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Nearly every demonstration of voting machine hacking has required unrestricted physical access to the machine and tools/keys. Paper ballot boxes are just as ha

Nearly every demonstration of voting machine hacking has required unrestricted physical access to the machine and tools/keys. Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements.

dheera 7y ago
Not only that, but paper ballots are a threat to the species, which IMO is a bigger threat than a threat to democracy. I think we should be asking ourselves how to make electronic voting feasible and secure, NOT dismissing it blindly as not possible and refusing to even try.
- lucasmullens 7y ago
  > paper ballots are a threat to the species What? How?
  - dheera 7y ago
    A few billion sheets of paper?
    - ninkendo 7y ago
      Paper is a renewable resource. Trees are replanted when we cut them down to make paper.
    - maximente 7y ago
      just call your credit card company(ies)/banks and demand they stop sending you offers in the mail this action alone will save an enormous amounts of paper, orders of magnitude more than is required for every democratic action you'll participate in with our super low tech future (paper ballots for all), and nicely reduces the amount of shipping/logistics etc. that your local mail delivery service has to do. massive win-win for the planet and democracy
      - dheera 7y ago
        > just call your credit card company(ies)/banks and demand they stop sending you offers in the mail Yes, I already did that. Everyone should too as well.
      - 18pfsmt 7y ago
        The USPS has subsidized junk mail. I have a mail scale, 90% of the mail sent to me is complete junk. Non-market based entities have no incentive for efficiency.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
      This isn't the 70s anymore; all paper companies nowadays use tree plantations instead of random old growth, which means paper is now only about as damaging as regular food products.
      - anticensor 7y ago
        Intensive agriculture is very damaging.
  - stevenhubertron 7y ago
    He likely is worried about the printed paper and tree cut down. I don’t agree that should be a worry here but I think that is what he is getting at.
ninkendo 7y ago
> Nearly every demonstration of voting machine hacking has required unrestricted physical access to the machine and tools/keys. For that to be any consolation, we’d have to unconditionally trust those who have physical access to the machine and tools/keys. Such trust is not necessary with paper ballots because they can always be hand-counted with supervision from both sides of a disputed election. A vote count given by an electronic machine has no such auditability. > Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements. “Hacking” a stack of paper, e.g. ballot stuffing or destroying ballots, is something people can see happen. It’s not impossible, but it is very difficult to do out in the open with security cameras and the public there to watch. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but you tend to make a much bigger mess doing it.
- codedokode 7y ago
  Also, today an observer can take a video and instantly publish it on the Internet if something fishy is happening in the polling station, but nobody can see what happens inside a voting machine and whether it counts the votes properly. Electronic voting is a perfect tool for falsifying election results.
  - 18pfsmt 7y ago
    I appreciate your perspective, but these issues should be dealt with by citizens. It is not a global issue how the USA handles its elections. Foreigners weighing-in scare the shit out of our old people. That's how we get epithets like (((globalists))).
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >Such trust is not necessary with paper ballots because they can always be hand-counted with supervision from both sides of a disputed election. That assumes they aren't replaced at some point. For a nation-level election this is probably too difficult to significantly influence an election but at even a state level it's relatively doable with a little coercion and/or carefully placed individuals even in 2019 in the United States. You also have the option to do voter impersonation in states without voting ID laws, again this would mostly only work at a more local level. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud documents 1052 CONVICTIONS of voter fraud in the United States with 1,216 proven instances. Outside of the United States there are all sorts of examples, including standing out the polling places with force to let people know vote our way or we'll shoot you.
FPGAhacker 7y ago
My concern is with the officials themselves. Everyone should be treated as untrustworthy.
- the_snooze 7y ago
  Translate that concern into action. Volunteer to be an election official yourself and keep an eye on everyone else. Participate in how this thing works. It's really rewarding.
- beat 7y ago
  In Minnesota, the problem of individual untrustworthiness is handled by putting multiple people on every task - and those people must be from different political parties. So any time ballots are handled, marked or unmarked, members of at least two different parties are present. So simple, so effective.
  - 18pfsmt 7y ago
    That's how it works in the 9 states I've lived in personally.
mikeash 7y ago
Hack voting machines: trick or bribe an election worker to plug a USB drive into all the machines a week before the election. Hack paper ballots: bribe the multiple people, including representatives from each party who cares to send one, to look the other way while you steal a box full of paper ballots and substitute your own. It’s not impossible, but it’s much harder to mess with paper ballots at scale and much easier to secure them.
disconnected 7y ago
Electronic voting machines run proprietary code which, AFAIK, was never publicly audited (AFAIK, the manufacturers have resisted auditing efforts bitterly). How can you trust that the machine will behave as you expect in a "real world" setting, when the results truly count? IMHO, the biggest risk from electronic voting machines isn't some rando swinging the elections with their 1337 haxx0r skills: the biggest risk is that the machines basically come "pre-hacked" from the factory - either intentionally, or unintentionally (bugs happen).
codedokode 7y ago
Election commitee (or whatever it is called in different countries) has unlimited and uncontrolled physical access to those machines and their keys. What stops them from uploading a firmware that would count every N-th vote for candidate A no matter what was voter's choice? How do you detect that? Unlike electronic voting, paper ballots are much more difficult to manipulate. If a voter has marked a box for candidate X, you cannot change it or ignore it if there are observers. An observer can verify that voting goes according to the rules and votes are counted properly. The most popular way to "hack" paper voting is to organise groups of people and ride them on a bus from one polling station to other so that they can vote multiple times, but it is more difficult to do, and easier to spot than simply replace the firmware in a voting machine. In the case with an electronic machine, you cannot see what's happening inside.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  In Canada, each person is assigned to a polling station, typically a school, church, or community center near their residence. You present ID at the door and your name is crossed off a paper list. Your name is not on the list at any other polling stations. You have the option to mail in your vote or to vote in an advance poll, but these options close a week before the main poll, so if your name appears on the list at your polling station, they're pretty confident you haven't voted yet.
- zachm0 7y ago
  How does one “simply replace the firmware” is a way that isn’t trivial to spot by an observer? Assuming there is no external IO such as USB or Ethernet, someone would have to disassemble the machine and solder a programming header in order to re-flash the device.
  - codedokode 7y ago
    Replace the firwmare (or even the whole motherboard) long before election day when there are no observers yet. > to disassemble the machine Is it that difficult?
Buttons840 7y ago
Both sides of the political spectrum are increasingly believing that elections are not fair, and it's far easier for people to believe conspiracies (true or not) when electronic voting machines are involved. At some point we will lose the ability to peacefully transition power. A successful voting process both accurately counts the votes, and is trusted by the people. Computers can count, but they are not seen as trustworthy by the people. Paper is more understandable and trustworthy. Even as a computer programmer I'm not sure I can trust electronic voting. Thus, even in the absence of any actual hacks or fraud, electronic voting is inferior at a primary objective of the voting system, being understandable and perceived as trustworthy.
cf498 7y ago
>Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements. No they arent. You need one guy with physical access to to a machine, at any time, to screw an election, with manual counting you need everyone in the room conspiring to rig the election during the voting hours. With the possibility to volunteer to count votes and publishing the voting numbers for each voting station, you just dont get those situations. I know its an unpopular statement, but having a democratic election is not a new problem to solve. Most western countries do it just fine. This is not a problem with the concept of paper ballots but a absurdly broken system.

