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Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

268 points by ColinCochrane 10y ago

javajosh 10y ago
It's interesting to view recent events in the US as a crisis of measurement. The news media measured the voting public with polling samples, we then measured the voting public with a vast government apparatus. Clearly, the measurements did not agree. Logically there are three possibilities: the media was right, the polls were right, or neither were right. It's actually quite a good thing that we start to speak openly about threat-models against all voter sentiment measuring tools, especially the official ones.
- theoh 10y ago
  The idea that an electoral poll incorporates a random error (and maybe a systematic one too) is alien to the discussion about recounts etc.
  - dmfdmf 10y ago
    Yes, this was one of my questions. What is the accuracy and error margin of the voting system itself (and each state seems to have different methods so its not even uniform). Of roughly 126 million votes cast, 1% accuracy would be 1.26 million votes which would be of the same order of magnitude of Clinton's "win" of the popular vote. I have no idea if 1% accuracy is close or wildly too high or too low but we can't have a meaningful discussion without it. Correction: Actual total was 126M votes for the presidential election not 160M votes as I stated. But the question remains.
    - theoh 10y ago
      Don't hold your breath. Consider the case, in the technology of proportional representation, of the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota It's (it seems to me) obviously arithmetically unfit for purpose compared to the Droop quota. In some cases more candidates can meet the quota than seats are available. Yet it remains in use/part of the credible discussion.
- vehementi 10y ago
  The last polls before the election put Trump at a 30% win chance. Trump winning is a completely normal outcome in that situation and doesn't signal polling problems.
- grzm 10y ago
  There are two different types of polls we're talking about here. One are polls conducted during the campaign to capture potential voter sentiment and perhaps predict the outcome. The second are exit polls attempting to measure the election outcome based on what voters say they cast. (Nearly?) all complaints about polls I've seen have been about the former. There are different sets of issues with both categories of polls. If anything, I believe the issue is not a measurement issue as much as it is educating the public about what the different types of polls are, their limitations, and their usefulness.
hacker_9 10y ago
Why do Americans use voting machines exactly? I mean, it just prints out their choice at the end right? What benefit do they actually gain from having pressed buttons instead of using a pen? It just seems to fuel the hacking conspiracy every time a president is elected. In the UK we turn up, go into the booth with the paper slip, and tick our choice with a pen. Then we fold it and post it into a container which later gets shipped off to the counting room. I just can't understand why you guys have to physically turn up if you are just going to select your answer on a computer anyway.
- DanBC 10y ago
  The UK system wouldn't stop conspiracy theorists because it's not strictly anonymous. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,0...
  - tehwalrus 10y ago
    Thanks for posting this, really interesting/terrifying and I hadn't seen it before.
- an_account 10y ago
  Every state in America (and even different counties within states) vote differently. I voted on paper and it was put in a box to be counted in a central location. This takes forever and they just now are finishing up counting. Electronic voting is a lot quicker and cheaper to count. I'd argue that the best system is one in which you vote on paper but it's counted electronically at the polling booth. That way there's a paper trail that can be audited and also quick counting.
  - Procrastes 10y ago
    That does sound better, and I left out the rapid counting. Good point.
  - sopooneo 10y ago
    But why not scan-tron? It seems like that is the best of both worlds. Start with a simple physical paper that everyone can understand and audit as the primary record, but then have each voter feed their own directly into a scan machine that can tally and send counts in quickly? That's how we do it around me, and it seems like a strictly superior approach. What am I missing?
ajf3 10y ago
Why hasn't some state used a hash to allow trustworthy online voting? They could add a unique id on the back of your driver's license and then allow you to use your unique id to generate anonymous/one time use id's. They could then have a publicly accessible server that at all time displays a column with anonymous id, vote and every person can verify that their personal vote is correctly displayed.
- erichocean 10y ago
  Because regularly people don't trust computer scientists...or math (if it's too complex, and hashes definitely are).
  - quickben 10y ago
    And they trust the current blackbox more? The reality is, people have no choice.
- emiliobumachar 10y ago
