CISA: Election Security Rumor vs. Reality

https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol

by gigama • 4 years ago

30 63 4 years ago

These are all of the following form:

Rumor: Bad things can happen.
Reality: Bad things cannot happen.
Facts: We made bad things illegal. Therefore they can't happen.

Somehow this fails to be reassuring. A slightly more sophisticated take is that the "bad things" which fill in this template are precisely those things which legislatures thought up as the most likely threats to election integrity. That makes the "we made it illegal" approach that much less sufficient. The only thing on the whole page which is remotely a mitigation is the description of outdoor drop boxes being reinforced against tampering, which is... small potatoes.

chasil15• 4 years ago

These are bromides offered by a bureaucracy on issues over which it has no control.

The claims are easily dismissed.

themark• 4 years ago

It mentions system testing; i read here that testing could only be done according to criteria provided by the vendor.

https://www.scribd.com/document/596142725/Fulton-Pa-Sues-Dom...

chasil15• 4 years ago

I don't think we need this vendor.

I think that a tiny amount of money could be allocated from our taxes to create an open, transparent, and secure voting system.

We are buying from untrustworthy vendors when we could build a superior solution ourselves.

The federal/state bureaucracies that advocate proprietary voting systems should be liquidated.

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

Sure... let's trust bureaucracy that consistently outsources election security to third parties who then claim that the process is proprietary. Might as well outsource the Federal Reserve and SEC to Chase and Wells Fargo while we're at it and believe everything they do is fair and balanced.

chasil15• 4 years ago

Outsourcing to a proprietary voting system could work, if a paper trail is produced that is verified by the voter.

Still, open source is everywhere. Why don't we have open, unbreakable voting?

Really, what is wrong with us? This is not a hard problem.

NegativeLatency• 4 years ago

What’s wrong with us: Pork barrel politics, corruption, money being considered speech, etc.

This is why campaign finance reform is probably my top issue as a voter. It’s just disappointing to have the two main political parties dominate to such an extent that it feels like there’s no reasonable choices WRT voting.

water810• 4 years ago

Open source does not mean unbreakable

dijonman23• 4 years ago

Why don’t we require voters to show ID? It seems the system is flawed from the very beginning, there is little oversight and too much trust in local “officials”.

chasil15• 4 years ago

There are citizens in the United States that do not participate in our culture to the extent that they do not have IDs.

One might think of Amish communities, but many are averse to regulation.

They are citizens, and they should vote if they wish.

We should find some method in the technology to continue their participation.

tzs2• 4 years ago

Why don’t we require voters to show ID?

Because in the US the people in charge of issuing suitable state ID have no interest in making it cheap and easy for all eligible voters to obtain such ID.

In fact, in many cases at around the same time they institute voter ID requirements they also reduce the number of places one can go to get ID, with most of the reductions coming to places that mostly serve minority populations.

ohthehugemanate• 4 years ago

While I agree with your point, YSK that your examples don't support it.

Congress does outsource the Fed to the big banks, including Chase and Wells. [1] That's how the US Federal Reserve system works. Congress (through its appointed board of governors) sets goals, and the regional privately incorporated Federal Reserve Banks act towards those goals at their own discretion. The Regional Feds pay taxes, own property, etc just like any other private corporation. Principal shareholders are the biggest banks, including Chase, Wells, Goldman, Bank of America, etc. Apart from the power of the position, the banks profit by the mechanism of "printing money" in the US: Congress creates new bonds and treasury notes and gives them to the Feds, whose shareholders earn interest and fees on those bonds/T-bills. You would not be the first to worry that this is the fox guarding the hen house.

The SEC however, is a government organization... which outsources the bulk of its regulatory responsibilities to a private association of stock exchanges and broker-dealer banks (including Chase and Wells) called FINRA. [2] The principle of "self-regulation" has been a cornerstone of the SEC since its founding. Here, too, there is considerable debate about whether self-regulation is a good idea in the age of private exchanges, dark pools, rapidly-multiplying derivatives, etc.

