
In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove - kushti
http://www.zdnet.com/article/in-battleground-pennsylvania-claims-of-a-rigged-election-may-be-impossible-to-disprove/
======
pyrophane
This, not in-person voter fraud, is the real threat to our democratic election
process. Paper ballots have a couple of strong advantages: 1) The voter can
confirm that their vote was recorded as they intended. 2) There is a paper
trail that is difficult to falsify which can be used to confirm election
counts.

Sure, there are problems with a paper ballot system, such as the fact that
ballots can be misplaced or destroyed, but we've given up a lot for
"convenience," which shouldn't be the top priority when it comes to our voting
process.

If nothing else, our voting machines need to produce duplicate paper receipts,
one for the voter and one retained within the voting machine so that
electronic results can be verified.

Edit: as has been pointed out in the replies there are good reasons not to
give people a paper copy of their vote, so it would be preferable to only
produce a single paper receipt that the voter can view but which is retained
within the voting machine itself.

~~~
SilasX
>1) The voter can confirm that their vote was recorded as they intended.

No, they can't. They can verify that:

A) Poll location XYZ (claims to have) received your ballot,

B) The government tabulator included the votes from XYZ in the final count.

That's not the same thing as verifying C) that they actually recorded your
vote as intended.

If they can verify that _this specific ballot_ , with this ID number, is
yours, that would violate ballot secrecy and existing protocols avoid this.
You would need something like homomorphic encryption to achieve C).

Incidentally, I don't get why we're okay with (in California et al) the system
of giving a ballot to anyone who claims to be the person on the list. Yes,
there are legit arguments against going all the way to photo ID ... but "no
authentication whatsoever"? Come now.

~~~
azernik
The problem with asking for stronger authentication at the polling place is
that we live in a third-world country [1] that does not have a free, mandatory
national ID card. Those aren't just cards with photos - they're tokens of a
national system for authenticating citizens' identities, which they must use
in order to participate in daily economic life (get a cell phone, open a bank
account, sign a lease, etc.) Since in a sane country everyone has one of these
(usually on their person), requiring people to present it doesn't present an
extra burden. Whereas in the US, in which a shockingly large fraction of the
population goes about their daily lives without any such government-
authenticated identity, forcing people to obtain such an identity just in
order to vote is more likely to disenfranchise them than to get them to go get
an ID.

Case in point - under the Help America Vote Act, you do have to present
identification on the first time you register (or in practice, the first time
you vote after you register by mail)... but in order to avoid the
disenfranchisement issue the list of allowed forms of identification is so
enormous as to be meaningless.

[1] I exaggerate. A little.

~~~
SilasX
Those are (well trod) arguments against Voter ID, which I took care to specify
I was _not_ making.

They are _not_ arguments against e.g. voter cards, requiring the person to
know their address in addition to their name, etc.

Are you okay with them giving me your ballot simply because I claimed to be
you? (It will be too late to take it back once I've cast.) If not, you agree
with me, and "we're just haggling over the price" as the saying goes.

Btw, you need to authenticate yourself to open a bank account in the US.

~~~
azernik
In California, at least, you _do_ need to know your address... at least, the
address they registered with, because there _is_ no database of people's
actual addresses. Which comes back to a chicken-and-egg problem - when someone
registers, how do you verify that their information is correct?

The point I really want to address is that having good voter authentication is
more or less equivalent to the project of having a national or state ID card.
Which no one in the US seems to be willing to undertake. I am not okay with
the lack of authentication, but I'm more okay with that than with
disenfranchising people who happen not to be integrated into our ramshackle
systems of identification. Ideally, I'd like to have a state or national ID
card possessed by at least, say, 98% of the population, and use that to
authenticate - but we're not there, and empirically disenfranchisement is a
bigger problem in the United States than voter fraud.

