Computer scientists and computer security experts are the ones that commonly advise against voting machines and other things like that, pointing out vulnerabilities and the inability to verify them.
1) Not all computer scientist are security experts.
2) The security experts came to the conclusion that hardening the system to the point where you could depend on its integrity (and the system still be widely usable) wasn't feasible.
3) Making one process manual in order to protect the outcome != giving up on technology and becoming a luddite.
This is due to a Dutch ethical hacker (Sijmen Ruwhof) investigating the way that our elections work. He had posted a great research document [0] that showed how bad our current system was. Two days later, we're back to paper.
Why does everyone think that hacking the DNC amounted to "hacking the election".
Did anyone complain when Iceland PM resigned as a result of the Panama Papers leak and the large-scale protests that ensued? You wouldn't say that that somebody hacked Iceland's democracy. The truth came out and whatever happened was a natural result of that.
> You wouldn't say that that somebody hacked Iceland's democracy.
No, you wouldn't. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the DNC hacks are all because the Democratic leadership is unwilling to accept responsibility for putting forward a bad candidate. Better blame the Russians, instead! If only the public didn't know the truth, we would have won!
You aren't wrong about the Democratic Party putting forth a weak candidate, but it is concerning that there weren't similar actions on the other side. The attacks were targeting a specific party alone and seem to be motivated by foreign geopolitical interests, not in the American public's interest.
There is a reason we want equal time laws for example, because if I constantly hear one side of the argument, it doesn't matter how true those arguments are, I will come to biased conclusions.
Like that time Sarah Palin had to release her personal email acct? Remember all the bad stuff in there? No? That's because there wasn't any. It's weird that when a political entity gets caught rigging debates (and worse) the std response is "I'm sure the other side did it too".
If the press digs up dirt on a candidate, should they not publish it until they dig up some dirt on their opponent? What if it's a foreign newspaper? Should Deep Throat's leaks not been published, because they would influence the election? What if he were a card-holding Democrat? What if he were a reptilian agent?
I hate Trump as much as the next person, but there was no shortage of actual dirt that was dug up on him. There was no democratic outrage over the source of his comments about grabbing people's genitals... Or that one page of his tax return.
The press "digging up dirt" is surely different than the illegal hacking and wholesale release of all private email correspondence. Deep Throat provided info on the current President's illegal actions to a journalist, not just "dirt".
Even if we accept that it is better to know the info in the DNC leaks, it is still a big problem if a foreign government can wield its influence so easily through illegal computer intrusions. At least to me.
Leaking the Trump tax return was illegal. There was nothing illegal in the tax return. The Snowden leaks were quite probably illegal. Many of the things he leaked were not illegal. (Since this will never go to trial, we'll probably never know.) Should the press only report on legally-sourced information? They aren't a jury.
Good news for us, though - both illegal leaks, and illegal hacks are illegal. We already have a mechanism to deal with bad behaviour in this space.
Not at all. It was required behavior. Until the government enacts a useful whistleblowing program someone who witnesses criminal actions has literally no legal choice but to leak. Ignoring it and hoping it goes away is the illegal option.
I want my institutions to be fixable from inside but when they aren't, I simply want them fixed.
Re Downvoter - I understand that you're upset but lashing out, especially against the truth, doesn't help.
> We already have a mechanism to deal with bad behaviour in this space.
I'm not sure if we do, that's kinda my point about why this makes me so uncomfortable. Clearly no one will be held accountable for the DNC hacks.
I think I misread your original comment a little too, the press should definitely report on every thing we just mentioned. They definitely aren't a jury and once it's out, it's out. My issue is framing the actual leaks like they were "whistle blower" leaks like Deep Throat or Snowden. I guess that's mostly personal opinion on the value of the leaks though.
The idea that our political discourse is now shaped by who can get what hacked information and how they can weaponize it (Trump's taxes, DNC's emails) scares the crap out of me. Even more so if it was a foreign government targeting one political party.
