
A used voting machine from the 2016 election - jpindar
https://twitter.com/AltUSPressSec/status/1019955719964160006
======
js2
My county uses a bubble form which I then place into a scanner and I can see
the counter on the scanner increment. I can print out a sample ballot from the
county website ahead of time.

This seems like the best system to me. Most Americans are very familiar with
bubble forms and there is a clear paper trail while still allowing electronic
counting. The only downside is the cost of the paper ballots, and I suppose,
not allowing for last minute changes. I don’t know how accessibility issues
are handled, but I believe there are attendants to help with that.

There’s just no way I will ever trust an touch screen voting system,
especially from a single manufacturer. Maybe a system where a touch screen
system from company A prints out a receipt which is then scanned by a scanner
from company B and both systems have to match. Maybe.

Meanwhile the parties are fighting over voter ID though so I don’t see this
getting any real attention.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" This seems like the best system to me. Most Americans are very familiar
with bubble forms and there is a clear paper trail while still allowing
electronic counting."_

The problem is that the paper ballots may never be hand counted if the margin
between the candidates given by the electronic vote counting machine is far
enough apart.

Of course, whoever hacks a vote counting machine can give any vote count they
want, so they can set the margin however wide they want.

The only way to really be sure of the totals is to do hand counts of paper
ballots, with representatives of each party participating or at least
observing the entire count.

Machines should never be trusted.

~~~
c22
It seems like any electronic-based voting system should be subject to
randomized audit via manual recount of its paper trail, regardless of reported
margin. This way we can reap the efficiency rewards of electronic systems
while also becoming aware if wide-scale tampering has taken place.

~~~
ball_of_lint
That would be excellent if you had to modify hundreds of machines to influence
an election but the case now is that even a few strategically chosen machines
could drastically swing an election.

~~~
marcosdumay
So audit those machines. It's still a small number.

~~~
hackandtrip
It's not about the technical problem, it's about the perception from people of
an electronic vote. People that didn't grew up in the tech revolution are
going to be skeptical anyway, and I'm not sure about the ones that are full of
social induces doubts about everything. It seems to me we are trying to solve
a non existant problem

------
pmoriarty
There was a lot of hoopla in the media over easily hackable voting machines
before and shortly after the Bush vs Kerry Presidential election. Afterwards,
the Democrats screamed fraud and vowed to get rid of those easily hackable
voting machines. Then they apparently forgot all about it and moved on. The
machines are still there. The vulnerabilities are still there. The results of
any election that they play a role in is suspect.

Then Trump vs Clinton came around, and it seems no one remembered that the
easily hackable voting machines were even there. But they were. What role did
they play in the election? Without a paper trail, we may never know.

Apart from the travesty that is the easily hackable electronic voting machine,
there are also electronic vote counting machines. In my own district, we voted
on paper ballots which where then directly placed in to electronic vote
counting machines. If those are hacked they can give out any vote total the
hacker wants, perhaps just outside the margin required for a manual recount.

Any election where either electronic voting machines or electronic vote
counting machines were used should not be trusted. When there's no paper
trail, it's even worse, but even where there is the laws might not allow a
hand recount.

The use of either of these types of machines might explain why exit poll
numbers and predictions have been so wildly off the mark in recent years.

~~~
noobermin
Exit poll numbers weren't off. Predictions were only off because people
ignored the actual polls and inserted their own biases into the interpretation
of said polls, and thought popular vote == winning.

~~~
monocasa
That's my understanding too, that despite being heavily data driven, the
Clinton campaign (and most of the polling agencies as well since they were
using the same techniques) didn't have anywhere near a correct model for a
"likely voter". That biased the results of their total model heavily towards
Clinton.

~~~
pmyteh
It's _very_ hard to come up with reliable likely voter models, not least
because there are significant changes in people who vote every time. The
opinion polls in the 2017 British general election were out, for example,
because in the event unusual numbers of unlikely voters came out to vote
Labour. Things were obviously going to be different that time (Labour had
elected a deeply unlikey leader and repositioned itself) but no-one had any
solid evidence _how_ turnout patterns would change, or to what degree.

So yes, inaccurate likely voter modeling is a serious problem. But it's
_really_ hard if things are changing, politically.

~~~
monocasa
Oh absolutely, it's a nearly impossible task. You can't even trust current
polls asking people if they're likely to vote.

------
joekrill
This seems like it would be very interesting but a series of Tweets seems to
be just about the worst possible medium for this.

~~~
bdcravens
Here's the entire thread (tweets combined):

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html)

~~~
alexandercrohde
Thanks, that's a million times better

------
walrus01
Canadian federal elections are still done on pencil and paper with cardboard
ballot boxes. Manually counted, double checked and recounted at each polling
station.