(Also, WRT it being too late to take back ballots - this is the point of
provisional ballots. If you show up for your first vote and can't fulfill the
(laughable) HAVA ID requirements or are for some reason not on the rolls, you
cast a provisional ballot in a sealed envelope, and over the next month the
registrar of voters tries to decide whether it's actually you and whether to
count your vote.)

~~~
SilasX
>In California, at least, you do need to know your address... at least, the
address they registered with,

What I meant was, when you go to the poll, they don't even challenge you to
give a name and address. You simply have to assert that you're Silas, and
boom, you get my ballot, no questions asked. And that's true, as it's what
happened the last 8 or so times I voted.

>The point I really want to address is that having good voter authentication
is more or less equivalent to the project of having a national or state ID
card. Which no one in the US seems to be willing to undertake.

I thought I made very clear that I wasn't speaking about full photo ID? And
that there are trivial mechanisms far short of photo ID but far better than
"give away my ballot to any one who asks, and irreversibly count the vote
before it can be corrected." For example, photo-less voter cards mailed with
your registration (Usable in lieu of a photo ID).

It's not perfect, but it's easy and 100x better than "are you a bot?
_Promise?_ " that we seem to tolerate here.

In fact, that's what worries me about this whole thing, how contorted the
debate has gotten: how you can't even voice trepidation at "honor system
authentication" for something as solemn as voting, without getting hit with a
well-tuned copypasta of sob stories about people who live off the grid but
still want to vote.

>(Also, WRT it being too late to take back ballots - this is the point of
provisional ballots. If you show up for your first vote and can't fulfill the
(laughable) HAVA ID requirements or are for some reason not on the rolls, you
cast a provisional ballot in a sealed envelope, and over the next month the
registrar of voters tries to decide whether it's actually you and whether to
count your vote.)

That doesn't undo the ballot that was just cast by the guy claiming to be me.

------
canadian_voter
For those of you who are unfamiliar with how voting works in other parts of
the world, I'd like to describe the voting process in Canada.

Registered voters (which is virtually everyone) receive a card in them mail
telling them where to vote. They bring the card, along with proof of address
and photo ID to their polling station on election day. Their ID is checked
against a list by two poll clerks and the elector is given a ballot. They take
the ballot behind a curtain and make a mark with a pencil beside their
candidate of choice. They take the ballot to the ballot box, where an observer
watches them place it inside.

At the end of the night, the ballot box is opened by the two poll clerks, who
are generally (but not necessarily) observed by several "scrutineers": one
representative from each party. One of the poll clerks holds each ballot in
turn, and announces who they believe the ballot was cast for. If everyone
agrees, the ballot is counted. If it is disputed, a discussion takes place
with reference to the printed rulebook. If there is still no agreement, it
gets escalated.

Once all of the ballots have been counted, the results are reported to the
Deputy Returning Officer, who phones them in to Elections Canada. The ballots
go back in the box and the box is sealed. It is delivered to Elections Canada
and stored in case of a recount. Enough results are generally available
nation-wide a little after midnight (polls close at 9 or so) for a winner to
be declared and concessions speeches given, although the official results can
take a little longer.

The system seems to work. I don't see how electronic voting machines could do
it cheaper, more securely or even very much faster.

I understand an American election is more complicated and may require a more
complex system, but truly I feel electronic voting machines are a false
efficiency here.

Source: Worked a few elections as a poll clerk. More details at
[http://www.elections.ca](http://www.elections.ca)

------
matt_wulfeck
The focus of this argument seems to center around people casting multiple
votes, "dead" people voting, etc. The problem is that there's no vote-
verifiable trail and serious security issues with electronic voting booths.

There was even a video interview with Howard Dean where he shows how easy it
is to dink around in the MS Access database on voting machine and change the
votes [0].

This [1] paper from 2003 sums up some of the issues nicely:

 _Voters can cast multiple votes without leaving any trace. Voters, as well as
voting staff or others with access to the machine, can perform actions that
normally require administrative privileges, including viewing partial results
and terminating the election early. Furthermore, communications between voting
terminals and the central server are not properly encrypted, allowing a
malicious man in the middle to alter the content of the communications_

I have zero faith in Diebold voting machines (or machines like it). And I'm
very skeptical that people with malicious intent haven't already attacked and
plan to attack such electronic components.

[0] [http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2724](http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2724)

[1]
[https://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach/pub/hackavote2003tr.pdf](https://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach/pub/hackavote2003tr.pdf)

------
grzm
There's been a lot of research done on the voting process, in particular
following the 2000 US presidential elections. There's a lot involved.
Integrity in the voting process -- and _belief_ in integrity of election
results -- is fundamental to a functioning democracy.

If this is an area you're interested in, one place you can start is via the
"End-to-end auditable voting systems" page on Wikipedia. Lots of good links
there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-
end_auditable_voting_sy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-
end_auditable_voting_systems)

From my reading, a big hurdle right now is getting these systems -- the whole
process, not just the tech -- tested in actual elections. Too late for 2016,
but if we get enough money, support and education involved, this can move
forward.