Nearly every demonstration of voting machine hacking has required unrestricted physical access to the machine and tools/keys. Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements.

dheera 7y ago

Not only that, but paper ballots are a threat to the species, which IMO is a bigger threat than a threat to democracy. I think we should be asking ourselves how to make electronic voting feasible and secure, NOT dismissing it blindly as not possible and refusing to even try.

lucasmullens 7y ago
> paper ballots are a threat to the species What? How?
- dheera 7y ago
  A few billion sheets of paper?
  - ninkendo 7y ago
    Paper is a renewable resource. Trees are replanted when we cut them down to make paper.
  - maximente 7y ago
    just call your credit card company(ies)/banks and demand they stop sending you offers in the mail this action alone will save an enormous amounts of paper, orders of magnitude more than is required for every democratic action you'll participate in with our super low tech future (paper ballots for all), and nicely reduces the amount of shipping/logistics etc. that your local mail delivery service has to do. massive win-win for the planet and democracy
    - dheera 7y ago
      > just call your credit card company(ies)/banks and demand they stop sending you offers in the mail Yes, I already did that. Everyone should too as well.
    - 18pfsmt 7y ago
      The USPS has subsidized junk mail. I have a mail scale, 90% of the mail sent to me is complete junk. Non-market based entities have no incentive for efficiency.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    This isn't the 70s anymore; all paper companies nowadays use tree plantations instead of random old growth, which means paper is now only about as damaging as regular food products.
    - anticensor 7y ago
      Intensive agriculture is very damaging.
- stevenhubertron 7y ago
  He likely is worried about the printed paper and tree cut down. I don’t agree that should be a worry here but I think that is what he is getting at.

ninkendo 7y ago

> Nearly every demonstration of voting machine hacking has required unrestricted physical access to the machine and tools/keys. For that to be any consolation, we’d have to unconditionally trust those who have physical access to the machine and tools/keys. Such trust is not necessary with paper ballots because they can always be hand-counted with supervision from both sides of a disputed election. A vote count given by an electronic machine has no such auditability. > Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements. “Hacking” a stack of paper, e.g. ballot stuffing or destroying ballots, is something people can see happen. It’s not impossible, but it is very difficult to do out in the open with security cameras and the public there to watch. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but you tend to make a much bigger mess doing it.

