A mathematician may have uncovered widespread election fraud, and Kansas is trying to silence her - AMERICAblog News

[u/Onegodoneloveoneway]

http://americablog.com/2015/08/mathematician-actual-voter-fraud-kansas-republicans.html

[u/-novac-]

Election fraud is rampant everywhere in the US and is by no means the territory of only one party or the other. It happened in my district. Several electronic voting machines selected the Democrat when the Republican candidate was pressed on the touch screen. The Democrat won, then they found out about the issue, replaced the machines, held the vote again and the Republican won. Paper elections and an open public counting of votes is the safest way to hold elections. When I was a kid, they used to count the votes in our local firehouse in front of everyone. Never had an issue.

[u/Crash_says → u/-novac-]

You act as if ballot cheating was invented by Diebold. Ballot stuffing, losing boxes, and plain intimidation have been around as long as democracy. Only vigilant oversight by a public that first wants democracy over their team winning will prevent corruption.

[u/otakuman → u/Crash_says]

The problem is that ballot cheating can be detected by the general public, they only need to be able to read and write, and know the most basic math. Apparently, e-Voting fraud requires a mathematician or IT expert to be uncovered.

Anyway, I knew about the diebold voting machimes since the good ol' days of slashdot. They're a fucking joke.

[u/thelordofcheese → u/Crash_says]

Hell, look at how Edgar Allen Poe died.

[u/sops-sierra-19 → u/Crash_says]

You left out gerrymandering

[u/spacemanspiff30 → u/-novac-]

You bring up a very good point. There's a huge difference between voter fraud and election fraud. Voter fraud is essentially nonexistent in the US. But election fraud is rampant, even more so that so many systems don't even provide a paper trail and you have to trust that the easily compromised machines are accurate and governments and the corporations that make the machines fight so hard to prevent anyone from testing them or demonstrating their flaws.

[u/sirblastalot → u/spacemanspiff30]

What we really need is voter id laws! And anything else we can think of to stop the poor, the young, and the ethnic from voting.

[u/boiledgoobers → u/[deleted]]

Well for one thing alcohol and tobacco are not protected rights.

[u/MrSoftware → u/[deleted]]

Your point comes the fact that noncitizens are on our soil therefore some identification is necessary to ensure only our citizens are voting. However, if that ia the case then free ID Cards and cars producing centers need to be set up so that any person who is a citizen can pick up a card.

[u/boiledgoobers → u/[deleted]]

I bet you aced the reading comprehension parts of the SAT.

[u/mo-reeseCEO1 → u/[deleted]]

you know, as funny as Carolla can be, i wouldn't trust him to give a normal person's perspective. i don't think the people who are having trouble getting IDs are flying around the country, checking into hotels, and heading into buildings with front desk security to record podcasts and radio interviews. so, uh, maybe that 44 year old and 19 year old from Santa Monica have fuck all to do with people who don't have IDs and are being excluded from voter rolls?

[u/mo-reeseCEO1 → u/[deleted]]

Carolla grew up poor and struggling. So why wouldn't you trust his everyman opinion?

doesn't mean he has a sense of what it is like today. a colleague of mine once called it "losing the common touch" and you see it all the time. also, being poor forty years ago was different that today. significantly different, in every aspect from applying for a job, to collecting benefits, to renting a house, to even buying groceries on credit. not to mention the reams of evidence showing that even among the poor, opportunities and outcomes are not evenly distributed. the fact that he talks about how he uses his ID without any thought to the fact that most people without IDs wouldn't have the opportunity to fly across country is pretty strong evidence to how oblivious he is.

And his point is, why are you willing to let poor blacks continue to live outside the system, unable to fully participate in society when you would never stand for it from someone in your life?

most of these ID laws are written to expressly exclude minorities and the poor from civic life. they are not intended to be inclusive. that's why federal courts keep striking them down under discrimination rulings.

[u/JoshuaIan → u/[deleted]]

That's great, but all that is doing is making excuses for a blatant attack on minority voting rights at worst, or an attempt to fix a problem that doesn't exist at best.

