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The Courts Government Security Politics

Judge Orders Georgia To Switch To Paper Ballots For 2020 Elections (arstechnica.com) 120

Posted by BeauHD from the election-technology dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Election security advocates scored a major victory on Thursday as a federal judge issued a 153-page ruling ordering Georgia officials to stop using its outdated electronic voting machines by the end of the year. The judge accepted the state's argument that it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots for municipal elections being held in November 2019. But she refused to extend that logic into 2020, concluding that the state had plenty of time to phase out its outdated touchscreen machines before then. The state of Georgia was already planning to phase out its ancient touchscreen electronic voting machines in favor of a new system based on ballot-marking machines. Georgia hopes to have the new machines in place in time for a presidential primary election in March 2020. In principle, that switch should address many of the critics' concerns.

The danger, security advocates said, was that the schedule could slip and Georgia could then fall back on its old, insecure electronic machines in the March primary and possibly in the November 2020 general election as well. The new ruling by Judge Amy Totenberg slams the door shut on that possibility. If Georgia isn't able to switch to its new high-tech system, it will be required to fall back on a low-tech system of paper ballots rather than continue using the insecure and buggy machines it has used for well over a decade. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist who served as the plaintiffs' star witness in the case, hailed the judge's ruling. "The court's ruling recognizes that Georgia's voting machines are so insecure, they're unconstitutional," Halderman said in an email to Ars. "That's a huge win for election security that will reverberate across other states that have equally vulnerable systems."
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Judge Orders Georgia To Switch To Paper Ballots For 2020 Elections More

Judge Orders Georgia To Switch To Paper Ballots For 2020 Elections

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  • I'm sure Governor Abrams will get right on that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @05:15PM (#59095424)
    after she won her completely not fixed election.

    Still impressed that this happened and I'd like to see it nationally. One of the greatest moments in Political History was in 2007 when Obama was sitting on huge piles of campaign cash and nobody could figure out why he didn't spend it.

    I about fell out of my chair laughing when I found out why: He sent 1000+ lawyers to Florida to oversee election security for his campaign. He won Florida too.

    Meanwhile "Moscow" Mitch continues to block any and all election security bills. Now, before anyone gets their panties in a bunch I don't think McConnell is a Russian spy or anything, but he's more than happy to look the other way when it suits him. Thing is, if anyone reading this cares about Democracy that shouldn't suit _them_

    Said it before, I'll say it again: I know we don't like partisanship around here but some issues are just partisan. Net Neutrality's one, and Election Integrity another.

    • People only care about democracy when their side wins.

      • True, there's a lot of disgruntled humans on the planet, who inexplicably refuse to appreciate even the great cosmic fortune of being the dominant species on the planet.

        Perhaps that's the way nature works. Earth's preeminent mammal can't be expected to harbor a generous reservoir of humility.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Boronx ( 228853 )

        Speak for yourself.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 )

      So you're all for voter ID, right?

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by bobstreo ( 1320787 )

        So you're all for voter ID, right?

        Absolutely not. You will have to bring your deed with you to prove you are a landowner though.

        • Re:I'm sure Governor Abrams will get right on that (Score:4, Insightful)

          by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:02PM (#59095576)

          And a penis, because the Founders didn't let women vote

          • Can I vote if I bring one in a jar?
          • Would it suffice to bring any one, like in a jar for example?

          • Actually, that's one of the fascinating things that we gloss over in history class in favor of creating a narrative of how glorious and noble the start of the US was.

            Truth of the matter, "all men are created equal" was very much "all rich white men are equal to lords and kings" and nothing more than that.

            At the start of our country, most people were slaves of a sort. Everyone knows about our African slaves, but we enslaved native americans quite often when we weren't genociding them, and white women were essentially slaves as well. White women could not choose a husband, couldn't get divorced, couldn't vote, and they weren't allowed to use the legal system. They weren't allowed to own property, be witnesses or serve on juries. Husbands could and would take them to court when they disobeyed, with public shaming being a frequent verdict of the kangaroo courts.

            White non-landowning men had it slightly better, because while they couldn't vote, they could at least try to use the legal system to their benefit.

            This leaves us with something like 5-10% of the population having true freedom - the white, rich male landowner. Land of the free indeed!

            Who was the richest man at the time of the revolution? George Washington. We have installed him as a national hero, but in reality he was an ultra-rich elite, crafting a new country that would substantially benefit him and those like him. Starting from that time, the other 95% of the population has continuously struggled to gain their own political power, a struggle that's still going on today.