codedokode 7y ago
Also, today an observer can take a video and instantly publish it on the Internet if something fishy is happening in the polling station, but nobody can see what happens inside a voting machine and whether it counts the votes properly. Electronic voting is a perfect tool for falsifying election results.
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  I appreciate your perspective, but these issues should be dealt with by citizens. It is not a global issue how the USA handles its elections. Foreigners weighing-in scare the shit out of our old people. That's how we get epithets like (((globalists))).
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Such trust is not necessary with paper ballots because they can always be hand-counted with supervision from both sides of a disputed election. That assumes they aren't replaced at some point. For a nation-level election this is probably too difficult to significantly influence an election but at even a state level it's relatively doable with a little coercion and/or carefully placed individuals even in 2019 in the United States. You also have the option to do voter impersonation in states without voting ID laws, again this would mostly only work at a more local level. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud documents 1052 CONVICTIONS of voter fraud in the United States with 1,216 proven instances. Outside of the United States there are all sorts of examples, including standing out the polling places with force to let people know vote our way or we'll shoot you.

FPGAhacker 7y ago

My concern is with the officials themselves. Everyone should be treated as untrustworthy.

the_snooze 7y ago
Translate that concern into action. Volunteer to be an election official yourself and keep an eye on everyone else. Participate in how this thing works. It's really rewarding.
beat 7y ago
In Minnesota, the problem of individual untrustworthiness is handled by putting multiple people on every task - and those people must be from different political parties. So any time ballots are handled, marked or unmarked, members of at least two different parties are present. So simple, so effective.
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  That's how it works in the 9 states I've lived in personally.

mikeash 7y ago

Hack voting machines: trick or bribe an election worker to plug a USB drive into all the machines a week before the election. Hack paper ballots: bribe the multiple people, including representatives from each party who cares to send one, to look the other way while you steal a box full of paper ballots and substitute your own. It’s not impossible, but it’s much harder to mess with paper ballots at scale and much easier to secure them.

disconnected 7y ago

Electronic voting machines run proprietary code which, AFAIK, was never publicly audited (AFAIK, the manufacturers have resisted auditing efforts bitterly). How can you trust that the machine will behave as you expect in a "real world" setting, when the results truly count? IMHO, the biggest risk from electronic voting machines isn't some rando swinging the elections with their 1337 haxx0r skills: the biggest risk is that the machines basically come "pre-hacked" from the factory - either intentionally, or unintentionally (bugs happen).

codedokode 7y ago

Election commitee (or whatever it is called in different countries) has unlimited and uncontrolled physical access to those machines and their keys. What stops them from uploading a firmware that would count every N-th vote for candidate A no matter what was voter's choice? How do you detect that? Unlike electronic voting, paper ballots are much more difficult to manipulate. If a voter has marked a box for candidate X, you cannot change it or ignore it if there are observers. An observer can verify that voting goes according to the rules and votes are counted properly. The most popular way to "hack" paper voting is to organise groups of people and ride them on a bus from one polling station to other so that they can vote multiple times, but it is more difficult to do, and easier to spot than simply replace the firmware in a voting machine. In the case with an electronic machine, you cannot see what's happening inside.

mikepurvis 7y ago
In Canada, each person is assigned to a polling station, typically a school, church, or community center near their residence. You present ID at the door and your name is crossed off a paper list. Your name is not on the list at any other polling stations. You have the option to mail in your vote or to vote in an advance poll, but these options close a week before the main poll, so if your name appears on the list at your polling station, they're pretty confident you haven't voted yet.
zachm0 7y ago
How does one “simply replace the firmware” is a way that isn’t trivial to spot by an observer? Assuming there is no external IO such as USB or Ethernet, someone would have to disassemble the machine and solder a programming header in order to re-flash the device.
- codedokode 7y ago
  Replace the firwmare (or even the whole motherboard) long before election day when there are no observers yet. > to disassemble the machine Is it that difficult?

Buttons840 7y ago

Both sides of the political spectrum are increasingly believing that elections are not fair, and it's far easier for people to believe conspiracies (true or not) when electronic voting machines are involved. At some point we will lose the ability to peacefully transition power. A successful voting process both accurately counts the votes, and is trusted by the people. Computers can count, but they are not seen as trustworthy by the people. Paper is more understandable and trustworthy. Even as a computer programmer I'm not sure I can trust electronic voting. Thus, even in the absence of any actual hacks or fraud, electronic voting is inferior at a primary objective of the voting system, being understandable and perceived as trustworthy.

cf498 7y ago

>Paper ballot boxes are just as hackable at scale with those requirements. No they arent. You need one guy with physical access to to a machine, at any time, to screw an election, with manual counting you need everyone in the room conspiring to rig the election during the voting hours. With the possibility to volunteer to count votes and publishing the voting numbers for each voting station, you just dont get those situations. I know its an unpopular statement, but having a democratic election is not a new problem to solve. Most western countries do it just fine. This is not a problem with the concept of paper ballots but a absurdly broken system.