Voting Machine Used in Half of US Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds (wsj.com) 110
Election machines used in more than half of U.S. states carry a flaw disclosed more than a decade ago that makes them vulnerable to a cyberattack, WSJ reported, citing a report which will be made public Thursday on Capitol Hill. From the report: The issue was found in the widely used Model 650 high-speed ballot-counting machine made by Election Systems & Software LLC, the nation's leading manufacturer of election equipment. It is one of about seven security problems in several models of voting equipment described in the report, which is based on research conducted last month at the Def Con hacker conference. The flaw in the ES&S machine stood out because it was detailed in a security report commissioned by Ohio's secretary of state in 2007, said Harri Hursti, an election-security researcher who co-wrote both the Ohio and Def Con reports. "There has been more than plenty of time to fix it," he said.
While the Model 650 is still being sold on the ES&S website, a company spokeswoman said it stopped manufacturing the systems in 2008. The machine doesn't have the advanced security features of more-modern systems, but ES&S believes "the security protections on the M650 are strong enough to make it extraordinarily difficult to hack in a real world environment," the spokeswoman said via email. The machines process paper ballots and can therefore be reliably audited, she said. The Def Con report is the latest warning from researchers, academics and government officials who say election systems in the U.S. are at risk to tampering.
While the Model 650 is still being sold on the ES&S website, a company spokeswoman said it stopped manufacturing the systems in 2008. The machine doesn't have the advanced security features of more-modern systems, but ES&S believes "the security protections on the M650 are strong enough to make it extraordinarily difficult to hack in a real world environment," the spokeswoman said via email. The machines process paper ballots and can therefore be reliably audited, she said. The Def Con report is the latest warning from researchers, academics and government officials who say election systems in the U.S. are at risk to tampering.
Paper ballots (Score:1)
If you don't support paper ballots cross indexed with a list of citizens you don't support free and open elections.
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The way things are going, American needs the UN to come in and observe the election. It won't be long until the general public no longer trusts the results.
Far from being "great again", the country is turning into a third world shit hole.
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We should use UN best practices.
Clear ballot boxes.
Paper ballots.
Indelible ink thumb marking.
Voter registration.
Immediate public counting.
Picture ID
But the Ds say that would be racist.
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The issues with voter registration usually have to do with cutoff dates long before the election and people getting purged from the voter rolls for no reason. Otherwise, nobody really objects to the practice itself, which should be fast and easy; it's usually just a matter of checking a box on a form or filling out a separate paper or online form.
ID is a bit trickier because it depends on the implementation and the resources available in the state. Believe it or not, a significant percentage of Americans li
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We got us an amature lawyer.
Everything in your post is wrong. Everything.
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Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
States legally requiring picture ID to vote.
I know you won't admit you're wrong, but everybody else knows.
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RTFA - it's a paper ballot scanner
THe model 650 is a paper ballot counter (Score:3)
The model 650 is the supersized version of the precint optical scan ballot counter (model 100).
First.. THIS IS PAPER BALLOT! so they can be recounted and recounted by hand. THew same ballots can even be counted on multiple machines. SO yeah paper ballots! The operative word here is "can". Lots of roadblocks to actually recounting. If all the machines are in use you can't just use one machine to recount another's ballots. Well you could and it wold work just fine but there lots of procedure violations
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I was skeptical at "about seven security problems in several models."
But I'm not skeptical about the part where the nations voting machines are full of security holes, and are under active attack, and are being used anyways.
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The tampering in 2016 was mostly "wetware attacks" - using propaganda and misleading information while pretending to be a news organization or other presumably-neutral party.
So in other words, business as usual (Score:1, Troll)
As far as Trump and his supporters are concerned, this isn't a bug, it's a feature.
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Awww. It doesn't know the difference between primaries and elections. Isn't that cute!
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There's a bunch of dicks hanging out in the men's room. Back to work, bitch, your break's over.
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Re:So in other words, business as usual (Score:4, Interesting)
> As far as Trump and his supporters are concerned, this isn't a bug, it's a feature.
I wish I could blame Trump, but in my home state the DEMOCRATS are in control (75% majority). It was the Democrats that pushed to phase-out paper ballots (which worked perfectly) and replace them with computers (which can be hacked/miscounted).
It was also the Democrats that turned my home state into the most gerrymandered state in the country: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
HONESTLY:
I think both parties suck ass. I wouldn't trust any GOP or DNC politician with the key to my house.
Re: So in other words, business as usual (Score:1)
Just remember not to "waste" your vote by casting it for a non-approved party.
Be a shame if you were silenced for not carrying on with the status quo.
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> As far as Trump and his supporters are concerned, this isn't a bug, it's a feature.
I wish I could blame Trump, but in my home state the DEMOCRATS are in control (75% majority). It was the Democrats that pushed to phase-out paper ballots (which worked perfectly) and replace them with computers (which can be hacked/miscounted).
