Can you explain what you find Nefarious about this project that's clearly from a hackathon?
"With an emphasis on social distancing and remote engagement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic mail-in voting surged from 24.9% to 50.3% of ballots 1 in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, respectively. This surge will also trigger an unfortunate increase in ballots rejected due to the avoidable human error; we’ve already started to see the effects, with half a million ballots rejected 2 in the 2020 primaries. As first-time voters, this issue is extremely critical to us as our generation seeks democratic representation. In an effort to reduce rejection rates, we introduce BallotProof, a methodology built for faster, smarter, and more secure validation of ballots."
I'm as sceptical of DOGE as the next guy, but this is just silly. Extremely alarmist title easily dismissed by checking the readme:
> The generation script (generate.py) enables the generation of semi-randomized ballots that fit certain satisfiability criteria. We use these sample ballots as tests for model functionality.
Yes, sure, this could easily be reworked to subvert democracy bla bla bla but it looks like this was part of a university project or similar from 2020, I think we can try and take this in good faith. Save the ragebaiting for the really harmful stuff.
> The generation script (generate.py) enables the generation of semi-randomized ballots that fit certain satisfiability criteria. We use these sample ballots as tests for model functionality.
5 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 24.0 ms ] thread"With an emphasis on social distancing and remote engagement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic mail-in voting surged from 24.9% to 50.3% of ballots 1 in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, respectively. This surge will also trigger an unfortunate increase in ballots rejected due to the avoidable human error; we’ve already started to see the effects, with half a million ballots rejected 2 in the 2020 primaries. As first-time voters, this issue is extremely critical to us as our generation seeks democratic representation. In an effort to reduce rejection rates, we introduce BallotProof, a methodology built for faster, smarter, and more secure validation of ballots."
> The generation script (generate.py) enables the generation of semi-randomized ballots that fit certain satisfiability criteria. We use these sample ballots as tests for model functionality.
Yes, sure, this could easily be reworked to subvert democracy bla bla bla but it looks like this was part of a university project or similar from 2020, I think we can try and take this in good faith. Save the ragebaiting for the really harmful stuff.
> The generation script (generate.py) enables the generation of semi-randomized ballots that fit certain satisfiability criteria. We use these sample ballots as tests for model functionality.