  Your scheme seems vulnerable to vote buying, e.g., $20 to vote for my candidate, but you have to show me your number so I can check.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    But vote buying is already rampant. Politicians already buy votes - promising benefits to key voting demographics, promising more or higher paying jobs for civil servants or the military, or promising lobby groups favourable laws/taxes/aid. Democracies are practically based around vote buying already. So your concern seems strange.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      Making promises that might be implemented isn't "buying" a vote. As you said, that is an intended part of democracy. Promises are not guarantees. Instead, vote buying is giving an explicit quid pro quo such as paying $10 for every "correct" vote receipt. Yes, this doesn't fix every problem, but it does fix some problems that used to be common. > So your concern seems strange. Then I strongly suggest reading more about the history of voting methods and technology. (the talk in my other post has a nice overview) We no longer have problems like offering whisky for votes or employers that threaten to fire anybody that doesn't vote a certain way (although occasionally they still try).
jjuhl 10y ago
Relevant video: Was YOUR vote counted? (feat. homomorphic encryption) - Numberphile : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
miguelrochefort 10y ago
Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement? I can't believe we still rely on trust for this kind of thing.
- grzm 10y ago
  Here are some links I've found useful: Wikipedia page on End-to-End Auditable Voting Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.... Ron Rivest slide deck from March 2016. Auditability and Verifiability of Elections https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf
- krapp 10y ago
  > Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement? How do you verify that your vote is actually "taken into account?" You may be shown that your vote matches what you intended, but then it can be manipulated or discarded somewhere else in the process, beyond your ability to verify. It's like reading open source code without validating the operating system or physical machine it runs in - the entire environment contains the potential for hostility, and it's too complex for one person to comprehend in its entirety. Also, any such system, assuming it works as intended, may also give interested third parties a way to spy on someone's voting habits. Historically, knowledge of a person's vote has been used by governments and employers to coerce votes and to retaliate against political opponents or supporters of unpopular causes.
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    Let's start with a simple example. A spreadsheet with your name and your vote. You can be sure that your vote is taken into account by the SUM function.
    - grzm 10y ago
      If this is an area of interest to you, I encourage you to take the time to review the work that's already been done in this area. The example you provide doesn't even address the concerns in your parent, much less others that have been identified by those working in the domain. As a starting point, you can review Rivest's slides for an overview. Ron Rivest, "Auditability and Verifiability of Elections", March 2016. https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf Edit to add: I see I've already suggested this to you earlier today.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
- gedy 10y ago
  Why exactly would Putin prefer Trump? Honest question as both Hillary (as SoS) and Bill Clinton have been rather soft on Russia - Trump favoring domestic oil production, etc seems would be less preferred. Look how aggressive Russia has become in the past 8 years.
  - Angostura 10y ago
    I think the suggestion usually is that Putin would prefer a disrupted, uncertain, inward-looking U.S
  - nemo 10y ago
    There are many, many reasons. Trump promised to be extra soft on Russia re:NATO, re:Ukraine, etc. His single contribution to the GOP platform was to soften the GOP's position on Ukraine. Some of his staff were also Russian clients. He's also expressed open admiration of Putin and Putin's style of governance, and emphasized that he wants the US to get along with Russia. His son secretly met with Russian reps before the election to discuss US policy in Syria and elsewhere. A Trump win would give Russia tremendously greater influence over Europe. Given Putin's open assistance to Trump in the election Trump would owe Putin favors, and it's likely one of the favors Russia would pursue wold be lightening the massive sanctions Clinton imposed on Trump. Trump's also incredibly easily manipulated which certainly serves Russia's interests.
    - matwood 10y ago
      I'm not sure how the US can be any softer on Russia and the Ukraine than they already have been. Trump has also publicly stated he wants to shoot down Russian warplanes that approach US assets. I think Putin just likes to see one of his rivals in a time of uncertainty.
  - throwaway420 10y ago
    I don't think most people understand how bad relations between the US and Russia have gotten in the last year and how badly they would have spiraled out of control if Hillary won. Hillary's favored no fly zone policy in Syria would have unavoidably led to armed conflict between the US and Russia/Syria. It remains to be seen what will actually happen, but Trump's rhetoric is mostly about working with Russia to take down ISIS. Putin might be a thug, but he's not insane and doesn't want to go to war with the US. He can work with somebody like Trump who wants to talk and take down a common enemy.
