[ThomPete]

Unless you can point to how someone get access to a lot of machines at one time then yes obscurity is actually a really strong method.

Furthermore it's not just obscurity it's also the other things I mentioned non-connectedness being one of the biggest.

[deif]

You don't need to get access to a lot of machines. Because the chain is long and obscure, there's no way to be verifiable, and even if there was that chain would require specialist infallible programmers to ensure nothing has been tampered with.

I'm not sure how you can argue that obscurity is a strong method of security when one machine in the country could be compromised, or the counting method code could be compromised, or the programmer verifying the code could be compromised, or the distribution system of voting machines could be compromised, or any part inside the voting machines could be compromised (e.g. the touch interface), or the voting machine remains secure during the voting period (i.e. voters are tampering with it on poll day).

[ThomPete]

If the machines aren't connected of course you need access to a lot of machines to have any effect on an election.

All machines are hackable all systems are hackable. But focusing on the box showing you can hack that changes absolutely nothing about the overall threat of the US election being hacked. No one with serious technical understanding would claim that it was impossible to hack the boxes. And so you are back to a much harder task which is the social engineering part of convincing thousands of people to betray their country and no one finding out.

[foepys]

> All machines are hackable all systems are hackable.

Then why use machines at all? As mentioned in this thread multiple times, Germany can count all votes within a few hours without any voting machines.

[rurban]

To alter the results in a cheaper way than with traditional vote stuffing methods, as recently observed in the Turkish national referendum. https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09839

[ThomPete]

Since when has any of this been rational? People want digital because they think it's better or more accurate.