Voting Machine Vendor Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States | Hacker News Reader

Voting Machine Vendor Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States

motherboard.vice.com

58 pointsuptown9 comments

All election software should be open source and publicly inspectable, like the code in the Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims 1! ;)

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/dumbold-voting-machine-for-th...

Somebody actually reprogrammed the Dumbold Voting Machine to run their intelligent university campus simulation!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4370926_Towards_a_m...

Electronic voting seems like one of those ideas that seem great when you start programming in your teens, but you eventually grow out of it when you start to see all the security considerations, costs and possible problems. With some experience in the field, it just starts to seem cheaper and easier to stick to the paper.

I'm always stunned when I'm reminded that there are places in the world that not only went electronic, but absolutely fail at its basic security as opposed to getting burned with some elaborate and/or clever attack.

And when you learn about the government contracting and procurement process it gets even worse.

eVoting needs strong encryption and trust-chain setup. we have done these things for content protection and payments with hardware level security. this is a solvable problem, especially with emergence of block-chain it can be made much more secure. the problem is, as you've pointed out, cost.

my somewhat cynical conclusion is that its being left weak intentionally either to save money or plain old incompetence as there is not much openness/competition in govt contracting process.

if we ever are to wholeheartedly accept this there has to be complete transparency in the process. at a policy level this is absolute must is we want to converge to a stable long-term solution.

That naive Mom's Basement idealism coincides with the Atlas Shrugged years. Voters should just buy their own voting machines, and let the market decide!

So I suppose my stance that the benefits of online voting for direct democracy largely outweight the complexity cost of a sufficiently secure solution are equivalent to the older type of objectivists who realize that free market isn't perfect but that it does lead to better outcomes in most cases.

That we can't produce secure voting software is just a testament to how much we suck at software engineering and making safe computers in general, because cryptographically this is a solved problem.

Hell I'd argue that modern implementations like Estonia's are pretty close to an acceptable standard of trustlessness. But that's thanks to open standards and public ledgers. The closed source voting machine was never a good idea, and never will be.

Given the ancap vibe of blockchain in general this is all a bit ironic isn't it?

online voting is a solution in search of a problem. Digital voting just makes it vulnerable to hacking and the general public barely understands how computer works.

Paper ballots are cheap and auditable, and can be understood by anyone that knows how to count.

This is one of the subjects I wish developers (of all persuasions) would consistently put pressure on local representatives; don't let these sales to voting companies just happen without pushback.

We can't expect representatives or legislatures to be technically adept at all things (or anything for that matter). The fact that this has all gone down over the last couple of years without much of a fuss from our industry is shameful. We get riled up over corporate battles, which tech stack is the best, but when it comes to protecting the people's sovereignty and everyone's rights, the silence from our industry as a whole, across all strata, is deafening. We should be angry. We should be loud. It should be a subject that comes up at least once a month at meet ups and happy hours. But like the rest of the populace, we've been silent. A good portion of us (developers) have been just as ignorant about acquisitions and policies surrounding voting machines as the general populace.

If there is one thing that you should write or call your representatives about (local, state, and federal), just by virtue of your profession and interests, it needs to be about e-voting. All developers have what I believe is an ethical duty to our country to be educated about this subject and to make sure we're disseminating accurate and helpful information to our representatives, our friends, our neighbors, and our families.

Here's some helpful links to get you started if you've never broached this subject, need a refresher, or just want to see how you can help out:

* https://trustthevote.org/

* https://www.eff.org/issues/e-voting

* https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/audit-better-faster-ch...

* https://www.eff.org/wp/accessibility-and-auditability-electr...

I firmly believe that we should stick with pen and paper. However, I think that battle is already lost. We need to secure what governments/people want to use and we need to do our part to make sure our representatives/voting boards are making informed choices about which systems they'll be deploying in the field.

Educate yourself and contact your representatives. Do your part for our democracy.

I don't think it's technically possible to make voting machines secure enough to use them in an election. So I am happy these things happen so the idea of using voting machines fades away forever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com