ThomPete 10y ago
This is missing the point though. The american voting system is actually very secure. It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect. 75% of them have paper trails which would require an even bigger achievement to change enough off as it's again highly distributed and decentralized, and it would require mostly physical presence to do it. And thats just a few of the things that makes this more or less impossible. A bigger concern is access to the actual voter databases but what they can there there is mostly creating chaos which would obviously be horrible but have no effect on voting. The biggest problem is actually when examples like these spread without the above consideration as that can trigger the population to loose faith in a system that is probably as safe as it has ever been. P.S. I am highly supportive of whistleblowers like Snowden but this is missing the point.
- rpearl 10y ago
  The election was decided in its totality by 107k votes in WI, MI, and PA (the sum total margin of victory in those three states). You don't have to manipulate many votes to have an election-deciding effect.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    You would have to know where and it's still quite a big decentralized system even if you knew for certain it would be those 3 states. It's simply not that easy.
  - dmfdmf 10y ago
    I forget the statistical term but after the fact, you can't go back and say "look at this, only 107K votes determined the outcome" because you can always find such explanations post hoc. I tried to search but couldn't find the discussion but one example is how couples use this type of fallacy to "prove" their love was fated. Typically on the day the fated couple met there were a number of unusual events or circumstances (a missed bus, sick grandma, a power outage, etc.) that played a key role in their meeting and the probability of all these coincidences occurring together must mean they were fated to meet. Moreover, you have to ask; How could the Simon Bar Sinister have known prior to the election that these three states (and probably one or two counties in each state) would be the decisive counties to hack to manipulate votes and win the election? He can't.
grzm 10y ago
Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 5 times over the past month or so. If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads: "American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 "Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 "Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 "In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 "Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178
- asp_hornet 10y ago
  I remember the discussions of Bush rigging the 2004 elections (not on HN).
  - grzm 10y ago
    Secure voting came to my attention after the 2000 Bush-Gore election and recount. There's been a lot of work really interesting work since then. If you're interested in what can be done to improve voting security, I encourage you to see https://www.verifiedvoting.org https://www.verifiedvoting.org
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Diebold, how people hacked their voting machines, and their campaign against said hackers was mentioned on Slashdot practically weekly back then. I think http://blackboxvoting.org/ http://blackboxvoting.org/ was started as a direct result.
- Natsu 10y ago
  This has come up in many of the related threads - "Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results" http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking... That aside, we should, of course, work on securing the vote.
xrd 10y ago
More and more I think our election system is ripe for foreign manipulation. I'd love to be proved wrong in an audit.
quinndupont 10y ago
This headline massively misconstrues Snowden's role and technical capacity in any such voting machine hack. Snowden merely said that it could be done, and pointed to a video published by Cylance.
_pdp_ 10y ago
E-Voting can be easily solved with ID cards combined with something similar to the blockchain so that you can verify your vote if you need to. The technology is there but I don't think there is any incentive to make it happen. The only problem that I can see is that we cannot be certain that any e-voting technology will survive future information security research and as a result the design needs to factor continuous upgrades.
- destructaball 10y ago
  The problem is that if you can verify your vote you can be coerced into voting in a certain way. There would need to be some sort of plausible deniability built in.
  - _pdp_ 10y ago
    Only you will be able to verify your vote. All votes are anonymous. You should be able to verify the very first vote as well and as a result of that verify the entire chain up to your vote. The last vote should also be verifiable to ensure that the chain is complete.
    - rtkwe 10y ago
      That doesn't solve the problem of verifiable votes. If you are able to verify your vote you can be coerced the verify it in the presence of someone else.