~~~
grzm
Here's a link to slides from a talk Ronald Rivest gave back in March 2016 at
ACM-IEEE:

"Auditability and Verifiability of Elections"

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf)

It covers a lot of what I'm sure is going to be discussed in this thread,
including vote receipts, coercion, verifiability that your vote is counted.

Edit to add:

And heres a good talk by Ben Adida speaking at Google for a "Theory and
Practice of Cryptography" TechTalk series entitled "Verifying Elections with
Crytography" from 2007. Good stuff there, too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

------
grzm
The fact that there's some lack of trust in the voting system -- regardless of
whether there are issues with the system -- is a problem.

We're smart, well-meaning people. We can spend time discussing whether or not
there is a problem: that's beside the point. How can we strengthen the entire
system in a fair way that ensures reasonable people trust that the election is
fair? We might disagree on which areas need to be worked on. That's an
indication that _all_ of those areas need effort, because they all need to be
trusted. It's not either/or.

People have been working on this. And it tackles a lot problems people here
find interesting: open systems, cryptography, application of tech in society,
hardware, scaling to name a few. We can build on the work that's already been
done together. It strengthens all of us.

------
ideonexus
Two solutions for this to my mind.

(1) Give voters a paper receipt like they get at an ATM. They can confirm
their vote, leave the receipt, and the paper trail is there for anyone to
recount. It would be extremely complicated to tamper with both the electronic
and paper ballots and have the results come out the same.

(2) Improve the science of exit polling. Right now exit polls suck due to
sampling biases and the inability of independent firms to cover enough
territory [1], but this kind of independent verification--if done expansively
and competently--could provide an independent verification on the final vote
tallies. If the tallies drastically differ from the exit polls, then an
investigation is warranted.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/upshot/exit-polls-and-
why-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/upshot/exit-polls-and-why-the-
primary-was-not-stolen-from-bernie-sanders.html?_r=0)

~~~
jelly
In the first case: why not just the paper?

------
npiazza83
Says the candidate who forgot to spend money on an analytics team...

I'm specifically talking about this: [http://www.insidesources.com/trump-
campaign-relied-on-data-f...](http://www.insidesources.com/trump-campaign-
relied-on-data-from-former-obama-analytics-firm/)

A large part of the job of an analytics outfit on a campaign is to provide
data to the boiler room on election day which informs legal action taken by
the campaign to contest potential fraud or intimidation.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
Candidates "shouldn't" have to spend money on an analytics team, but it is
surprisingly unprofessional for a national, presidential campaign.

(edit) Don't know why parent is being downvoted. This is a legitimate concern.

~~~
npiazza83
How can you make the case that fraud happened without collecting any evidence?

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence...

------
akshayB
I don't seem to understand how externally small voter fraud can change the
election results. Is there a chance that voters fraud can happen, absolutely
yes. Also votes can go both ways its not like only democrats can commit voters
fraud, republican can also do that same thing. Overall this should net each
other out or even reduce the effect of fraud.

~~~
rfrank
> Also votes can go both ways its not like only democrats can commit voters
> fraud, republican can also do that same thing. Overall this should net each
> other out or even reduce the effect of fraud.

The fact both can do it says nothing about whether or not their efforts to
commit voter fraud would be equal. It makes no sense to assume number of
fraudulent votes from either side would offset.