      • Nope, it's just a voter supression tactic (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:33PM (#59095668)
        The voter Id scam is so obvious it's laughable.

        a. You make it hard to get a State Issued Id since students and disadvantaged people are more likely to vote Democrat. Easy way is to close DMVs.

        b. You charge fees for Ids making a defacto poll tax.

        c. It's a distraction from real election fraud like in Connecticut and Alabama.

        The ACLU calls out Voter Id [aclu.org] and the laws repeatable get struck down by judges not because they think they're racist laws but because Republican lawmakers say out loud (often on film) that they're meant to target blacks.

        • c. It's a distraction from real election fraud like in Connecticut and Alabama.

          Do you have links describing actual incidents in these states? I am not trolling. I seriously want to know what you are talking about.

      • No issue with it as long as you mail 'em out for free, auto-register voters, and allow anyone without one (or an address) to vote provisionally on the day of (which is a federal holiday) and then sort it out later if the election is actually that close that the provisional votes matter.

        • Wait, no address and you're allowed to vote? How do we know what Congressional district, or State or local election, you should be eligible to vote for? That goes completely against the Constitutional restrictions on voting (being a resident of a given State). Otherwise you could have people voting in NYC, then crossing the river and voting in NJ, then tumbling down the coast to MD. Voter ID is the only way to do it - and should be required (like it's done in pretty much every other country in the world

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by shilly ( 142940 )

            1. Do you think homeless people should be able to vote? If so, how would you make that happen if you require an address?
            2. Voter ID is not required "in pretty much every other country in the world". No ID needed in the UK or Australia. It's not normally needed in Germany either.

            Not requiring ID to vote used to be something people in the US were proud of. "Papers, please" used to be a jokey reference to American exceptionalism, in that you were freer than other peoples (the UK had the same joke). Con

            • 1. Elections, at least at the Federal level, are restricted by the Constitution to the State of residency. If you cannot confirm your residency, you do not get to vote in at least Federal elections. That's the Constitution. You don't like it? There's a way to change that - ti's called an amendment. You can't legislate or regulate around that.

              2. Voter ID laws [wikipedia.org]. In Australia, voting is mandatory AND the Government mails you a voter poll card - it's your proof you're registered to vote (a voter ID, effe

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by shilly ( 142940 )

                1. How about answering my question, which was not about the law says, but about what you personally think. Do you yourself think that a homeless person should be able to vote? And if so, how do you reconcile that with also thinking a person should have an address to vote? I'm asking about your view of the rights and wrongs and competing priorities.

                2. Your starting point was to say that "pretty much every other country in the world" required voter ID. I pointed out that there were important exceptions, inclu

                • 1. Doesn't matter what I think, the law is the law, and if you believe it should be changed, then work to change it. Ignoring the law simply is anarchy.

                  2. Yes, pretty much the rest of the world - outside of parts of the UK and the US. That's petty much everywhere. You have a proven ID in that either a personalized voter card is sent to you (and you can be asked to show proof that it is you), or you must present official ID everywhere. You're really grasping here, trying to find someone else who's as lax

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by shilly ( 142940 )

                    1. That's a pretty stupid response. I asked you the question because I'm interested in what you think. That's how conversations work, you see. I'm genuinely curious as to how you would balance the tension between requiring a person to have an address to vote and a (presumed) belief that every citizen of age should get to vote. Look, engage or don't engage with the question. But titting around with rhetorical flourishes about the law as an answer is just a waste of my time and yours.

                    2. I'm not grasping at al

            • ... 2It's not normally needed in Germany either.
              Yes it is. No idea what "voter id" is supposed to imply.
              In Germany you get a "voting card" sent to your address. You can either vote with that card or with an ID (passport or personal identity card).

              If you have neither you can not vote. However a homeless could acquire a voting card, and by law anyone needs/has an id anyway. And a driving license is not an id ... most of the time pretty pointless to try to use it as such one (in any place).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

              No ID needed in the UK

              The level of voter fraud in the UK is practically nil, and is almost always around mail-in votes.

          • I said provisionally. The homeless should still be allowed to vote. Unwind the provisional votes after the election if its that close.

          • Wait, no address and you're allowed to vote? How do we know what Congressional district, or State or local election, you should be eligible to vote for?

            You can easily establish that the person exists and lives in a given area even without a fixed address. Homeless people are real people and exist in an identifiable locality. This scam is being used to disenfranchise American Indians in South Dakota and other states with reservations since on many of these they do not have a property lots laid out on the European model with named and numbered streets and addresses.

