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Electronic voting is such a liability for exactly this reason, it gives bad actors plausible doubt to throw on an election result.
Pen/pencil and paper. Much more secure.
Edit: to newer commenters. Please watch these excellent videos.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
And no, I am not supporting the Nazis. I'm saying the whole reason electronic voting is stupid is because it makes it easier for them to plausibly claim the vote was rigged. Because it is easier than with properly conducted paper voting.
And that just because previous elections in Brazil conducted with paper voting were less secure, isn't an argument for electronic voting.
Also edit to add, being un-networked will not protect you from state actors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
this was literally the narrative to try and make them less secure by the bolsonaros when they were in power. the brazilian voting machine is actually state of the art and they know it.
The way to make it secure is to just use pencil/pen and paper and manually count. I really don't know why people cling to electronic voting.
Works just fine in multiple countries, including here in Australia.
(inb4 Brazil is way bigger than Australia. Yeah, so per capita they have more people to count votes...)
listen though: the voting machines are already secure.
paper can be messed with. they have to be manually counted by people every time. that's why the literal nazis in brazil wanted to revert to paper.
No please you listen
Reliably verifying this is a near impossibility.
Tom Scott lays it out well in these videos:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
They want to revert to paper without any of the procedural steps needed to make it secure. You are absolutely conflating the fact that they want paper voting (so they can cheat) with how proper secure paper voting actually works.
Yes, they need to be manually counted. This works incredibly well where I'm from (Australia), and other countries.
You need the votes to be counted, by hand, in the presence of many people, and with invigilators from all parties/candidates making sure no one is cheating.
We even have preferential voting, which is even more laborious, and yet we still do it.
With such a set up you'd have to have a conspiracy of literally thousands of people in order to affect the vote. And if people are just letting a vote be rigged if it's an open secret, well the only solution to that is mass action and you have far greater societal issues. All election systems rely on people fighting to keep it fair.
Sorry, but voting machines are a band aid that do not make elections secure, and give people a false sense of security, while also allowing bad actors to throw doubt over results (because of aforementioned impossibility of verification).
Like, sorry. I'm glad Lula won, but electronic voting is still shit.
stop being stubborn when the facts point elsewhere.
paper votes are part of their strategy to manipulate elections by stealing ballots and more. paper is much easier to fuck with than encrypted electronics.
you are literally echoing the nazi narrative for weakening brazilian elections.
How?
No, it isn't easier to fuck with. It can be fucked with easily if you don't put the necessary protections in place to stop it. Which from what I'm being told is what was happening in Brazil.
I'm pointing out why electronic voting is stupid precisely because it gives them something to point at. This is precisely why it's so important to not have electronic voting. We wouldn't be having this conversation if the election were beyond reproach (which is the case in countries like Australia).
You're clinging on to electronic voting because your side won, and that voting securitu was even worse before, and I'm very happy Lula did win, but it doesn't stop the fact that elections are less secure if you do them with electronic voting.
Seriously, go watch those videos, they lay it out much better than me.
Lost me on that. Pen and paper aren't at all more secure than Brazilian voting machines.
They are essentially low spec linux computers without ports, internet acess or easy way in. The only thing they do it store results and print them on paper.
Even if one manages to crack open a machine and sneak something inside, there is security to prevent it to pass as genuine
The internal state of the machine is not observable and not auditable. Anything stored in a computer can be falsified and the voter cannot know that it recorded their vote correctly. Unless the printing you are referring to is that it prints a paper ballot for each voter that they can check and then drop in a ballot box, then there is a step in the process that scrutineers can't have eyes on. Even if the software is open source and the scrutineers got to watch it being compiled and installed on the machines, there are so many unobservables. Computers are literally billions of times more complicated and harder to audit than pencil and paper.
The only electronic voting system I would even begin to entertain trusting is one that basically just fills the ballot out for you to make sure it is legible, and that you can validate the paper ballot. Such a system could then also keep its own count, giving a much quicker unofficial count before the paper ballots are counted, but I don't really think it's worth it. It is still an extremely complex machine that it would be easy to hide some sort of surveillance/wireless connection in, and anyone who can inspect the running total counts can also use that to determine how each person that goes through the booth voted.
There is value in the brutal simplicity of pencil and paper, folding your ballot, and putting it in a box. It's a system anyone can understand and that the human eye can audit.
Which can also be easily falsified
No it can't, and that's the point.
You have cast ballots always under multiple eyes, and have invigilators from all parties that supervise the vote counting.
