[gergles]

> It's preposterous to think that election judges aren't actively verifying seals during election day and making sure nobody is tampering with them.

I've been an election worker around the country and have never been in a jurisdiction that did seal checks during the election - only once at the beginning and once at the end. Granted, I've never been in a jurisdiction using DREs, but still.

I agree physical security is a defense here, but this just reiterates, to me, how dangerous DRE voting machines are.

[JumpCrisscross]

I have been an election worker. We were asked to sign the attestation envelopes in advance.

I trust further checks were conducted higher up. But at our level, protocol was ignored.

[djrogers]

I hope to God you refused and reported this. That's completely illegal and could get you in a lot of hot water - not to mention the potential for enabling vote fraud.

[JumpCrisscross]

I refused. Everyone else complied. I wrote a letter to the Board of Elections and our state's Attorney General but never heard back.

[tropo]

Next time, call the news media. Be sure to pick places biased each direction. If time runs out, I suppose 9-1-1 is an option.

[laser]

You've got to be kidding? Why would you comply with that? Sounds completely illegal?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

And you reported this right?

[Shank]

I have no experience with non-DRE seal checking. Our seals had the machine serial numbers on them, with watermarks, etc. If a seal was mysteriously broken, it was in our best interest to take it out of service anyway, because suddenly the legitimate votes on that machine come into question.

[azernik]

In Alameda County, CA we use what look superficially to be the same machines, and have similar physical security measures - there are seals on all access points (e.g. on the cover protecting the power switch), and whenever we access one of them we save the seal's tag, log its ID, and log the ID of the replacement. At the end of the day you end up with basically a series of tags on a form that show chain of custody (the two people - always more than one - that handle the machine with a seal removed have to sign off on each change of tag).

EDIT: Note that we use these machines with an optional paper-printout add-on, and they're a non-default option mostly used to increase ballot accessibility - most people vote on paper ballots that are fed into a scanner on-site, so the scanner results can be cross-checked against the physical ballots in case of a disputed result.

[scoot]

So someone could spoil all the votes by breaking the seals?

[azernik]

Sure. And they could also spoil all the votes with an armed robbery - at many polling stations, there's no actual police presence until/unless someone calls them in.

The main intent of all the security measures is that any such tampering be obvious, and that it be clear whose votes (or at least, which precincts' votes) were compromised.

[shshhdhs]

Sure, but that doesn't address an attack that certain precincts that vote a specific party line could be compromised. If 100 attackers at 100 precincts slit some seals than that could swing a swing state

[azernik]

When you have a consistent pattern of ballot spoilage, elections are not counted as normal; at that point you'd have court cases, recounts, assorted forensic attempts to verify valid votes, etc. The system is not a rigid machine - it is a set of rules for the common case, and a set of safeguards that trigger special-case handling.

[anonbanker]

Basically, a team of 20 voters with boxcutters could spoil the results from an entire precinct.

[simooooo]

You would have to assume so...

[gcb0]

also trivial for attackers to have replacement plastic seals is their pockets

[zwp]

The seals aren't signed by election officials?

I'm not familiar with seals used on voting machines but that's common in other "tamperproof container" scenarios.