It was also the Democrats that turned my home state into the most gerrymandered state in the country: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Well, yeah. Whichever party is in power will pretty much do anything and everything to stay that way. So of course they want election systems that can be tampered with, and want to ensure that their people are in charge of deploying them, just in case the need arises. And of course they want things to be as gerrymandered as possible in their favor. Both parties are only against those things when the other party is in power.
And it isn't just things that affect the balance of power directly. They also pa
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That's beyond an exaggeration. First, the Republicans only get 37.5% of the vote. It would be trivially to give them zero seats; instead they got one. In Wisconsin, the Republicans got 47.5% of the vote. But they got over 60% of the seats. That's gerrymandered to hell and back.
I'm not saying "Maryland has no gerrymandering", but it's not an extreme case. It's pretty similar to how in Texas, Austin is d
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I've heard Wisconsin is bad, but not as bad as Maryland. Here's the relevant quote: "The districts are among the least geographically compact in the nation."
- There are points in Maryland where the district is only one block wide, in order to reach from 40-mile distant mountains into cities like D.C. or Baltimore (which are Democrat).
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That's actually not the best measure of gerrymandering. There are real measures, based on how extreme a change is needed to make districts flip. And Maryland looks silly, but could easily have been more gerrymandered. Republicans got 3/8 votes and 1/8 seats. That's... not super horrible. I mean, it's easy to imagine them (and partisans drew maps that did) get 0 seats with that kind of blowout. Meanwhile, Wisconsin has 37.5% democ
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> Wisconsin has 37.5% democratic seats in spite of the fact that the democrats got [49.75%] of the vote.
I corrected you based on the actual results. So that means the Wisconsin gap between popular vote and seats in the U.S. House is about 12 and a half percent.
The gap in Maryland is 60.4% popular vote for the majority party (DNC) and 7/8 of the seats == 27% gap.
CONCLUSION: Maryland is still "more gerrymandered" than Wisconsin, even if I use your methodology.
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P.S. I should include the GOP too:
The GOP in Maryland got 35.5% popular vote and only 12.5% of the house seats.... which is 23% gap (due to the GOP being gerrymandered out of two of their rural, non-urban seats).
That still exceeds the GOP gap in Wisconsin of just 16.6%.
Maryland is far worse (again using YOUR proposed method).
Re: So in other words, business as usual (Score:1)
And as for compatibili
Re: So in other words, business as usual (Score:1)
B) Trump the showman clearly makes every effort to seem like the biggest, most narcissistic douche on the planet. Regardless of the reason (whether it's because he's Evil Incarnate or a drooling moron... or because he's got everyone fooled
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We're talking about someone so uninformed that he is spending most of his time fighting a trade war with one of the few countries that the USA has a trade surplus with. I guess it is still true that to Americans, free trade means getting stuff for free, and then giving it to the Chinese.
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I think that's the best summary of US trade policy I've ever read.
You don't say (Score:2)
Who could have possibly predicted this?
What is this world coming to? Next, they'll be telling us robot lawnmowers are killing little hedgehogs.
https://youtu.be/SgpnrOUS2BE [youtu.be]
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Jesus, you're a thick one, aren't you? THAT'S THE POINT. Nerds can be so bloody-minded sometimes. No wonder their idea of the height of cleverness is Dilbert.
Sounds a good enough reason (Score:2)
Voting machines are vulnerable to attack?
Sounds a good enough reason to cast a revote on the Presidential election to me. :)
Let's just use paper ballots (Score:5, Informative)
(1) The paper can be quickly scanned by machine, for a same-day tally.
(2) However the stacks of paper ballots will provide a verifiable audit trail, which can be hand-counted if the machines' integrity is doubted.
The main flaw with today's system is NO audit trail exists (which is probably what the political bosses want).
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The main flaw with today's system is NO audit trail exists (which is probably what the political bosses want).
In some states that is true. In my State, there is an audit trail.
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Let's just use paper ballots
Good news! They already took your advice. This article is about a problem with a voting machine which tallies paper ballots.
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Yeah I read the article, but in MY state we don't use paper ballots (which is dumb). We have no audit trail.... no possibility of a handcount.
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Forget the article, did you even read the summary
Non-networked and paper ballots (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, we all know how to deal with the continual Russian hacking, the EU has demonstrated the only thing that works are paper ballots and non-networked vote counting machines with an audit trail.
And, yes, it's Russia.
Luckily for those of us on the West Coast, Oregon, California, and Washington State all vote by mail using paper ballots.
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Which leaves them susceptible to vote buying, fraud, and intimidation. Well done.
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none of those are measurable in any significant way, as has been demonstrated by countless studies.
Not measurable (Score:2)
I think that you said the right thing but did not understand what you posted.
They are not "unmeasurable" because they are so rare. They are unmeasurable because given the system, there is no realistic way to measure them.
The system is not auditable.
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Even better, in Canada, we count ballots by hand. In triplicate. With representatives from each of the involved parties fully supervising the count. The best part? results are available within an hour or two of the polls closing. Recounts are ordered automatically when results are closer than something like 1%, but rarely do the numbers change.