I'm rambling a little but the future that this shows me looks terrible (and probably unstoppable).
Not necessarily. There was some circumstantial evidence that the tax returns were leaked by his ex-wife, who would have every right to release the returns since they are also her returns.
Not sure that there's actual conclusive proof that the phishing attack on Podesta's gmail account was in fact carried out by an entity affiliated with the Russian government.
All of the other accusations that I've heard along the lines of russian hackers hacking into the actual "election hw/sw" were laughable.
Funny thing is this alleged hacking was [supposedly] one of the reasons for demanding recounts in the states narrowly won by Trump and the only actual hard evidence discovered was "pro-Clinton discrepancies" in Detroit at which point the recount in the state of Michigan was stopped :)
On July 27th, Donald Trump asked for the assistance of a foreign power under US sanctions. Specifically, he asked for assistance in performing opposition research. This is fundamentally wrong IMO, and arguably a foreign emolument in and of itself. He did this during a live televised press conference, beginning with the words "Russia, if you're listening..." [1]. There is documented evidence of a large-scale Macedonian-originated "fake news" ring [2], and thousands of comments in closed pro-Trump Facebook groups which demonstrate that a nontrivial number of Americans believed the obviously-false (e.g. [3]) information being peddled.
That is fundamentally different than having a questionable history be exposed by a free press.
It doesn't concern me at all. The Democratic Party isn't a branch of government. It's a private company. That so many treat it like it's a government organization is far more concerning than the motivations behind any hacks of one or both major parties.
While you are technically correct, do you want to live in a country run by private corporations or would you rather public pressure and regulations be able to influence the parties?
I think we should do more than treat it as a governmental organization, we should regulate it into behaving more like one, or regulate some of its influence away so that there's is more room for third parties
Plenty of states already have regulations. California has rules about how parties elect their boards and whatnot, for example, and officially recognizes parties.
I agree that we should reduce their influence. That would be the opposite of doubling down on our current system of treating them like pseudo-branches of government.
One way to accomplish that would be to ban official recognition of parties, require them to fund and run their own primary elections, and move to multi-member representation districts. All of these things can be done at the state level for state and local offices.
Whoever it was actually did target the RNC, but as for your other point it still befuddles me how Russians not wanting a president who was threatening WWIII with them is some sort of groundbreaking revelation that proves this was an insane conspiracy and not just every day business by a nation looking out for their interests
Just because one party was predominantly targeted doesn't mean they were sponsored by a foreign geopolitical interest. This could mean that guccifer 2.0 was a partisian (in America or abroad) acting on his own beliefs, or it could also mean that Democrats are especially bad with infosec and Republicans aren't.
> but it is concerning that there weren't similar actions on the other side.
This is just wrong, of course there were. "Grab them by the pussy." Was also a leak and was also published with political intent. (And just quietly, also demonstrated a man is an utterly foul human being whom I would cross the road to avoid.)
You are so wrong it's practically dangerous. And not about Clinton.
Seventeen US intelligence agencies [1] have joined in a consensus opinion that Russia, under Putin's command, ran a targeted campaign aimed at opposing Hillary Clinton and helping to elect Donald Trump. It is well-documented beyond any reasonable doubt in a full report, portions of which (including conclusions) have been made unclassified [2].
This should be troubling to any American. In fact, it seems to be: Donald Trump himself has pledged to conduct an investigation into voter fraud surrounding the 2016 US election [3].
So let's do it. Investigate the circumstances surrounding the 2016 election. Make public the extent and severity of Russian disinformation operations, and hold them accountable. Investigate why James Comey made a fact-free statement contrary to FBI policy during early voting, when 40% of total ballots are cast. Investigate any and all financial dealings with Russia in the run-up to the election, by either candidate. Perform full recounts and investigate voting rolls for evidence of improper exclusion or inclusion. Oh yeah – and check to make sure Hillary Clinton, the tragically flawed candidate who nonetheless put up with mountains of abuse – really did win the popular vote by approximately three million.
