I keep seeing comments about how Canada avoided a similar fate because of its strict use of paper ballots; the US must have changed its system to include these electronic and possibly not airgapped machines.
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That’s a really cool reply. Thanks for sharing!
I think the lawsuits throwing out mail in ballots for blue counties were far more harmful than “voting machine fraud”
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A lot of this hinges on partisan officials choosing (often) black box software and private verification companies. But that’s not even the main problem.
If your Ballot System contains source code, the source code is researched and code reviewed, and then complied by the company and the verification agency. Both checksums must match.
It all falls apart exactly here. With digital voting, all other security is as performative as the TSA. It doesn’t even matter if either party in this step is malicious or if the source is open/closed.
A code review can never make any guarantees. And if there is a bad actor, checksums are not bullet proof. Especially when we’re talking about state actors, who have access to supply chain attacks and unknowable cryptographic abilities.
And all of this uncertainty extends just as far with the hardware. Even if a voter knew what a machine should have in it, they’ll never get the access to verify it themselves.
Even checking a ballot print isn’t foolproof. In a secret ballot system there’s nothing tying a print to your actual tallied vote other than your faith in the process.
Stealing an election isn’t as easy as one might imagine.
Stealing an election doesn’t have to be easy, it has to be possible with a minimal circle of secrecy. And digital voting/tallying makes that possible.
As others have said in this thread, the most important thing is the ability for any voter to understand and personally audit the process. That’s just not possible without paper ballots and simple counting.
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100% we need to switch back to entirely paper ballots, even if it takes months to determine a winner.
I don’t understand why it’s so difficult. In France voting is done entirely on paper and results are often released later that night, and almost all the results are in by the next day. Same in the UK, although it generally takes them a few hours longer, probably because the polls close later in the evening.
In California we’re all mailed paper ballots, which we can return by mail (no stamp needed) or designated ballot box, or in person at a polling place up to closing time on Voting Day. My ballot (in a westside Los Angeles district) had 37 items, (on about 7 pages iirc) some of which were yes/no on propositions, others of which had a choice between 2 to 15 candidates for various offices. From school board to US President. It was very clear, just needed a black pen to fill the circles, and I could have gotten it in a dozen different languages. It’s also accessible for my quadriplegic husband, who can’t get to a polling place. But it took time and thought. It wasn’t like the pictures I’ve seen of French ballots which were just a single name on a sheet of paper, take the one from the stack of your choice, I guess? So counting them takes more time. Plus counting ballots that were mailed and postmarked by the deadline, those are allowed 2 weeks to arrive.
*(A couple of edits to clarify details)
I heard Ireland does too, but they also use Rank Voice Voting so it takes them about a week. Seems like a potential benefit that the process of democracy is so visible, imo.
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Some places have hybrid machines; an electronic interface but gives you a printout of your choices (like a Scantron form filler). I’m fine with this option so long as hardcopies are preserved for 2 years minimum and randomized checks are performed before and after an election on EVERY machine.
Kansas has the hybrid style so I fill out a paper ballot and it is scanned and the results tabulated electronically with a paper trail for auditing. This actually seems even more reliable to me than only paper or electronic with printed out copies for a paper trail.
Same here. Paper ballots that can be machine scanned and stored for manual audits seem like the best possible method.
Washington uses paper ballots absentee only and only needs more than a few hours to figure out results unless there’s a very tight race.
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Where I live, we have voting machines with a paper receipt. Voters use a touchscreen and then get a printed ballot. The voter can then check to make sure that what they cast electronically is correct, and then the paper ballot is scanned and saved. You can perform an audit anytime you like to compare the instant electronic results to hand counted ballots.
Yes cause so much harder to modify a paper ballot, especially the mailed ones. No way one of the USPS employees, or a corrupt election worker, clerk, etc. would ever do anything wrong. If anything, our recent elections have shown us really people are infallible & honest, and it is computers that are inherently flawed.
It’s far harder to achieve mass manipulation of the ballot when it’s all being handled by a lot of human hands. If it’s managed by computers, then by finding a bug or other vulnerability in the software or database you could alter the whole election.
Meanwhile, to manipulate a paper ballot & hand-counted election in the same way you’d need the cooperation of a huge number of people, and you’d need them all to keep their mouths shut. That’s far more difficult than defeating a computerised system
It’s actually much easier, especially with mail-in ballots. Paper ballots can discarded, modified, etc. Many of them sit in election boxes that aren’t under reliable surveillance. The election workers, usually only two, come and put them into giant trash bags. They are not monitored at that point either, allowing them to modify the ballots. I haven’t seen any reliable checks of the envelopes at that point either, where if they’re opened & resealed, it wouldn’t even raise flags. You also have no way to confirm the tally of your vote to ensure it wasn’t manipulated. If you want to have multiple checks with multiple isolated computer systems, you absolutely can.