268 points by ColinCochrane 10y ago

It's interesting to view recent events in the US as a crisis of measurement. The news media measured the voting public with polling samples, we then measured the voting public with a vast government apparatus. Clearly, the measurements did not agree. Logically there are three possibilities: the media was right, the polls were right, or neither were right. It's actually quite a good thing that we start to speak openly about threat-models against all voter sentiment measuring tools, especially the official ones.

theoh 10y ago
The idea that an electoral poll incorporates a random error (and maybe a systematic one too) is alien to the discussion about recounts etc.
- dmfdmf 10y ago
  Yes, this was one of my questions. What is the accuracy and error margin of the voting system itself (and each state seems to have different methods so its not even uniform). Of roughly 126 million votes cast, 1% accuracy would be 1.26 million votes which would be of the same order of magnitude of Clinton's "win" of the popular vote. I have no idea if 1% accuracy is close or wildly too high or too low but we can't have a meaningful discussion without it. Correction: Actual total was 126M votes for the presidential election not 160M votes as I stated. But the question remains.
  - theoh 10y ago
    Don't hold your breath. Consider the case, in the technology of proportional representation, of the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota It's (it seems to me) obviously arithmetically unfit for purpose compared to the Droop quota. In some cases more candidates can meet the quota than seats are available. Yet it remains in use/part of the credible discussion.
vehementi 10y ago
The last polls before the election put Trump at a 30% win chance. Trump winning is a completely normal outcome in that situation and doesn't signal polling problems.
grzm 10y ago
There are two different types of polls we're talking about here. One are polls conducted during the campaign to capture potential voter sentiment and perhaps predict the outcome. The second are exit polls attempting to measure the election outcome based on what voters say they cast. (Nearly?) all complaints about polls I've seen have been about the former. There are different sets of issues with both categories of polls. If anything, I believe the issue is not a measurement issue as much as it is educating the public about what the different types of polls are, their limitations, and their usefulness.

hacker_9 10y ago

Why do Americans use voting machines exactly? I mean, it just prints out their choice at the end right? What benefit do they actually gain from having pressed buttons instead of using a pen? It just seems to fuel the hacking conspiracy every time a president is elected. In the UK we turn up, go into the booth with the paper slip, and tick our choice with a pen. Then we fold it and post it into a container which later gets shipped off to the counting room. I just can't understand why you guys have to physically turn up if you are just going to select your answer on a computer anyway.

DanBC 10y ago
The UK system wouldn't stop conspiracy theorists because it's not strictly anonymous. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,0...
- tehwalrus 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this, really interesting/terrifying and I hadn't seen it before.
an_account 10y ago
Every state in America (and even different counties within states) vote differently. I voted on paper and it was put in a box to be counted in a central location. This takes forever and they just now are finishing up counting. Electronic voting is a lot quicker and cheaper to count. I'd argue that the best system is one in which you vote on paper but it's counted electronically at the polling booth. That way there's a paper trail that can be audited and also quick counting.
- Procrastes 10y ago
  That does sound better, and I left out the rapid counting. Good point.
- sopooneo 10y ago
  But why not scan-tron? It seems like that is the best of both worlds. Start with a simple physical paper that everyone can understand and audit as the primary record, but then have each voter feed their own directly into a scan machine that can tally and send counts in quickly? That's how we do it around me, and it seems like a strictly superior approach. What am I missing?

ajf3 10y ago

Why hasn't some state used a hash to allow trustworthy online voting? They could add a unique id on the back of your driver's license and then allow you to use your unique id to generate anonymous/one time use id's. They could then have a publicly accessible server that at all time displays a column with anonymous id, vote and every person can verify that their personal vote is correctly displayed.

