Hey, Democrats. I know you're worried about GOP hacking electonic voting machines.

[Viva_Daddy]

So am I. Personally, I think we need to go back to ALL PAPER BALLOTS AND ALL HAND COUNTED. I don't care if it takes a week or so to find out who won (although exit polls are generally fairly accurate).

However, everybody know that a large voter turnout always favors the Democrats. So let's have an HISTORICALLY HIGH turnout this November and then no one (with the possible exception of Fox Snooze) will believe it if the machines say the Republicans won.

[Bluenorthwest]

1. Not a worry round these parts, no voting machines in this all paper State.

What you guys do in the various great States is up to you guys. Why do you keep the machines?

[msongs]

2. unfortunately the democratic party usa Inc does not share any of your concern(s) nt

[delrem]

5. This is true to the point where all I'm receiving from the political class is dissonance.

Contradiction after contradiction.

[delrem]

3. This ought to be #1 priority for all, who live in a democracy.

My fucking God! What can people be thinking, handing their democracy over to private companies with closed source apps, to count their ballots?

How can a whole country of 313 million be so fucking stupid?

[defacto7]

9. ^ this ^^ this ^^ this ^

[Brigid]

4. I think that the right is scared of one thing above all others:

Long lines of people waiting to vote, especially if there are lots of brown people among them.

[brooklynite]

6. Just like they were hacked in 2006, 2008 and 2012?

Did someone lose the instruction manual?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

18. If the real vote isn't close enough, hacking is hard to get away with.

[Mr.Bill]

7. I have worked at the polls for five years.

In my county, we still use paper ballots, but at each precinct, the law says we have to have one electronic voting device available so those that choose to vote electronically may do so. In five years I have seen a grand total of four people use the one at my precinct. I think that says a lot about how people feel about electronic voting.

[HomerRamone]

8. kick for old time's sake

most of us have just given up on this and hoped for the best

[defacto7]

10. no one ... will believe it if the machines say the Republicans won

I don't think anyone really believed it the last couple of times.

You are absolutely on the mark though. We need turn out, we need paper ballots, we a need hand count with watchdogs from both parties.

[The Traveler]

11. Electronic voting CAN be reliable and auditable

If ya just gotta have electronic voting ('cause you don't want the stress of waiting for the counts) then it can be done. But the machines in place aren't worth crap. They have little to no protection against tampering, and they provide no indication that tampering has occurred. In this day and age, there is no excuse for that negligence.

In my view, the voter should also get a paper receipt ... one which the voter can read and which is dropped in a box for election integrity verification purposes. The receipt would provide a human readable format for the ballot selections, a bar code expressing those selections, and a transaction hash, and a transaction sequence hash which basically makes tampering with the machine record detectable. If the transaction record or transaction history hashes don't add up ... then a recount of the paper receipts must be done.

In other words, you could possibly tamper with the records, and tamper with the counts, but such tampering would be detected.

The code for such a system should be open source, so that computer security folk can examine it in detail for flaws, back doors, etc. Test system s

So, yeah, it could be done. But why bother unless you are in a hurry? Sensibly designed paper ballots will get ya there without hanging chads and such.

Trav

[RobertEarl]

12. For more reading on this subject

DU linlk: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025285323

It is about audits of even the paper ballots.

[Cleita]

13. Hey. We aren't even worried about that anymore. We are worried about

elections being totally rigged with gerrymandering, jim crow laws being revived, and many other cheats in play.

[Gothmog]

15. Travis County is soliciting RFP for a new voting system

It is a very interesting RFP https://www.texastribune.org/2014/07/09/travis-county-forges-new-territory-voting-machines/

The efforts put Travis County, along with Los Angeles County in California, at the cutting edge of a race against time to create an alternative voting technology system.

The new machines would have voters use off-the-shelf electronic equipment like tablets, but also provide them with receipts and printed ballots to allow for easier auditing. The development and implementation process won’t be finished in time for the 2016 elections, though officials hope to have the system ready by the 2018 gubernatorial race.

The most recent era of voting technology began in 2002, when Congress — scarred by the memories of hanging chads and nearly 2 million disqualified ballots a couple of years before — passed the Help America Vote Act, which won bipartisan support and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

[csziggy]

16. Paper ballots can be scanned but I think they should be hand counted, too

Our Florida county uses paper ballots that are put through scanners to read. Any ballot that the scanner can't read is kicked out right away and the voter can redo it or be counted by hand.

That's great because there is always a physical ballot to check. In 2000 when the recount was ordered the Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, made a PDF file of the "questionable" ballots that had been kicked out by the machine and posted it on the county website. I still have a copy of that file somewhere.

But Sancho found out in the movie "Hacking Democracy" that even the electronic scanners that he thought were secure could be manipulated if unscrupulous people have access to them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy). While I trust Ion Sancho to run honest elections, I worry about the future when he retires. If his successor is not as careful about the security of the scanners or is willing to allow manipulation of the machines our elections could be hacked.

As long as the paper ballots are retained so they can be counted by hand, this is not a concern. But Florida law does NOT require this so a future Supervisor of Elections could determine that destruction of the paper ballots is legal. They could also change the way the scanners are set up. The law does not require that questionable ballots be kicked back immediately for the voter to fix.

In 2000 a neighboring county, Gadsden, had a high rate of "spoiled" ballots. They had not set up their machine to immediately kick out questionable ballots for the voters to fix. This is one of the counties that caused a lot of discussion since it has a high percentage of minority voters and one of the highest rates of "spoiled" ballots in that election. Ion Sancho helped them reset their scanners for their recount and their recount, like Leon County's, went quickly.

The main problem is the proprietary software that the voting machine companies are allowed to keep secret. It is not secure, voting officials do not have the access or ability to secure it, and it is not accessible to audits. Electronic banking and gambling machines allow the companies that use the products to secure and audit the results - why are our voting machines less able to have this done?

[TriplD]

17. Given the recent whistleblowing on the NSA's hacking into everything

...and lying to Congress about it, I'm not sure why they shouldn't also be suspected of hacking elections too.

There certainly isn't enough transparency to determine otherwise.