[HN Gopher] Wi-Fi sniffers strapped to drones: odd plan to stop ...
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Wi-Fi sniffers strapped to drones: odd plan to stop election fraud
Author : sunbum
Score : 29 points
Date : 2023-08-21 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| brk wrote:
| I can't wait to show up to the next election with some ESP32's
| configured to create networks like "Diebold System 1" or "Vote
| Reorganizer".
| astrodust wrote:
| "ccp-electioncontrol-b490"
| bdcravens wrote:
| For several months, I renamed my phone to "Pfizer 5G
| Transmitter" so it'd show up when I turned my hotspot on.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Oh, cool! Free drones with (probably) Rapsberry Pis attached!
| I'll bring my net when I go vote.
| caboteria wrote:
| Hopefully we'll be able to sign up and have them send us one
| for free so we can use it for things other than monitoring our
| local polling place.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I will LMAO if I see a drone hovering over my polling place. I
| might even be moved to tears if it's clutching a pillow.
| mikey_p wrote:
| This demonstrates such a poor misunderstanding of how elections
| and elections equipment work, that this can only be assumed to be
| a fundraising stunt.
|
| I've been a poll worker in Ohio off and on for 3 years, and at no
| point does any polling location send any voting data over any
| network of any kind. There's literally nothing to hook a router
| or access point up to that contains any votes.
|
| * At least in my county, the electronic pollbooks in each voting
| location ARE networked to the other pollbooks in that location so
| that we can see WHO voted, etc. but this is just the pollbooks,
| which is necessary to prevent folks from voting twice by trying
| to check in at a different pollbook. Each electronic pollbook is
| also backed up by a paper pollbook, and we reconcile all the
| totals several times a day to make sure that we have an accurate
| count of how many ballots have been issued and how many ballots
| are in the ballot box.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Hidden wireless (5g! Get cancer while you vote!) modems
| implanted in voting machines in secret by kim jun un and the
| illuminati! /heavy on the sarcasm
| orangepurple wrote:
| Why bother performing election fraud using an online process?
| Just discard user inputs, use preloaded historical local voter
| registration data by age cohort, multiply the curve by some
| coefficients to make it plausible, and report that as the result.
| If the coefficients are known, a recount can "independently" be
| designed to come up with the same numbers. No network access is
| needed to produce completely controlled results. The network
| access thing is a red herring. There are more sophisticated ways
| to generate the numbers the powers that be want without raising
| eyebrows.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This can be surprisingly hard to get right. Look at the chart
| in https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2021/10/11/russian-... for an example. Humans are bad at
| making up numbers.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Why's the drone required?
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| I bet they are using crypto and AI, too, for the cyber. It's
| buzzwords all the way down. Grifters gonna grift...
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| >> Why's the drone required?
|
| Id assume its illegal to put a sniffer into a polling place.
|
| What makes the plan stupid is believing you can capture a
| supposedly covert intermittent low energy signal using a drone
| that can only hover about 10 minutes at a time.
| wedowhatwedo wrote:
| It's not but I'm sure some very smart business person knew Mike
| Lindell was gullible and would fall for something crazy like
| this.
|
| A box in the corner doesn't make for good TV. Drones flying
| around sure does.
| stantaylor wrote:
| Why drones? was my first thought as well. I think your answer
| is as good as any. Mike Lindell is an idiot.
| astrodust wrote:
| Why not drones?
|
| Sure, you could do exactly the same thing with a sniffer
| app on a normal phone, but drones sell better, at least for
| this ridiculous grift.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| Even better when you label the "wifi montiroing device" as
| "WMD" and strap it to a drone.
|
| Also, why do I even know this? What is life anymore? Haha.
| splintercell wrote:
| Why would election centers allow a box to be kept in the
| room?
|
| What might work better is people walking around with a
| backpack wearing Pineapple.
|
| https://youtu.be/EbetD2LMbeQ
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Suppose you do capture what you are looking for. How would
| you present the information to courts when you illegally
| captured the information.
| JessMee wrote:
| It isn't, really. My impression is that anyone could just sit
| in a parked vehicle with one of these and track what info is
| available. But they're not flashy enough by themselves. The
| drones are the sizzle that sells the steak.
| tfandango wrote:
| Standing next to a building doesn't sound as good, marketing.
| Stuff like this actually makes me really sad because people
| should not really be this gullible.
| joezydeco wrote:
| A lot of local election laws prohibit electioneering or any
| kind of campaigning or observation within X number of feet of a
| polling place.
|
| I'm guessing putting a drone a hundred feet or so _above_ a
| polling place somehow allows line of sight while still staying
| out of the restricted zone?
| sharikous wrote:
| Making open source, transparent, auditable, voting machines that
| can be trusted to be secure and are more efficient than physical
| counting is a very interesting challenge.
|
| A challenge that I am sure politicians are not very interested in
| solving.
|
| Why spending so much to gain the trust of your citizens if most
| people know nothing about cryptography anyway?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Is he giving this contract to the Cyber Ninjas too?