I don't know what this does to your impression of the Fed or the SEC being fair and balanced. But you should definitely think about it every time you see discussion of the unequal impact of monetary policy, or a million dollar fine for an SEC violation worth billions.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm [2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/how-does-finra-diff...

anonymouse0083• 4 years ago

Reality: The existence of a vulnerability in election technology is not evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited or that the results of an election have been impacted. Technology has vulnerabilities. Identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities is an important security practice.

  Rumor: Vulnerabilities in election technology mean that elections have been hacked and hackers are able to change election results.

I'm sorry this is comical.

chasil15• 4 years ago

Not when a judge has such qualms that the evidence is sealed.

"At a recent hearing, Totenberg sealed the report, citing a strong reluctance to draw any public scrutiny to the sensitive details in the case. Totenberg would not even allow an election integrity group to openly advocate for disclosure of the report..."

This is absolutely intolerable.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-seals-report-on-voting-m...

chasil15• 4 years ago

As far as google will tell me, the seal remains in place.

I say burn these Dominion Voting machines, and blacklist the vendor nationwide.

"But the lawsuit, now known as Curling v. Raffensperger, didn’t stop. It instead shifted to alleging that the new system was so insecure as to be unconstitutional."

https://www.votebeat.org/2022/3/2/22959221/alex-halderman-do...

anonymouse0083• 4 years ago

Finally the person has been charged that I can speak plainly about these things - elections in 2012 and 2016 had incredible amounts of fraud at the local level. These elections mean next to nothing politically for the local folks running, however, the state and national level really “appreciate” the ability of single upstarts to “get out the vote” in their party.

No true preferences for government by the governed have been revealed through elections for some time. That is the travesty for the US, and will be its ultimate downfall

chasil15• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, the fraud is hardly new.

Nixon did not lose to Kennedy as meekly as some assert, despite some evidence of fraud in Illinois:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-preside...

It would have been far better for the country if Kennedy had lost (to say nothing of Kennedy himself).

Let's go back further:

https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-1884-presidential...

Election fraud has a long history in the United States.

It must end.

devwastaken• 4 years ago

I am actually very interested in evidence of election fraud. The "there's no fraud" claims sound like hand waving. Of course there's fraud, but to what extent, and how do we know that extent?

chasil15• 4 years ago

I saw the film "2000 Mules."

Amongst the claims of this film was an assertion of open drop boxes on public streets with no cameras for surveillance. Several FOIA requests for camera footage also failed, as the cameras "malfunctioned."

While there may be innocent explanations for the odd cell phone location tracking, this fact remains:

"The most secure election in history" cannot be as claimed with unmonitored and publicly-accessible drop boxes.

This cannot continue if an honest election is the goal.

p.s. I regularly split my voting ticket, so I am not as biased as some might suppose.

tenpies• 4 years ago

Not a word about Voter ID

Every serious, even-remotely-democratic country on the planet requires voter ID, yet one US party is staunchly against it. Until the US changes this, then its electoral process should be seen with extreme skepticism and electoral fraud should probably be considered the default.

kube-system10• 4 years ago

Both parties have their qualms about IDs. It all depends on how they’re issued and by who.

If you proposed exactly what many of those other countries have: a national voter ID, both democrats and republicans would be against it.

water810• 4 years ago

No only one party is importing Hispanics by the hundreds of thousands

jamesvnz• 4 years ago

New Zealand does not require ID at the voting booth. We would generally be considered to be near the top of the list for "remotely democratic countries".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws#New_...

Australia doesn't require ID either.

josefx• 4 years ago

If I understand the simple Australian guide bellow correctly anyone who knows your name and home address can vote in your place. The only good thing about it is that abuse of that probably doesn't scale well.

https://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/easy-read/file...

chasil15• 4 years ago

I don't want anybody to be down voted on this thread, so I am up voting you.

