Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsiebert | Hacker News Reader

Before I saw this today, I saw this opinion piece from the ny times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/opinion/midterm-election-...

I can't help but think, if private equity already controls the industry, that there is ample room for a startup or non profit or even a government owned business to disrupt the industry. Create real secure optical scan voting machines based on the best practices that have been come up with, and with independent audits and sell them with a contract where the machines are updated with security fixes for a fixed period.

Sell the machines a bit like razors, The machines themselves are relatively cheap, but come with a required subscription to the security fixes for the lifetime of the machine.

View on HN

The optical scan systems are relatively secure already, and have a built in paper trail to back them up. The bigger issue tends to surround the visual/touch voting computers, that often don't have a proper paper trail, let alone other vulnerabilities.

The most difficult issues is the shear number of ballot combinations in most cities is staggering with different districts by type. You may have the same water district as your neighbor across the street, but different fire and school districts. It's complicated to say the least. Even for optical scan options.

disclaimer: I work for an election services company, but not with any voting hardware. The company is mostly in printing/coordination of ballots themselves. It's a complex issue to say the least.

Los Angeles County is one of the few jurisdictions with the resources and heft to move the needle on their own.

They're making their own OSS tabulators. I've been out of the election integrity game for a while, so I'm not immediately familiar with the scope of their effort.

Any one wanting to reform USA's election administration stack should start in LA. Help their effort. Lobby to import their gear to their own jurisdiction. Study their effort, roadmap.

No, Los Angeles County's new tabulator isn't open source. Look what happened when someone tried to request the source code for their "open source" system (as LA County's press release called it). LA County replied that it's "exempt from disclosure" for a whole host of reasons (2 pages worth):

https://osvtac.github.io/files/meetings/2018/2018-09-13/pack...

https://osvtac.github.io/meetings/2018/2018-09-13/agenda

In contrast, the City and County of San Francisco is working on developing and certifying an open source paper-ballot system.

And that's not even close to the most shady action a government has tried with software that I've heard about.

Thanks. I wish I wasn't surprised. Just disappointed.

I've had prior run-ins with Dean Logan. A leopard can't change his spots. I'm now mad at myself for thinking things have gotten better.

Thanks again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com