No such thing as an un-hackable voting machine

American Thinker ^ | 09/13/2017 | Thomas Lifson

[SeekAndFind]

President Trump's Voting Integrity Commission unexpectedly revealed important evidence suggesting that a return to paper ballots is the only way to prevent the possibility of major fraud from sophisticated hacking efforts.  Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times covered the hearings:

The country's voting machines are susceptible to hacking, which could be done in a way so that it leaves no fingerprints, making it impossible to know whether the outcome was changed, computer experts told President Trump's voter integrity commission Tuesday.

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The testimony marked a departure for the commission, which was formed to look into fraud and barriers to voting, but which heard that a potentially greater threat to confidence in American elections is the chance for enemy actors to meddle.

"There's no perfect security; there's only degrees of insecurity," said Ronald Rivest, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He said hackers have myriad ways of attacking voting machines. "You don't want to rest the election of the president on, 'Maybe the Wi-Fi was turned on when it shouldn't have been.'"

He and two other computer security experts said bar codes on ballots and smartphones in voting locations could give hackers a chance to rewrite results in ways that couldn't be traceable, short of sampling of ballots or hand recounts – and those work only in cases where there's a paper trail.

Andrew Appel, a professor at Princeton University, said it would be easy to write a program that cheats on election results and deletes evidence of the hack as soon as results are reported.

Given the level of sophistication of Russian and Chinese hackers, among others, we simply guarantee the integrity of an electronic voting system.  We need tangible proof that can be watched

[cgbg]

Democratic precinct captains don’t need any computers.

They just stuff the ballot boxes with plain old paper!

[marron]

Paper ballots, and ID. Absolute must.

In Detroit, though, remember, they simply lied when they certified the count. Counted 300 but inside the box were 50.

[AndyTheBear]

Seems a hybrid system might be best leaving both an electronic and a paper trail that can be cross checked against each other. Paper can be messed with too.

[CincyRichieRich]

The Left are the only cheaters...we DON’T do that...find just one contradiction.

[zeugma]

There is nothing inherrently wrong with computerizing election machines, provided said machines satisfy the following conditions.

1. There is no external network connectivity. In truth, any connectivity should be used merely to set up the box for the specific election. Once voting begins, all network connectivity should be disabled.
2. The machine must produce a human-readable ballot that is then put in a secure lock box.
3. Ideally, all software on the device should be completely open source so that anyone can validate the correctness of the software.

I've got no real issue with using computers to make the voting process quicker, easier, and more reliable. It is when you start trusting only computers without a hard-copy ballot to validate results that you run into issues. Using a computer to print out the ballot to be cast is actually a great idea, as you then do not have to worry about such things as 'hanging chads', and incorrectly marked ballots.

[FredZarguna]

Michigan uses a paper ballot.

60% of Detroit's votes could not be recounted because of discrepancies between the paper ballots and the sign-in sheets; in almost 40% of Detroit's precincts, there were more votes than voters.

In about 20% of cases ballot box locks were removed or destroyed after they were officially sealed.

Democratic captains need oversight. Paper ballots will help but clearly won't solve the problem of voter fraud.

[DoughtyOne]

What they fail to mention, and the media fails to explain to the public are these things.

Yes, there is the potential to taint the vote if certain circumstances fall in line like ducks in a row, which isn’t likely to happen, unless Democrats conspire to do so, and there are no Republican observes around.

Okay, there’s that.

Then there’s the issue that if a foreign nation wanted to affect our elections, it would have to have agents present in most major precincts in the nation on election day/evening, and those ducks would again have to be in a row.

Another-words, this is not exactly what they are tying to pass it off as being, “The Smoking Gun”.

[itsahoot]

Then there’s the issue that if a foreign nation wanted to affect our elections, it would have to have agents present in most major precincts in the nation on election day/evening, and those ducks would again have to be in a row.

Or they could just own the company that makes the machines like Hugo Chaves did.

The insane march to slavery will continue unabated as long as we are content with the current thievery.

[GOPJ]

Easy solution - have both paper and machine... if there's doubt, pull the paper votes and COUNT 'em.

Any precinct that has 100% participation - or even close to that amount - become suspect.

Put cameras outside ALL voter stations and COUNT the number of people who went in to vote and compare it to the total number of votes counted in that precinct.

Voter Fraud - changing the vote by over 20 votes USING ANY METHOD - becomes a felony with a mandatory ONE YEAR in prison.

Voter Fraud's an attack on everything our Constitution stands for... and it's time to put an end to it.

[GOPJ]

It's not going to be a long march to slavery if we don't start dealing with the truth of what's happening... it's be a short march to slavery.

Easy solution - have both paper and machine... if there's doubt, pull the paper votes and COUNT 'em.

Any precinct that has 100% participation - or even close to that amount - become suspect.

Put cameras outside ALL voter stations and COUNT the number of people who went in to vote and compare it to the total number of votes counted in that precinct.

Voter Fraud - changing the vote by over 20 votes USING ANY METHOD - becomes a felony with a mandatory ONE YEAR in prison.

Voter Fraud's an attack on everything our Constitution stands for... and it's time to put an end to it.

[Sacajaweau]

Stop the early voting, mail in voting, everything that makes the election alterable.

When you mail in your ballot, you have absolutely no way to verify it ever got to the ballot box.

[itsahoot]

Voter Fraud's an attack on everything our Constitution stands for... and it's time to put an end to it.

Back in the late 40's my mother was very active in politics. I can remember how they had poll watchers at the precinct. Both parties had to agree on the count then the totals were posted on the precinct door for anyone to read. The ballot boxes were sealed and then sent to the Sheriff department to be locked in a cell until everyone agreed on the result. Voting Machines were introduced in the large metropolitan areas and fraud became rampant.

[DoughtyOne]

I believe Soros has purchased some voting machine concerns.

I’d want to see how you could set it up to screw over the vote tallies. Not saying it couldn’t be done, but this was not mentioned in the article.

It was my intent to address what was presented here.

Guess that wasn’t quite good enough for you.

[itsahoot]

I’d want to see how you could set it up to screw over the vote tallies.

There are several YouTube videos showing exactly how it can be done. The ScanTron readers commonly used to grade testing sheets are the easiest to mess with.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks.

What bothered me, about the article on his thread, is that it would most likely be used to further the idea Russian hacks could corrupt our elections.

That’s why I answered the way I did. I’m not saying these machines couldn’t be hacked, but if this revelation is used to advance the Russian hacking idea, it would be misguided to the point of the manipulation of the perceptions of our populace.

What was revealed here should not have been able to advance that idea, but in many people’s minds, I’m sure that’s exactly what the result was. I can see their addled minds thinking, “See! I knew it!”

Very much a false premise...

[GOPJ]

Back in the late 40's my mother was very active in politics. I can remember how they had poll watchers at the precinct. Both parties had to agree on the count then the totals were posted on the precinct door for anyone to read. The ballot boxes were sealed and then sent to the Sheriff department to be locked in a cell until everyone agreed on the result. Voting Machines were introduced in the large metropolitan areas and fraud became rampant.

In many ways American culture was better in the 40's... of course there were exceptions... the way democrats in the South treated black citizens was dreadful - and unprotected women had a rough go of it... but other than those two large exceptions - the American culture in the 40's was better.