[HN Gopher] Colorado county's voting machines banned after secur...
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Colorado county's voting machines banned after security breach
Author : geox
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-08-29 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I really hope I'm reading this wrong, but it looks like the key
| takeaway here should be that an official responsible for security
| completely subverted their responsibilities, allowed unauthorized
| access, and disabled monitoring... and the only reason anyone
| found out is one of their co-conspirators broadcast the resulting
| access all over the internet.
|
| If the only way a bank (or its depositors) knew the bank had been
| robbed was if the robbers told everyone they'd robbed that bank,
| would we consider the bank secure, no matter what consequences
| employees faced?
|
| There seems to be a fundamental failure of process with no plans
| to actually improve security in the future.
| sylens wrote:
| It was my understanding that going into the symposium, the
| issue of Mesa County's machines was already on the radar and
| there was an active probe into Peters
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Peters survived an effort to recall her from office over the
| ballots and other issues, including allegations that she failed
| to maintain adequate staffing in the election division.
|
| I might be tempted to say that the voters of Mesa County deserve
| having their freedoms stolen away. A _vital_ part of democracy is
| holding transgressors accountable, and the voters of Mesa County
| have failed their responsibility.
| logicchains wrote:
| >I might be tempted to say that the voters of Mesa County
| deserve having their freedoms stolen away. A vital part of
| democracy is holding transgressors accountable, and the voters
| of Mesa County have failed their responsibility.
|
| I mean, if she really was deliberately messing with the
| counting somehow, the result of the vote doesn't necessarily
| reflect what the voters actually voted for?
| throwjd764glug wrote:
| If a lone clerk can compromise the machines, should we really be
| using them? Do we know and trust everyone who had (legitimate or
| otherwise) access to these machines, including the manufacturer?
|
| And what benefit do they offer over a hand count, to justify so
| much risk?
|
| Just because the Republican's allegations about fraud were
| without merit, does not mean electronic voting is a good idea.
| nikkinana wrote:
| Of course.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| This past election cycle politicized what should have otherwise
| been treated as a national security threat in unauthorized access
| to voting systems.
|
| Notice i use the word "systems" to include the human element as
| well as all the other components that go into making what we have
| today far from an acceptable system of voting in the most
| powerful individual on the planet.
| gruez wrote:
| >This past election cycle politicized
|
| The past election cycle? You mean 2020? IIRC even back in 2016
| there were significant concerns that russians were hacking
| election machines.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Given the audits and investigations of past elections, and that
| up until the summer of 2020 most democratic leadership were
| saying the election would be fraudulent, why aren't we allowing
| republicans to audit to their heart's content? What could it
| possibly hurt to make it completely open and accountable, for
| whatever they feel was sketchy? Surely national harmony is
| worth a Stacy Abrams style audit?
| pacerwpg wrote:
| This is an open ended request. Specifically which elections
| were not open and accountable and now require an official
| audit?
| merpnderp wrote:
| I don't care which ones they claim. If they want to dig
| into an election, then let them dig. If they find
| something, then they've done us all a favor. If they find
| nothing, then they've also done us a favor.
|
| But it is shady AF for democrat leadership to claim the
| election was going to be stolen in summer 2020, then today
| we have republicans claiming all their investigations into
| election irregularities are being blocked at every level,
| and every tiny step being fought in court.
|
| No way Trump won, but it would be nice for Republicans to
| be able to know that for a fact.
| yarky wrote:
| It looks like the safer way to vote is avoiding technology,
| which I find a bit counterintuitive even though many countries
| rely on paper and people counting, I've even done it once
| (forced by law). I don't know how wrong I might be in this, but
| it looks to me like it systems are vulnerable by nature and
| hence the only secure voting system seems to be a system that
| avoids relying entirely on IT systems.
|
| The technical problem is solvable, but the security and
| transparency (to the public) are harder to get, specially the
| security aspect since blockchain technology could potentially
| help dealing with transparency.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > It looks like the safer way to vote is avoiding technology
|
| correct.
|
| obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/
| Audiophilip wrote:
| I think Tom Scott's video about e-voting couldn't be more
| relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
| enaaem wrote:
| Taiwan has the best vote counting procedure. Inefficiency is
| feature. Ballots are hold up, choice is announced and score is
| publicly tracked.
|
| https://youtu.be/cqKt-lPfJuw
| greypowerOz wrote:
| i still refer people to this also. He neatly summarises the
| core issues. People watching other people count marks on dead
| trees works great.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _People watching other people count marks on dead trees
| works great._
|
| They did this twice in Georgia and it didn't get the
| conspiracists to shut up or change their minds.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I like Tom but I think he's wrong to dismiss vote machine +
| paper receipt as an "expensive pencil". You get the best of
| both worlds with this option. The benefits of the voting
| machine give voters more screen real estate to view the
| candidates for a single race, more chances to correct their
| vote, and even the option to randomize candidate placement. You
| also get faster vote tally by doing it electronically. In
| addition if you produce a paper receipt you now have a physical
| backup to verify individual machines or precincts as a whole.
| You could craft policy to automatically do audits on say 30% of
| the machines before actually releasing the tally, with the
| option to do a full audit if needed.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The Brazilian design for voting machines addresses most of
| those concerns in a nice way. I couldn't find a full
| description in English but Wikipedia has a few bits:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Brazil
| greypowerOz wrote:
| respectfully, that article simply repeats variations of
| scenarios tom brings up in his video;)
|
| pick any part of the process in that article and ask "how do
| you know that the black box is trustworthy?" , in the context
| of assuming that some nation states have a vested interest in
| messing with the process...