> You wouldn't say that that somebody hacked Iceland's democracy.
Right, because the Panama Papers leak wasn't a leak targeting specifically one Icelandic party, traced back to a foreign government with active geopolitical disputes with Iceland who also had similar hacks of other Icelandic parties traced back to them with no corresponding leaks.
There are quite a few additional relevant differences, as well, but I think that suffices to demonstrate that the situations are not, at all, parallel with regard to the applicability of the description in question.
> Why does everyone think that hacking the DNC amounted to "hacking the election".
In the American two-party political system, it is very important who the two candidates are, and how they are chosen. While it is formally only the business of the two political parties to choose their candidates however they see fit, in practice also the primaries are an important part of democracy.
If America had a more modern multiparty system, the decisions of individual parties would be less important for the whole.
Most European countries run their presidential elections in two rounds: First round all parties can run their candidates, and second round is between the two winners of the first round. In America the primaries pretty much take the role of the first round in the European model.
(Also, the whole idea of counting votes instead of counting winners per electoral district is a bit alien to the American system, so it's not easy to see how the European system could be implemented in America.)
> You wouldn't say that that somebody hacked Iceland's democracy.
This the kind of thing you could read here on HN and it would be taken seriously and debated to death until the `hack` term would lose any semblance of definition.
A great write-up, but I'd say at least as much credit to the person who reported the issue to the RTL news, who then contacted Sijmen to investigate further. According to [0], the original reporter had already enumerated all the flaws of the system.
We only every needed technology to make sure ballots get encoded correctly.
We could do that with open source software, commodity PCs and card punch machines and readers.
Then validating that your choices were encoded correctly would be easier. So would counting.
You could count at the voting location to get fast results and recount once the ballots arrive at the central office to confirm that the reported count was correct.
You could keep the initial counts at the polling place. Then later compare those numbers with the second count's to confirm that nothing happened to the ballots.
You also should have a unique number on each ballot that you can later use to look up how your ballot was recorded.
None of this should require advanced technology, new inventions or secrecy.
>You also should have a unique number on each ballot that you can later use to look up how your ballot was recorded.
The standard objection to such a practice is that it facilitates vote buying / selling / coercion by giving the voter a means of proving how he voted.
However, I think it's a good idea nonetheless. All the ballots, randomly numbered, should go into a file available for download. That way, anyone can count them, and any voter can verify that his particular ballot was recorded correctly.
No I don't want you to move my vote before I can see it. Use computers to do the count fast and first if you want to, but I want paper receipts also stuffed into a box and I want to be able to observe the whole process and I want to be able to observe the votes being physically counted at the end.
Democracy gives so much legitimacy to her government that it will be gamed if it's possible.
If you have your ballot encoded on a punch card, you should be able go a pc with a punch card reader at the polling place and see what is actually encoded on it. The software to read the card could also be open source.
Or you could have an app on your phone that snaps a photo and reads it according to the settings published by the municipality where you are voting.
All that can happen before you give it to a poll worker.
Yes but I don't want that. I want to be able to read who I voted for with my eyes. I want to be able to check that the ballot box is empty when it comes in and I want to be able to verify that every voter only got one printout that they could check with their eyes what they voted before sliding it in the ballot box.
I don't want anyone to be able to stuff a box with a bunch of votes I didn't see. And yes, voting by mail has some of these problems, but it makes up such a tiny fraction of the vote where I live I put up with it without complaining.
Voting needs to be so secure that when people like Trump call an election rigged we need to be able to laugh at him and show everyone how secure it is.
I participated in the experimental deployment of digital ballot box in a rich north Italian region, during regional elections.
The system worked, and worked well. But overall, it was a failure. Putting the digital in something as simple as voting, just increase the risks at all levels: security, deployment, rechecking, etc.