erichocean 10y ago
Because regularly people don't trust computer scientists...or math (if it's too complex, and hashes definitely are).
- quickben 10y ago
  And they trust the current blackbox more? The reality is, people have no choice.
emiliobumachar 10y ago
Your scheme seems vulnerable to vote buying, e.g., $20 to vote for my candidate, but you have to show me your number so I can check.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  But vote buying is already rampant. Politicians already buy votes - promising benefits to key voting demographics, promising more or higher paying jobs for civil servants or the military, or promising lobby groups favourable laws/taxes/aid. Democracies are practically based around vote buying already. So your concern seems strange.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    Making promises that might be implemented isn't "buying" a vote. As you said, that is an intended part of democracy. Promises are not guarantees. Instead, vote buying is giving an explicit quid pro quo such as paying $10 for every "correct" vote receipt. Yes, this doesn't fix every problem, but it does fix some problems that used to be common. > So your concern seems strange. Then I strongly suggest reading more about the history of voting methods and technology. (the talk in my other post has a nice overview) We no longer have problems like offering whisky for votes or employers that threaten to fire anybody that doesn't vote a certain way (although occasionally they still try).

jjuhl 10y ago

Relevant video: Was YOUR vote counted? (feat. homomorphic encryption) - Numberphile : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTvoZ3Rho

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

miguelrochefort 10y ago

Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement? I can't believe we still rely on trust for this kind of thing.

grzm 10y ago
Here are some links I've found useful: Wikipedia page on End-to-End Auditable Voting Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy.... Ron Rivest slide deck from March 2016. Auditability and Verifiability of Elections https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf
krapp 10y ago
> Wouldn't a voting system that let people confirm that their vote is taken into account be trivial to implement? How do you verify that your vote is actually "taken into account?" You may be shown that your vote matches what you intended, but then it can be manipulated or discarded somewhere else in the process, beyond your ability to verify. It's like reading open source code without validating the operating system or physical machine it runs in - the entire environment contains the potential for hostility, and it's too complex for one person to comprehend in its entirety. Also, any such system, assuming it works as intended, may also give interested third parties a way to spy on someone's voting habits. Historically, knowledge of a person's vote has been used by governments and employers to coerce votes and to retaliate against political opponents or supporters of unpopular causes.
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  Let's start with a simple example. A spreadsheet with your name and your vote. You can be sure that your vote is taken into account by the SUM function.
  - grzm 10y ago
    If this is an area of interest to you, I encourage you to take the time to review the work that's already been done in this area. The example you provide doesn't even address the concerns in your parent, much less others that have been identified by those working in the domain. As a starting point, you can review Rivest's slides for an overview. Ron Rivest, "Auditability and Verifiability of Elections", March 2016. https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf Edit to add: I see I've already suggested this to you earlier today.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gedy 10y ago
Why exactly would Putin prefer Trump? Honest question as both Hillary (as SoS) and Bill Clinton have been rather soft on Russia - Trump favoring domestic oil production, etc seems would be less preferred. Look how aggressive Russia has become in the past 8 years.
- Angostura 10y ago
  I think the suggestion usually is that Putin would prefer a disrupted, uncertain, inward-looking U.S
- nemo 10y ago
  There are many, many reasons. Trump promised to be extra soft on Russia re:NATO, re:Ukraine, etc. His single contribution to the GOP platform was to soften the GOP's position on Ukraine. Some of his staff were also Russian clients. He's also expressed open admiration of Putin and Putin's style of governance, and emphasized that he wants the US to get along with Russia. His son secretly met with Russian reps before the election to discuss US policy in Syria and elsewhere. A Trump win would give Russia tremendously greater influence over Europe. Given Putin's open assistance to Trump in the election Trump would owe Putin favors, and it's likely one of the favors Russia would pursue wold be lightening the massive sanctions Clinton imposed on Trump. Trump's also incredibly easily manipulated which certainly serves Russia's interests.
  - matwood 10y ago
    I'm not sure how the US can be any softer on Russia and the Ukraine than they already have been. Trump has also publicly stated he wants to shoot down Russian warplanes that approach US assets. I think Putin just likes to see one of his rivals in a time of uncertainty.
- throwaway420 10y ago
  I don't think most people understand how bad relations between the US and Russia have gotten in the last year and how badly they would have spiraled out of control if Hillary won. Hillary's favored no fly zone policy in Syria would have unavoidably led to armed conflict between the US and Russia/Syria. It remains to be seen what will actually happen, but Trump's rhetoric is mostly about working with Russia to take down ISIS. Putin might be a thug, but he's not insane and doesn't want to go to war with the US. He can work with somebody like Trump who wants to talk and take down a common enemy.

