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She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. (thiswillhold.substack.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Five@slrpnk.net to c/usa@midwest.social

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[–] Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The most wtf part is using windows on a voting machine and the fact that windows trusts an UPS that connected via usb, I'm not sure how true it is but I'd kind of believe that, as usb is the best way to attack airgapped systems

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 hours ago

The voting village at defcon is a nightmare, a dream or a joke depending on your perspective

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The most WTF part is that you all use voting machines. In Canadian federal elections every vote is counted by hand, end of story.

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago

IMO there's nothing wrong with both.

Machine prints out paper ballot, properly inscribed with the selected vote so that there's no "ooh, but there's a smudge here that might mean a vote for X". It could also print out a 3D barcode that contains metadata such as time, place, machine, checksums, etc
Human who voted can verify the correct box is selected etc.
Vote slip goes into second machine where it's counted (or a box for later counts)
Paper vote slips are maintained for recount/validation purposes

[–] minoscopede@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

💯 we should all be very wary of voting machines. If it's not fully open source and cryptographically verifiable, it's not secure.

[–] Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Same in the UK

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I can't speak for the whole US, but in Connecticut we use a Scantron sort of system where you fill in bubbles on paper and feed it into a machine. This leaves us with a paper ballot in addition to the machine's totals. Using machines isn't necessarily a bad thing, it makes the count a lot faster and it's not like human counters couldn't lie. If other states don't have that paper backup though, they should.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

We use the same thing for civic and provincial elections in Canada, but for federal it's strictly hand count only.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

The reason governments use windows is because Microsoft paid to have the various certifications done that are required by regulators. That's why when they do use Linux they end up using something like RHEL (the support contracts factor in too)