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Unfortunately that article is weak on the actual security
| mechanisms. Each step adds a layer of security. To affect
| the results of the election you need to compromise
| _multiple_ of them.
|
| Here's a translated page that goes into detail:
| https://www-tse-jus-br.translate.goog/o-tse/escola-
| judiciari...
| treesprite82 wrote:
| It sounds like the random selection of machines for the
| parallel "mock election" is intended to help with that
| issue.
| 0x456 wrote:
| There is also the Emmy Nominated HBO Documentary "Hacking
| Democracy", from 2006.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > A spokesperson for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which
| provides election equipment to Colorado and 27 other states, said
| the company continues to work in full cooperation with the state
| and Mesa County authorities.
|
| Oh, you mean Dominion Voting Systems, apparently bought by the
| CCP for $400 million just months before the 2020 election?
|
| Funny how the MSM never reports on who owns Dominion.
| blondie9x wrote:
| Unreal. Because voting is secure the conspiracy theorist decided
| to create a conspiracy and potential security threat by releasing
| passwords online for the system and allowing people in to the
| back door. How pathetic. You were that hard up for a conspiracy?
| They should vet these people more and allow less individual
| access. I've seen some systems where 2 or more people of opposite
| political parties have to open the facilities at the same time.
| Maybe try that?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Yes, Colorado voting is secure, and yes, a conspiracy theorist,
| who happens to be Mesa County's Clerk and Recorder, is
| completely to blame for the security breech. What you're
| leaving out is that because the election didn't turn out the
| way the Clerk wanted, she's muddying the waters and making
| further fair elections far more difficult.
| [deleted]
| BeefWellington wrote:
| On the flipside - this was caught, an investigation has opened,
| the public was notified and mitigating steps were taken to
| ensure election security. IMO this is what it looks like when
| the system is functioning well.
| [deleted]
| ricardobeat wrote:
| If a single breach to a ceremony involving the equipment is
| enough to invalidate it's use completely, doesn't sound like the
| machines are designed with enough layers of security? Couldn't
| they repeat that step and reset that leaked password?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's a safety precaution.
|
| Consider it like a supply chain breach: If you discover that
| your supply chain has been possibly tampered with by QAnon-
| associated conspiracy bloggers who deliberately lied to
| circumvent background check requirements and who also disabled
| the security cameras that week, you replace the equipment to be
| safe while you investigate.
|
| > Griswold also said that one week before the breach, Peters
| ordered her staff to turn off the video surveillance system
| that monitors the voting machines and that it was only recently
| turned back on.
|
| Precautions for supply chain breaches aren't unique to voting
| machines. If you discover supply chain tampering for anything
| security-sensitive, you replace the gear. This goes for
| everything from people's laptops to network equipment.
|
| The full article has more details. This wasn't just a simple
| leak. There's some strange corruption involved at that office.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| Have predicted for years that electronic voting would cause civil
| unrest because in a highly contested election, it does not
| provide adequte physical evidence of vote integrity. The whole
| idea of electronic voting is designed to forfeit the integrity of
| a process whose _entire legitimacy_ depends on the integrity of
| that process. As they say, this isn 't the first time they stole
| from us, it's just the first time they've been caught. Anyone who
| has scratched the surface of this issue is unlikely to be
| persuaded by new assurances about new electronic voting controls,
| other than committed partisans who are fine if it's rigged in
| their favour.
|
| The more interesting question is, what are the knock on effects
| of a popular loss of confidence in western elections held with
| these machines?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| "Nobody except us can be alone with these machines otherwise you
| can't trust them"
|
| Is not something that anybody trying to ensure trust in elections
| should ever say.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Note the story isn't "insecurities suspected in voting systems",
| its "systems exposed for inspection" ... Why would a voting
| system _not_ be totally open and inspect-able by any citizen of
| the jurisdiction using it, and /or anyone else? What've they got
| to hide?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The inspection seems to have included the administrator
| passwords. That seems like something worth hiding from the
| general public.
| aristophenes wrote:
| Your implication is that whoever has the administrator
| passwords can tamper with the machine to affect the results.
| And that someone, who is not the general public, should have
| access to the passwords. How is that better? So certain
| chosen individuals an have the power to tamper with the
| machines, but no one else? Isn't that the exact problem that
| is concerning people?
|
| Machines that cannot be completely publicly inspected
| shouldn't be used.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >And that someone, who is not the general public, should
| have access to the passwords. How is that better?
|
| I'm not in favor of electronic voting either. There was a
| clear thing covered in this inspection that needs to be
| hidden. Whether that makes for a good election system is a
| separate matter.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This story is wild. The headline is about the machines, but the
| article is really about some strange corruption within the
| department that led up to the breach:
|
| > Griswold also said that one week before the breach, Peters
| ordered her staff to turn off the video surveillance system that
| monitors the voting machines and that it was only recently turned
| back on.
|
| Somehow they ended up with an unauthorized person attending a
| procedure to update the machines, which then resulted in video
| and other information being posted to a QAnon-affiliated blog.
|
| Replacing the potentially compromised machines is a good move,
| but it seems like the real story is that something has gone very
| wrong inside this government office.
| maxwell wrote:
| Why replace the machines instead of using paper ballots?
| saryant wrote:
| All of Colorado uses paper ballots. These machines are only
| used to tabulate paper ballots. Each election is then
| followed by a risk-limiting audit to ensure the machines'
| accuracy.
| pm90 wrote:
| It frankly seems like a deliberate sabotage. It doesn't help
| that the county clerk is apparently attending a QAnon
| conspiracy conference at the moment.
|
| Any election official that shows allegiance to such theories
| should be summarily banned from ever holding public office.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Peters ordered her staff to turn off the video surveillance
| system that monitors the voting machines and that it was only
| recently turned back on.
|
| This is probably about the point where you should ask your
| boss's boss "is this okay?" rather than just following orders,
| tbh. The whole thing is bizarre.
| joelbondurant wrote:
| Democrats gonna democrat.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Can't they just wipe them clean and restart?
|
| How is one person being present during an upgrade enough to
| render the physical machines suspect and beyond repair/review?
|
| If they are compromised, I'd love to see a post mortem and
| understand how they were compromised and how that can be
| mitigated going forward.
