given the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines (people would still complain)
disclosure, i am biased and think everyone should use paper.
The fact that a single company has this much potential influence on US elections is the real issue here. The party affiliation of the owner is irrelevant to that.
If you're upset about this today - you should be, but you should have been upset about it last week, last year, and for the past decade or so.
Can somebody point out the "MAGA Oligarch" link here? Scott Leiendecker is a former Republican election official, and the linked article says the company is "repped by" (presumably a PR agency?) that uses Trumpian imagery, but that seems to be the extent of the connection.
(I know that already might seem a lot to some people, but I was wondering if there was anything to justify the title beyond that.)
- vote marking machines (eg it marks a voter readable ballot that is the official record). You get fast preliminary results and improved voter accessibility but still have very high tamper resistance.
?? In NYS the main process for voting is voter marks their paper ballot and then scans the marked ballot into the “reader” (DS200). Optionally, there is a “marking” machine (Automark) which has accessibility features. But this machine only marks the ballot, and does not read. The marked ballot must still be scanned.
Are you proposing to eliminate the single scanner and have a new machine developed which marks and scans ballots?
If that’s the case, that would be incredibly expensive and greatly slow the voting process. I say this having worked at polls for 15 years.
Also, in the article—
> “…the SAVE Act got a lot of attention […] because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack.”
Some confusion in this, because while a passport may prove citizenship, it is not sufficient to prove eligibility to vote. Why? Because it doesn’t show your address, and eligibility from the Bureau of Elections standpoint is residency in an Assembly District/Election District. IE, you vote where you live because of local candidates and initiatives.
If there was no fraud, and all the recent elections were secure then this wouldn’t matter.
My contention has always been that until we see the basis of identity secured like Estonia/CAC/PIV/Passports through strong identity proofing and robust processes, we are not ready to talk about the Pandora’s box that is voting machines.
The hand-wringing in this article about Republicans signing up election monitors and having lawyers on stand-by is absurd. Both parties pour huge amounts of resources every election into this sort of thing and aggressively pursue it. If you really want integrity in elections you should want interested parties to be able to audit the results and mount legal challenges if they feel it is justified (and, yes, that means all interested parties and not just who you consider to be the "good guys").
Once the company sells the voting machine to some state or city I would assume the voting machine is not "owned" by the company anymore. I'm also assuming they aren't in any way connected to a network and are all isolated independent systems.
The state should be auditing them prior to using them to see that they work as expected.
Maybe we should just go back to the old school way? It seems like there have been grievances about voting machines for so long and it causes distrust to the entire system. The whole hanging chad issue in the 2000 election is a prime example.
1. It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process.
2. Which is it? The MAGA people tried many lawsuits and many appeals to voting authorities for investigations. The unanimous response “safest election ever”. Ok fine, then no one should have a problem with whoever owns the voting machines, because there’s so little risk, only crazy people would even ask for investigation.
Which is it?
Ofc there is a problem with a single company or organization controlling a nontrivial segment of the voting machines used in the US. And ofc it was a problem in 2020 as well. The solution is to get easy-to-tamper-but-hard-to-detect stuff out of the voting process. Pen and paper and video recorded hand counts in front of witnesses. Same night results. It is not rocket science and most of the rest of the world does it this way.
“there is a problem with a single company or organization controlling a nontrivial segment of the voting machines used in the US”
Even if you have many companies providing voting machines, it does not deal with the problem of distrust in national elections. Many elections that have recently occurred come down to the votes of a particular small area of the country or district. These districts are likely to be dominated by one voting machine or type of vote machine purchased by the election board at that district. So, effectively you still have a single or a few voting machines determining elections.
How did a man/company with annual revenue <$20M/year obtain the capital necessary to purchase a company that has $787M in receivables from the Fox News settlement?
Aside from cryptographically sound and open source end to end verifiable options there is one simple alternative still used in many other countries and jurisdictions:
1. voters mark paper ballots
2. observers from all parties watch the counting
3. results are tallied publicly
Yes, this is very much feasible; and no, this is not the right domain to be ingeniously efficient and cost sensitive. US being the richest country in the world or some such, etc..