Pen and paper it's just so much better: simple, cost-effective, safe and understandable by anyone.
I develop software and devices used for data collection during clinical drug trials, and our single biggest "competitor" is the old paper diary. Despite evidence showing that electronic data collection for certain types of trials provides better data, people just don't "trust" anything but pen and paper (never mind the fact that patients could sit in their cars before an appointment and fill in a month's worth of data by just "remembering" how they felt two weeks ago, or how much of a particular medication they took).
Typically sponsors, or clinical research organizations. Sometimes investigators themselves, but that will only affect us if they have the ear of the sponsor.
There are options beyond "hand counting" and "computer software."
IBM was founded, way back when, on what were basically electrical (but not electronic!) census-punch-card-tabulating machines. One could use a similar, or slightly improved, design just as easily, along with correspondent electrical "polling machines" that are essentially a grid of buttons hooked up to pre-patterned card punches.
The whole design could be done by one or two electrical + mechanical engineers in a couple of days (based on previous designs whose patents have long expired) and then given months of testing.
Note that you're reinventing the Votomatic voting machine [1] which is used to punch holes in a standard-sized IBM punched card. It was invented in 1963 and has been used in multiple US elections.
I like IBM punched card equipment as much as anyone [2], but I feel obligated to point out that punched-card voting led to big problems in the 2000 election when ballots in Florida had "hanging chad" and the election ended up being decided by the Supreme Court. (I wonder what fraction of HN readers remember this, and what fraction consider this ancient history.)
To clarify, those were not machine punched, they were pre-perforated with the appropriate hole to be punched by the user, using a stylus, via a printed template that contained the card (holes not referenced directly).
We still use the same mechanism in Silicon Valley, sad to say.
Same in my country, never thought of this as being outdated, just the simplest most cost effective solution for a system that has to be totally secure.
Not the OP, but my country runs a similar system. Each election station counts the ballots by hand. Anyone can signup for counting and/or watch the counting. It's mostly reps from all participating parties. Sometimes few independent citizens show up as well. After all people in the station agree on their total count (they can recount if needed), they phone in their numbers to the central station.
Raw numbers of each station are available publicly. The people who did the counting can check if their numbers were transmitted correctly. Parties usually have preliminary results from their people at stations way before the centralised system processes & publicises them. They'd easily spot any issues. Paper ballots are stored in secured bags and can be recounted if there is a need.
This is literally how the Dutch election system has worked for years, ever since they stopped with the voting machines (which were admittedly a mistake).
The recent change has to do with how the votes were tallied. Basically the way they were transmitted wasn't really tamper-proof, and there wasn't a system in place to determine the difference between the result of the ballot station and the publicly announced result.
Of course they've 'solved' this by replacing the electronic tallying system. Which I can't help but feel is a very misguided way of fixing those problems.
The article confuses two things. First there is voting by paper ballot and manually counting them. We have been doing that for about nine years now. Second is aggregating the votes from all the polling stations, this used to be done with software, but with this decision it will be done manually. The immediate reason for this is an investigation into the security of that software which concluded that it was not safe, and the resulting media attention.
It is yet unclear what "manual aggregation" exactly means. Electronic calculators and Excel were suggested.
Excel would be a terrifying proposition. Much like you should assume the network is always compromised you should also assume the spreadsheet is always broken.
I live in Contra Costa County, California. When my wife and I went to vote during the election, my wife's name "had a problem". A lady came out with a binder to compare to the roll where people sign before grabbing their forms. I got my forms, but my wife was told she had to take an absentee ballot because her name was not in the binder, but was on the roll list. Her name was highlighted in the list on the roll that I signed, just above my name. My name was not highlighted and I was allowed to sign the roll and then get my ballot to vote. I only saw a few pages of the roll, but there were at least three people highlighted on the two pages that were open to signing. The other pages definitely had highlighted entries and my comment to my wife was something along the lines of "why is a substantial number of people highlighted?" when we first walked up.
