
They think they are above the law: the firms who own America's voting system - wallace_f
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/22/us-voting-machine-private-companies-voter-registration
======
tptacek
If you want to have strong opinions about voting security, you should do as
Matt Blaze recommends and sign up to be an election judge. I did it after my
business partner 'lvh did, presumably at Blaze's urging, and he's right: you
really can't comprehend fully what's going on in an election until you've
worked on one firsthand. A lot of things you'd be inclined to think are major
security problems probably aren't, and the converse is also true.

Wherever you are, it's probably easy to sign up (I did online) and they'll
likely pay you to do it.

~~~
the_snooze
Some people might interpret this as gatekeeping, but it really is true. If
you're serious about election security, you'll learn a lot very quickly by
immersing yourself in the process and the people who do it.

For example, one often-overlooked advantage of traditional in-person paper
voting is that you're entitled to spoil your ballot and request a fresh one.
This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking a
photo of their ballot as proof, as there's no guarantee that the ballot in the
photo is the same as what was submitted.

~~~
paulgb
> This protects voters from being coerced into voting a certain way and taking
> a photo of their ballot as proof

I like that, and I think it's an important property of voting systems that
people who want to implement online voting overlook. But isn't it undermined
by absentee voting, or is there a similar mechanism for that?

~~~
amenghra
Once you go online (not to be confused with electronic-in-person), you cant
really hide your vote. Whoever is buying your vote can instead buy your
credentials to vote.

~~~
nostrademons
Isn't that also a problem with in-person voting and fake IDs?

~~~
Tyrek
that's entirely a question of scale - I can imagine that it'll be trivial to
scale 'online' voting fraud if you have credential access, whereas doing it in
person naturally limits the total number of times you can do it.

~~~
colmmacc
Committing identity fraud in person, in locations likely to have an elevated
police presence, is extremely risky and getting caught carries severe
consequences.

~~~
tptacek
More fun Cook County details: not only is there not an elevated police
presence at our polling places, but the election judges are charged with
making sure the local police are not hanging around within like a quarter city
block, since the local police don't have any authority with respect to voting.
We got to chase a cop away at our place.

(The Cook County Sheriffs police our vote, but there aren't that many of them,
so if they're going to show up, it's because a judge called them out.)

------
dbcurtis
I would feel better if these folks
[https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15](https://www.gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=15)
helped establish the best practices for voting machine approval.

Seriously, what does it say about our society that it is harder to deploy a
slot machine in Reno than a voting machine in Peoria?

~~~
organsnyder
Money.

I work in healthcare. We have a much higher regulation burden on how care is
paid for compared to how it is actually delivered.

------
Animats
We need a Democrat to buy an election company. Then legislation for voting
transparency will sail through the Senate.

~~~
e40
This is 100% snark and 100% true, at the same time.

~~~
jakeogh
It's really not. The US is (well was...) dominated by a uni-party. They
usually only really need to rig primaries.

~~~
e40
I think you missed the point. Had HRC become president, she would have likely
been impeached (in the House, not Senate) over emails. We have a criminal in
office now who has made it 2 years without impeachment.

There are two parties are a double standard. If the Republicans thought votes
were being stolen by Democrats, there would be swift and strong action.

~~~
jakeogh
The RINO's as we call them are indistinguishable from the DINO's. The
"criminal" you referred to terrifies them, and rightly so.

Jeb! was supposed to lose to Clinton. Bush Sr. referred to Bill as his son.
They vacationed with the Bin Ladens.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-
oU3Hqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-oU3Hqg)

------
davidw
Happy with my Senator Ron Wyden's take on this: paper ballots. He's also
mentioned in the article.

Our system here in Oregon works pretty well: you vote by mail with paper
ballots and there's automatic voter registration.

~~~
neilv
One of the downsides of vote-by-mail is that it makes some ways of buying
votes easier.

But it does have the upside of making participation easier (especially for
people overburdened with work or other responsibilities). And the physical
paper auditing trail makes it immensely better than all the electronic systems
without that record.

