White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-delays-release-us-voting-machine-study-midterms-near-2026-06-19/

by logickkk1 • 1 month ago

125 123 1 month ago

I'd love to hear the steelman - what's the argument in favor of using a proprietary electronic system?

There have been legit complaints about closed sourced voting systems for ~20 years and DEFCON has done a "Voting Village" for ~10 years demonstrating numerous issues, some of which were not addressed by the next elections. Transparency doesn't appear better either.

Is it speed to tally? Cost? Easier to screw with results?

jfengel4• 1 month ago

You must have missed the 2000 election. We hung for weeks on the vagueness of paper ballots. Both sides filed motion after motion to exclude some batch of ballots or other. There was a huge number of extremely unlikely votes in a place with a badly designed paper ballot.

The system right now is a security nightmare, a bad implementation of a bad idea. But anybody who lived through 2000 remembers that as even worse.

mcculley• 1 month ago

As a Floridian, I apologize for the 2000 election. But we have a much better system now. We have paper ballots that are scanned. We have an auditable fallback for untrustworthy machines. There is no reason other states cannot have the same.

wahern3• 1 month ago

Florida was using a punch-card system, thus the infamous hanging chads. Fill-in-the-bubble scantron systems are much faster and less error prone; not as fast as purely electronic voting, but you get a reliable paper trail that is more transparent and much easier to audit.

matheweis• 1 month ago

I’m not sure that what’s happening right now in California is any better.. even Nate Silver is crying foul and this point.

js2• 1 month ago

both sides

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot

Gore probably won that election. I can't help but wonder about an alternate history where he became president and there was no 9/11 due to smoother handoff between administrations.

caseysoftware4• 1 month ago

I paid close attention.. and agreed that that particular approach was broken.

My question was: what's the argument in favor of using a proprietary electronic system?

rayiner15• 1 month ago

It’s cheaper in the short term because these are COTS products. But that’s not a good reason. Voting security should be “zero trust.” We should count votes the same way the Taiwanese, without reliance on technology: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. Voting should be

caseysoftware4• 1 month ago

Super interesting, thanks for the insight.

I'm 100% onboard with transparency and auditablility are table stakes and any methodology that doesn't address those should be disqualified.

jnetnw• 28 days ago

Agreed.

rcpt2• 1 month ago

Seems to be an exclusive article that's also paywall. Anyone know the story?

Ensuring secure elections and auditing extensively seems like good practice. However the issue has become political and neither party is interested in that. The right claims fraud with no good evidence, in response the left has decided that our elections perfectly secure and to suggest otherwise gets you a sound "tsk tsk"

jordanscales2• 1 month ago

Pretty remarkable both-sidesism in this comment. One side _does not admit the results of the 2020 election_ and the other side says widespread voter fraud is not happening in the United States. Being a fence-setter on this one is intellectually lazy.

wahern3• 1 month ago

Conservatives in multiple states looked under every rock to find voter fraud in the 2020 election and largely came up empty handed. In Arizona they even forced a quasi-legal audit with their own citizens brigade, spending weeks pouring through records, then quietly admitted there was no systemic fraud.

All the cumulative fraud uncovered nationwide, most of which was mistaken registration, discovered through existing processes, and didn't even favor a single party, never amounted to enough to even to turn even a single state.

what2• 1 month ago

Did you memory hole 2016?

rcpt2• 1 month ago

"tsk tsk"

mapontosevenths• 1 month ago

Non-paywalled - https://archive.is/ki4vM

I think this paragraph summarizes it nicely.

"The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, the sources said. It does not say the vulnerabilities have led to votes flipping, but examines security gaps in how the machines are used during U.S. elections."

My take is that they couldn't find anything that amounted to the level of fraud Trump needs to justify the deaths, chaos, and loss of faith in the system he caused, so they'll keep delaying it until they either find something or find someone willing to just make something plausible sounding up.

Danox• 1 month ago

All places, outside the American South in the United States don't have a problem, the American South however, is where it is a time honored tradition to make it hard to vote for some citizens.

And it has always been political and other things in the south.

blanched• 1 month ago

The South does have this problem. But pretending it's /only/ the South does no favors to people who are disenfranchised elsewhere.

A quick google will show that it has been a nationwide problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

ubertaco• 1 month ago

Tell me you've never been to Idaho without telling me you've never been to Idaho, where a considerable portion of the population (especially around Moscow, Idaho) wants explicitly to repeal the 19th amendment (the one that gave women the right to vote).

