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[–] 51 points 4 months ago (20 children)

Ahhhh.. The great idea to delegate voting to machines built by private shit corpos. From where I come, we vote on a paper. And boy, it works fucking great.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Lots of people in the US vote on paper too (maybe counted by a scantron like machine).

    It's a country with like 350 million people on a land mass that's about the same size as China. Each state controls its elections, and they all do it slightly differently.

    But yeah I agree with the private corporations part. That's fucking dumb.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Only the blue and red states allow the use of electronic voting machines. Our dumbest state uses them exclusively.

    All others use paper.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Californian here, we've always voted with paper in the 5-6 different cities I've lived in here.

    It does work great.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (4 children)

    It doesn't produce results instantly, which means the President can scream "election fraud!" when results come in over time and numbers change.

    This is the age old critique of digital security. Social engineering will do more harm than any technical safety features can prevent.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    In Australia we get the 'general' result, i.e. which party won and winners of most seats, on the night of the election, with a few seats needing a week or two to fully count and recount. Sure it might take a few hours but the AEC have things pretty streamlined.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Americans: failing to solve problems nobody has since 1776

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Solving the problem of secure and trustworthy voting is a problem as old as democracy itself

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (6 children)

    Most of the first world had that figured out a long time ago.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    They haven't. The procedures in place only work if the folks in charge are honorable and the voters are trustworthy.

    What we have, in the modern day, is a deep skepticism of elections outside of the NATO block and a naive presumption of infallibility inside the block (among liberals, mostly assuming their guys win).

    In the US, in particular, even liberals are increasingly distrustful of the physical apparatus of vote collection and tabulation. It's been a long time coming (2000 and 2004 being very nakedly and obviously stolen races). But trustworthiness has taken a real nosedive since 2024.

    A recent survey conducted by the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections at UC San Diego found that only 60% of respondents were confident votes in the midterm elections will be counted accurately.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    You need to stop looking at americans as some sort of normal people whose problems apply to everyone else.

    Motherfuckers can't even get the concept of national ID cards right.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Motherfuckers can’t even get the concept of national ID cards right.

    There's a sharp dispute over the purpose of such a card. Do you want cards to rapidly integrate people into your society? Or do you want them to strictly exclude and segregate people into immuntable castes?

    Hard to create a single universal document if you can't agree on that premise.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It's just a national proof of citizenship it's not that deep.

    I swear yall americans way too fucking dumb to be your own country

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    It’s just a national proof of citizenship it’s not that deep.

    That's how the SSN was pitched, sure. Then it became a reliable unique identifier and started getting used for everything.

    I swear yall americans way too fucking dumb to be your own country

    Which country do all the smart people live in, again?

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  • [–] 41 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    Look up the voting machine exhibit at Defcon all those years ago. These kids were taking total control of them within hours including faking a near split vote that barely swung towards whatever candidate they wanted.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    These kids were taking total control of them within hours

    That's impressive broadly speaking, but not terribly useful unless you have unfettered access to the machines for that length of time.

    Security measures on the machines aren't supposed to just be in the hardware/software. They're also supposed to be locked up and tagged, so that any physical tampering is noted when they are used again.

    If you've got teenagers who have breached that first level of security, it's much bigger news that what they managed after hours of manipulating a device in the open.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The machines in November had network access.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Why would they need network access? Just have it record the numbers onto a portable drive then upload the results somewhere else that has access.

    Is it too much work for poll people to transfer a usb stick to a laptop at the end of the day?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    LOL I was replying to you literally saying the hacking demo at Defcon, where they had the physical machines right there in the room, was "not terribly useful unless you have unfettered access to the machines." I'm saying that wouldn't have mattered in November because they were networked.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Can confirm. I was there and while I did basically nothing helped one of those 'kids' by holding up the top for them. Funnily nearly all of the issues would be fixed by NOT PUTTING USB PORTS ACCESSABLE TO THE PUBLIC ON THEM. One still needs a firmware dump to know what hacks to use but its actually a easily fixable problem for the basic attacks.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    NOT PUTTING USB PORTS ACCESSABLE TO THE PUBLIC

    They're not normally accessible to the public. Machines are kept under lock and key by election officials.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago

    After spending over a decade undermining the confidence of US voters

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Because we don’t have elections anymore. Thank you Republicans for raping the last little bit of liberty and hope to death.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    They won completely, and it was not enough to kill us all, but they had to make sure to take everything sacred and worthwhile from us before doing it.

    I hope not a single trace of humans is left, and that something far better replaces us.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    My confidence couldnt get any more undermindered'd then it is already.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    NOT releasing it is undermining voter confidence.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    That's the point. 

    The report is basically going to say everything is fine. Stuff is old, but if you're not plugging it into the Internet it doesn't matter. This directly contradicts the Republican's on stolen elections, so they're squashing the report.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    "Game was rigged from the start."

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] -5 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Fuck their propaganda, Vote twice if you can get away with it. Fuck em.

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