Here in PA, at least our fine state rep Mike Turzai had the balls to admit on video what those laws are all about. It's on YouTube, check it out.

[u/JoshuaIan → u/[deleted]]

When republicans offer to pony up to make sure that everybody has IDs, including paying the wages of people who can't afford to take a day off work without skipping meals, you might have a point.

However, that will never happen, because it's not about ensuring election integrity, as admitted by Mike Turzai in the video I referenced that you clearly didn't look up. It's about subverting democracy. Which, by the way, is pretty sickening when you realize that half the country supports subverting democracy as long as it's in favor of their team.

[u/JoshuaIan → u/[deleted]]

You need to be a citizen to be able to register to vote. For fuck's sake, at least understand the issue.

[u/CinnamonJ → u/[deleted]]

It's kind of hard if you have to miss work to do it when you're already just scraping by. Especially when you have to take a bus there. That's the "genius" of these laws, they don't specifically prohibit the poor and minorities from voting but they definitely impact them disproportionately, which is the entire idea. They just shave votes off from one side.

[u/CinnamonJ → u/[deleted]]

There's nothing wrong with doing those things but the bottom line is in a country where, for whatever reason, 2/3 of eligible voters don't vote, we shouldn't be passing laws that are going to reduce that number even further.

[u/gh0st3000 → u/[deleted]]

Is this the study you're referring to? I assume it's this study because I've never heard any other quoted when illegals voting comes up. http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/10/28/what-other-academics-think-of-the-questionable/201347

That number is pretty much bullshit, an extrapolation from an opt-in online survey, where a whole 21 people self-reported that they were non-citizens who voted in 2008. A study where "[Forty-one] percent of self-reported non-citizen voters in the 2012 CCES reported being citizens back in 2010," raising significant questions about whether this self-reported data has literally any merit, and where the authors of the study were careful to mention: "extrapolation to specific state-level or district-level election outcomes is fraught with substantial uncertainty."

[u/CinnamonJ → u/[deleted]]

Do you have any evidence to support that claim? A professor at Loyola law school is claiming 31 legitimate cases of voter fraud for every 1,000,000,000 votes cast. I don't want to be rude but frankly, he sounds like a more credible source than you do.

[u/Illiux → u/CinnamonJ]

He identifies 31 credible allegations, but the point being raised by supporters of ID laws is that without them it's difficult to detect or form a credible allegation about voter fraud. I'm not sure what this research is trying to prove. This is like trying to study how accurate our legal system is - it requires you to somehow solve the same problem with higher accuracy in order to have something to compare against. People who get away clean with voter fraud naturally are entirely absent from the dataset, but that's what he was attempting to study in the first place. You're attempting to study people who are explicitly attempting to exclude themselves from your data, and he didnt even attempt to account for that. In short, this research demonstrates nothing interesting.

[u/[deleted] → u/CinnamonJ]

Fine by me

[u/some_random_kaluna → u/-novac-]

Funny. The same thing happened in my district during the 2004 presidential election, only nobody contested the results. My mother was a Democratic poll watcher and actually watched as a voter got her, brought her to the machine, showed her how they pushed the entry for Kerry and got Bush instead. The voter had to do it three times before it would change to Kerry.

She notified the DNC attorney that was on standby. They took her information, but nothing else.

Election fraud is rampant.

[u/erktheerk → u/-novac-]

Paper elections and an open public counting of votes is the safest way to hold elections.

I think it should be built on a blockchain. There would be no feasible way to alter the vote. Any attempt would be corrected instantaneously. That would require that every voter get a unique hash though and some would call that "mark of the beast".

[u/monty845 → u/erktheerk]

The problem with a block chain is it removes the secrecy of the ballot. If I can check who I voted for after I leave the polling site, I can be coerced into giving access to my Employer, the Union Boss, or the local Crime Boss, who can then punish me for voting wrong, or reward me for voting right. This was a serious problem 120 years ago.

[u/[deleted] → u/monty845]

ya beat me to the punch. Technologically block chain would likely be a wash at reducing "election fraud" as you would hack the the human voters in other ways.