Or Michigan, home of both Henry Ford (and his now-infamous Dearborn Independent, which still seems to resonate with most Michiganders that I've met) and Charles Lindbergh.

What you're describing is a rural areas problem, and the South, most of which has never really developed much urbanism (outside Atlanta and maybe Charlotte) has never had to "grow up", much like rural Michigan has never had to "grow up" and remains a hotbed of MAGA racism and plots to kidnap their governor, or the same way that much of Idaho has never had to "grow up" and is a common destination for Doug-Wilsonites and similar "trad" homesteaders. Drive an hour outside of Detroit or Lansing and ask the almost-universally-white rural folks what they think of Dearborn and they'll tell you all the same wild "sharia law" white-replacement conspiracy theories they've told me over and over again.

And of course, even Boston famously took rather poorly to the notion of desegregation – look up Boston's reaction to "forced bussing" (since the only way to racially-integrate Boston schools was to bring in black kids from outside Boston, since the redlining had been so severe there, and the city was covered in widespread protests).

jfengel4• 1 month ago

A local media channel running the same wire service report: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ktvu.com/news/report-white-...

what2• 1 month ago

the right claims fraud

So does the left every time Trump wins.

pclowes3• 1 month ago

This is not comparable. A couple groups on the far left is not the same as the leader of the party. I don’t see any major figure on the left: Bernie, Obama, AOC, Biden, Hillary, Pelosi etc claiming fraud.

jmward013• 1 month ago

The red haring is that voting is hacked or illegals are voting, etc etc etc. The -real- story is disenfranchising voters by making it hard for them or out-right steaming their votes in the courts. We don't have an election fraud issue in the us. We have an election legitimacy issue.

jpkw• 1 month ago

Red Herring* - it's a fish, not a rabbit

pinkmuffinere2• 1 month ago

You’re right, but that’s a distraction from the bigger misconception — it’s actually “Read Herring”. The idea is that the herring has already been documented (and “read” back), no longer deserving of additional discussion.

jmward013• 1 month ago

Well, on the bright side, you can tell I didn't have AI write the comment for me! Thanks for the correction.

rayiner15• 1 month ago

So do you only secure your computer networks after they’ve been hacked? We should have transparent, verifiable election infrastructure, like Taiwan: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo.

1shooner• 1 month ago

https://web.cec.gov.tw/english/article/23550

Taiwan has a comprehensive household registration system. The compilation of the voter list/electoral register is handled by the Household Registration Offices 20 days prior to the Election Day. Hence, citizens do not have to actively register to vote, with the exception of citizens residing overseas during the Presidential and Vice Presidential election.

I don't think the Trump administration would be interested in pursuing this degree of vote access.

tzs6• 1 month ago

The problem is implementing that in a way that doesn't disenfranchise a lot of people. Most or all countries that have the kind of robust national ID system for such a system also make sure it is easy for every citizen to get the necessary ID.

Such a system could be added to the US without too much disruption if we did it gradually, say making it only apply to people born after 2030 so there is time to get all the support infrastructure in place.

Doing it quickly, and making it apply who grew up in a US without anything like that, would be a big and probably expensive effort. None of the proposals I've seen Congress talk about, or seen states talk about or that states have passed, have addressed this.

They say it is actually easy to get the required ID, but when you dig into the documents needed to get it if you don't already have a government issued photo ID it is a lot harder.

A certified copy of your birth certification is usually good enough...but most states require government issued photo ID to issue a certified copy of your birth certificate. Oops.

Also, for many older people, it can be hard to find where to go to get a birth certificate. That's all handled by the states, not the feds, and at the time many older people were born many states just recorded those records at the county level.

There are alternatives that allow can work around the lack of a certified copy of your birth certificate, or that can work around needing a government photo ID to get the birth certificate. They involve secondary documents, such as school records. Those don't usually have difficult ID requirements to get, but are even less likely to be centralized. You might have to go to the school district to get the records. For an older person trying to dig up old elementary or middle school records to bootstrap getting an idea that will often be difficult, even if that school district is still around and somehow the records haven't been lost.

The current system does in fact work well. It should be replaced with a stronger that could stand up against larger and more well organized adversaries than it has had to face before, but it is not urgent, and we have the time to do it right.

tennfown• 1 month ago

So do you only secure your computer networks after they’ve been hacked?

