View Full Version : Electronic Voter Safeguards??
Preface this with: firmly in the grips of advancing geezerhood. My level of sophistication with all things "computer" is laughable.
A concern I have had for quite a while is; what, if any, failsafes are implemented in our Nations voting machines/count system?
Stalin's line of "those that cast the votes decide nothing. Those that COUNT THE VOTES decide everything" certainly comes to mind.
Virginia as possible example.
With it's proximity to the virtual seedbed of corruption (D.C./East Coast), was the deck stacked in the last election that saw the left sweep that power base?
My sense is that a majority of the "Whiz Kid/Brianiacs" have far left leanings, and would happily contribute their expertise in the creation of our "New Utopia".
Are we at that point where we need "election Police", Federal voting machine count oversight, and if yes- WHO would appoint them; "Us" or "Them"?
You aren't the only one wondering about that when looking at how many Virginians are telling them to pound sand.
It doesn't even have to be high tech. From what I was reading at the time, this largely involved poll workers telling voters they were done before the voter triggered the recording mechanism, then the workers would change the votes as desired.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article44452446.html
Georgia is a good one to research and a good indication of what paperless voting will get us into. Ripe with abuse, wiped all the machines the day they were served with a lawsuit for election integrity etc etc
If I were POTUS, this would be a concern at the effing top of the list.
This is and has been a part of "their" strategy since the beginning. Lie, cheat, steal... Do anything to gain control and power to force their agenda upon us all.
When all is said and done, we have but one choice: Accept their will, or fight them.
Georgia is a good one to research and a good indication of what paperless voting will get us into. Ripe with abuse, wiped all the machines the day they were served with a lawsuit for election integrity etc etcI'm not sure all those allegations are true. Much hearsay.
The precinct could certainly manipulate things but they would get caught. Same for Central rollup point, the precincts have records.
The Georgia machines I'm familiar with the votes are recorded on smart cards the smart card is log to the voter when you check in, and the votes are recorded on the smart card encrypted format that only the machines themselves can write. There is no voting record retained on the machine to my knowledge. I would expect there would be a log that a vote was cast though.
I'm not saying the machines are infallible, but the technology does not have obvious holes. (Other than social engineering individual voters, which can be done with paper as well. ) The central authority could absolutely manipulate things when adding them up, but because the smart cards and precincts have records it would be hard.
All that said, servers are servers and the fact that an election server wass left exposed to the open internet for six months is very very problematic. There are signs that it had intrusion, but also no evidence that harm was done to voting integrity due to the timeframes. But I guess we'll never know.
Incompetence knows no boundaries. if you compromise physical or network security, then all bets are off.
Back to the Georgia elections, most of the allegations that have even kernels of truth were regarding disenrollment of voters due to non-response AND non-voting over a period of three years. IE: debates over voter rolls and polling places. Even then, they were allow to vote with contingent ballots.
By the way smart cards are not just recording information in memory like old credit card magnetic strips.
They are essentially little computers and the information is encrypted into the non-volitile memory with a public key. (Part of a public+private key pair) Knowing that public key does not allow you to decrypt it. It requires knowing the private key which would only be known by the machines counting the votes.
Thinking about it, I don't know if the smart cards themselves are used to tally the votes or if the machines report the votes and the smart cards are just encrypted backup in case there is an issue.
In any case the technology used store the vote on the smart cards is normally very robust and it would be extremely difficult the tamper with them. It's essentially a one-way transform unless you know the other part of the key.
Even if you did, logistically it would be a nightmare to try to change the votes on millions of smart cards.
Short of a published list of peoples' names alongside who/what they voted for and those voters actually reviewing what is listed, there is all but a guarantee the voting totals will be tampered with in some way.
If the voting system is corrupted, I am sure it is for our own good. Right? They only want what is best.
You (almost)never hear a ton about voter fraud from votes cast the day of the election...at polling places...I think its to hard and to public to **** with that(for now)...
Its always the mail in, absentee, early, etc... votes that have issues or is where the problems pop up...
Like the guy(or lady) that had like 12 boxes of mail in votes in the trunk of their car...just in case...or some shit like that...
And the fact that some of those votes(like absentee) in some states are only counted IF they need the extra votes to break a tie...and gee, 98% of those are usually D votes... yup, no corruption there...
Most of the .mil votes that are cast as absentee are never counted because of this.
All true, and this was a big issue/complaint in the GA elections recently, and clearly a problem in FL with the ballots in the trunk, etc.
HardToHandle
01-19-20, 21:23
I am not an expert, but have been a poll watcher. Mom is an election official.
Our state has automated poll books, but generally uses scantron paper ballots and also has voters sign off on printed precinct books. Political parties can nominate observers to precincts and the main county count rooms. Guess what? The system is pretty secure.
The major issues came out in Bush v. Gore, where a Democratic county in South Florida was a disaster - floating chads and such. Also, a huge amount of the voters there were between imbeciles and idiots, appearing to be unable to complete a very simple ballot. There was also the Voting Rights Act stigma in the south and for Florida, which meant there was both US Dept. of Justice and assorted plaintiffs bar ready to sue over election issues.
The 2000 aftermath was more federal funding for elections, as certain urban areas had not been adequately funding their responsibility. That led to all sorts of “free” money that was generally not being spent on more staff, but the easy button of new machines/technology to speed up vote tallying. For the millions of people who got the OPM letter, government and cyber security are two things that never co-exist, then or today. At the state level, the Feds look like cyber experts compared to the disaster windchill was states like Illinois.
Gov. Schwartznegger ordered a cyber security survey of California voting systems 15+ years ago and found them a disaster. The systems still suck, even though the vendors occasionally patch holes. Then jackass states like Oregon decided to have everyone vote by the Internet... There is a reason the Russians have been pushing the cyber election hacking narrative, as it is a great theme to stir up folks on both sides.
Both Republican and Democratic states have cyber voting issues, but likely it is worse in the Blue states. The problem is the nation’s elections are going to keep coming down to the dozen Purple states again and again - Florida, Pennsylvania, et al need to get their game in order.
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