ThomPete 10y ago

This is missing the point though. The american voting system is actually very secure. It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect. 75% of them have paper trails which would require an even bigger achievement to change enough off as it's again highly distributed and decentralized, and it would require mostly physical presence to do it. And thats just a few of the things that makes this more or less impossible. A bigger concern is access to the actual voter databases but what they can there there is mostly creating chaos which would obviously be horrible but have no effect on voting. The biggest problem is actually when examples like these spread without the above consideration as that can trigger the population to loose faith in a system that is probably as safe as it has ever been. P.S. I am highly supportive of whistleblowers like Snowden but this is missing the point.

rpearl 10y ago
The election was decided in its totality by 107k votes in WI, MI, and PA (the sum total margin of victory in those three states). You don't have to manipulate many votes to have an election-deciding effect.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  You would have to know where and it's still quite a big decentralized system even if you knew for certain it would be those 3 states. It's simply not that easy.
- dmfdmf 10y ago
  I forget the statistical term but after the fact, you can't go back and say "look at this, only 107K votes determined the outcome" because you can always find such explanations post hoc. I tried to search but couldn't find the discussion but one example is how couples use this type of fallacy to "prove" their love was fated. Typically on the day the fated couple met there were a number of unusual events or circumstances (a missed bus, sick grandma, a power outage, etc.) that played a key role in their meeting and the probability of all these coincidences occurring together must mean they were fated to meet. Moreover, you have to ask; How could the Simon Bar Sinister have known prior to the election that these three states (and probably one or two counties in each state) would be the decisive counties to hack to manipulate votes and win the election? He can't.

grzm 10y ago

Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 5 times over the past month or so. If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads: "American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 "Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 "Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356 "In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247 "Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178

asp_hornet 10y ago
I remember the discussions of Bush rigging the 2004 elections (not on HN).
- grzm 10y ago
  Secure voting came to my attention after the 2000 Bush-Gore election and recount. There's been a lot of work really interesting work since then. If you're interested in what can be done to improve voting security, I encourage you to see https://www.verifiedvoting.org https://www.verifiedvoting.org
- onion2k 10y ago
  Diebold, how people hacked their voting machines, and their campaign against said hackers was mentioned on Slashdot practically weekly back then. I think http://blackboxvoting.org/ http://blackboxvoting.org/ was started as a direct result.
Natsu 10y ago
This has come up in many of the related threads - "Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results" http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking... That aside, we should, of course, work on securing the vote.

xrd 10y ago

More and more I think our election system is ripe for foreign manipulation. I'd love to be proved wrong in an audit.

quinndupont 10y ago

This headline massively misconstrues Snowden's role and technical capacity in any such voting machine hack. Snowden merely said that it could be done, and pointed to a video published by Cylance.

_pdp_ 10y ago

E-Voting can be easily solved with ID cards combined with something similar to the blockchain so that you can verify your vote if you need to. The technology is there but I don't think there is any incentive to make it happen. The only problem that I can see is that we cannot be certain that any e-voting technology will survive future information security research and as a result the design needs to factor continuous upgrades.

destructaball 10y ago
The problem is that if you can verify your vote you can be coerced into voting in a certain way. There would need to be some sort of plausible deniability built in.
- _pdp_ 10y ago
  Only you will be able to verify your vote. All votes are anonymous. You should be able to verify the very first vote as well and as a result of that verify the entire chain up to your vote. The last vote should also be verifiable to ensure that the chain is complete.
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    That doesn't solve the problem of verifiable votes. If you are able to verify your vote you can be coerced the verify it in the presence of someone else.