| lockhouse wrote:
| Or we could just offer secure voter IDs to everyone that is
| legally eligible to vote free of charge.
|
| It could be like selective service. Sign up after your eighteenth
| birthday to vote.
|
| Also, use scantron style ballots that use computers to automate
| vote counting but not vote casting, with members of all major
| political parties monitoring polling stations and vote counting
| to ensure everything is above board.
| tzs wrote:
| > Also, use scantron style ballots that use computers to
| automate vote counting but not vote casting, with members of
| all major political parties monitoring polling stations and
| vote counting to ensure everything is above board.
|
| That's almost the right way to do it. Just add some additional
| data printed on the ballots in a special ink that is normally
| invisible, and provide voters with a special marker to fill in
| the bubbles that reacts with the special ink to make it
| visible, use some clever cryptographic techniques to figure out
| what should be printed with that special ink, and you get this
| [1].
|
| With that, people who just want to vote and trust that others
| will deal with auditing and counting go into the booth, fill in
| the bubbles for their candidates, drop the ballot in the
| collection box, and then just wait for the machine count to see
| who won, just like now.
|
| But after the election all the cast ballots can be published
| allowing anyone to check the count.
|
| Individual voters who noted a code that was on their ballot can
| check the published ballots and verify that their ballot was
| counted correctly (but they cannot prove to a third party that
| they voted for a particular candidate).
|
| This system also allows a voter before voting to verify that
| the ballots have been correctly printed.
|
| Voting systems with those properties are called end-to-end
| (E2E) verifiable voting systems [2], and there have been
| several proposals for such systems, including many that like
| Scantegrity do not rely on electronic voting machines.
|
| Here is the original paper on this (PDF and HTML), and a paper
| proving that it is coercion-resistant [3][4][5]:
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-
| end_auditable_voting_sy...
|
| [3]
| https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c...
|
| [4]
| https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c...
|
| [5] https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Its and interesting idea, but what do you do when Joes says
| his vote was miscounted?
|
| Can you prove him wrong? Can he prove it?
|
| Because if not, it all seems pointless to me.
| saveferris wrote:
| One of the interesting by products of all of this is that
| elections are getting less secure instead of more secure. After
| all these allegations came out and if you dug into how
| elections are run, they are pretty secure - not perfect of
| course. Now, you have states opting out of things like the
| registry that can detect if a voter votes in more than one
| state. So, it will be harder to catch a person voting in more
| than one state now. I guess that only applies to presidential
| elections where that would be illegal but I am sure people have
| voted in more than one local election too and they should not
| have.
|
| I live in Illinois and I don't know if it is free or not but
| you can get a sate ID here that is not a drivers license and
| use that to register to vote.
|
| A national version could make sense. Since the more voters
| there are only helps one party, we'll never see anything like
| that on a national level no matter how much sense it makes.
| schemathings wrote:
| Slight tweak - you're eligible to vote in the primaries if
| you'll be 18 by the general election.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Or we could just offer secure voter IDs to everyone that is
| legally eligible to vote free of charge._
|
| This exists, it's called registering with your address and then
| going to your local polling place.
|
| Voter fraud is essentially a nonexistent problem.
| codr7 wrote:
| One day you're going to look back at this comment and it will
| feel about as comfortable as Gate's yapping about 640k being
| enough for anyone.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Bill Gates never actually said that. He had a very detailed
| idea of exactly what was coming in the next year from that
| point on and what it would get used for.
|
| Also using mail to register to vote has been used for over
| 150 years and current voter fraud is practically zero.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhaustive-fact-check-
| find...
| codr7 wrote:
| Could be true; I also don't trust anything coming from
| Bill Gates these days, he has his icky fingers in too
| many pies.
|
| Yes, and the longer a game is played, the more loop holes
| are found.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Could be true; I also don 't trust anything coming from
| Bill Gates these days,_
|
| He explains it here. Where is the evidence that he said
| it?
|
| https://www.wired.com/1997/01/did-gates-really-
| say-640k-is-e...
|
| _Yes, and the longer a game is played, the more loop
| holes are found._
|
| This is vague FUD nonsense. What are you talking about
| and where is your evidence?
| saveferris wrote:
| I am curious what you think could happen. I did a lot of
| looking after all the allegations and all the lawsuits. It
| is remarkably secure today, all the lawsuis that have been
| filed, etc. and nothing was found.
|
| Where do you think the vulnerabilities are that can be
| exploited?
| codr7 wrote:
| [flagged]
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Nothing was found by courts. Or governments. Or the
| media. Or anyone, really.
|
| Put up proof that something was off or STFU.
|
| I said the same thing to myself and many others when
| there were a few cries of voter fraud after the 2016
| election. Those cries died down within a month or so of
| the election because the loser wasn't actively amplifying
| that position.
| codr7 wrote:
| Doesn't it bother you even a little bit that all of the
| so called "investigators" are in the same boat?
