2020 US Election mega thread

[Tik-Tok]

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All I can figure is this is turning into a "Real Housewives of Washington", or maybe like watching a sports team where you want your side to win. I've never watched reality TV, but the drama with all of this certainly makes me think I am now...

Sports teams is exactly how most people treat politics these days (or maybe since the beginning of democracy)

[syscal]

Going to be interesting to see how things go with all of this data analysis being brought forth as evidence of irregularities. All of this voting data, in the contested states, really provides a means to discover anomalies in this election. Sure, there are many explanations for the anomalies, but it *should* be enough to prompt an audit...at least in any area that isn't afraid of an audit. Also, there are plenty of data analysis that have been disproven by other sources - so don't believe everything you see. (https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78)

Some of these expert witnesses, as far as I can tell, are doing this analysis as private businesses/citizens out of their own pockets. Yes I'm sure there is financial incentive (ie acknowledgement) for doing so, but it's not something that can be swept under the rug like it might be if their bosses were in government or otherwise. I actually appreciate the dude that used his contact centre (cold calling) to verify absentee ballots. It's so old school it's nearly impossible to argue.

One of the issues they are running into is trying to point out (in the courts) ahead of time that there is a problem, only to be told it's not a problem until there is proof of damage...and then coming after the fact and being told "the damage is already done, why come to use now?". I mentioned this earlier in regards to cases being thrown out simply to illustrate that the court system is quite complex. Skipping any number of steps, even though they may be redundant and useless, gives the next judge the ability to ask "Why didn't you bring this up earlier? It must not have been such a concern then".

Again...unsure what is going to become of all of this, but it's an extremely complex process that is mostly pushed aside by the narrative that once the press "calls the election" it's a done deal.

Fascinating to see how IT could (allegedly) be used to manipulate an election but then, by nature of the data created, also be the downfall of those who are doing the manipulating (allegedly). I'm obviously super interested in this part, but I don't appreciate the idea that because it *could* be hacked - it was. I do 100% support the notion of auditing those machines though, as long as there are appropriate controls during the audit.

Evidence exists, but will it be useful to turn this around? Who knows. I do think new legislation is coming down the pipes for election law regardless of who becomes Pres.

EDIT - I listened to the one ex-senator who mentioned the voting machines being connected by ethernet, despite claims that they weren't on the internet, and first thing in my mind was "yea you can have all of these devices connected to a network, but with a firewall/router in place they could still have internet access restricted". So I guess it's going to come down to interpretation of the law, as well as proving safeguards were in place to prevent direct access to the internet via ACL's or what have you. I dunno, some of this expert testimony from the IT guys tells me that they paint the worst picture so they can get permission to audit everything...which honestly would clear things up either way. What's the worst case scenario for the Trump team...? finding nothing at all? That's a win for everyone really.

[revelations]

Some of the devices sent the data in other forms, over the internet - but not directly.

While the voting devices themselves may not have been connected to the internet, in many cases their data was defintely sent electronically

[ExtraSlow]

If you can buy and sell billions of dollars worth of stocks and commodities online securely, surely there exists a method for secure online voting.

Paper ballots are the least secure and reasonable voting method out of all the options.

[Tik-Tok]

All these years and I thought that the reason they didn't have secure voting was because votes were supposed to be anonymous, but then this election shows me they actually can track votes to voters.

So why isn't it more secure?

[sabad66]

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All these years and I thought that the reason they didn't have secure voting was because votes were supposed to be anonymous, but then this election shows me they actually can track votes to voters.

So why isn't it more secure?

My understanding is that they can link batches of votes to batches of people but not to individual voters. Basically they get a big batch of mail in votes that have signatures on the outside envelope then another secret envelope with the ballot inside that envelope. Then once they validate the outside envelope signature, they toss the secret envelope into a big pile with all the other verified ballots then count those separately.

[syscal]

Depends on state. Some allow you to track online.

