My brain is fried tho, I’m headed to bed
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342256417_Ballot-Marking_Devices_Cannot_Ensure_the_Will_of_the_Voters
Ballot-Marking Devices Cannot Ensure the Will of the Voters
Andrew W. Appel, Richard A. DeMillo, and Philip B. Stark
ELECTION LAW JOURNAL
Volume 00, Number 0, 2020
#Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/elj.2019.0619
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In this report we explain:
* Hand-marked paper ballot systems are the only practical technology for contestable, strongly defensible voting systems.
* Some ballot-marking devices can be software independent, but they not strongly software in- dependent, contestable, or defensible. Hacked or misprogrammed BMDs can alter election outcomes undetectably, so elections conducted using BMDs cannot provide public evidence that reported outcomes are correct. If BMD malfunctions are detected, there is no way to determine who really won. Therefore BMDs should not be used by voters who are able to mark an optical-scan ballot with a pen.
* All-in-one BMD or DRE+VVPAT voting machines are not software independent, contestable, or defensible. They should not be used in public elections.
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If a hacker sought to steal an election by altering BMD software, what would the hacker program the BMD to do? In cybersecurity practice, we call this the threat model.
The simplest threat model is this one: In some contests, not necessarily top-of-the-ticket, change a small percentage of the votes (such as 5%). In recent national elections, analysts have considered a candidate who received 60% of the vote to have won by a landslide. Many contests are decided by less than a 10% margin. Changing 5% of the votes can change the margin by 10%, because ‘‘flipping’’ a vote for one candidate into a vote for a different candidate changes the difference in their tallies—i.e., the margin—by two votes. If hacking or bugs or misconfiguration could change 5% of the votes, that would be a very significant threat.
Although public and media interests often focus on top-of-the-ticket races such as president and governor, elections for lower offices such as state representatives, who control legislative agendas and redistricting, and county officials, who manage elections and assess taxes, are just as important in our democracy. Altering the outcome of smaller contests requires altering fewer votes, so fewer voters are in a position to notice that their ballots were misprinted. And most voters are not as familiar with the names of the candidates for those offices, so they might be unlikely to notice if their ballots were misprinted, even if they checked.