| torgoguys wrote:
| No reason for your question to be downvoted. I've done my small
| part to reverse that.
|
| I doubt the officials suspect the machines have been
| compromised, but they have no way of knowing. There are chain
| of custody rules to help ensure integrity of the systems. Those
| have been violated so the machines can't be used until they've
| been carefully examined and recertified.
|
| Putting this in a money context might help some--lets say you
| owned slot machines that could have big payouts. Would you let
| rando unauthorized person to be alone with one of your machines
| in a private office, doing upgrades, and still trust the
| machine? Probably not. You'd want to take a look at it top to
| bottom before trusting it to do any payouts. The person might
| not have done anything wrong but you've got to be sure first,
| and since there are other ways these things could be
| compromised than just adding unauthorized software to the hard
| drive, a clean install isn't enough.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| So far the claim is _" an unauthorized person's name was
| entered into the log of people who were present for a secure
| software update conducted by Dominion employees"_ and not _"
| rando unauthorized person to be alone with one of your
| machines."_ If someone seeing an update executed compromises
| the machines, that's a HUGE problem.
|
| But I think you're spot on with the slot machine comparison.
| In a casino, asking security to turn off the cameras
| monitoring an area would be a breach in itself. They wouldn't
| do it and would report someone who requested it.
|
| In this situation, "how could an official could order it?"
| and "why did the security team do it?" are both things to
| look into. Was this standard operating procedure? If so, for
| how long and when else did it occur?
|
| And broader, are there other jurisdictions where they had
| similar security lapses? If so, when, where, and for how
| long? Further, were those machines also removed from service
| and analyzed?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > How is one person being present during an upgrade enough to
| render the physical machines suspect and beyond repair/review?
|
| As soon as an unidentified attacker has unsupervised access to
| a piece of hardware it's game over. An exploit that uses
| persistence features like embedding itself into the BIOS/UEFI
| firmware (see e.g. https://www.coresecurity.com/core-
| labs/articles/the-bios-emb...) can be very hard to get rid of -
| so hard that it's likely easier to dispose of the machines
| entirely.
| unanswered wrote:
| Do you have a source for "an attacker having unsupervised
| access" to these machines or are you just making that up?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Can't they just wipe them clean and restart
|
| They're now evidence in an ongoing investigation. They don't
| know exactly what happened to them because the perpetrators
| deliberately disabled the security cameras monitoring the
| machines before doing whatever they did.
|
| Wiping them could destroy evidence or it could miss a different
| issue (hardware modification, for example).
|
| The only reasonable response is to quarantine the machines as
| evidence and replace them with new machines with a known chain
| of custody.
|
| > How is one person being present during an upgrade enough to
| render the physical machines suspect and beyond repair/review?
|
| There's more to the story, including someone intentionally
| disabling the security cameras that monitored the machines for
| at least a week. With a gap in the surveillance of the machines
| combined with a QAnon-associated leak and an intruder who
| misled the office, it's time to start fresh and set the old
| machines aside as evidence.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Can't they just wipe them clean and restart?
|
| I mean, _probably_. There's malware that's extremely difficult
| to get rid of, but probably it wasn't used here.
|
| But it looks like they have elections coming up in a few weeks,
| so "do it on paper" is probably a not-unreasonable precaution,
| particularly given the general pattern of dodginess, in
| particular the thing about the video surveillance.
|
| If nothing else, if you phone up the manufacturer and tell them
| that a weird pillow website devotee allowed some unknown third
| party to potentially mess with the machines, the manufacturer
| is probably _not_ going to say "yeah, that'll definitely be
| fine, use them"; they won't want to take the risk. This is
| probably a return-to-manufacturer job.
| platz wrote:
| https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/dyvjwa/mike-lindell-is-h...
| sidlls wrote:
| Whole countries with public counting of paper ballots have
| election results faster than we do.
|
| The phrase "voting system" is an absurdity. It highlights the
| overly complex, bug-riddled lunacy we have now.
|
| A lockbox, under guard with multiple observers, collecting
| ballots over the voting period, followed by a public counting of
| the paper ballots is simple and fast. What we have now isn't.
| ajay-b wrote:
| I agree, the overly complex use of machines, followed by closed
| door counting, lends it self too much to impropriety. I think
| America has mostly honest elections, but after last year's
| election I am... Uneasy about the whole system. Simple is
| better.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| What exactly makes you uneasy?
|
| In the case of Mesa County, CO, the breech of security was by
| a conspiracy theorist. There is no voter-level election
| fraud, so the USA doesn't need strict ID requirements.
| Colorado is particularly transparent about how they do risk-
| limiting audits of all elections, so fearing about electronic
| counting machines mis-counting is misplaced.
|
| What exactly, are you uneasy about?
| tohnjitor wrote:
| - Arguably unconstitutional changes to state voting laws
| less than six months before election day.
|
| - Authorized election observers banned from their
| designated polling places on election day.
|
| - Cessation of ballot counting on election day.
|
| - Waiting until observers leave to count large numbers of
| ballots that were hidden under a table all day.
|
| - Hundreds of thousands of ballots with no chain of custody
| records.
|
| - Double standards about who is allowed to challenge vote
| certifications. Democrats challenged Trump's election and
| both of Bush 43's elections as is permitted in the
| Constitution. When Republicans did the same in 2021 they
| were threatened with impeachment and removed from
| committees.
|
| I'm sure I'm forgetting other reasons to be uneasy.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| > When Republicans did the same in 2021
|
| Are you talking about January 6th, or what?
|
| John Kerry conceded quickly in 2004, partly to avoid the
| weirdness that followed the 2000 election.
|
| Gore as Vice President presided over the congressional
| vote to certify the EC vote. Which he lost. Nothing like
| Jan 6 2021 happened and the vote was substantially closer
| and fishier. I think the double standard lies elsewhere.