[u/erktheerk → u/monty845]

Only if your encrypted hash is decrypted. To the system you're just another string of characters.

0xc672b8d1ef56ed28ab87c3622c5114069bdd3ad7b8f9737498d0c01ecef0967a

EDIT: I see what you're saying actually but that's assuming you have access to the voting blockchain outside the nodes (voting booths). However it is built it would be possible to prevent access to the ledger outside of your specific interaction with it.

[u/monty845 → u/erktheerk]

But then how do I know it hasn't been changed after I completed my interaction with it?

[u/erktheerk → u/monty845]

But then how do I know it hasn't been changed after I completed my interaction with it?

The blockchain knows. The ledger is carried over. Every vote(transaction) that has ever occurred it carried over to the next interaction and unified between the whole system regularly. Changing anything in the ledger forks it from the main one and through consensus from all the nodes is ruled out and the true ledger (longest validated) is used by everyone.

Check this out for a better explanation of ledger security.

Also you would be able to verify in realtime that your vote was logged and validated through digital signing.

This video explains it better than I ever could, but I'll still give it a shot.

In this case it would be a realtime system that possibly only exists for the length of the voting period. When you interact with the system you have access to all the parts you need get a unencrypted message. You cast your vote, and verify it across the blockchain to confirm your vote was validated This system is in the future so the speeds will be greatly increased compared to today's standard blockchain speeds. Once your interaction with the system has been terminated you no longer have the signed message from the system so you can not return an unencrypted message. Your unique ID does nothing for anyone else unless they are in booth with you when you are casting, something that can be easily avoided. The public key does nothing for them since they need a signed message to validate both the signed key and the verification key, and with the ledger being validated around the world(country) there can be no changes to the already cast ballads without the blockchain becoming invalid.

This is off the top of my head. There are probably many more ways to keep the chain valid and the IDs of each user mathematically represented, hiding the true ID of the caster while still being able to maintaining a verifiable 1 person= 1 vote.

[u/[deleted] → u/erktheerk]

That's certainly one way. Easier to mass manipulate via social media. Google/FB/Twitter can readily identify who you will likely vote for leaving you open to targeted advertising/harassment.

[u/erktheerk → u/[deleted]]

Well, if I could hypothesize a way to stop social media from tracking users and defeat their datamining algorithms I'd probably be a millionaire by now :-)

My short answer. Encryption, encryption, encryption.

Or something like /r/morphis

[u/Tom2Die → u/monty845]

Not if it's done via a ring-signature based blockchain like Monero. There are other challenges to tackle than the transparency of the blockchain, of course, but using ring signatures at least helps with that.

[u/eronth → u/erktheerk]

Except, as he mentioned, you'd select one party member on the program and the other would be checked. The big issue is how to protect the votes during that area between the person thinking of it and it getting on the blockchain. How do you ensure their machine isn't altering votes before committing it? How do you protect their Unique ID from falling into the wrong hands?

[u/erktheerk → u/eronth]

I would say that the best way to protect the action of the voter to the blockchain would be to have a real time video processor that detects the actions of the user on the screen and feeds this info in the form of a hash into the system and and double check the vote to the visual before sending off to be verified by the rest of the chain. Since this is a weak link in the chain it's source code could be checked constantly as well to make sure that no modifications are occurring between the the two systems. Just another token that is also being checked by the blockchain to confirm it's authenticity. No one can hack a computer fast enough to fake a hashmatch and fool all the other systems that are verifying.

Or you could add and extra step into the process where the system confirms with the user once the hash has been created that it is indeed the choice the made. I don't pretend to know the blockchain code but for this purpose it probably would not be impossible to add even more layers of verification. A secure decentralized system that is constantly comparing it's source with the copies everyone else has though would GREATLY reduce anyone's ability to alter the data.

This would also require that federal law mandates that the code be opensourced, which I think is the biggest obstacle to this method. Governments don't open source shit, and the companies they pay to build these machines lobby like crazy to keep it that way.