However, a Canadian election is much simpler because you're voting for _just_
your MP, there's not dozens of choices of things to vote for like sheriffs,
state reps, etc.

a ballot looks like this:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+federal+ballot&num=100&client=ubuntu&hs=6vj&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtuIS_iq_cAhWjCTQIHbpRAZEQ_AUICygC&biw=1508&bih=1388)

Provincial and municipal elections happen similarly but occur at different
times and on different schedules.

------
phren0logy
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more traction here, but that's likely due to
the issue joekrill already pointed out - a tweet stream is annoying and
painful. It's too bad, there's a lot of interesting detail here.

------
foobarbecue
In case anyone was actually interested in the outcome of the research, it's
here
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1019955719964160006.html)
, and so far there's nothing substantial. They say they're going to replace
the boot screen.

------
lolc
While I welcome a teardown of a voting machine I wonder why it's mixed with
the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. You'd think
there are enough interested parties to make the Russian state an unlikely
culprit even if evidence of tampering should be discovered.

~~~
jonhendry18
"While I welcome a teardown of a voting machine I wonder why it's mixed with
the conspiracy theory that the Russian state falsified votes. "

I don't think we can say with certainty that they didn't. We know they were
hacking into other voting-related systems. We know they hacked a voting
systems vendor and spear-phished hundreds of election officials. And a Russian
oligarch-connected investment firm bought a company that hosts Maryland's
statewide voter registration, candidacy, and election management system; the
online voter registration system; online ballot delivery system; and
unofficial election night results website.

None of this directly confirms that votes were changed, but it's indicative of
a heck of a lot of activity around our elections, and it would be very odd if
they weren't making efforts toward changing votes. Possibly to the extent of
having operatives in the US to do so or bribing election workers, though I
have no evidence of either.

~~~
lolc
> I don't think we can say with certainty that they didn't.

And so we can't with many other actors. Why single out Russia?

> We know they hacked a voting systems vendor and spear-phished hundreds of
> election officials

From where I am those claims have not been sufficiently proved. But yes,
depending on the credibility you afford leaked NSA documents, it's a reason to
focus on Russia. Still I want to caution against the conclusion that evidence
of tampering means the Russian state must have done it.

> Possibly to the extent of having operatives in the US to do so or bribing
> election workers, though I have no evidence of either.

A classic conspiracy theory. It's nice in that it works even when the scheme
is exposed as even rumors of it destabilize U.S. politics.

------
korethr
I would _hope_ that such a device would be wiped and/or factory reset before
being auctioned off. However I've worked in IT long enough to know how all too
often, that doesn't happen.

That said, I believe any claim that there was evidence of this machine having
been tampered with or compromised should be viewed with some skepticism unless
we can see said evidence side by side with a known-good machine. How is one to
evaluate it otherwise if there's nothing to compare it to? Any thing dredged
out of that machine's guts could genuinely seem suspicious, but how are we to
know such wasn't simply the vendor's incompetence -- especially with as much
incompetence in the design of these machines as has been brought to light so
far?

~~~
eat_veggies
Is it even possible to have a known-good machine? If we're potentially dealing
with state actors here, the entire supply chain could be compromised, so even
machines fresh out the factory might have backdoors.

------
harry8
This is one of the few forums where more than a tiny minority would even
understand the vocabulary of the analysis as to whether the machines are
fraudulent. This is a huge problem and should prevent such machines ever being
used.

Even if they are 100% fine and better than paper ballots people are relying on
third party expertise to say it's ok. Everyone understands or can very
quickly, ballot box stuffing, systematic fraudulent counting of paper ballots
etc. It's not just being honest in voting and counting it's being obviously so
and readily understandable that is critical for democracy. These machines,v
even if otherwise perfect, are neither. Don't let them near your election.
Surely. It's insane.

------
blackflame7000
We should still use paper records with identifcation. If there is a problem
with some people not having access to proper ID lets solve that problem
instead of leaving our firewall down on election security to support the
people still using ssl so to speak.

------
adreamingsoul
Someone should give one of these voting machines to mikeselectricstuff.

~~~
dokem
Yea, listening to EEVblog for too long makes my ears hurt. Mike is much more
chill.

------
jonny_eh
So was evidence found of tampering or not?

~~~
foobarbecue
No evidence was presented, but lots of attention was gotten. I guess we are
waiting in breathless anticipation for the "results". I doubt anyone doing
this seriously would post a tweet thread like this before actually doing the
work.

Does anyone know this guy? Is he competent or something?

------
satellitec4t
Twitter is horrible