| he0001 wrote:
| > - Double standards about who is allowed to challenge
| vote certifications. Democrats challenged Trump's
| election and both of Bush 43's elections as is permitted
| in the Constitution. When Republicans did the same in
| 2021 they were threatened with impeachment and removed
| from committees
|
| What are you referring to here?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| None of these issues are true in Colorado, or Mesa
| County.
|
| For other states, all these issues were addressed in more
| than one lawsuit each, and all such lawsuits were
| rejected.
|
| The suits didn't get filed in one state, and appear
| before one judge. Multiple states, multiple judges. A lot
| of the suits were appealed, and failed on appeal, too. To
| be uneasy about this is to believe in a far reaching,
| many hundreds of participant conspiracy.
|
| Further, the states in which these concerns were raised
| are all swing states. This seems suspicious in and of
| itself. Why not raise concerns about procedures in
| Colorado? It's a vote by mail state, and even in Colorado
| Springs districts, there was a big swing to Biden from
| 2020 results. Seems like you'd take on the easy places to
| prove a conspiracy, and you'd raise legit concerns. But
| no, swing states are the only places, it looks like
| trying to game the refs, to borrow a sports metaphor.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| The issue is, most of the things you mention never
| happened. Not even close.
| dannyw wrote:
| Australia has a simple and trustable election system. Paper
| ballots, reinforced by the fact that more or less every citizen
| can get a job working on election day. Your duties include
| looking up people based on what they say their name an address
| is (no ID required; although many electors hand me their ID
| anyway) on a big electoral roll book, cross out their name, and
| hand them a ballot with your initials.
|
| They go to one of the booths and mark their selection, and drop
| it off into a zip-tied big ballot box (that is visible to the
| general public, and of course election staff at all times).
|
| After the polls close, the polling official cuts the zip-ties
| on the ballot boxes, everyone working sorts ballots into piles
| and count them, along with scrutineers from political parties
| who can watch. An officer-in-charge records and publishes the
| results continuously, and everything is saved and shipped for
| OCR-based recounting to verify the numbers. The process is
| federally operated and the same processes are followed
| everywhere.
|
| Results are almost always revealed on election night.
|
| The electoral roll books are processed centrally after every
| election, so someone who votes twice would be quickly caught.
| Someone who votes under fake names and addresses would most
| likely cross-over with someone else, hence an investigation
| would still happen. (We also have compulsory voting, which is
| another subject for debate, but it does mean "vote under
| multiple names" is mitigated without the need for ID laws).
|
| The job pays reasonably well (A$457 for the day), more or less
| everyone who applies gets hired (I believe there is a bias
| towards maximizing first-time applicants), and it's hard to
| think about election fraud when every citizen can be part of
| the election process itself, and it's hard to conceive of how
| fraud can happen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > The process is federally operated and the same processes
| are followed everywhere.
|
| The US has state-run elections, as provided in the
| Constitution (Article II, section 1).
|
| Each state could individually opt-in to use a federally run
| system (or portion thereof), but the feds can't mandate it,
| absent a Constitutional amendment.
|
| The USA is really a republic of states in many regards and
| the states have [or at least started with and in theory still
| have] a lot more power than in many other countries where the
| central government is stronger.
| syshum wrote:
| 16th and 17th amendment neutered alot of power the States
| had..
|
| With the 16th the federal government was able to
| extort/bribe the states with money...
|
| With the 17th the states lost their voice in Congress...
|
| The 2 combined has really hurt the idea of State
| Sovereignty. Personally I would like to see that power
| restored back to the States
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree with your overall preference. I'm not as sure
| that the 17th stripped power from the states, so much as
| defined how that power was elected. (It's clear that it
| could make some difference but not clear that it shifts
| overall power federally.)
| syshum wrote:
| Because before the 17th the Senate was the State
| Governments representative in the congress. Senators
| represented the desire of the State Legislatures not the
| People of the states.
|
| This is why all spending bills have to start in the
| House, because the House is the peoples voice in
| congress, and if they want to spend the peoples money it
| has to start with the peoples voice, not the States.
|
| The US was to be a republic with only a single part of
| the new federal government democratically elected, there
| was / is a reason for that. Separation of Powers and
| distributed power being the key concepts.
|
| By changing congress to have both the house and the
| senate become democratically elected the State
| Governments lost their voice in the federal government.
| mcspiff wrote:
| This more-or-less describes the Canadian system as well. We
| get "voter cards" mailed to us that make it easier to look up
| the person on the voter rolls, that's the only notable
| difference. And they aren't required, similar to what you
| say.
| smt88 wrote:
| The US systems are often similar to this, including the
| several steps of checks.
|
| None of that matters in the face of conspiracy theorists who
| live in non-reality.
| trident5000 wrote:
| I appreciate the conspiracy theorists. Id rather have crazy
| people shout fire and things be looked at than have the
| election system taken for granted perpetually.
| smt88 wrote:
| I would agree with you if they were good-faith actors
| motivated by caution.
|
| Unfortunately in this case, they won't accept anything
| that invalidates their baseless belief that the election
| went the other way.
| sidlls wrote:
| Not really. Most of the US is run on a very opaque system
| of electronic machines and poorly thought out processes
| ostensibly to make it more secure.
| smt88 wrote:
| Source?
|
| I haven't heard of a large part of the US that doesn't
| have a auditable paper ballots as a backup for the
| electronic system.
| syshum wrote:
| auditable paper ballots are only good if there is an
| actually full audit, that almost never happens, and today
| if you advocate for one you are a "far alt-right wing
| conspiracy theorist"
|
| That is far far far different that what is being talked
| about fro AU and Canada, where there is no electronic
| middle man that is trusted first...
| smt88 wrote:
| There were full audits in the contested parts of the US
| this year. Where did they refuse to do one?
| syshum wrote:
| Source... the only full audit is the one still in
| progress in AZ.
|
| Some (very very few) did "Risk Limiting" Audits, that
| audit a random sampling (some times as low as 2%) of
| ballots.