~~~
davidw
It's not perfect - another potential flaw is late breaking information that
might lead some people to change their votes. Still, compared to the mess
where people don't vote because of long lines and taking time off work (most
western countries vote on weekends) and so on... I think it's good.

Now we just need more ranked choice voting.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
I believe in Oregon you can change your vote right up until election day.

~~~
davidw
Nope.

> Can I change my mind after I've returned the ballot?

> No. Your ballot has been cast as soon as you deposit it in the mailbox or at
> a drop site. After that, you cannot receive a new ballot to re-vote.

From [https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-
mail](https://multco.us/elections/voting-oregon-vote-mail)

------
UweSchmidt
No machines are needed for voting. Votes should be counted manually. Several
tiers if error correction ensure honest counting and no manipulation. Counters
should be paid well and be recruited from all parts of society.

~~~
specialist
Tabulation is the smallest part of the election administration software stack.
Even when ballots are counted manually, vendors would still get their cheddar.

------
joshfraser
It would be a lot easier to trust an electronic voting system if it was open-
source, open-hardware, and votes were recorded on a public blockchain.

~~~
rectang
But such a system is incompatible with the secret ballot, and is therefore
vulnerable to voter coercion.

Didn't vote for the right candidate? You're fired "for performance reasons".

~~~
joshfraser
It would be pseudo-anonymous like Bitcoin. You would keep the mapping between
public keys and real-world identities private. But perhaps some percentage of
people would choose to waive their right to privacy, further strengthening
trust in the system. Statistically, the public voters should be in line with
the final outcome.

~~~
mcintyre1994
> But perhaps some percentage of people would choose to waive their right to
> privacy, further strengthening trust in the system.

This has the same problem. Didn't waive your right to privacy and provably
vote for the right candidate - you're fired (or worse). That's why taking
photos of a ballot isn't allowed, you can't have any way to show who you voted
for.

~~~
deburo
Huh? If you're asked to waive your right by your employer, I'm pretty sure you
can get them in trouble by going to the media and make a fuss about it. This
is a silly hypothesis.

~~~
joshfraser
It's no different from an evil employer who forces their employees to vote and
send a picture of their ballot today. Sure, taking a photo of a ballot is
illegal, but that's not going to prevent it from happening when you're behind
that little curtain. Coercing people to vote for your guy is illegal in both
scenarios and you can and will get in trouble if you try and pull that stunt
at any significant scale.

~~~
manacit
When you vote on a paper ballot, you are entitled to request a new sheet of
paper if you've messed up a vote. In effect, this would allow you to take a
picture of one ballot, toss it, and get another.

So, yes, it is quite different - an employer has no way to validate that an
employee has voted a specific way. Any proof is not indicative of the final
vote, unlike the proposed Blockchain solution.

------
spenrose
"VotingWorks is a non-profit building a secure, affordable, open-source voting
machine."

[https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-
machi...](https://voting.works/2018/11/votingworks-better-voting-machines/)

------
Stokes22
This is a concrete action that is happening right now-- Tulsi Gabbard's bill
to have all votes secured by PAPER BALLOT BACKUP:
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D)

------
5trokerac3
> “To say that they don’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say
> that nothing untoward happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we
> don’t have the evidence of it.”

What kind of "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" nonsense is this?
Why doesn't this article talk about how DHS was caught red-handed hacking into
GA election systems?

~~~
WillPostForFood
Because it wasn't true:

[https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigatio...](https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/339734-investigation-
shows-dhs-did-not-hack-georgia-state-computers)

~~~
sciurus
Then Secretary of State and now Governor Brian Kemp has a history of falsely
claiming groups he doesn't like are hacking GA election systems.

[https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--
politics/prob...](https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--
politics/probe-georgia-democratic-party-prompts-fresh-scrutiny-brian-
kemp/AElKvktttgsz5UgJbiXgyO/)

------
cjslep
One way to make it harder for those who "own" the voting system to rig it
would be to reform the voting system itself so that it isn't the first-past-
the-post winner-take-all system we have today.