|
| I don't have proof, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to
| speak.
|
| As a general rule of thumb; whenever you get terribly
| upset that someone else has a different opinion, it's
| time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| >Doesn't it bother you even a little bit that all of the
| so called "investigators" are in the same boat?
|
| I don't follow this sentence at all. Can you be a bit
| clearer about what you mean here?
| codr7 wrote:
| None of these so called "investigators" were even close
| to objective.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| I don't see a conspiracy spanning every level of
| government and the media, I guess? It seems like
| something close to that would be required for so many
| people from so many different political backgrounds to
| look and find nothing.
|
| Or maybe you're defining "not objective" as "doesn't
| produce the result I wanted"...
| codr7 wrote:
| It's a theory, an alternative explanation, we are allowed
| to have those without evidence and it's OK to have
| multiple competing explanations.
|
| A better question would be: Why are you so desperate to
| believe one thing or the other?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| At some point that just devolves into one person pointing
| at a dog and saying "that's a dog" and the other saying
| "nu'uh it's a cat". Cat guy isn't doing anything illegal
| but they're still making a claim without evidence and
| refusing to let go of the claim in the face of contrary
| evidence.
|
| I'm genuinely worried about my country's ability to
| recover from what the Big Lie is doing to it, so I do
| care about the topic, and I do try to argue for sanity
| and truth where I can.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| This is why I imagine it was so weird to be Brad
| Raffensperger during / immediately after the 2020
| election. He ran for GA Sec of State on a platform of
| election security. He took actions he felt were in
| pursuit of that goal. He was proud of what he had done
| and the security of Georgia's elections. He supported
| Trump in the 2020 election. I am not in agreement with
| some of his approaches but by all accounts he was
| passionate about his role and generally did his job of
| making elections happen.
|
| Then his preferred candidate loses. The loser tosses
| accusations at Raffensperger and friends ranging from
| incompetence to outright malice. The loser claims the
| systems Raffensperger has been knee deep in the previous
| two years are insecure, suspect, compromised. The loser
| puts personal pressure on Raffensperger to "find" votes.
|
| That had to be one hell of a "what did I do to deserve
| this?" feeling throughout that time frame.
| ausbah wrote:
| but why, voter fraud isn't a problem in the US. trying to sate
| the lies of one political party won't "prove them wrong"
| either, they'll just fine new things to cry foul about somehow
| thsksbd wrote:
| [flagged]
| gustavus wrote:
| Yes but it might make their claims ring more hollow. The
| purpose isn't to convince the diehard zealots, it's to
| convince the people that might be on the fence and could see
| it go either way.
|
| Maybe Joe down the street isn't very much into politics, but
| he's been hearing all about these electronic voting machines
| being the source of fraud, and he know it sounds
| unreasonable, but it does introduce some doubt, especially
| when he finds out that no one knows what's in them and that
| people can access em "over the internets", it's enough out of
| his wheelhouse to get him wondering.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Yes but it might make their claims ring more hollow.
|
| It might do the opposite; "see, they finally admitted it's
| a problem!"
| splintercell wrote:
| And this is how the Democrats have been painted in the
| corner.
|
| Presuming there was no problem:
|
| - Not doing any 'improvements' would result more of what
| is going on right now, an inability to prove the
| otherside wrong, and doubling down on the (near
| ridiculous) claim that it was the 'most secure election
| of all times'.
|
| Presuming there were issues:
|
| - Doing anything to improve them would mean that the one
| election they truly really wanted to win (i.e. defeating
| Trump), they will be accused of finally admitting that
| there were problems.
|
| - Which means from their perspective, keep doubling down
| on the claim that it was the most secure election of all
| times
|
| - OTOH if you didn't care that much about defeating
| Trump, and truly want there to be improvements if they
| are needed, then the Democrats claiming that these were
| the 'most secure elections of all times' just makes you
| start not believing it
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Democrats are exceedingly good at letting Republicans do
| the painting.
|
| In the real world, though, the good tools we already do
| have are being _removed_ because of conspiracy theories.
| For example: https://apnews.com/article/voter-fraud-
| election-conspiracies...
|
| > Earlier this month, Republican election officials from
| Florida, Missouri and West Virginia said they planned to
| withdraw from the group, joining Louisiana and Alabama.
| Former President Donald Trump, on social media, has
| called on every Republican-led state to leave,
| characterizing it as a "terrible Voter Registration
| System that 'pumps the rolls' for Democrats and does
| nothing to clean them up."
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| >>>> "voter fraud isn't a problem in the US"
|
| Playing devils advocate here, how do you know that?
|
| This whole argument dont look under the rug because if the
| rug isnt dirty then theyll shift their attention to under the
| couch seems afoul.
| ausbah wrote:
| because it is known. voter fraud rates are know and they
| are supremely small, way less than .001% of all ballots
| submitted. a cursory basic search will reveal articles like
| below, but there're also academic papers investigating the
| phenomena
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/voter-election-fraud-
| statist...
