You cannot tamper with a vote that has been transmitted to the blockchain because it’s a separate transmission.
For touchscreens on a block chain input device, one would have to rewire the device’s input interface and cause the vote to flip before it reached the device’s transmission chip. Not going to happen because the polling station staff can see immediately what was transmitted during initial tests when booting up and because the tampering would have to coordinate the ballot names with the rewiring; extreme low probability of that ever happening.
If the touchscreen were tampered with, then every vote would be flipped, not just one ‘here and there’. The ‘here and there’ scheme can be used in current unsecure machines to evade detection of tampering but it requires software to execute it, but there can be no software in a blockchain device on a widespread basis unless every blockchain device was opened up and back-fitted with chips between the input interface and the transmission chip. that’s not going to happen because additional security is easy to add to ensure that the improper opening of a blockchain device immediately disables the device.
If a blockchain compliant MFG were to have an assembler illegally install chip components between the input interfaces and transmission chips, then a procedure of testing at the polling stations could detect irregularities and remove the machines from service, default to special paper ballots and report to election authorities who would by law be compelled to call in law enforcement investigators. In such a case, the device OEM would be in a lot of trouble.
Hacking into the input interfaces of so many blockchain devices would point to a massive conspiracy. Pushing a button or a touchscreen immediately sends a signal to the transmission chip which encrypts and transmits, it is not stored. There is no software between the touchscreen and the transmission chip. So an authorized break-in would be isolated and rare and end up disabling the device.
The trouble and confusion an isolated incident would cause would lead to an investigation of what happened and would be traceable back to the device manufacturer who would have been previously certified as blockchain compliant. If the MFG’s process of securing the devices were to be found to be compromised, the federal or state government could yank their license and certification.
Again, such incidents would be rare and isolated just as they are now. What is of tremendous concern now is that current unsecure electronic machines can be easily tampered with without witnesses. The people working the polling stations are unable to see the tampering unless they are keeping separate hand tallies to cross check the current machines (they are not doing this). And what makes this such a large concern is that the tampering can happen to many machines in many districts statewide without officials knowing about it, and with no trace. For example, a stack of infected memory cards can be dispatched by unknowing officials to polling stations statewide.
As for people complaining that current existing unsecure machines do not record their vote correctly, that is very isolated and it is not true that nothing is done about it. Reports of those isolated events show polling station workers removing such machines from service.
You don’t have to rewire anything. The touchscreen is going to be driven by software. That software is going to define buttons that are displayed on the screen. That software will register votes based on how those buttons are pushed. Any first semester VB programmer can make those buttons read whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want, regardless of what the button says.
You don’t have to flip every vote. Just plug a little generation of a random number into your button processing loop, if the number is right flip the vote. Or screw with the definition of the button, make certain pixels on the button a different button that triggers the candidate’s button. This is freshman stuff, bored programmers monkey with this kind of thing all the time. Hell you can easily even VW it, wire it too work perfectly until the date is election day, so they can’t even find it in testing.
You don’t need chips inbetween the input and transmission. you do all the tampering on the input. It’s easy. Software has to run those button, and that software whatever the programmers want it to.
Do you have a single manufacturer? No massive conspiracy necessary. Just one programmer.
Only reason they’re rare and isolated now is that so many districts are too cheap to switch to the fancy machines. most of America is still coloring circles or punching holes. Of course those go through a card reader.
Sometimes they get removed. AFTER somebody complains and IF the complaint is believed. How many times did they download their votes before then? Are we throwing out all the votes that were sitting on there? Not to mention those are just the times the programmer was lazy enough to let the user actually see the vote misrecorded.