------
ryanmarsh
The dichotomy between our pride in the power of the individual to cast their
vote and be represented in government, and the facts of how voting and vote
counting happens (the security of the systems and the conflicts of interest
involved) is so stark a contrast that I can only assume there are forces at
work which have achieved full capture.

~~~
specialist
Journalist Andrew Gumbel called this "America's recurring amnesia."

Steal This Vote [2005]

[https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-
Democracy/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-
Democracy/dp/1560256761)

As an (burnt out) election integrity activist, I'd say not much has changed.

------
throwanem
We could vote on paper for the same people we've been voting for, and we'd
still end up with the same problems.

------
Stokes22
Paper Ballot Backup

Current bill to do just that:

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1946/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22hr1994%5C%22%22%5D%7D)

------
1024core
It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These
problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in
the Congress, nothing gets done about it.

~~~
hannasanarion
This is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen
years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by
requiring paper backups.

Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump.

Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it,
Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their
voting record.

[https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_departm...](https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_department_appoints_special_prosecutor/dhpcbdc/)

~~~
rectang
This isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked
played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not
historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine
of Chicago.

It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one
level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do
not serve their interest"), we can have a less inflamed discussion.

My rejoinder to the grandparent is, "some states are better than others". This
is well known, and the correlation with party is well known as well.

~~~
hannasanarion
Cuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans
in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse
approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio.

Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has
been for a very long time.

Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in
favor of more secure and less money-influenced elections, all Republicans
opposed.

~~~
jerf
No, it's all Democrats in favor of things that they know will net them more
Democrat votes, and Republicans against them, and vice versa, of course. Why
are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to
court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? Well, you
could try to derive an answer from first principles... or you could just count
votes, and come to the correct answer much more quickly.

Don't be so silly as to believe their spin about "getting money out of the
election"; such reforms are not hypothetical things that may happen in the
future, reforms have been passed are in effect, and, lo, money is still in
politics.

~~~
tzs
> Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and
> going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens?

You are a bit off on that.

The census is supposed to count everyone resident in the US, regardless of
citizenship status or legality of their presence here. It's been that way
since the Census Act of 1790. (And it does not count US citizens who are not
resident in the US, except for Federal employees and their dependents).

The issue with adding a question about citizenship is that it might discourage
some people from responding to the census, reducing the accuracy of the count.
The Census Bureau estimates that about 6.5 million people will not respond if
the question is included.

There are legitimate reasons for the government to want to know how many
citizens are resident in the country, and how they are distributed, but they
already have that data from the American Community Survey which does include a
citizenship question (in fact, I believe, the same question they are trying to
add to the census).

The experts at the Census Bureau unanimously recommended not including the
question (as did six former directors of the Bureau, both Republican and
Democrat). The Commerce Secretary overruled them, claiming that the Justice
Department said it wanted the question added to somehow better enforce the
Voting Rights Act. (Emails between the Secretary and the DoJ that were
introduced in one of the trials over this show that this is not true--the DoJ
told him that the question was unnecessary).

Here's a recent article that covers most of this [1].

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-
implica...](https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implications-
at-stake-supreme-court-hears-census-citizenship-questio)

------
terryschiavo22
This isn't a complicated problem. State election agencies are underfunded and
have to cut corners in order to survive. A simple federal cash infusion would
solve 70% of this problem. The other 30% is coming up with sufficient election
machine standards.

~~~
rectang
It isn't technically complicated, but it is politically complicated: free and
fair elections are not in everyone's interest. The technical problem will
continue to persist (or will be reintroduced!) so long as it benefits someone
in power to have a broken system in place.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think that's an important point. For a lot of people in US politics it's
more important to "win" than to have fair elections.

------
techrich
Or how about we don't use a computer at all, something as important as
elections should have nothing to do with a computer. If the russians are that
good at hacking elections, why take the chance?