Slightly tangential question: Why doesn't the government "own" the intellectual property for their citizens to vote?
I'm all for free markets and capitalism, but I think its not clear to me why some fundamental responsibilities and operations of the government can be contracted out. Is there a way this make sense to anyone?
It's OK because voting machines are always correct and voting fraud never happens, especially not late at night in Georgia when all the observers have been sent home, or while windows are being covered so observers can't see in.
Digital voting is not secure and never will be, which is the main reason it exists. Nobody really wants secure elections, they want to win elections. Look at prop 50 for a recent example.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 61.6 ms ] threadgiven the money required it seems like it with always be one or the other that owns these? Maybe governments should own the machines (people would still complain)
disclosure, i am biased and think everyone should use paper.
If you're upset about this today - you should be, but you should have been upset about it last week, last year, and for the past decade or so.
I have been. What's next?
Hard to take this statement serious when all the headlines in this substack echo leftwing bias. At least be intellectually honest about your intent.
(I know that already might seem a lot to some people, but I was wondering if there was anything to justify the title beyond that.)
- vote marking machines (eg it marks a voter readable ballot that is the official record). You get fast preliminary results and improved voter accessibility but still have very high tamper resistance.
- risk limiting audits in all jurisdictions
?? In NYS the main process for voting is voter marks their paper ballot and then scans the marked ballot into the “reader” (DS200). Optionally, there is a “marking” machine (Automark) which has accessibility features. But this machine only marks the ballot, and does not read. The marked ballot must still be scanned.
Are you proposing to eliminate the single scanner and have a new machine developed which marks and scans ballots?
If that’s the case, that would be incredibly expensive and greatly slow the voting process. I say this having worked at polls for 15 years.
Also, in the article—
> “…the SAVE Act got a lot of attention […] because it requires in-person registration with specific documentary proof of citizenship (like a passport or State ID + birth certificate) that millions of citizens lack.”
Some confusion in this, because while a passport may prove citizenship, it is not sufficient to prove eligibility to vote. Why? Because it doesn’t show your address, and eligibility from the Bureau of Elections standpoint is residency in an Assembly District/Election District. IE, you vote where you live because of local candidates and initiatives.
My contention has always been that until we see the basis of identity secured like Estonia/CAC/PIV/Passports through strong identity proofing and robust processes, we are not ready to talk about the Pandora’s box that is voting machines.
Votes are recorded by filling in the dots on a scantronic ballot form.
The form is scanned and the votes are tallied electronically.
The original paper ballot is archived, and can be re-scanned (or hand counted) if a recount is required.
This combines the best of both worlds: speed and accuracy of electronic tally, and the original hand-filled paper ballot is retained as a record.
(Mixed rating, according to Snopes.)
The state should be auditing them prior to using them to see that they work as expected.
1. It is crazy that we are using machines in any way in the voting process.
2. Which is it? The MAGA people tried many lawsuits and many appeals to voting authorities for investigations. The unanimous response “safest election ever”. Ok fine, then no one should have a problem with whoever owns the voting machines, because there’s so little risk, only crazy people would even ask for investigation.
Which is it?
Ofc there is a problem with a single company or organization controlling a nontrivial segment of the voting machines used in the US. And ofc it was a problem in 2020 as well. The solution is to get easy-to-tamper-but-hard-to-detect stuff out of the voting process. Pen and paper and video recorded hand counts in front of witnesses. Same night results. It is not rocket science and most of the rest of the world does it this way.
Even if you have many companies providing voting machines, it does not deal with the problem of distrust in national elections. Many elections that have recently occurred come down to the votes of a particular small area of the country or district. These districts are likely to be dominated by one voting machine or type of vote machine purchased by the election board at that district. So, effectively you still have a single or a few voting machines determining elections.
There are some key details missing in this story.
1. voters mark paper ballots 2. observers from all parties watch the counting 3. results are tallied publicly
Yes, this is very much feasible; and no, this is not the right domain to be ingeniously efficient and cost sensitive. US being the richest country in the world or some such, etc..
I'm all for free markets and capitalism, but I think its not clear to me why some fundamental responsibilities and operations of the government can be contracted out. Is there a way this make sense to anyone?