After a bit of back and forth, someone in charge agreed to let her vote given she was in the roll book, which is the "truth" of who can vote and who cannot. One lady was still somewhat insistent she be given an absentee ballot. I'm still wondering about it today given all the claims around "hacking".
This is total, total aside. But having been in vote counting centres for hours on end during elections here in Ireland. You really feel the democratic process (also how badly educated some people are about how to fill out something basic like a ballot). A shift to digital methods would really change that, and it's something I will miss. Sometimes, tradition, like Prime Ministers Question time in the UK, is something that has important effects worth keeping. You really see the democracy in action!
At least they interviewed a computer scientist. I was amazed in 2001 and have continued to be amazed at "civilians'" (i.e. those not in the industry) faith in all things electronic.
I remember this also from when I was on the school board. The parents and the administration were eager to augment the young kids' curriculum with "technology skills" -- by which they meant Word and Powerpoint. The only opposition was from board members and parents in the computing industry.
Of course now my teenager doesn't even use those tools and had to learn actual technical skills on his own. None of those kids learned anything about what a computer is, or even what "technology" is.
80 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadThough counting by hand has it's own issues (waves at Florida)
Are we really at this point giving up on technology and becoming luddites?
And this is only about aggregating sub-results.
Voting computers for the actual vote ( public ) have been abandonded years ago, again because of vulnerabilities.
This ban was pursued by an old school hacker ( Rob Grongrijp ).
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_vertrouwen_stemcomputers_n...
1) Not all computer scientist are security experts.
2) The security experts came to the conclusion that hardening the system to the point where you could depend on its integrity (and the system still be widely usable) wasn't feasible.
3) Making one process manual in order to protect the outcome != giving up on technology and becoming a luddite.
Thanks Sijmen :)
[0] https://sijmen.ruwhof.net/weblog/1166-how-to-hack-the-upcomi...
Did anyone complain when Iceland PM resigned as a result of the Panama Papers leak and the large-scale protests that ensued? You wouldn't say that that somebody hacked Iceland's democracy. The truth came out and whatever happened was a natural result of that.
No, you wouldn't. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the DNC hacks are all because the Democratic leadership is unwilling to accept responsibility for putting forward a bad candidate. Better blame the Russians, instead! If only the public didn't know the truth, we would have won!
There is a reason we want equal time laws for example, because if I constantly hear one side of the argument, it doesn't matter how true those arguments are, I will come to biased conclusions.
I hate Trump as much as the next person, but there was no shortage of actual dirt that was dug up on him. There was no democratic outrage over the source of his comments about grabbing people's genitals... Or that one page of his tax return.
Even if we accept that it is better to know the info in the DNC leaks, it is still a big problem if a foreign government can wield its influence so easily through illegal computer intrusions. At least to me.
Good news for us, though - both illegal leaks, and illegal hacks are illegal. We already have a mechanism to deal with bad behaviour in this space.
Not at all. It was required behavior. Until the government enacts a useful whistleblowing program someone who witnesses criminal actions has literally no legal choice but to leak. Ignoring it and hoping it goes away is the illegal option.
I want my institutions to be fixable from inside but when they aren't, I simply want them fixed.
Re Downvoter - I understand that you're upset but lashing out, especially against the truth, doesn't help.
No law can compel you to break the law, or cover up abuses of it.
He had every reason to think this was the minimum he had to do. Which has been shown to be true.
I'm not sure if we do, that's kinda my point about why this makes me so uncomfortable. Clearly no one will be held accountable for the DNC hacks.
I think I misread your original comment a little too, the press should definitely report on every thing we just mentioned. They definitely aren't a jury and once it's out, it's out. My issue is framing the actual leaks like they were "whistle blower" leaks like Deep Throat or Snowden. I guess that's mostly personal opinion on the value of the leaks though.
