The Election Won’t Be Rigged, But It Could Be Hacked

Of course it will be hacked. I find it hilarious that people think that our political parties have some type of moral code they actually use to play by the "rules", whatever nonexistent rules those are. As long as they aren't doing something directly illegal or can deflect the blame for illegal behavior to an underling that "misunderstood the directions", the incentive is there for ALL political parties to play as dirty as they possibly can. Democrat, Republican, whatever, doesn't matter.

The party's game is to win seats in Congress and the Presidency. Not win fairly. Not win "by the rules". To win, at whatever cost, as long as that cost isn't the elected positions themselves.

I was an election judge in Colorado in 1994, '98, '00, and '04. I observed elections in North Carolina in 2006 and '08.

The Colorado elections used paper ballots (complete with "hanging chads") and from what I could tell were run pretty fair and square. One year there were some problems with some of the kids from the local college where rich Easterners send their lower-caliber offspring when they can't get into the Ivy League. They flooded a particular precinct insisting that they be given provisional ballots (name not on the list and ballots not counted unless it's close). They didn't meet the requirements even for those ballots and some threw a hissy fit. The local prosecutor discovered that many had already voted absentee back in their home state. They were not prosecuted, unfortunately.

In North Carolina in '06, the precinct captain ran it by the books. In '08, same precinct, same captain, many were allowed to vote provisionally even though they didn't meet the requirements (didn't live in the county they were trying to vote in). Others told me it was similar in other precincts.

Paper ballots, ID, and lots of well-trained observers seem to be the best way to avoid the threats from social engineering and hack attacks on the integrity of the voting process. I would even go for the purple dye they use on the thumbs of voters in some countries to prevent people from traveling precinct to precinct to vote for dead people and people who have moved away who are still on the rolls. (There are more than you probably think.)

In general, my observation has been that the voting process has become more corrupt over the past 20 years. It's just damn hard to catch it if the people who are supposed to enforce the rules don't care to.

I submitted this as its own post, but it didn't get much traction, so I'll link it here as well.

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/579f40a01b631bd12f10c2...

This paper argues that the 2016 primaries were hacked based on the fact that (among other arguements):

There was consistent discrepencies between paper and machine voting results, favoring Clinton and against Trump.

Clinton and Trump support was corralated with precinct size

Demographics are not sufficent to explain the above observations.

I have not verified the accuracy of this analysis, or found other commentary on it.

I wish that we would abandon the concept of all-in-one electronic voting machines and instead incentivize ballot printers.

They could have a happy touch screen UI that is easy to localize, and then print out a human-readable paper ballot for the voter to review and then drop into a physical ballot box. And you could have one machine with a special printer to produce raised-character printing for blind voters to verify.

All the advantages of a computer UI and very few of the disadvantages of the DRE voting machines.

Lack of paper trail has been an election complaint for at least 16 years now.

Is there any practical difference between rigging and hacking? Whether the election outcome is manipulated by government officials, one or both major political parties, Vladimir Putin, corporate insiders at the vendors that supply voting machines, some guy named Chad, or some collaboration between any of the above, it amounts to the same thing: the loss of voter's right to hold their elected leaders accountable.

Most election tampering requires a pretty big conspiracy and is therefore hard to pull off on a large enough scale to change the outcome without being caught, but electronic voting with no paper trail makes it possible for someone to do just that without more than one or a handful of people knowing about it, which I think makes it the biggest threat to the accuracy and credibility of elections in the United States.

Even in the absence of real election fraud, if the voters have no credible reason to believe it didn't happen, then the election system ought to be fixed. Ideally, the burden of proof should be on election officials to show that the results are correct, not on activists to prove fraud.

Sounds like a challenge! If any of the precincts turn up 100% for Jill Stein, you'll know it was me.

It is rigged AND is going to be hacked. That's a given.

It could easily be rigged without a papertrail or having to show ID to vote.

If the election gets hacked, won't it by definition be rigged by the hacker(s)? I just don't see how it's "ridiculous" to think the vote somewhat impacted by 1) some people voting more than once since many jurisdictions are basically "honor system", 2) exploits of vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems, and 3) ballot stuffing and other illicit activities by poll workers.

How prevalent those are, the full impact, etc. are debatable, but it seems a little naive to say those things never happen at all or that people who suspect they happen are crazy conspiracy theorists.

OSET is trying to help with this. They are working to make open source voting systems available.

http://www.osetfoundation.org/about/

>> "A recent poll found that 34 percent of likely voters believed the general election would be rigged."

Even if it the US election was rigged, very possible US wouldn't even care.