I for one, actually believe a blockchain ledger system of voting like that of Monero would provide a great option. Most of all, they could anonymously verify their vote which to me is the most important. Having some verification that my vote was actually calculated as casted is extremely important to me. Furthermore, you’d have top academics, mathematicians, cryptographers providing the exact details on its design with an open source solution that anyone could search & scan for vulnerabilities, meaning it would receive a significant amount of review & testing.
You also would have a huge amount of people like myself that actually understand the tech, and plenty of individuals willing to explain its design & safety in a format comfortable for you. It is a shame people are so opposed to new ideas & real progress, especially after Democrats just lost to Trump. I guess just keep what you’re doing & we’ll finally get a viable third party.
Yes cause so much harder to modify a paper ballot, especially the mailed ones
Correct. It is. Because to do enough to change the result you need to do it alot, and that’s really hard to get away with.
In Canada we count the ballots with witnesses (called scutineers) to validate.
I’m not sure if they called it a scrutineer but I used to volunteer at elections (US) and they did the same. The counters would sit at a long table with people watching from both sides. If I remember correctly, everyone had to stay until it was done and there was a sign-in/out sheet.
I understand that there’s more people voting for federal elections but it really didn’t take that long. Polling closed at 7 and the results/physical ballots were delivered to city hall by 10
In my case the scrutineers were volunteers from the political parties and didn’t have to stay if they didn’t want to, but I was a deputy returning officer and I couldn’t leave until the count of ballots matched the number of ballots I had given out to people.
All of this talk about election fraud is just power hungry psychopaths inventing reasons they lost. Large scale cheating with paper ballots is much harder than digital systems.
One difference I’ve seen between out elections is we have more polling stations. It’s unusual for people to wait longer than 15 minutes to vote.
We always have results that evening. Polls close at eight pm and results are finalized by midnight.
It might have been party volunteers here too, not sure as I was the “lowest level” of volunteer…
I think you hit the nail on the head with the amount of polling stations. Politicians of a certain party here really like voter suppression.
I remember my country using such machines for some elections before they were considered as incompatible with democracy. We vote on paper again, which is good.
Same here, we’re still voting on paper, and I hope that never changes without good reason.
I guess it varies by jurisdiction. In my state we fill out paper ballots, then you just insert the ballot into a machine which records your votes and prints you a receipt.
There’s also a difference, because our elections typically have only a few races on them. In other words, at the federal level I only vote for the candidates in my writing. Typically four to six options.
In a us election, there can be a ballot containing choices for many different levels, including judges, district attorneys, and so on. Not to mention they might have several referenda on the same ballot too.
I could see that being much more complex on paper, making electronic voting attractive.
at the federal level I only vote for the candidates in my writing
I’m guessing you’re a Canadian that was using voice-to-text with your device’s language set to “US English”.
In American English, “writing” and “riding” sound the same. But not in Canadian English. Or British English, but for a different reason.
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We did it cause money. And lobbying. Same thing.
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paper ballots
Just FYI, I think most, or at least every voting machine I’ve used in GA, actually prints a paper ballot that then is read by a machine (or maybe a human, not entirely sure).
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re immune to some sort of foul play. I always triple check my choices and triple check the printed ballot. But is there some sort of nefarious trickery in some machine readable only part of it? Perhaps. I personally don’t think there is, but who knows. I’d love to be proved wrong. I’d love to see the fascists suffer.
To be 100% clear, I don’t think there isn’t foul play going on, I’m just skeptical that it’s specifically in the voting/counting machines, but I haven’t also read up on the most recent of claims from the past few weeks about it.
My voting location has paper ballots counted by scanners (it’s not practical or accurate/reliable to count that number of ballots by human hand).
If there’s a question, just rescan the ballots. Nothing’s perfect, but this (IMHO) is about as good as it gets.
The only change I would make is to have ranked choice voting.
I’ve honestly liked the systems we have in our county. They’re a digital system but you feed in a straight sheet and it reads your district. From there you select on a touch screen all of your selections and then print it out. You have a chance to review the ballot at that point to make sure everything is printed out right. You then slide it into another scanner which counts the votes and drops the ballot into a secured box, that way should they need to audit things you have a paper trail too.
GOP can use actors, like russia and now elon to change/hack the machines to vote in thier favor. this is more prevelant in red areas than blue ones. Remember mitch mcconnels last election, he had the same exact situation, more people voted blue in those areas, but somehow the votes still went to mitch.
