
House moves toward eliminating agency tasked to prevent voting machine hacking - brudgers
https://www.thenation.com/article/house-republicans-just-voted-to-eliminate-the-only-federal-agency-that-makes-sure-voting-machines-cant-be-hacked/
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SheinhardtWigCo
TFA says this bill "transfers the EAC’s authority to the Federal Election
Commission". That seems reasonable; why have two separate agencies responsible
for upholding election integrity?

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panopticon
The bill text [1] appears to only transfer authority related to section 9(a)
of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Maybe I'm reading this wrong,
but it looks like the FEC only regains the ability to coordinate voter
registration regulations and processes--not regulating general election
standards.

 _Huge grain of salt_ : I'm not well versed in reading legal documents and may
be way off the mark.

[1]: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/634/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/634/text)

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imglorp
We're approaching the point where the only thing politicians fear is a fair
election.

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cies
Suggestion: use a read only medium, as has been used in vote-by-pencil system
for ages, like: PAPER!

To make it easier to count, we can use machines to print votes on a piece of
paper (something akin to a receipt-roll). These votes are printed when voter
casts vote, and the machines shows the vote to the voter through a small hole
in the machine (preventing the voter from seeing the preference of the
previous voter).

Vote-rolls are distributed like ballots, and they are "sealed" in the machine
before are sent back to the central counting places. OCR is used to read the
votes from the rolls.

Machines can also keep track of votes digitally, for a quick count. The quick
and slow count should match.

This way we can have quicker and cheaper voting, while not compromising (much)
on security wrt to voting-by-pencil.

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jakeogh
Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

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toomanybeersies
I think that electronic voting as the single source of truth is a bad idea,
but electronic voting as a method of making the process more efficient is not
a bad idea.

Voting machines should print off a receipt of your vote, which you can then
confirm and seal in an envelope, like you would a paper vote, and put in a box
of paper votes. The machines will also need to have a method for voters to
correct an incorrect vote somehow.

If there are irregularities, or a recount is needed, the paper votes can be
counted. There should also be an option for a normal paper vote, if the voter
so choses, like how in an airport you can choose an Xray or a pat-down.

Upon saying that, I don't see what's wrong with paper votes. Elections don't
happen very often, and paper voting scales perfectly fine with population.

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jakeogh
You don't necessarily know if there are irregularities. Many elections are
quite close anyway. Just count the paper by default, it's not that hard.

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testplzignore
Ehh, maybe it's for the best. Such an agency is effectively a check on the
power of the entire government, so I wouldn't expect it to be effective if the
government is pulling the strings. And, its demise further weakens the
illusion that our elections are legitimate and safe from hacking. Spur the
people into taking the problem seriously.