All voices should be heard.

Pasting from another post:

There are citizens in the United States that do not participate in our culture to the extent that they do not have IDs. One might think of Amish communities, but many are averse to regulation.

They are citizens, and they should vote if they wish.

We should find some method in the technology to continue their participation.

agapon• 4 years ago

If one wants to drive, one needs a driver license. If one wants to vote, one needs a voter ID. If one does not want to participate in culture and society, doesn't want to get any government ID, then they don't get to vote. I think that it should be that simple. But it won't be because historical and political reasons, status quo, etc.

boomboomsubban2• 4 years ago

Unless accompanied by a national free US ID, a voter ID law is an unconstitutional poll tax. Nobody should need to pay to vote.

And as another poster mentioned, a national free ID is unpopular with sections of both major parties.

water810• 4 years ago

So we can make a vaccine card for every person, but we can’t print a freaking ID? These arguments against voter ID are so pedantically stupid I just wanna slap people.

mercy_dude• 4 years ago

Mail-in/absentee ballot request forms typically require applicants to sign the form and affirm their eligibility to cast a mail-in/absentee ballot under penalty of law. Upon receipt of a mail-in/absentee ballot request form, election officials implement varying procedures to verify the identity and eligibility of the applicant prior to sending the applicant a mail-in/absentee ballot. Such procedures include checking the signature and information submitted on the form against the corresponding voter registration record, as well as ensuring that multiple mail-in/absentee ballots are not sent in response to applications using the same voter’s information.

Let’s see. In 2020, many duplicates were sent. Ballots were sent for dead people. So the rumour is not only true, it has already been happening across the country as recently as last election.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/duplicates-and-dead-...

chasil15• 4 years ago

In any case, voting is a solemn act of conscience.

It should be conducted on election day, in privacy, without undue influence.

Mail-in voting should only exist for those who cannot physically attend, with medical evidence.

LtWorf2• 4 years ago

That's how it works in italy. Where we also use paper instead of machines to vote.

Then a fraud requires a conspiracy.

kube-system10• 4 years ago

Yeah, I got one of those “duplicate” ballots. News stories about it were posted all over political discussion sites as “proof” of fraud.

What they didn’t mention is that they all had serial numbers that tracked back to the registration roll anyway. If you tried to send both in, it wasn’t counted, and you’d be caught in the act.

I’m more comfortable with this process than I am with electronic voting with no paper record.

water810• 4 years ago

Can you name one person that was caught in the act?

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

Can we stop it with this bullshit.

There's no such thing as election integrity in america and there never has been. Everything they say about the previous election is probably true. Everyone involved in elections in the united states is biased, and just like everything in politics, people will resort to dirty tricks, do whatever they have to do and are in it for themselves. It is nothing new.

Everyone arguing for mail in and absentee ballots is doing it because they want to use them to cheat. Everyone arguing for or against anything wants the rules to favor them in some underhanded way, every single rule in very single system was decided to enable some official's preferred method of cheating.

Multiple presidents have stolen elections. Every house seat is gerrymandered to protect the incumbent. Election officials in the south used to throw black votes away. Politicians in the north used to pay poor people to travel around a city or state and vote multiple times 50, 100, 150 years ago. It has always been this way in America.

chasil15• 4 years ago

The people of the United States are sovereign.

As such, we can require transparent and accurate elections if and when we choose.

This choice must be exercised by elected representation.

No political power in the United States can resist this force, when it gathers.

We are sovereign.

betwixthewires2• 4 years ago

It's never going to gather because nobody wants their cheating methods to become useless. Most of our elected representation got there by cheating. They can resist this political force, by making sure to cheat to prevent honest representation.

water810• 4 years ago

Oh, yay another government agency telling us exactly how things happened without any possibility of their mistake

CISA: Election Security Rumor vs. Reality

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