To pull off falsification would require a massive conspiracy that would almost 100% be leaked.
Two great videos on the topic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
In conclusion you're incorrect in my opinion.
Wrong, Brazil is proof of that.
It doesn't matter if it leaks or not or how big the conspiracy is, if it happens it immediately casts doubt on the validity of whole process. Besides, "accidentally" getting rid of one or two votes, or "finding" one extra vote, has a bigger chance of going undetected and, even if caught, can be excused as "oops, my bad!"
Brazil's electoral frauds rarely aimed for presidential votes, they were much more often for state deputies and city councilors, where the difference between the last one getting elected and the first one out is usually very small. In the 1994 elections, the state of Rio de Janeiro had to null the results for state deputy and federal deputy. Fraud was rampant. https://www.terra.com.br/noticias/brasil/ha-30-anos-fraude-eleitoral-no-rio-apressou-projeto-da-urna-eletronica,e9c86b3b8ba6575111c5fed66407caf9qn1fx78n.html
Some notable examples of fraud happening with paper, as per that article:
You said in another comment something about "deeper social issues". Guess what Brazil has in spades?
How? Because elections were conducted insecurely before? This isn't a point against paper voting, is a point against how paper voting was administered in Brazil before. By what what you're telling me, poorly.
This doesn't discount from the fact that you can never reliably verify a voting machine hasn't been tampered with, unless you're going to have invigilators from all parties in all elections supervise everything from the hardware manufacture, to the writing of the software, to the installation of the software and supervised by all parties while they are in storage. In practice this a near impossibility.
Whereas you absolute can do it for the limited period in which voting occurs with paper ballots.
So, don't do the necessary adminstrative mitigations against these???
You need all parts of the process to be sufficiently supervised by all parties.
Like, I get this situation was worse before, but that isn't an argument for electronic voting.
Please go watch these videos: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
There was a saying in Brazil, up to the 90s, that "elections are won in the counting" - fraud was rampant, especially at municipal/state level and the electronic urns got rid of that.
Paper can only be considered more secure if you have special paper and special printing like money bills, otherwise they can be falsified much more easily.
Skill issue.
(Edit: realising this may be received by non-first-language English speakers, it's a meme. I'm not actually implying people in Brazil don't have skill haha. Just that it's definitely possible to have secure physical ballot elections, and just because it wasn't in Brazil, doesn't mean voting machines are better)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pFD5npXRYi8
Paper is more secure, but only if you pair it with procedural mitigations against bad actors.
For example, one thing we do in Australia is having representatives from all parties invigilate the vote counting to ensure it's correct.
Just because it was worse in Brazil before, isn't an argument for electronic voting.
Compromising a machine is much more likely than creating a conspiracy of hundreds if not thousands of people that would be required to steal a paper and pencil election in Australia.
You're free to point how to compromise a significant enough number of machines that never connect to the internet and whose firmware/code is audited by several parties and institutions before being compiled and installed on them, some time before elections proper and also after the elections
Here ya go:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
That does not explain at all "how to compromise a significant enough number of machines that never connect to the internet and whose firmware/code is audited by several parties and institutions before being compiled and installed on them", but I'll indulge you
All in all, of the problems Tom raised, only 2 are really valid for Brazil (prove the installed system wasn't tampered with, prove there was no USB disk swipe) and both are dealt with with multi-party oversight, which is the same thing used to protect the validity of paper voting.
Can I take a moment to appreciate you as the only person so far to meaningful engage on this. It's extremely late here so I won't respond now (other than in-short saying things like Stuxnet still make me sceptical about the validity of verifying the software running is actually what you think it is, and no, supervision requirements aren't the same because we don't have to indefinitely supervise our paper ballots, but you absolutely do with voting machines if you plan on using them again).
I will respond in full over the next day or two, but just wanted to send you thanks for actually making solid, reasoned arguments, unlike others who seem to be pretending like the existence of badly run paper elections somehow proves me wrong, which is very frustrating!
Night mate
Cheers, mate
Gotta go back to the old tried and true Butterfly Ballot system. That never fails.
Nothing in the election machinery prevents a candidate from claiming fraud.
Certainly, nothing about pen and paper ballots prevents disreputable agents from stuffing ballot boxes or just refusing to count opposition votes entirely.
But it's much less plausible when you have more secure voting systems.
Two great videos by Tom Scott. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
This is easily solved by never having any portion of the vote counting and transport happen alone. And representatives from all parties all invigilate so there's no funny business.