The one Colonel keeps mentioning the VOATZ from MIT as a secure alternative but Google shows nothing but articles about security issues. DuckDuckGo of course shows info more like a standard search. It’s only my second time using that site to search but I’m a little surprised at the difference in results.

[zechs]

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Paper ballots are the least secure and reasonable voting method out of all the options.

Hmm, I don't think so.

Paper with ID is about as secure as it gets, because the source of votes (individual ID's) are unique and physical. It is really, really hard to fake individual votes if a paper copy, with ID, with the person physically present is required. And then it still maintains anonymity.

As soon as you go digital, anything is possible.

The real crime with voter security is not requiring government mandated ID. Its such an obvious requirement to hold free and fair elections.

[Mitsu3000gt]

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If you can buy and sell billions of dollars worth of stocks and commodities online securely, surely there exists a method for secure online voting.

Paper ballots are the least secure and reasonable voting method out of all the options.

I am pretty sure paper ballots are the safest way of voting because they can't get 'hacked' like every voting machine can (in theory). There is no way to simply change numbers or results because there is physical paper for every vote. For example at hacking conferences like DEFCON, they were able to break into every single one of the ~100 voting machines brought to test vulnerabilities. Similar principle to why nuclear launch codes and some other super important things are done with floppy disks or other 'ancient' tech still - often low tech is the hardest to manipulate or hack. Paper ballots still have their own problems like people being idiots and not filling them out correctly, but that's a separate issue.

[The_Rural_Juror]

[Xtrema]

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I am pretty sure paper ballots are the safest way of voting because they can't get 'hacked' like every voting machine can (in theory). There is no way to simply change numbers or results because there is physical paper for every vote. For example at hacking conferences like DEFCON, they were able to break into every single one of the ~100 voting machines brought to test vulnerabilities. Similar principle to why nuclear launch codes and some other super important things are done with floppy disks or other 'ancient' tech still - often low tech is the hardest to manipulate or hack. Paper ballots still have their own problems like people being idiots and not filling them out correctly, but that's a separate issue.

Given people are stupid, it's the simplest system that everyone understands.

The minute the word Block Chain comes out, you lose 80% of population.

[killramos]

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Given people are stupid, it's the simplest system that everyone understands.

The minute the word Block Chain comes out, you lose 80% of population.

For good reason

[ExtraSlow]

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Hmm, I don't think so. Paper with ID is about as secure as it gets, because the source of votes (individual ID's) are unique and physical. It is really, really hard to fake individual votes if a paper copy, with ID, with the person physically present is required. And then it still maintains anonymity.

As soon as you go digital, anything is possible. The real crime with voter security is not requiring government mandated ID. Its such an obvious requirement to hold free and fair elections.

I disagree with every part of this post. The idea that a system requiring human hands and eyeballs to distribute, read, verify and aggregate ~200 million pieces of paper is "secure" or "reliable" is insane. Adding in the layer that the ballots themselves have different physical characteristics in different states just layers on the insanity.

Shit, the likelihood is that data entry errors are larger in that system than ANY potential deliberate modification of the outcome.

[syscal]

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I disagree with every part of this post. The idea that a system requiring human hands and eyeballs to distribute, read, verify and aggregate ~200 million pieces of paper is "secure" or "reliable" is insane. Adding in the layer that the ballots themselves have different physical characteristics in different states just layers on the insanity.

Shit, the likelihood is that data entry errors are larger in that system than ANY potential deliberate modification of the outcome.

This is incorrect, especially right now. Human error would certainly occur, but not in any capacity that could swing an election.

One great way to mitigate these issues, with the exception of manipulation by the software after the fact, is to allow a poll watcher from the Republican party and one from the Democrat party observe the count (the LAW). This is where it falls apart because these key counties, like Maricopa, in these swing states went out of their way to prevent meaningful observation. Yes, the election was certified in those states but that's not the end of the road necessarily.

[The_Rural_Juror]

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This is incorrect, especially right now. Human error would certainly occur, but not in any capacity that could swing an election.