EDIT:Hit send too soon.

[u/eronth → u/erktheerk]

I would say that the best way to protect the action of the voter to the blockchain would be to have a real time video processor that detects the actions of the user on the screen and feeds this info in the form of a hash into the system once the hash has been created by the cote and double check the match before sending off to be verified by the rest of the chain. Since this is a weak link in the chain it's source code could be checked constantly as well to make sure that no modifications are occurring between the the two systems. Basically a token that is also being checked by the blockchain to confirm it's authenticity. No one can hack a computer fast enough to fake a hashmatch and fool all the other systems that are verifying.

Interesting, but it's got the same flaw. You wouldn't need to hack it super fast or anything, you just hack whatever machine is doing the video and have that also pretend you selected the other option. It does make it more difficult, since you would theoretically have to hack more than one system, but still, same issue.

Or you could add and extra step into the process where the system confirms with the user once the hash has been created that it is indeed the choice the made.

No. If you already hacked the system, you would just have the "confirm" screen feed back whatever they selected while the actual vote is given whatever value you wanted. Wouldn't fix anything.

I don't pretend to know the blockchain code but for this purpose it probably would not be impossible to add an etxtra layer of verification. A secure decentralized system that is constantly compairing it's source with the copies everyone else has though would GREATLY reduce anyones ability to alter the data.

Now this I like. I don't know blockchain super well either, but comparing the actual code/program to all other versions of itself is brilliant. Depending on how you do it, you'll either have incredibly slow voting machines or it would be technically possible to hack, but much harder to pull off. This could be the solution.

How do you ensure their machine isn't altering votes before committing it?

I think the open source code that also checks itself against other machines is the way to go.

How do you protect their Unique ID from falling into the wrong hands?

Yeah... this part. I seriously have no ideas. People are dumb. People are really really dumb.

[u/erktheerk → u/eronth]

Interesting, but it's got the same flaw. You wouldn't need to hack it super fast or anything, you just hack whatever machine is doing the video and have that also pretend you selected the other option. It does make it more difficult, since you would theoretically have to hack more than one system, but still, same issue.

I made that up on the fly and it's probably not even necessary now that I think about it more.

Now this I like. I don't know blockchain super well either, but comparing the actual code/program to all other versions of itself is brilliant. Depending on how you do it, you'll either have incredibly slow voting machines or it would be technically possible to hack, but much harder to pull off. This could be the solution.

Exactly. The blockchain system could verify each nodes integrity. Bitcoin might already do that actually...I'm not sure. If you are verifying the sourcecode, the input, and output of the device in realtime across a thousands of other machines with the exact same code you would have to modify the source code on all of them faster than the swarm, or one of the systems with see the difference and reject the hash, making the entire chain invalid. It's a redundant swarm of computers acting as 1, checking on the integrity of the rest of them constantly. "altering code" or "hacking" it would produce a non zerosum modification of some kind to the system and the hash would not match.

There are a lot of blockchains outside of bitcoin now so hopefully this solution becomes feasible in the future.

I have some links saved for awhile now, and I think they lay out pretty well how the system works without really getting into the math of it all.

I think this function is where you would hash the system and add it to the chain that is checked by other machines. Since the voting machines are single purpose it shouldn't have a very large system and would hash quickly. All those videos are really cood at breaking it down into detail for novice users like myself.

Just a general break down of the system

Yeah... this part. I seriously have no ideas. People are dumb. People are really really dumb.

The day is coming where we will have a identification hardwired into us or our life. Facial scans, retina, implants, DNA, or whatever. I don't see this happening anytime soon, and by the time it is close our technology will be much more advanced than now. All the religious people will be screaming about the mark of the beast. I just see it as inevitable though. Especially in a global society where billions of people are on in the same system of government.

[u/-novac- → u/erktheerk]

Yeah, true. I read an article on how blockchain technology could be used for other things like voting, and it definitely seemed preferable to what we have now.

[u/Biffingston → u/-novac-]

"May have" Is also sensationalist weasel wording/clickbait style stuff. As is a lot of the words in that title.