Idk seems to be an industry standard.

rurban• 1 month ago

Well, you have all three issues. Voting is trivially hackable, illegals are voting, and voting is made too hard.

Any civilized nation made voting secure, easy and fast. Yet still the US of A's still insist on computerized voting. Because then the government in-power can easily block voting surprises.

edoceo• 1 month ago

Is anyone aware of any viable, or close to viable open-source options exist? That also have capacity for something like a CA statewide election?

verdverm• 1 month ago

What does HN know about https://www.voting.works/ ? (open source/hardware voting machine)

Note, they are also trying to change the USPS rules regarding mail-in ballots, such that the USPS will not deliver ballots either direction unless the recipient is on a list they are allowed to make. Public comment is open until July 2

https://www.regulations.gov/document/USPS-2026-1289-0001

SV_BubbleTime4• 1 month ago

What does USPS assume for chain of custody for a ballot? Do they hand them directly to a person?

enoint2• 27 days ago

Since the President has no constitutional role in running elections, what do you think this order is meant to do?

pclowes3• 1 month ago

Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important.

Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud should be punished severely. Politicians who baselessly erode confidence in elections without providing timely evidence should be ineligible for political office at least and potentially tried for treason.

readthenotes1• 1 month ago

Doing such is probably as old as elections.

Without going too far back, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/factchecking-clintons-vote...

rayiner15• 1 month ago

Faith in elections is a two-way street. The election system must also be fully transparent, minimize the degree to which voters must trust election administrators, and keep records that would allow evidence of voter fraud to be detected. You can’t punish people for not providing evidence if you’ve designed an election system that fails to keep the information that would allow anomalies to be detected.

mulderc2• 1 month ago

My states system is very transparent and has many systems for detecting fraud but people on the right claim otherwise and they are either ignorant of how it worked or just lying.

afavour2• 1 month ago

The election system must also be fully transparent

It should not be fully transparent. I should not be able to look up who you voted for. That should be private information.

With that caveat in mind, to my eyes the election system we have is doing exactly what you’re saying it should do.

pclowes3• 1 month ago

You want to campaign on improving election security and transparency (hopefully without being misleading about all of the systems already in place and the security, statistical analysis, and auditing already done)? Go for it.

That is very different than claiming fraud without evidence.

dawatchusay• 1 month ago

This and a comment under it start with the exact same sentence. “Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important.” There’s something wrong here and it makes me doubt HN

morkalork• 1 month ago

Don't worry, various governments around the world are working hard to ensure online communities can only be accessed with ID verification. Will that ease your doubt in the future?

phs318u2• 1 month ago

That’s not what I’m seeing.

pclowes starts off the comment you quoted (“Faith in elections and election integrity is incredibly important”), then rayiner responds with “Faith in elections is a two-way street” and engages with pclowes point by providing a broader perspective. They are not “the exact same sentence”.

k310• 1 month ago

Every Accusation is a Confession.

Voter fraud means:

1. I did it.

2. I need to blame someone else.

3. The more general definition of fraud is: anything done by someone who disagrees with me.

4. Jim Crow.

5. Must go.

asadeddin• 1 month ago

Delaying vulnerability disclosure for political reasons undermines the entire coordinated disclosure model. If researchers learn that findings get buried when inconvenient, they stop reporting through official channels.

mobrules• 1 month ago

I used to be in the minority and actually vote but now I have joined the majority of the population and will no longer cast my vote. Maybe I am now disenfranchised but if both parties want it to be this messy and not use "well architected frameworks" because it might disenfranchise people who aren't yet disenfranchised then they are just disenfranchising a different group of people, me. I guess I haven't done the numbers and new naive voters are more valuable. "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!" -grandpaSimpson

dofm2• 1 month ago

Not voting tends towards causing worse outcomes than voting.

The way I recommend people vote is this:

1) think of the worst, stupidest, most revolting, irritating and consistently wrong you know in your local area

2) wouldn't you like the power to potentially cancel out the damage they could do with their vote?

3) congratulations: you have that power. It's using your vote.

Volundr• 1 month ago

now I have joined the majority of the population and will no longer cast my vote.
then they are just disenfranchising a different group of people, me.

"They" aren't disenfranchising you, you are disenfranchising you. You have the same access to vote you always did, your just choosing not to exercise it.

White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report

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