One great way to mitigate these issues, with the exception of manipulation by the software after the fact, is to allow a poll watcher from the Republican party and one from the Democrat party observe the count (the LAW). This is where it falls apart because these key counties, like Maricopa, in these swing states went out of their way to prevent meaningful observation. Yes, the election was certified in those states but that's not the end of the road necessarily.

The Kraken sucks. Moar memes for you.

[zechs]

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I disagree with every part of this post. The idea that a system requiring human hands and eyeballs to distribute, read, verify and aggregate ~200 million pieces of paper is "secure" or "reliable" is insane. Adding in the layer that the ballots themselves have different physical characteristics in different states just layers on the insanity.

Shit, the likelihood is that data entry errors are larger in that system than ANY potential deliberate modification of the outcome.

The security comes from the fact that everything is decentralized... Kind of like how blockchain works.

I never talked about anything besides security, you brought up a whole bunch of points that have nothing to do with security. But sure, lets go there.

For being accurate, yes, I think in the case of "is this mark next to X or Y" that the accuracy would be quite high. People are stupid, but saying that they can't distinguish between two dots is a bit much. These are our elections we are talking about, so hire people if necessary.

There are so many simple, easily verified ways to check paper ballots, it just takes more time. Versus one line of code and "oops lol an extra 100k votes, can't invalidate them because we'd disenfranchise people".

Electronic systems are inherently insecure by their very nature, they help communicate information, not hide it.

[syscal]

Don't forget about voter confidence. That seems more important to Americans than anything else, at least in the context of this election.

[sabad66]

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I disagree with every part of this post. The idea that a system requiring human hands and eyeballs to distribute, read, verify and aggregate ~200 million pieces of paper is "secure" or "reliable" is insane. Adding in the layer that the ballots themselves have different physical characteristics in different states just layers on the insanity.

Shit, the likelihood is that data entry errors are larger in that system than ANY potential deliberate modification of the outcome.

This is actually the gap that dominion voting machines fill. You vote on the machine and it prints a paper copy with the same selections. Machine voting makes it easy to tabulate the counts (removing the human error piece), and the backup paper copy is used for recounts/discrepancies/audits. Assuming the paper ballots are secured and not altered, it’s actually a pretty good system with checks and balances on both sides.

Then you add in the fact that these are all locally managed and decentralized like zechs mentioned and overall it becomes really hard to do the massive coordinated fraud that Democrats are accused of

[syscal]

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This is actually the gap that dominion voting machines fill. You vote on the machine and it prints a paper copy with the same selections. Machine voting makes it easy to tabulate the counts (removing the human error piece), and the backup paper copy is used for recounts/discrepancies/audits. Assuming the paper ballots are secured and not altered, it’s actually a pretty good system with checks and balances on both sides.

Then you add in the fact that these are all locally managed and decentralized like zechs mentioned and overall it becomes really hard to do the massive coordinated fraud that Democrats are accused of

The machines themselves are a very small part of the discussion, so this is where people are getting things wrong.

There are hundreds of sworn affidavits, and I've listened to probably 20 testimonies in these hearings so far, where poll workers were not allowed to observe the counts.

Here's an example from AZ from multiple witnesses in multiple districts. Duplicate ballots are ones that were created to replace ballots that can't be scanned. They take the bad ballot, copy over the selections to a new one, and then scan it in the machine. This SHOULD be done under observation by both parties, but they would stack these in a bin and someone in a cubicle or other room would recreate those by hand and under no observation at all. When questioning why they can't observe, the supervisors simply didn't answer. So, no meaningful observation at all. That said, the estimated count is in the 1000's at each location this happened. For example, faxed in votes from the military.

Other examples were signature matching being accepted, where witnesses state in their sworn affidavits that the signatures being accepted were nothing even close and quite often the exact same over and over.

This is one of the arguments being made. Dominion really has nothing to do with it. How many votes to turn AZ? 10,457 difference, so 5229 votes...

[ExtraSlow]

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Don't forget about voter confidence. That seems more important to Americans than anything else, at least in the context of this election.

I can agree with this.