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Well, looking at 2020, all the lawsuits that were filed
| went nowhere, generally for lack of evidence. Arrests and
| convictions for voter fraud do happen, but the scale tends
| to be very small and ineffectual at changing outcomes.
|
| It's not that we don't look under the rug. The rug has been
| looked under, many times, and we keep not finding the
| monsters claimed to be under the rug.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| The lawsuits went nowhere because the courts determined
| there wasnt standing in many of the cases. A party cannot
| get subpoenas to investigate without a case. No case ==
| No Investigation or presentation of evidence.
|
| So I would say its more along the lines that they _tried_
| to look under the rug many times but everytime they tried
| they got denied.
|
| How is standing assessed? That there has been damages to
| the party. The party is claiming that there was voter
| fraud however most of the evidence they need to prove
| their damages require a subpeona which they need a court
| case to start gathering proof. Do you see the catch 22
| there?
|
| I am not a lawyer but presenting all your evidence before
| a trial seems poor form.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Some of them were dismissed for standing. Quite a few
| were dismissed because they lacked specific allegations
| and/or evidence.
|
| You don't have to present all your evidence before a
| trial, but your filings at the start of the process do
| need to create a picture of the standing you have, the
| harm you've suffered, and the evidence you intend to
| present.
|
| "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy.
| Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an
| election unfair does not make it so," wrote Stephanos
| Bibas on behalf of a three-judge panel. "Charges require
| specific allegations and then proof. We have neither
| here," [0]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-
| lawsuit-penn...
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
| election_lawsuits_related...
|
| United States Supreme Court Texas v. Pennsylvania et al.
| - Dismissed on standing.
|
| Arizona Aguilera v. Fontes - Voluntarily Dismissed
| Aguilera v. Fontes - Dismissed _Donald J. Trump for
| President v. Hobbs - Voluntarily Dismissed Arizona
| Republican Party v. Fontes - Dismissed Ward v. Jackson -
| Dismissed Bowyer v. Ducey - Dismissed on standing
| Stevenson v. Ducey - Dismissed
|
| _ The case was dropped because by the plaintiff because
| even if the plaintiff won, they would still be short a
| few hundred votes.
|
| Again , not _one_ case was actually allowed to go to
| trial.
|
| Georgia
|
| In re: Enforcement of Election Laws and Securing Ballots
| Cast or Received after 7:00pm on November 3, 2020 -
| Dismissed Brooks v. Mahoney - Voluntarily Dropped Wood v.
| Raffensperger - Dismissed on Standing Pearson v. Kemp -
| Dismissed on standing Boland v. Raffensperger - Dismissed
| Trump v. Raffensperger - Dismissed Favorito et al. v.
| Fulton County et al. - Dismissed Trump v. Kemp et al. -
| Dismissed
|
| Again , not _one_ case was actually allowed to go to
| trial.
|
| Im not going to list every single state but its very
| similar elsewhere. Dismissed for standing, jurisdiction,
| or trumps team dropped the suit voluntarily.
|
| The statue of limitations is VERY short for elections.
|
| Going back to the Catch 22, many of the personal
| testimonies the trump legal trump had saying they
| witnessed fraud were thrown out or could not be used
| until a trial. So, he cannot use a subpoena , and his
| witnesses were not allowed to testify. What would you
| recommend he do?
|
| So now you get crazy schemes like Mr Pillow to collect
| data during the election so they have something to bring
| to court. At least that sounds like their plan no matter
| how wacky it is.
|
| Now, I dont believe that Trump won. But I do believe they
| should've gave the guy his day in court. To deny someone
| that on the basis that they will just keep coming back
| looking elsewhere is not right.
|
| By denying his day in court you have emboldened their
| supporters and disenfranchised independent voters who
| want secure elections, like myself.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| You might want to ask yourself why Bill Barr, with the
| powers and visibility he had as AG/head of DOJ, looked at
| the pile of fraud allegations and told his boss it was a
| big box of nothing.
|
| I'm sure he's just part of the conspiracy, or
| something...
| mindslight wrote:
| A pattern of outcomes being similar isn't indicative of
| much when a large number of suits were filed with a
| shotgun approach. The only way you can sift through this
| from first principles is to read the legal briefs that
| were actually filed, and see for yourself if there is
| something substantive there.
|
| I read and analyzed a sampling of two cases, and saw the
| same pattern where there were a whole bunch of
| straightforward banal claims plus a whole bunch of
| grandiose conclusions, without any logical linking of the
| two. The grandiose claims were widely quoted in the press
| though, despite being completely unsubstantiated. That
| was enough to satisfy my own opinion.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Playing devils advocate, lack of evidence is not the same
| as lack of guilt.
|
| It is entirely possible that voter fraud occurred AND
| there is no evidence that it occurred.