|
| I am unaware of any full, hand recount not using any
| electronic machines audits that took place anywhere in
| the US outside of AZ.
| smt88 wrote:
| Georgia did two full recounts that didn't use
| machines[1]. It was observed by Republicans, Democrats,
| and independents, and it was organized by Republican
| state officials.
|
| The audit in progress in AZ is a partisan sham that has
| been challenged as unnecessary and politically motivated
| by local Republican researchers[2] and officials.
|
| 1. https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/historic_first_
| statew...
|
| 2. https://tucson.com/news/local/political-notebook-
| tucson-repu...
| btgeekboy wrote:
| Yes - it's been a few years since I lived there, but this
| was effectively the process we used in my California
| county. I've come to admire the simplicity of Scantron-
| esque ballots vs. many of these overengineered touch screen
| systems.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| At least in my California we do have touchscreens for
| people with disabilities who can't read (they need an
| audio ballot) or fill out a ballot with a pen. But when
| the one time I worked on the polls, no one even used the
| touchscreen.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| In most places in CA, the touchscreens spit out a marked
| paper ballot that is then counted and stored with the
| rest.
| milliondollar wrote:
| Agree. I've voted in 4 states (NC, NY, VT, NH) and it has
| all been like above. And I've also served as election
| volunteer, checking absentee ballots against the voting
| rolls.
| xvedejas wrote:
| I'm trying to understand the operation of the rollbook. Is
| the voter required to go to one specific place to vote? This
| seems at least moderately inconvenient.
| thebrid wrote:
| The UK has a similar system. You are required to go to a
| specific place to vote but these are normally _very_ local
| and just for your neighbourhood, e.g. in the local school
| or church hall. My last three polling stations have been
| 0.1, 0.6 and 0.2 miles away.
|
| There are 35k polling stations for 47m voters so each
| station has to process only ~1,300 voters in 15 hours.
| Queueing is unusual in my experience. Postal votes and
| voting by proxy are also options.
| kergonath wrote:
| Voting in the UK is a very smooth process. It's very easy
| to take 5 minutes to go and vote before or after work, or
| during a break if you work locally.
| jhgb wrote:
| We have it similar in the Czech Republic, except it's
| around ~700 eligible voters per polling place. Since the
| upcoming parliamentary elections are likely to have a
| ~60% participation, a team of several people at any
| random polling place is facing the insurmountable task of
| counting ~400 ballots in several hours.
| emmelaich wrote:
| No, not necessary to go to a specific place.
|
| If someone found voting at two places, that's dealt with
| afterwards.
| dannyw wrote:
| You can vote in any polling place in your state. If you are
| out of state, you need to go to dedicated interstate
| polling centers (or vote by mail).
|
| The roll book is very, very big, and includes every
| registered elector in the state. It's alphabetically sorted
| by last name. Every election official gets their own roll
| book that they mark names off.
|
| The way you are supposed to do it is ask:
|
| 1. "What is your name?"
|
| (flip through the book and find the right page with the
| last name, usually just takes a few seconds)
|
| 2. "Where do you live?" / "What is your address?"
|
| (find the entry with the right name and correct address; if
| you can't find it, ask them to go to the 'help desk' where
| a provisional ballot is provided).
|
| 3. "Have you voted before in this election?"
|
| (they should say no, and then you initial a ballot and hand
| it to them).
|
| These books are centrally checked after the election, so
| people who vote twice can be investigated.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Whole countries with public counting of paper ballots have
| election results faster than we do.
|
| How many of those countries have as many races on a typical
| presidential-year ballot as the US does?
|
| The US is also generally pretty fast to count its ballots; note
| that the election result is usually known within hours of polls
| closing, despite the insane number of races on the ballots.
| What happened in 2020 is there was an unusually high number of
| mail-in ballots, and this was combined with several states
| intentionally slowing down the counting process.
| sfteus wrote:
| My only issue with a paper-only drop box is there's no
| redundancy. I would think with having poll watchers from
| multiple affiliations and multiple shifts per day to ensure you
| have many eyes on the box it wouldn't be a concern. But, if
| someone or some group managed to figure out a way to "stuff the
| box," you'd have no proof it happened.
|
| I really like the system we have in DFW now. We have a global
| voter roll so you can vote in any location in your county. You
| submit your vote on a machine, which keeps a local machine-
| level tally and prints out a paper ballot. You verify the
| contents of the paper ballot, then drop it into a vote counting
| box, which scans, tallies, and displays your vote for you to
| confirm. If at any time anything looks wrong, you notify a poll
| worker to resolve it. At the end of each day, they verify the
| counts on the machines and ballot box match, then the ballot
| counter/box is locked along with the memory cards of each
| individual machine, so you have day-by-day results.
|
| When the election ends, the ballot boxes are delivered to a
| central county counting system where they are put into another
| large-scale counting machine to verify that the counts there
| match the local counter/box. If at any point there's too many
| discrepancies, they'll do hand counts of the paper ballots.
| They can also unlock the voting machine memory cards if
| necessary. All of this process is done under the supervision of
| poll watchers.
|
| In theory, you get near instantaneous results as each voting
| location can simply total the ballot box results and report
| them. You also have 4 separate systems (voting machine, local
| counter/ballot box, central counter, paper backups) that would
| need to be compromised to successfully tamper with the results.
|
| I'm sure it wouldn't make a conspiracy theorist satisfied, but
| to me, it's a system that balances speed and convenience with
| the simplicity and security(?) of a paper ballot, without
| unnecessarily obfuscating the process behind electronic-only
| voting.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Just add some risk-limiting audits (like what Colorado has,
| incidentally) and this is the kind of election system I would
| like.
|
| https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/gentle12.pdf
| xadhominemx wrote:
| It's hard to stuff the box because fraud would be instantly
| detected when many voters submitted multiple ballots.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Hand counting of ballots works well when you're only voting for
| a single elected office. In the US, most elections involve
| voting for many different offices all on the same ballot.
