company single-handedly responsible for normalizing the idea that electronics can catch diseases, and for enabling terrorism to attack infrastructure is now moving to get involved in voting?

    How about hell no?

  • We can't track invisible bits traveling light speed down a wire.

    It's entirely bogus. We need to demand plain old paper ballots and end this stupid argument.

    • I think you can have both. Computers can print words on paper that both computers and people can read. Vote at an electronic voting machine that, instead of recording your vote, prints a paper record of your choices that both you and computers can read. If what it prints agrees with what you want, turn that paper in as your vote. If what it prints doesn't agree with what you want, tear it up and try again. The ballot pages have no human markings in the vote choice section, and the font and grammar are prog
      • Thank-you! exactly, this is the way to have security plus some counting automation. I think the

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        The ballot pages have no human markings in the vote choice section, and the font and grammar are programmed in to the reader, so they can be machine read without error.

        Oh for fuck's sake. That's not giving him 'both'. That's giving him the illusion of security while still leaving the entire process vulnerable to malicious interference or plain incompetence in the counting machines and recount processes.

        For example https://news.yahoo.com/folded-... [yahoo.com]

        How about: vote on a paper form. Count that paper form in a large hall with representatives of the candidates (and their parties) and independent observers present. Tally the counts by hand. Verify and check the tallies. Validate

        • Bullshit. A paper form printed by a computer can be hand counted just as easily as one pre-printed and marked by a person and is no more vulnerable to incompetence or malicious interference than one pre-printed and marked by a person. And, unless you have a mimeograph machine, your hand marked ballots will be printed by someone with a computer. Your words come across like you're making crap up.
          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            My words come across like I was responding to

            they can be machine read without error.

            I made nothing up. The only crap in my post was the part I quoted.

  • by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @05:16PM (#61451868)

    Once they submit their ballots, voters will receive a piece of paper with a verification or QR code, which they can input into their local election jurisdiction's website to track their ballot through the tabulation process. The process is done without revealing the content of the voter's ballot while maintaining the privacy and secrecy of their selections

    So if the process doesn't show who the vote was tabulated for, how does the voter know it wasn't stolen? It's fine to know that a vote was counted on your behalf, but won't voters want to see that it was actually received for the candidate they chose?

    Which would probably open up another can of worms when people start claiming their vote was changed.

    • by ewhac ( 5844 )

      So if the process doesn't show who the vote was tabulated for, how does the voter know it wasn't stolen?

      You don't. This is by design.

      The same process that could be used to confirm that your vote for Candidate D was logged could also be used by your abusive spouse/employer to produce proof that you voted for Candidate F, or else.

      The way you help ensure the counting process itself isn't corrupt is by volunteering to work for your city/county elections.

      • So if the process doesn't show who the vote was tabulated for, how does the voter know it wasn't stolen?

        You don't. This is by design.

        So what's the point then?

        • The point is you have a physical ballot that if push comes to shove, ordinary people can count and verify under the watch of poll watchers from the major parties without any suggestion that a machine is cheating... and yet you can also count it by machine and get a fast result.

          • It doesn't say you get a physical ballot. It says you get a piece of paper with a QR code, which leads to the aforementioned website which shows only that a ballot has been counted, not who it counted for.
  • windows auto updates on voteing day lead to long lines at the polling place.

    voters at on point had to wait 30 min to 1 hour to cast there vote do the voteing system rebooting in the middle of the day.

  • I'm less concerned about whether my vote is counted, than if all the dead people's votes are NOT counted.

  • Or not.

    "Texas has a long history of problems with Hart eSlate voting machines"
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10... [techcrunch.com]

    "“We have heard from a number of people voting on Hart eSlate machines that when they voted straight ticket, it appeared to them that the machine had changed one or more of their selections to a candidate from a different party."

    Hart is headquartered in ... Texas. You know - the state that likes to file lawsuits with the US Supreme Court telling other states how to run their elections: https [texastribune.org]

    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      If the other states didn't break the fucking law then they wouldn't need Texas to tell them not to.

  • So even if this could be implemented perfectly, preserving security and anonymity, which it probably can't, you still have the problem of humans. In other words, I'm far more worried about the countless morons who won't be able to figure out how to verify their vote and will immediately take to facebook / twitter / parler / gab / "whatever trump 'launches' lol" / myspace / youtube / instagram / telegram / whatsapp to claim for all time that their vote didn't count and that the election was therefore a fraud
  • I'm not concerned that recent elections were insecure, but its vital that the voting public BELIEVE that they are secure if the are. Have a variety of ways to help demonstrate election security - and as a consequence catch any insecurities is extremely valuable. This is not a Red / Blue issue - for democracy to function elections need to be fair and people need to believe that they are fair.

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