|
| Again, I'm not saying that happened, but I think there
| are some common sense improvements that could be made to
| the voting process that remove any doubts.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _remove any doubts_
|
| There isn't much doubt from people that care about
| evidence.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Voter fraud can be difficult to prove. Voting in most
| parts of the country is optimized for anonymity and voter
| convenience at the expense of security.
|
| I care about evidence, I believe it is absolutely
| possible to commit voter fraud and not leave any evidence
| of it, and I also do not believe that Trump lost due to
| voter fraud. All of these things can simultaneously be
| true.
|
| I fail to see the harm in making our elections more
| secure, so long as we do not disenfranchise any legal
| voters.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| How much do you know about how elections are managed and
| secured today? How often have you interacted with
| election staff outside of casting a vote?
|
| 44 states have laws to run post-election audits, sampling
| the ballot pool and checking for statistical anomalies in
| the result [0]. This is one thing, and it's certainly not
| a complete solution to voter fraud...but I didn't know
| about these regular, legally mandated audits til I
| searched for election audit information. I do know about
| other things that help reinforce election security, like
| poll observers. From past jobs that occasionally provided
| IT support to local governments, I also have exposure to
| the physical security controls around ballots and polling
| equipment.
|
| If you're well informed about election security, it might
| be more effective for you to bring up the specific
| challenges you feel need to be solved or gaps that need
| to be filled. Otherwise it's chasing shadows of threats
| and vulnerabilities that may or may not exist.
|
| If you're not that informed, get involved with your local
| election office. They probably want volunteer pool
| workers and you'll learn a lot about the behind the
| scenes parts.
|
| [0] https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/bestpractices
| /Electi...
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _I care about evidence_
|
| Then why don't you have any?
|
| _I fail to see the harm in making our elections more
| secure, so long as we do not disenfranchise any legal
| voters._
|
| It isn't necessary and it does statistically
| disenfranchise legal voters.
|
| If there is virtually no voter fraud why are you so set
| on 'making our elections more secure'? These pushes are
| always started by people who know the truth - they aren't
| solving an election security problem, they are solving
| the problem of making people who vote against them have
| statistically more difficulty to vote.
| lockhouse wrote:
| If the photo IDs are made available free of charge in
| convenient locations such as post offices, how would they
| be disenfranchised?
| Y-bar wrote:
| > Sign up after your eighteenth birthday to vote.
|
| Offer may differ for some communities, certain may experience
| having to sign up two counties over, in the basement, on the
| second Wednesday every odd month, behind a locked door with a
| sign "Beware of the leopard".
|
| Better if everyone just gets enrolled by default.
| lockhouse wrote:
| What if national voter IDs were available at your local post
| office or military recruiting station? The availability and
| hours would be much better than most DMVs or welfare offices.
| saveferris wrote:
| There is a lot of things wrong with this but I have said that
| in order to get your tax refund you have to show proof you
| registered to vote. I'd like to say proof that you voted but
| that may be a step too far...
|
| Agree, it should be easier not harder to register and to vote
| slipheen wrote:
| Did you happen to know that not everyone is required to
| file a federal income tax statement? The IRS does not
| require you to pay income tax, or file taxes, unless you
| make over $19,400 (as of 2022)
| https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501
|
| It's really difficult to tell what percentage of people
| that applies to, but just for one example I got from
| Google, The Tax Policy Center estimates that 70 Million
| Americans do not need to pay income tax.
|
| https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tpc-number-those-
| who-...
| JohnFen wrote:
| Also, not everyone gets a refund. I haven't had a tax
| refund in about 30 years, because I arrange any
| withholdings to match my expected tax bill.
| saveferris wrote:
| I am only half serious about that....should have pointed
| that out. Interesting links though. Correct that not
| everyone with income is required to file, though they
| should. I did not know the income level was that high
| though, would have guessed half that.
|
| Just a guess but I think that overlap is probably pretty
| large. I would think the majority of people who don't owe
| taxes are due to lower incomes who would not be required
| to file and that is offset with deductions....purely a
| guess though.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Tax refunds? What are those?
| lockhouse wrote:
| Not sure if you're being facetious, but some of us have
| too much of our pay deducted from payroll throughout the
| year compared to our tax burden, so the IRS returns the
| extra money to us.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Why not adjust your withholdings to avoid that?
| lockhouse wrote:
| Sometimes you can't because of the way deductions work.
| splintercell wrote:
| > Better if everyone just gets enrolled by default.
|
| But the whole point is that non-citizens are voting or
| multiple voting or non-resident voting is occurring.
|
| The question is, how do you know that the person who is in
| the line to vote is the person who he says he is. Sure the
| name John Doe is on the list, but is the person standing in
| front of you is John Doe or not, how do you establish that?
| fmobus wrote:
| It's so comical watching a country that claims to be first
| world struggling with this.
|
| My shit country has solved this _ages_ ago:
|
| Every citizen has an id.
|
| The IDs are issued by each state, but they are all
| functionally the same. You will have no trouble voting with
| an out-of-state ID.
|
| That ID is free and relatively easy to get.