The idea that our political discourse is now shaped by who can get what hacked information and how they can weaponize it (Trump's taxes, DNC's emails) scares the crap out of me. Even more so if it was a foreign government targeting one political party.
I'm rambling a little but the future that this shows me looks terrible (and probably unstoppable).
Funny thing is this alleged hacking was [supposedly] one of the reasons for demanding recounts in the states narrowly won by Trump and the only actual hard evidence discovered was "pro-Clinton discrepancies" in Detroit at which point the recount in the state of Michigan was stopped :)
That is fundamentally different than having a questionable history be exposed by a free press.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnY7D4M4k68
2: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281
3: http://usapoliticszone.com
They don't succumb or respond to public pressure in any meaningful way.
I agree that we should reduce their influence. That would be the opposite of doubling down on our current system of treating them like pseudo-branches of government.
One way to accomplish that would be to ban official recognition of parties, require them to fund and run their own primary elections, and move to multi-member representation districts. All of these things can be done at the state level for state and local offices.
This is just wrong, of course there were. "Grab them by the pussy." Was also a leak and was also published with political intent. (And just quietly, also demonstrated a man is an utterly foul human being whom I would cross the road to avoid.)
Seventeen US intelligence agencies [1] have joined in a consensus opinion that Russia, under Putin's command, ran a targeted campaign aimed at opposing Hillary Clinton and helping to elect Donald Trump. It is well-documented beyond any reasonable doubt in a full report, portions of which (including conclusions) have been made unclassified [2].
This should be troubling to any American. In fact, it seems to be: Donald Trump himself has pledged to conduct an investigation into voter fraud surrounding the 2016 US election [3].
So let's do it. Investigate the circumstances surrounding the 2016 election. Make public the extent and severity of Russian disinformation operations, and hold them accountable. Investigate why James Comey made a fact-free statement contrary to FBI policy during early voting, when 40% of total ballots are cast. Investigate any and all financial dealings with Russia in the run-up to the election, by either candidate. Perform full recounts and investigate voting rolls for evidence of improper exclusion or inclusion. Oh yeah – and check to make sure Hillary Clinton, the tragically flawed candidate who nonetheless put up with mountains of abuse – really did win the popular vote by approximately three million.
1: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/...
2: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/ODNI_Sta...
3: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/trump-voting-...
Right, because the Panama Papers leak wasn't a leak targeting specifically one Icelandic party, traced back to a foreign government with active geopolitical disputes with Iceland who also had similar hacks of other Icelandic parties traced back to them with no corresponding leaks.
There are quite a few additional relevant differences, as well, but I think that suffices to demonstrate that the situations are not, at all, parallel with regard to the applicability of the description in question.
The "hacking of election" is the same thing as having a 1 year media smear campaign between candidates that occurs before the USA elections.
In the American two-party political system, it is very important who the two candidates are, and how they are chosen. While it is formally only the business of the two political parties to choose their candidates however they see fit, in practice also the primaries are an important part of democracy.
If America had a more modern multiparty system, the decisions of individual parties would be less important for the whole.
Most European countries run their presidential elections in two rounds: First round all parties can run their candidates, and second round is between the two winners of the first round. In America the primaries pretty much take the role of the first round in the European model.
(Also, the whole idea of counting votes instead of counting winners per electoral district is a bit alien to the American system, so it's not easy to see how the European system could be implemented in America.)
This the kind of thing you could read here on HN and it would be taken seriously and debated to death until the `hack` term would lose any semblance of definition.
0: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/120667/proces-stemmen-tellen-ned...
We could do that with open source software, commodity PCs and card punch machines and readers.
Then validating that your choices were encoded correctly would be easier. So would counting.
You could count at the voting location to get fast results and recount once the ballots arrive at the central office to confirm that the reported count was correct.
You could keep the initial counts at the polling place. Then later compare those numbers with the second count's to confirm that nothing happened to the ballots.