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Next thing you know, you'll tell me you automatically register everyone to vote by knocking on their doors and when they vote, in person, you let them register on the spot and even give them a pencil to vote with ...
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The Conservative government changed that last Federal election, as well as changing the voter ID requirements in such ways as to disenfranchise people, all on the advice of Americans.
The trouble with Vote by Mail (Score:2)
Sorry this is wrong problem to solve with IT (Score:5, Informative)
In good ole UK we use following system
* Every year little form through post to register folk in household for election register ( can state if entry not public info )
* Get card through post about next election
* On day of election go to polling station.
* If you have polling card fine if not any proof of id or even just name and address
* You get ticked off on paper list
* Given your bit of paper go into little booth
* Make X next to candidate ( for EU and local elections may be more than 1 )
* Fold up
* Put in box
* Someone outside will ask you who you vote for. I always decline ( exit poll I think it called )
Then those boxes are taped up and sent to counting station. Lots of paid folk count them out.
They announce vote about 8-12 hours later
Simples
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Then those boxes are taped up and sent to counting station. Lots of paid folk count them out.
A process which is open to scrutiny as the votes are counted.
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One of the interesting bits I learned about Australian elections (don't know if it's true or not), is that the first member of the public who enters the polling station has the job of inspecting the ballot box to ensure that it's empty, then that it's properly sealed, and then signs an affidavit stating such.
UK is a terrible system. (Score:2)
Who scrutineers? And why does it take 8-10 hours?
In Australia, scrutineers are appointed by the candidate (random member of public only used if no scrutineers available). They seal the box.
Then at the end of the day the votes are counted at the polling booth. By hand. By the same staff that manned the booth. IN FRONT OF THE SCRUTINEERs. I have done the scruitneering a couple of times, it is a quick and friendly process.
Normally there is a quick pass in which the votes are stacked into piles. Then the
How incompetent are these people? (Score:2)
It isn't all that difficult to design a properly secured system, and all you really need to do is to isolate the stations from the outside world.
Each voting machine should tie into a local "server", and after every vote, send up an encrypted packet with the voting choices to that server. Locally, the machine should keep a paper version of every vote, a local copy of the count, and after a given period, do a sync with the server with totals to verify that what has gone to the server from each station has n
It can be even simpler (Score:1)
At each voting location, drop ballots into the local vote-tabulating ballot box, which is sealed.
At the end of election the box prints out a local tally. Send copies of the tally to the press if they aren't there watching the printout as it is printed.
Take the entire sealed ballot box to the central location.
Take all ballots to another machine that is made by a different vendor which uses totally different chips inside.
Re-count the votes with this second machine and publish the results to the press.
If ther
Voting Software (Score:1)
ffs...
https://xkcd.com/2030/ [xkcd.com]
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Meanwhile, blockchain based on-phone voting is now a reality in the US. And yes it's as bad as XKCD says. [slashdot.org]
It's worse than you think... (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF (Score:2)
This is the machine that counts your damn paper ballots. So what the hell are you all talking about?
Do you guys even read anymore?
Voter Suppression & Gerrymandering (Score:4, Insightful)
But, well, I don't think we really care. There's a significant number of Americans who think it's a bad idea to let the "wrong" people vote. It's funny to see the double think involved when they somehow reconcile this thought with their love of democracy...
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If we really care about democracy then we should make voting mandatory
A basic tenet of democracy is an informed and caring electorate making informed decisions. "Mandatory voting" is the absolute antithesis of this. Besides creating the problem of people who absolutely object to being forced to vote and decide to vote for the stupidest option just to fuck with the system, you'll have a much larger group who don't care at all and will vote based on the last sound-byte attack ad they hear.
require all states to have vote by mail
Yeah, because throwing ballots to the wind and counting whatever comes back is SO much dem
That's not a basic tenet democracy (Score:2)
You're straw manning when you say "anyone who walks in". Again, one vote per person and elections that concern them. I don't get to vote in California's Senate races. I have my own. The same goes for illegal immigrants. You're trying to distract from the main issue, which is the suppression of legitimate voters.
You know perfectly well what the "wrong" people m
whatever (Score:1)
saying it is doesn't make it so. Democracy is everybody gets to a vote, they get one vote and they get to vote in elections that concern them.
That is the practical application. The basic tenet -- idea behind the system -- is that the people who vote are informed and care.
You're straw manning when you say "anyone who walks in".
No, I'm giving you the opposite to your "wrong" people claim. You say that there are those who claim that "wrong" people should not be allowed to vote. Since "wrong" people means non-citizens, non-residents, etc. as I listed, then if you oppose the idea of not allowing the "wrong" people to vote you are supporting the idea that anyone who walks in can do so.
I don't get to vote in California's Senate races.
I don't care why, but
Re: Voter Suppression & Gerrymandering (Score:1)
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No Surprise There (Score:1)
Ferret
It's not a voting machine... (Score:3)
Democracy :( (Score:1)