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Comment by grzm | Hacker News Reader

Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 5 times over the past month or so. If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads:

"American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967

"Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396

"Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356

"In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247

"Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178

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This has come up in many of the related threads -

"Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results"

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...

That aside, we should, of course, work on securing the vote.

Oh, definitely. I don't mean to imply anything about hacking wrt this election. (Did I?) Frankly I generally don't go down those rabbit holes too far because securing the vote is motivated by ensuring a trusted process, rather than any particular rumor or incident. I'm happy to leave the investigations for incidents to others. They're important as well, I just don't have skin thick enough to handle the partisanship.

I added these links here because the same points get hashed and rehashed in every thread, rather than building on the work that's already been done and figuring out what the next steps should be. (I admit that rehashing is a pet peeve of mine.)

As you note, securing the vote is important. A secure vote and trust in the election process is very important to a democracy, and something that continues to come up for a variety of reasons, and something that can easily be supported by anyone interested in democracy, regardless of party affiliation or political persuasion.

I remember the discussions of Bush rigging the 2004 elections (not on HN).

Secure voting came to my attention after the 2000 Bush-Gore election and recount. There's been a lot of work really interesting work since then. If you're interested in what can be done to improve voting security, I encourage you to see https://www.verifiedvoting.org

Diebold, how people hacked their voting machines, and their campaign against said hackers was mentioned on Slashdot practically weekly back then. I think http://blackboxvoting.org/ was started as a direct result.

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