~~~
akshayB
You just look at the probably of all events that can happen not just one
outcome. Also what we are talking about is extremely small fraction it is even
hard to be considered as margin or error.

~~~
rfrank
In 2000 Florida was decided by about 600 votes. Small fractions matter in
battleground states and counties.

~~~
akshayB
Winner takes it all has its own consequences and that's why irrelevant things
are voters fraud is a big topic of discussion.

~~~
akshayB
Electing a new official should be about policy and not about going crazy on
things like this.

------
AvenueIngres
>Trump won't have trouble finding support for his claim of a "rigged" election

Trump won't have trouble with getting away saying that this election is rigged
because we know it is.

Anyone with a bit of a CS background knows that electronic voting machines is
a stupid idea, that was bound to be implemented by either corrupt or crappy
consulting firms.

They provide literally no value over conventional vote counting, this is a
textbook case of "better is good's enemy". I personally don't feel comfortable
casting my vote in a literal black box. And if you had any doubts the
political parties that makes up this country are ethical here is a couple
links you should check:

[0] - Project Veritas: DNC execs and shadow consultants conspiring mass voter
fraud logistics on tape -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDc8PVCvfKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDc8PVCvfKs)

[1] - Again. This same time the higher-up are caught on tape in pretty sketchy
stuff:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQvsK5w-jY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQvsK5w-jY)
\- funny that the boss who fired the "black-ops" employees of [0] ended up on
tape as well.

[2] - John Podesta emails - ""US not a democracy" \-
[https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/23756](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/23756)

[3] - "Trump: WikiLeaks Shows How Clinton Campaign Rigged The Polls By Over-
Sampling Democrats" \-
[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/24/trump_wiki...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/24/trump_wikileaks_shows_how_clinton_campaign_rigged_the_polls_by_over-
sampling_democrats.html)

[4] - See the attached document about oversampling polls:
[https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/26551](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551)

[5] - Found this court testimony of a software developer who allegedly worked
on the voting machines used in state elections - I _cannot_ vouch for the
authenticity of this video, see for yourself if you find that credible or not
-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmsaDS_FwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmsaDS_FwY)

edit: I have no problem with a rain fire of downvotes, but perhaps you can
take a little time to oppose actual arguments.

~~~
wnevets
hacker news is voting up a comment where its primary source is a video by
James O'Keefe, what a sad day this is.

~~~
AvenueIngres
Actually, my comment is (well) below zero so you can have a nice day! You can
perhaps make a little effort and judge the videos on its own merits rather
than using its author as a red-herring to disqualify further discussion on the
matter.

In addition to that, if you took the time to read this (short) comment you
would have noticed that those sources I am using are only there to further my
point that political parties are unethical and that one party dominating
demographics of the intellectual class mechanically sees its power of nuisance
increase tremendously. The bigger idea here is that political parties are
willing to do anything to advance their interests and it is a mistake to allow
them to self-regulate when it comes to respecting the will of the people.

They have no regards for this and the emails show how cynical they are about
it.

------
mtgx
Why is the focus on "trying to disprove" the election is rigged? Just because
Trump says it, that means it's not true? Or what's the logic behind this
trend? The media's job should be to focus on _proving_ whether the elections
can be rigged or not - especially if there is suspicion that they could be
rigged. It shouldn't be to try to _disprove_ it by default. The angle they
choose matters a lot.

If anything, calls for in-depth election process audits should've come at
least a decade ago. The U.S. isn't doing so hot in terms of election integrity
(and no, Russians have nothing to do with it, either):

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21/the-
u-s-has-worst-elections-of-any-long-established-democracy-report-finds/)

~~~
georgehotelling
Well you can't prove a negative, you can only disprove a positive.

In this case there was a (vague) assertion made, so you can try to disprove
that.