You also should have a unique number on each ballot that you can later use to look up how your ballot was recorded.
None of this should require advanced technology, new inventions or secrecy.
The standard objection to such a practice is that it facilitates vote buying / selling / coercion by giving the voter a means of proving how he voted.
However, I think it's a good idea nonetheless. All the ballots, randomly numbered, should go into a file available for download. That way, anyone can count them, and any voter can verify that his particular ballot was recorded correctly.
People could use their phone to record the entire time they are in the booth.
Democracy gives so much legitimacy to her government that it will be gamed if it's possible.
Or you could have an app on your phone that snaps a photo and reads it according to the settings published by the municipality where you are voting.
All that can happen before you give it to a poll worker.
I don't want anyone to be able to stuff a box with a bunch of votes I didn't see. And yes, voting by mail has some of these problems, but it makes up such a tiny fraction of the vote where I live I put up with it without complaining.
Voting needs to be so secure that when people like Trump call an election rigged we need to be able to laugh at him and show everyone how secure it is.
The system worked, and worked well. But overall, it was a failure. Putting the digital in something as simple as voting, just increase the risks at all levels: security, deployment, rechecking, etc.
Pen and paper it's just so much better: simple, cost-effective, safe and understandable by anyone.
Who is people here? Participants, scientists, people in other roles?
IBM was founded, way back when, on what were basically electrical (but not electronic!) census-punch-card-tabulating machines. One could use a similar, or slightly improved, design just as easily, along with correspondent electrical "polling machines" that are essentially a grid of buttons hooked up to pre-patterned card punches.
The whole design could be done by one or two electrical + mechanical engineers in a couple of days (based on previous designs whose patents have long expired) and then given months of testing.
I like IBM punched card equipment as much as anyone [2], but I feel obligated to point out that punched-card voting led to big problems in the 2000 election when ballots in Florida had "hanging chad" and the election ended up being decided by the Supreme Court. (I wonder what fraction of HN readers remember this, and what fraction consider this ancient history.)
[1] http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/resources_votomatic.html
[2] http://www.righto.com/2016/05/inside-card-sorters-1920s-data...
We still use the same mechanism in Silicon Valley, sad to say.
As every ballot station count only his ballots, it's quick.
For a presidential election, maybe 30 minutes.
The counting is done by the citizens, so no (easy) frauds are possible.
All ballots are visible, the process is transparent, no suspicion.
I personally think that a 30min delay to get the election results is worth the wait.
It is about what happens after that. The electronic steps after that are deemed not secure enough.
Raw numbers of each station are available publicly. The people who did the counting can check if their numbers were transmitted correctly. Parties usually have preliminary results from their people at stations way before the centralised system processes & publicises them. They'd easily spot any issues. Paper ballots are stored in secured bags and can be recounted if there is a need.
The recent change has to do with how the votes were tallied. Basically the way they were transmitted wasn't really tamper-proof, and there wasn't a system in place to determine the difference between the result of the ballot station and the publicly announced result.
Of course they've 'solved' this by replacing the electronic tallying system. Which I can't help but feel is a very misguided way of fixing those problems.
It is yet unclear what "manual aggregation" exactly means. Electronic calculators and Excel were suggested.
After a bit of back and forth, someone in charge agreed to let her vote given she was in the roll book, which is the "truth" of who can vote and who cannot. One lady was still somewhat insistent she be given an absentee ballot. I'm still wondering about it today given all the claims around "hacking".
Could you instead mean to say a provisional ballot?
I remember this also from when I was on the school board. The parents and the administration were eager to augment the young kids' curriculum with "technology skills" -- by which they meant Word and Powerpoint. The only opposition was from board members and parents in the computing industry.
Of course now my teenager doesn't even use those tools and had to learn actual technical skills on his own. None of those kids learned anything about what a computer is, or even what "technology" is.