            • Or is the scam being used to bus thousands of people across State lines to vote multiple times? Which is more likely? I'd say it is the thousands in close, geographic areas of high-electoral college votes, not South Dakota...

        • If you're worried about poor people voting and being able to support their self why do you want to make voting day a federal holiday? You seem to want the poor people to get a short check that week for the benefit of voting. Talk about a poll tax...

      • I'm all for free voter ID. I'm not for poll taxes pretending to be election security.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        So you're all for voter ID, right?

        If you're the sort of shithead who thinks vaccines cause autism and are too risky despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, sure.

    • The problem in my view is with election commisioners. They're technically a non-partisan job but of course they're highly partisan in some states. However even those that are partisan are burdened by an even deeper set of motivations that makes the election commissions screwed up.

      The commissions are generally done at the county/parish level, very petty offices. Their primary concern is not at all about election accuracy, or even election stealing. Instead their major motivations are about budgets and dr

      • The problem is the left doesn't have the money (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:38PM (#59095686)
        to fight every single state election. The right wing, propped up by wealthy plutocrats, does. The Koch Bros and a few other billionaires started going after State Legislatures in the 90s as part of a "bottom up" approach to taking over the country. They used divides between rural and city voters plus social wedge issues like Abortion and Gay Rights to win local elections. They used the state legislatures to gerrymander themselves into a majority in the House and to tip presidential elections (look up the "Sheldon Primary". If Bernie Sanders wins the nom next year it'll be the first time in decades if not ever that the plutocrats don't pick both nominees).

        Local elections matter. This is why voting should be universal and mandatory. It is the most sacred right and obligation in any civilization. Much, much more so that guns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anegg ( 1390659 )

      Said it before, I'll say it again: I know we don't like partisanship around here but some issues are just partisan. Net Neutrality's one, and Election Integrity another.

      With respect to Election Integrity as realized through voting machine technology, it might be more a function of which party is in power. When I first moved to Maryland many years ago (1996), they had a fine paper ballot/electronic scanner system that was easy to use, provided the paper ballots as a backup, yet could be counted quickly.

      With the Democratic party firmly in control in Maryland, they switched to all-computerized voting. Votes were tabulated internal to each machine, with some kind of storage

    • "election integrity"
      Which one are you talking about? Integrity vs some made-up Russian boogeymen whose main claim to 'hacking the election' is $100k ad-spend in Facebook?
      or ACTUAL election integrity violations (see if you can see a common thread in most of them?)
      1982

      An estimated 100,000 fraudulent ballots were cast in a 1982 Chicago election. After a Justice Department investigation, 63 individuals were convicted of voter fraud, including vote buying, impersonation fraud, fictitious voter registrations, ph

  • Why use voting machines at all? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bradmont ( 513167 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @05:32PM (#59095494) Homepage

    What is the point of these machines in the first place? It just seems like a solution in search of a problem. What is the advantage to be gained form the extra complexity?

    In Canada we just use a pencil and paper and it pretty much always works fine. I recall a few elections ago one candidate was accused of ballot box stuffing, but since it has to be done manually, it was only thought to have affected two or three polling stations within a single electoral district.

    • What is the advantage to be gained form the extra complexity?

      Supposedly they're better for handicapped access. People with minimal education and competency can use them without spoiling the ballot. You can use the same machines for those who are blind, hard of sight, or otherwise illiterate. Filling out bubbles is apparently too complex, especially for races where you need to fill out a set number of bubbles.

      That said, I believe what I just said is mostly bullshit. There is a limited population of illiterate(blindness or otherwise) people. The vast majority of p

      • Re:Why use voting machines at all? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Bradmont ( 513167 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:04PM (#59095592) Homepage

        Haha, yeah, that does sound like bull. I'd never thought about blind voting, but a quick google shows that at least in some provinces you can bring a friend to help you if you need to.

        We don't even use scantron cards here, it's just a simple black background with a white circle where you put a check mark and they're counted by hand. Representatives from the different parties volunteer to "scrutineer", that is, to do the counts together and make sure nobody is fudging numbers. It's totally low tech, and it can take a couple of hours for the results to be tabulated nationwide, but it's pretty foolproof.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Boronx ( 228853 )

          I was election observer a few years ago. Our county did scantron at the time. The counting machine was this old 386 attached to a derelict scantron reader.

          In order to prove that it worked, this clerk brought out a box with a number written on it. In the box was a stack of cards. When run through, the computer produced the numbers written on the box. Nobody counted the cards to see if those numbers were correct.