|
| Really, we should just be switching to using scantron style
| ballots everywhere. They're paper ballots which can be
| efficiently counted by a machine, and are super easy to
| manually recount later
| sidlls wrote:
| Are you suggesting most other places, including those with
| counted paper ballots, don't have multiple offices to elect
| at election time?
| tzs wrote:
| > Really, we should just be switching to using scantron style
| ballots everywhere. They're paper ballots which can be
| efficiently counted by a machine, and are super easy to
| manually recount later.
|
| Better yet, switch to Scantron style ballots with some clever
| mathematics in how the ballots are made, and some clever
| chemistry in how they are marked, and you can then make it so
| that all the ballots can be published afterwards, any voter
| can verify that their vote was counted toward the correct
| candidate, anyone can verify that the totals for each
| candidate match the vote, a voter cannot prove to a coercer
| that they voted the way the coercer wanted, and any voter can
| do a check before voting to try to catch shenanigans with
| being given tampered with ballots, all without requiring any
| changes to the Scantron counting machines so that there is
| very little addition cost for all of these protections--and
| for voters that don't care about verifying that their vote
| was correctly counted it works just like plain Scantron
| voting--fill in the bubbles next to the candidates you want
| to vote for.
|
| https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt08/tech/full_papers/.
| ..
|
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
| thebrid wrote:
| The UK uses hand-counted paper ballots and often has multiple
| elections on the same day. You just have a separate ballot
| paper for each election.
|
| It's not unusual to have votes for some combination of Member
| of Parliament, Regional Parliament, City Council, Local Mayor
| and Police Commissioner all on the same day. Members of the
| European Parliament too, until recently.
|
| It really doesn't take that long. Polls close at 10pm and
| first results can come out around midnight. Depending on how
| close the result is, the winner is often known around 6am the
| next day and the new Prime Minister can be in office by the
| afternoon.
| xxpor wrote:
| Yeah, 5 positions in a day in the US would be extremely
| small. My November ballot had 10+ candidates and 10ish
| questions/propositions.
| Spivak wrote:
| This system is simple but it's neither fast nor available. The
| thing you have to worry about with this kind of system is
| ballot stuffing which leads to needing an additional
| requirement to verify each voter and observe them filling out
| and depositing the ballot. This creates a bottleneck at the
| polls which is why every election there are news stories about
| people having heat strokes or being turned away after the polls
| close.
|
| It's also not available because making people show up to a few
| set of fixed locations at specific polling hours will exclude
| people who don't have access to transportation which is why
| during the Obama election the big thing was the Obama campaign
| providing busses to voters.
|
| If you're willing to give up some anonymity (only that you
| voted not what/you voted for) then mail in ballots, public
| drop-boxes, and walk-in deposits are much faster and more
| available. If you can mail in then great! Done. If you want to
| go to the polls then you fill out your ballot ahead of time,
| verify yourself with the poll worker and then drop it in the
| box. Done. 30 seconds a person rather than 10 minutes a person.
|
| I think the culture in the US surrounding voting is the real
| issue. The discussion is always around security and integrity
| and making sure only the right people vote which are the kind
| of problems people who read too many Tom Clancy books care
| about. Meanwhile we only get at most ~50% turnout every year
| and people have to fight to actually cast their ballots. And we
| pretend that our election results actually mean something when
| half the country doesn't vote and the sample that does is so
| skewed because the factors that keep people from voting aren't
| random.
| syshum wrote:
| The uniparty does not want secure, fast, accurate election.
| Election manipulation is the game... Neither side of the
| uniparty want to admit that though and believe "their side" is
| the pure and virtuous side, where as the "others" are evil vote
| stealers or suppressors
| hatware wrote:
| I like how this is fading because folks can't process
| reality. How anyone thinks lifelong politicians are serving
| us in _any_ way is beyond me.
| sidlls wrote:
| Tribalism has a very strong presence in the US.
| hatware wrote:
| I just call it the Agent Smith effect
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I'm struggling to identify what is a uniparty here. I fee
| that the two parties in the United States have multiple
| separate issues and behaviors that are mutually incompatible
| enough to call two different political organizations. For
| example, when the republicans were in power, very few social
| programs were passed/rolled out in the 4 years they were in
| power for. The Democrats in comparison have passed a
| significant amount of legislation in just 8 months, including
| new social programs like the child tax credit.
|
| Similarly, the removal and reinstatement of protection for
| Dreamers also seems to be one of those issues the parties
| broadly are incompatible about.
|
| If you would like to educate me, I would welcome it! Maybe my
| understanding of a party is wrong, or my understanding of
| policies are wrong. I'm not really into politics so I don't
| know much.
| syshum wrote:
| >>I fee that the two parties in the United States have
| multiple separate issues
|
| I suspect that is largely because the issues you care about
| happen to align with one single party. You primary seem to
| focus on what government can provide in way of social
| programs. Do you believe that is the sole role of
| government or even a proper role of government? To provide
| things for people?
|
| If so it is not surprising you believe there is differences
| between the parties, because on the issue of social program
| there does seem to be (even though that is only surface
| level) a difference, democrats love to give out lots of
| free money to people they believe will continue to vote for
| them.
|
| I am sure my opinions on those programs you will disagree
| with.
|
| The problem here is that I do not believe those programs
| are put into place to help anyone, they are just another
| form of control. The uniparty wants control, they get that
| via fear, money, and division.
|
| The apparent divide on "social programs" is an example of
| how the uniparty convinces people they are separate, when
| in reality they are both authoritarian driven by the desire
| to control people, not help them.
|
| Edit:
|
| BTW, Follow the money for your democrats... Look at the
| actual spending bills, look at where the Trillions of
| Dollars is going. Hint it is not the poor... sure a Few
| billion is for the headlines, but most of it is plain old
| corporate welfare just like Republicans do....