|
| Every citizen has an assigned place (building, room and
| ballot box) to vote, and it's usually close to their
| residence (you are expected to update when you move, it's
| also very easy).
|
| Each ballot holds no more than 600 votes, average is around
| 300. Lines are uncommon, it usually took me like 5 minutes
| to vote.
|
| Voting takes place on a Sunday, and most cities make public
| transit free of charge.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Despite the claims of a certain political party, state
| photo ID cards are easy to get here as well. They are
| needed for most benefits programs, banking, driving cars,
| air travel, purchasing items that are age restricted, and
| many other routine parts of adulthood. It is extremely
| unlikely that potential lawful voters would be
| disenfranchised by requiring a photo ID to vote. However,
| I fully support making a government issued photo ID
| freely available for those who don't already have one.
| echelon wrote:
| > _Or we could just offer secure voter IDs to everyone that is
| legally eligible to vote free of charge._
|
| The opposition argues that this is discriminatory and would
| favor richer voters.
|
| If I understand their argument correctly, there is a non-zero
| cost to going to obtain these forms of identification that
| disproportionately impact the poor. You have to take off work,
| commute (potentially without a car or bus), pay a fee, be
| capable of understanding the instructions, etc.
|
| > _Also, use scantron style ballots that use computers to
| automate vote counting but not vote casting, with members of
| all major political parties monitoring polling stations and
| vote counting to ensure everything is above board._
|
| The state of Georgia switched to these! They're awesome.
|
| You digitally record your vote and get a printout with your
| selections. The printout becomes your ballot, and you're able
| to verify it before submitting it. The choices are super
| legible in big fonts.
|
| There's a big QR code in the corner that an automated scanner
| can use to read the values, but a human can manually verify the
| printed names and ballot initiatives.
|
| The printed ballots look like this:
|
| https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/imagecast-x-ballo...
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You have to go vote anyway, right?
|
| Since rich people tend to make more money per hour, that is
| discriminatory to them too.
|
| Honestly if there is one thing the US doesn't need it is more
| uninformed voters. I would love if one could require a test
| for civics or something before you could vote. Not
| discriminating anyone, no grandfather clauses.
| mcculley wrote:
| This seems worse than scantron to me. An unaided human cannot
| read the QR code to verify it.
| echelon wrote:
| I agree with you - we still have work to do.
|
| That said, if there's any suspected discrepancy between
| recorded choice and the QR code encoding, the ballots can
| be statistically sampled for divergence.
|
| Scantrons might be difficult to implement for ballots with
| lots ballot choices or lots of options. You'd want to
| maintain readability for those with poor eyesight.
|
| You probably don't want to hold up the line with people
| scanning the matrix to make sure it encodes the correct
| choices, either.
|
| I'm not sure what the optimal solution is here, but we are
| improving. No more "hanging chads".
| mcculley wrote:
| We have been using scantron ballots in Florida since
| 2002. (Statewide, that is. I think some counties were
| doing it before the reforms.)
|
| I can't imagine any ballot that would be hard to encode
| on them.
| tzs wrote:
| > The opposition argues that this is discriminatory and would
| favor richer voters
|
| Not quite. They argue that the kind of voter ID requirements
| that are being passed in several states are discriminatory
| because they are not free of charge. Some are free of any
| direct fees, but the indirect costs are often substantial,
| for the reasons you note:
|
| > If I understand their argument correctly, there is a non-
| zero cost to going to obtain these forms of identification
| that disproportionately impact the poor. You have to take off
| work, commute (potentially without a car or bus), pay a fee,
| be capable of understanding the instructions, etc.
|
| Worse, some states that have passed such laws have also
| simultaneously taken steps to increase those indirect costs.
| E.g., under the guise of budget cutting reducing the number
| of offices that issue state IDs, and reducing the hours
| during which the remaining offices processes ID applications.
| The offices that get closed are disproportionately the ones
| that are nearest to the most minority and poor voters, who
| also happen to the the voters who are most likely to not
| already have the ID, and the reduced hours usually mean no
| evening or weekend hours meaning many have to take unpaid
| time off work to go apply for ID.
|
| I forget which state it was, but in a lawsuit over their new
| ID law plaintiffs found a list the committee that drafted the
| law made which listed a bunch of different possible forms of
| ID that people had, and for each also listed for each what
| percent of voters had it and their party and racial
| demographics, sorted by how much that ID would favor white
| people of the majority party in that state, and the final
| approved IDs in the law were all the ones the ones that
| favored white majority party voters.
|
| Here are a ton of references, many of which contain a zillion
| links to even more research on this:
|
| https://www.projectvote.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/06/AMERI...
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/jul/11/eric-
| holde...
|
| https://www.aclu.org/documents/oppose-voter-id-
| legislation-f...
|
| https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/2018/Minority_Voting_Access.
| ..