          When I pointed this out, and also that because of the arbitrary nature of software, correctl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CQDX ( 2720013 )

      The problem in parts of the US is days after the election boxes of "lost" ballots are found and have to be counted. The belief is that for close elections there are illegal ballots held in reserve, ready to be "found" and tip the election in favor of the underdog.

    • I think that paper ballots REDUCE complexity

      Where I live in the US
      1. you walk in
      2. use computer to confirm your ID
      3. given a large/heavy paper ballot
      4. go to a cubby and mark your vote with a Sharpie by connecting two ends of an arrow next to your response
      5. take paper to scanner where it is fed in while you wait to confirm no errors
      6. paper is fed into a locked container where it is held in case of recount.
      7. Given piece of paper with unique number so that you can go online and confirm your vote was proper

      • You can't have #7.
        As soon as someone can verify a vote people will be paid/coerced into providing that proof.
        Other than that it's all good.

        • It is already in place, coercing a person to give you the slip of paper is the same as forcing them to tell you

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Boronx ( 228853 )

            No it isn't, because you can lie. This should be illegal.

            The correct way to verify your vote is to lock it in a ballot box in plain sight, have the ballot box opened and counted in plain sight. Putting it in a computer is insane.

        • Verifying your vote was counted isn't the same thing as revealing who you voted for. If your employers coerce you into voting without knowing who for, it would probably be human nature to not vote how they want even if their natural inclination would be.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      To sell the "machines" to part of the USA election cycle and then get more money to look after the machines for decades.
      Democracy makes money on the sale and the decades of "trusted" repair work.
      Anyone local can print on paper in time for the next election.
    • For your right... to riiiiiig elections! - Moscow Mitch and the Yeasty Boys.

  • Judge ordered to retire obsolete-non-compliant machines and subtitute them with more up-to-date-compliant machines.

    If said modern machines are not ready for the primaries, have ready the paper ballots as plan B.

    I read it a day before ars somewhere else, and was surprised to pick it up a day latter on ars, with that headline, and two days latter on /. as ussual...

    Sesationalist headline. Better covergae elsewhere on the net.

  • As I recall, when voting machines started going electronic, many of us here and in other tech forums agreed that the only reasonable way to do it was to make machines that allowed voters to pick candidates, and then print out a human and machine readable ballot that would go in the box. For some reason, that approach didn't seem to have any impact on people who actually made the decisions, and we wound up with this mess of hackable, un-auditable voting computers. In this second wave of voting machinery, we'

  • For the past few years, any time my govt makes a change to anything, it's got some kind of sneaky nefarious backroom corporate stings attached, gives the rich more money/power, is a another crazy power-grab, is transparent propaganda/distraction, is another lol-wtf from the executive branch, or is more domestic spying.

    There is always a champagne toast somewhere, so what's the angle here?

  • Good! As a conservative, I'm all for strengthening the validity of our elections. Secure voting, voter ID, not allowing illegal immigrants to register to vote -- all of these measures every honest citizen should support.

    • Re:Sounds good to me! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Friday August 16, 2019 @11:56PM (#59096256)

      I think that you have your priorities mixed up when you want to write specific laws for an incredibly rare instance, while actively removing laws regarding things that occur frequently

      Did you know that in the 2016 election, the entire US Department of Justice indicted only 19 illegal aliens who had attempted to vote fraudulently.

      At the same time, 17 states have enacted laws which abandon the Voting Rights Acts and make it harder for millions of US citizens to vote [brennancenter.org]

      At this point the gop machine is trying to scare us with illegal aliens in order to limit the voting rights of citizens, that is foul any way that you look at it

    • Good! As a conservative, I'm all for strengthening the validity of our elections. Secure voting, voter ID,

      Well yes, as a conservative, it's not really surprising you want to "strengthen the validity" in precisely the way proven to marginalise people who don't vote conservative. After all, the main policy of the Republican party does seem to be Gerrymandering.

      • How do you draw the conclusion that I'm trying to marginalize people? Is valid and legal voting marginalizing? Are you assuming that people that vote "not conservative" are, as a class, less able to get voter IDs? Interestingly, in Georgia (for example), contrary to claims by Democrats, voter registration by minorities increased dramatically after Voter ID went into effect.
  • This is clearly Obama's fault. It's now up to our Dear Leader to fix this mess. Praise Dog vote Trump!

  • We've Only Just Begun (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The days of accepting a single judge's or even a court's ruling and swiftly implementing it are long gone. Nowadays it isn't really decided until multiple appeals have been turned down or decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Then whatever administration is responsible for implementing the law/decision will drag it's feet interminably, or until the composition of the court changes, or the "interested parties" will continue to litigate every little piece of the implementation.

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