| macksd wrote:
| They may be referring to the fact that the two parties will
| often join forces to protect the status quo. Where you see
| support for things like ranked choice voting, or easier
| ballot access for third parties, you see less support from
| the established party leaders because the status quo is
| their best case scenario. It's all about democracy as long
| as you have the majority.
|
| While in actual votes the parties may differ, in principle
| I often fail to see any clear difference in philosophy.
| Someone running against the incumbent will slam them for
| abuse of executive orders and support for the Patriot Act.
| Then they'll get in office and sign a renewal of the
| Patriot Act and issue more executive orders than their
| predecessor. In that way I see them as a uniparty on many
| issues.
|
| In other ways Republicans are just anti-Democrats and
| Democrats are just anti-Republicans. They seem to use the
| same arguments on different issues depending on what
| happens to suit them or what politician they're defending.
| I've seen Republicans slam Biden for his failure in
| Afghanistan and failing to get Afghan nationals that helped
| the US military evacuated. But watch them do a 180 as soon
| as any of those Afghans arrive here. Which party believes
| you have absolute autonomy over your own medical decisions
| and that doctors need to treat you according to your own
| wishes? Well it depends on the treatment we're discussing.
| It doesn't depend on any consistent principle.
|
| Call it a uniparty or not - I just don't trust either to be
| sincere about any democratic principles anymore.
| mindslight wrote:
| Individual candidates have differing policies, but their
| overall platform is cut from the same cloth - benefiting
| their corporate sponsors. The main backdrop of agreement is
| massive money printing to prop up ever growing market
| bubbles, to the detriment of individuals' finances. The
| main differentiation comes in how they spin the fallout
| from corporate welfare - the Democrats want to use some
| printed money for individual welfare, whereas the
| Republicans market fake austerity.
|
| Having said that, individual candidates do differ and the
| Republican party is going down a dark path dressed up as
| libertarianism that almost made me reflexively downvote
| "uniparty" above.
| platz wrote:
| > Peters was among those who have been spreading baseless
| conspiracies about the election, but despite being accused of
| helping leak official election data to a QAnon promoter, she
| still appears to have a large support base in Mesa County. The
| Daily Sentinel reported Wednesday that "a large group of Mesa
| County residents asked the county commissioners to condemn
| Griswold for her investigation and to stand behind Peters, saying
| the clerk is a hero for trying to uncover cracks in the state's
| election system." And this Saturday, supporters will hold a
| "patriot rally" for Peters.
| leejoramo wrote:
| I live in Mesa County. This is a costly mess.
| bdavis__ wrote:
| I grew up in Mesa county.
|
| Last time i visited the MJ dispensaries were just over the
| county line; that stuff is not allowed in Mesa County. Boebert
| is the Congressional Rep.
|
| For Colorado, low wages, very Republican, general lower
| education.
|
| And the last thing they need it to waste public money on this
| kind of BS.
| aristophenes wrote:
| The Colorado Secretary of State is unintentionally showing the
| conspiracy theorists are correct. A single person having physical
| access to the voting machines, months before the election, who
| has different political views from the Secretary, is enough to
| make those machines unusable. When the entire election in a
| district is run by officials from a single political party, with
| unlimited access to the voting machines, what is the other
| political party supposed to think?
|
| I had no opinion before now, but clearly these machines are
| unusable anywhere.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > A single person having physical access to the voting
| machines, months before the election, who has different
| political views from the Secretary, is enough to make those
| machines unusable.
|
| According to the article they disabled the security cameras
| monitoring the machines for a week.
|
| Once someone deliberately breaks the chain of custody on voting
| equipment, whether it's electronic or a paper ballot box, it
| becomes suspect. Not only that, but the machines are now
| evidence in the investigation, so they have to be set aside
| anyway.
|
| Replacing the equipment was the only option. There is no
| perfectly secure voting system that isn't affected by chain of
| custody breaks.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This is the opposite of reality.
|
| Colorado resident here. The CO Secretary of State has been
| proactive about everything election related. There's complete,
| transparent procedures for voting, there's educational
| materials about the risk limiting audits that get done for
| every election.
|
| All registered voters get a ballot in the mail. You can return
| them by mail, use a secured drop box which reside in locations
| under security camera. You can check your ballot's status on-
| line, and get email updates. You can also vote in person,
| should you want, on election day.
|
| Some yahoo state rep introduced a patently-unfair bill that
| would have made CO do things like stop counting on midnight of
| election day, which would almost certainly leave large
| fractions of ballots uncounted no matter how you vote, mail or
| in-person. No way around that. Thankfully, the CO legislature
| is not particularly crazy this year, so it failed.
|
| The conspiracy theorists caused the breech - the Mesa County
| Clerk is the one that c illegally copied the voting machine
| hard drives and gave the images to other conspiracy theorists.
|
| You are putting the blame exactly in the wrong place.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > The conspiracy theorists caused the breech - the Mesa
| County Clerk is the one that c illegally copied the voting
| machine hard drives and gave the images to other conspiracy
| theorists.
|
| Back when voting machines were made by Diebold and the
| conspiracy was that they were tipping elections in favor of
| Rs, this sort of thing would have been taken as absolute
| proof - by the kinds of people who are today trying to play
| this all down as not concerning (I guess because it's a
| contrived or unlikely attack) - that we shouldn't use the
| machines and that election results could reasonably be
| doubted.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| No. Diebold machines were quite different. What Mesa County
| is having problems with, and what the... conspiracy
| theorists... are having problems with, are vote counting
| machines.
|
| Colorado has paper ballots, not voting machines. Votes are
| counted electronically, but risk-limiting audits are done
| on all elections. Some percentage of the paper ballots are
| selected and counted again. They should come within a
| percentage of the overall count. A failure of a risk-
| limiting audit triggers a recount. My memory is hazy about
| procedures after this.
|
| The huge problems with Diebold machines were multiple: you
| voted on them. They counted the votes, with no other
| record, and no receipt to the voter to ensure that the
| machine counted as the voter wanted. There was no record of
| the votes other than electronic in the machines, so
| recounts were meaningless. Diebold's CEO was a partisan,
| and announced it. Anyone of integrity would have problems
| with how Diebold did things.