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a.
| ..
|
| https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/4/7157037/us-voter-id-
| req...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/644648955/for-older-voters-
| ge...
|
| https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2014/10/16/well-actually-
| pretty-...
|
| https://www.theregreview.org/2019/01/08/shapiro-moran-
| burden...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/heres-h.
| ..
|
| https://scholars.org/contribution/high-cost-free-photo-
| voter...
|
| https://now.tufts.edu/2018/01/23/proving-voter-id-laws-
| discr...
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This sounds close to what Colorado does. Ballots are hand
| marked and human readable, but machine counted. Risk limiting
| audits are performed for (I think) every election above small
| town level.
|
| Ballots are mailed to every eligible voter, but you can go vote
| if you really like your precinct.
| [deleted]
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| I guess nobody's told him about MAC address randomization.
|
| (not that gathering SSIDs and MACs from random people in the
| vicinity who happen to have Wi-Fi on their devices has any value
| in detecting election fraud, anyway)
| neilv wrote:
| Are the nutty people and manipulators _discrediting_ legitimate
| concerns about electronic voting machines?
|
| I think it would be better if they limited their sabotage to
| UFOs, and french fries, and other things less fundamental to our
| society.
| orangepurple wrote:
| UFO news happens when some really bad domestic corruption
| stories are in danger of getting into the news cycle
| djkivi wrote:
| Don't forget about Titanic news...
| mcculley wrote:
| I enjoy this meta conspiracy theory.
| linuxftw wrote:
| I don't believe the elections have any amount of integrity in the
| US. The system of controls in place are laughable at best. When
| the physical recount doesn't match the voting day totals, the
| original totals are kept (see Jill Stein vs Hillary in 2016).
| It's just pathetic all the way around.
|
| That said, Mike Lindell is a fraud charlatan. The fact that Trump
| hitched his wagon, directly or indirectly, to clowns like him
| shows how weak of a statesman he really is. I agreed with many of
| Trump's policies, but his ability to execute is pitiful.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Manual recounts tend to be full of error opportunities, so that
| policy is pretty sensible to me. Maybe if you did a large
| number of manual recounts and took an average or the most
| common value or something, it might work. A single manual
| recount is not deserving of any trust whatsoever.
|
| Manual recounts are a safety blanket for people who haven't
| thought through what it costs and what it actually gets you.
| linuxftw wrote:
| We're not talking about a discrepancy of 1 or 2 votes. We're
| talking hundreds of votes.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Yes, that tends to happen when you do manual recounts.
| That's my point. They're unreliable as hell.
|
| You see a chance to validate a pile of 100k votes. I see
| 100k chances for human error.
| linuxftw wrote:
| That's not how recounts work. Please, inform yourself.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Ok, how about this? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases
| /2012/02/120202151713.h...
|
| "Hand counting of votes in postelection audit or recount
| procedures can result in error rates of up to 2 percent,
| according to a new study from Rice University and Clemson
| University."
|
| If you've got 100k votes to recount, you might have up to
| 2000 errors, according to this research.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's absolutely how recounts work.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/arizona-
| republica...
|
| > Election workers spent three days counting 850 ballots
| in Mohave County. They made errors in 46 races.
|
| > Each ballot took three minutes to count, Tempert said.
| At that pace, it would take a group of seven staffers at
| least 657 eight-hour days to count 105,000 ballots, the
| number of ballots cast in 2020. Mohave County would need
| to hire at least 245 people to tally results and have
| counting take place seven days a week, including
| holidays, for nearly three weeks. That estimate doesn't
| include the time needed for reconciling mistakes, or
| counting write-in ballots, Tempert's report added.
|
| This from a county that went 75% for Trump in 2020 and
| _really_ wanted this to work, incidentally.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Unlike the Stein recount, it seems Mohave County actually
| possessed the ballots. I'm talking about 100's of ballots
| going 'missing' and having no paper trail whatsoever.
|
| Also, 46 'races' out of 30k+ races, because for whatever
| reason, they count each individual vote up and down the
| ballot as a 'race.' So, 46 errors out of over 30k.
|
| Tellingly, this article doesn't indicate whether the
| presidential race results were accurate within any
| margin, nor does it indicate whether the actual vote
| totals matched what was reported on election night.
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| I'm not into Lindell or whatever is going on here, but that said
| closed source voting machines that are not open for audit and
| have remote access setup really do not sound like the ideal
| platform for trust. Really if you wanted people to distrust these
| machines I couldn't think of a more perfect solution for distrust
| than that.
| mindslight wrote:
| One of the biggest problems with these nutjob movements is that
| they're playing off very real problems to fuel their circuses.
| Proprietary untrustable voting machines have always been a
| major problem. You used to be able to bring this up, and since
| it wasn't a partisan issue, people would at least hear you out
| even though they understood little about the technicals. But
| these days if you talk about it to most people or without
| including a bunch of nuanced disclaimers, you're pigeonholed as
| if you're part of this mentally ill cult. So reasonable
| opposition/criticism gets pushed into this shitty position of
| just having to support the status quo, despite seeing its
| glaring problems and injustices.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Well the only choice you have is to not play that game.
| Opposition to valid criticism will take advantage of this and
| put the quacks front and center. The only choice we have is
| to ignore the quacks and call out anyone trying to equate us
| with them.
| mindslight wrote:
| In the context of technical discussions about the insecure
| designs of voting systems based on machines, sure. But how
| does "not playing the game" work in the context of getting
| the larger public to care about the real issues, or even
| just getting election officials to? It seems like the whole
| dynamic increases the power of election officials to circle
| the wagons and insist "we're secure, trust us".