Not to brag, but there's almost never any doubt in our elections, and rarely anyone claiming fraud.
It's not perfect, but sorry, Australian elections are better than any country using electronic voting.
You simply cannot verify electronic voting in the same way you can physical writing, and anyone claiming otherwise is lying or doesn't understand.
No lay voter has any idea of what constituents "secure" in a material sense.
All you have are people insisting "my system is safe, your system is not". And this thread is a perfect illustration.
Hand marked paper ballots are notoriously prone to failure. Nothing about them is materially more secure than a printed ballot. And yet...
It isn't easily solved, as the number of venues and volume of votes leave ample opportunities for shenanigans (or, at least, alleged shenanigans).
The Ohio Recount in 2004 is a classic example.
There is something inherantly more secure about physical ballots. They exist in the physical world and need to be physically counted, and can't be just erased by the flip of a bit.
I can fully wipe a harddrive fairly trivially, I can't fully erase a pencil mark without some serious chemicals, an iron and probably a bunch else.
First of all, the USA in general has terrible voting practices. Second you're right, no system can ever fully defend against people making shit up and getting voters to distrust an election, however:
An average person can fully comprehend how a paper voting system is kept secure. An average person cannot do the same for electronic voting because inherantly it gets into software and hardware security.
I really encourage you to watch those videos I sent, Tom Scott lays out the arguments very well.
There isn't. They can be easily misread and miscounted, they can be misfiled, hidden, lost, and destroyed. They are a bitch to transport securely. They can vary in format and interpretation. They're comically easy to spoil.
No they can't.
Again, jump back to Bush v Gore. Or go all the way back to Nixon v Kennedy or Tammeny Hall New York. Hell, consider the elections in Iraq and Vietnam and Korea after the various US occupations, and the comically one-sided election results. Or elections in the old Soviet Bloc, which Americans routinely dismissed as fraudulent. Or the most recent elections in Latin America that remain openly disputed.
Very easy to point to historical moments where the paper ballot systems were distrusted. That's pretty much the whole history of their use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore
You mean the classic example of once again fucking around with something not just pencil and paper, in a country with a history of laughably bad voting systems?
You are also just lumping in bad election procedure and declaring electronic voting better.
I'm not saying paper elections are secure just by the virtue that they're on paper, and you framing it that way is pretty dishonest. I'm saying that the most secure electronic election can never be as secure as the most secure paper election.
You've just ignored all I've said about invilators from all parties, adequate supervision of all ballots at all times. Do errors happen? Sure, but in far, far smaller fraction that what you could achieve by compromising election machines.
The fact that machines are un-networked is a laughable defence. Ever heard of Stuxnet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
This is ABSOLUTELY within the capabilities of state actors. Like not just theoretically. It's already happened in multiple cases.
I'm sorry, but everyone could learn a thing or two from the Australian system. We certainly don't have a fair democracy because we live under capitalism, and the wealthy will always use their influence to get their way, but at least our election procedures are probably one of the best, if not the best in the world.
If you want to just pretend like electronic voting is secure, then have fun I guess. But you're literally just sticking your fingers in your ears.
Pencil-marked central-count optical scan ballots had a 5.7% undercount rate in Florida counties that adopted the technique.
You can find out more here: https://www.usccr.gov/files/historical/2001/01-021.pdf
These were not unique to Florida, by any moans.
Just from the table of contents, this was an absolutely cluster fuck of a terribly run election. I beg you please stop misrepresenting the argument.
The best paper elections possible are more secure than the best electronic elections possible.
You keep describing terribly run paper elections and pretending it's an argument in your favour.
If you refuse to address this point I'm kinda done with this.
"Paper ballots are more secure!"
"Obviously, the textbook case that exposes all the problems with manually managing and tallying physical ballots is beside the point"
Okay, sure.
Electronically input printed ballots are the best method of tabulating an election result we have formulated to date.
There is absolutely no benefit to using pencils on paper. None. Zero. Zip. Bupkiss.
Your fetish for pencils doesn't change with the election season. It just becomes blindingly apparent when election is fumbled badly enough to necessitate a deep dive into what went wrong.
the machines can also be rigged, and often for the fascists.
Exactly, electronic voting is so dumb and I don't know why people defend it.
It's almost like they're offended and think I'm saying that Lula shouldn't have won, which I'm not saying at all.
Electronic voting is just stupid regardless of whether I agree with the result or not
plus they are all owned by gop aligned people.
In Brazil too?