|
| The Mesa County situation is completely different. Paper
| ballots which can be recounted by hand or electronically,
| and provide the voter with some small assurance that their
| ballot is marked the way the voter intends. Systems in
| place to notify voters that their ballot is in the mail,
| accepted for counting, and then finally, counted.
| aristophenes wrote:
| You missed my point entirely. The fact that a "breach" could
| happen and is something that is dangerous means the
| conspiracy theorists are correct. They feel about the
| Secretary of State like you feel about the Mesa County Clerk.
| If the situation was reversed and the Mesa County Clerk was
| the Secretary of State, would you feel confident about the
| elections? Who is getting access to the voting machines and
| what are they doing?
|
| If having access to the machines means that you can affect
| the results of the elections, and the public cannot safely
| audit that, then these machines are unusable at all times.
|
| You trust the Secretary of State. You think everyone in the
| state and country should trust the CO Secretary of State.
| Fine. But eventually an untrustworthy person gets to that
| seat of power, it's naive to think corrupt people wouldn't
| try and succeed. And from that point on they decide election
| results, and only other corrupt, complicit people run the
| government. The only real skill they need is to appear
| trustworthy, as grifters are already good at doing.
|
| The conspiracy theorists just think this has already
| happened.
|
| We should have a voting system that you would feel
| comfortable to be overseen by your ideological adversaries.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I trust the CO Secretary of State because she has done the
| right thing for her entire term, and been open about it,
| and made educational efforts well before the... conspiracy
| theorists... got to it. I'm a CO resident, and I pay
| attention to election issues. I read the CO procedure on
| risk limiting audits.
|
| There's no way that any procedure would have satisfied the
| current crop of... conspiracy theorists... because they
| were determined to find something to overturn the election
| of some candidates. Tina Peters is a case in point. She
| violated the procedures.
|
| There's probably voting systems that some ideological
| adversaries could oversee that I would be OK with - the
| current CO system comes close. Like I say, I'm a CO
| resident, and I looked into it.
|
| That said, you should google for Ken Buck, a north central
| CO Representative. You can find audio recording of him
| pressuring the Republican Party equivalent of Clerk and
| Recorder to illegally change election results. Why he's
| still got his seat in Congress is beyond me.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If having access to the machines means that you can
| affect the results of the elections
|
| They disabled the security cameras and did _something_ with
| election equipment, which is now set aside as evidence.
|
| They need to investigate. This would have happened if it
| was a paper voting machine or a ballot box with votes in
| it.
|
| This isn't a "conspiracy theorists are correct" moment.
| This is a show that the voting system does indeed have
| protections and supervision around it that identities
| tampering and resets the supply chain.
| aristophenes wrote:
| It's good to also think about security of paper ballots.
| Usually, in the United States, public observers from all
| political parties are allowed to be at all polling places
| and observe (and help count) all the votes. There is a
| limited amount of time between the vote and the count,
| and in that time anyone can watch to make sure nothing is
| tampered with.
|
| This is why people get uncomfortable with vote counting
| taking too long or ballots being moved and stored before
| counting is done. The accountability is gone and whoever
| controls the process has the ability to tamper.
|
| If these machines need to be observed at all times to
| prevent tampering, just forget about it. It's
| unrealistic. Even if they can be protected the public
| can't trust that, the only people who could truly confirm
| that would be the people who are in the position to
| tamper with them.
|
| The Mesa County Clerk wasn't trying to hide what they
| were doing. If any other County Clerk wanted to tamper
| and not hide, well we wouldn't be having this discussion
| because no one would know about it, even if there is a
| video feed on the machines. Has this happened anywhere
| else? Can you, as a citizen, confirm no other voting
| machines in Colorado (or elsewhere) have been tampered
| with?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Your issues with vote counting taking too long are
| decent, but the Colorado 2024 election, didn't take too
| long. Cory Gardner conceded on election night, for
| example. Since only a particular election is contested by
| these... conspiracy theorists..., and nobody is trying to
| get Gardner reinstated I have to conclude something else
| motivates these... conspiracy theorists...
|
| The Mesa County clerk is indeed trying to hide what she
| did. I believe she's on the lam, and in hiding right now.
| It looks to me like the Mesa County clerk took it upon
| herself to foul the process in illegal ways because the
| CO procedures worked, despite whatever legal things that
| Clerk could do. This seems like a pretty standard
| technique for overthrowing a democratically-elected
| government: manufacture a scandal, throw out the real
| results, put in fake results, pass new laws preventing
| any of your political opponents from taking office ever
| again.
|
| We're at the "manufacture a scandal" stage.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| 2024? Are you from the future or something?
| throwjd764glug wrote:
| > They disabled the security cameras and did _something_
| with election equipment
|
| If it was a technician inserting an infected USB key
| under the guise of maintenance, how could you tell from
| the video?
| xphilter wrote:
| Ah yes. The conspiracy theorists really showed us! Next, proud
| boys and Q will team up to buy a pizza place, kidnap a bunch of
| kids, and create a kid prostitution ring.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The thing is, the line of reasoning that electronic voting is
| fundamentally not securable to a sufficient public standard was
| being advanced a lot _before_ the election, and has a lot of
| evidence to support it.
|
| E.g. here's sci am on 2016:
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/election-sec...
|
| Contesting only elections that don't go your way and providing
| dubious or nonsense evidence (see various thrown out lawsuits)
| is simply subverting the process and the electorate.
|
| If they're unusable, then they're unusable _everywhere_ : and
| the election needs to be run without them.
|
| > When the entire election in a district is run by officials
| from a single political party, with unlimited access to the
| voting machines
|
| This probably shouldn't happen. Unfortunately, hyper-
| polarisation has.
| GaryTang wrote:
| lol more and more _conspiracies_ are becoming more and more
| likely
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