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Well my point in general is that often, when bringing up
| contentious topics (and _everything_ is contentious
| nowadays) you can 't let people browbeat or shame you
| into shutting your mouth. That's what I mean by not
| playing the game. Don't let them trot out the quacks or
| otherwise get you to shut up about it and take their
| side.
| mindslight wrote:
| It's not about getting "browbeaten or shamed", but rather
| whether it makes sense to apply energy to a certain topic
| at the expense of other topics, and how legitimate
| criticism gets abused to fuel illegitimate pop culture
| nonsense.
|
| If I were a voting machine researcher or cryptographic
| voting was my hobby horse, my goal would still be to talk
| about voting despite the political circus. But rather I'm
| just a security generalist talking about these things
| casually. I can choose to spend effort talking about
| voting, or I can avoid this topic and spend my effort on
| topics that are more productive.
| autoexec wrote:
| > But how does "not playing the game" work in the context
| of getting the larger public to care about the real
| issues, or even just getting election officials to?
|
| On the plus side, there's already a large fraction of the
| larger public concerned about election safety. They might
| be worried about a lot of imaginary problems, but they
| can still be motivated to push back against electronic
| voting machines which is a win for addressing the real
| issues.
|
| Election officials are already highly incentivized to
| make elections appear fair and transparent. That too can
| be leveraged to push back against electronic voting
| machines.
|
| The trick is making sure the people who aren't conspiracy
| nut jobs aren't afraid to listen to and address the very
| real concerns with these devices for fear of being lumped
| in with the crazies on the other team.
| Insistence/persistence might help, but I think having
| well reasoned arguments and the support of trusted
| persons on the "right team" speak up about the issues
| might help too.
| appplication wrote:
| This statement is basically a metaphor for really any
| political issue. Modern political discourse is about picking
| sides and entrenching defenses rather than developing
| reasonable, nuanced takes on individual issues.
| mindslight wrote:
| 100% agree. I think it's just gotten much worse recently
| with the rise of Facebook geniuses and the like. I used to
| ignore both major parties, vote third party or deliberately
| not vote, comfortable that they were roughly balanced and
| would do roughly similar magnitude damage. I can't fully
| rule out just getting more conservative as I get older, but
| these days it feels like there's basically one half-sane
| option where the preaching-to-the-choir issues are at least
| still mostly the fringes of the party. The last primary
| election I found myself reading candidate blurbs on
| dogmatic issues trying to figure out which candidates were
| merely paying lip service to the expected narratives and
| wouldn't actually focus on them as a priority.
| 2devnull wrote:
| And then sue anybody who questions the machines security.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Loads of people raise concerns about electronic voting
| machines without getting sued, it's making wild direct claims
| that they're switching votes while writing in internal emails
| you know it's false that gets you in trouble...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| These people are so fucking stupid. There's just no being nice
| about it. They are void of any intelligence whatsoever.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| Honestly the real conspiracy is that Lindell and other dipshits
| are making legitimate concerns about voting machines impossible
| to talk about.
| Mike61 wrote:
| I agree ... I am now a little more stupid for just thinking
| about this ...
| orangepurple wrote:
| These dummies think a wifi scanner will pick up anything useful
| and that they can somehow keep drones floating over concrete
| buildings where wireless signals are highly attenuated, voting
| takes place and afterwards, around 24-36 hours, and what if
| there is a cellular modem inside? It won't be picked up by some
| wifi SSID sniffer. And SSIDs don't have to be broadcast by APs.
| Total fools.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| This opens up another grift opportunity - drones that can do
| in-flight battery swaps for these drones!
|
| Call Lindell, see if he has any money left.
| orangepurple wrote:
| The best way to deliver lithium ion batteries to those
| drones is an 18650 cell packaged in a 12 gauge shotgun
| shell. They fit. And the show is more spectacular when they
| are fully charged upon impact with the target.
|
| I suspect he is alphabet agency controlled opposition
| playing the role of the useful idiot to distract the angry
| mob with a red herring which can later be proven false,
| thus discrediting everyone who was concerned about election
| fraud. The tactic is used to perform character
| assassinations and to discredit conspiracy theories not by
| proving them false beyond a reasonable doubt but by casting
| anybody who asks questions as a nutjob.
| taylodl wrote:
| I call it negative intelligence - people who are so stupid they
| make everybody around them _more_ stupid.
| joemazerino wrote:
| [flagged]
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