[laxmin]

The Indian Voting Machines are the answer. No operating system, no passwords, no connections, no bruteforcing anything, system on a chip, so widely distributed devices that hacking even a few of them is challenging, etc.

The US voting machines are just waiting to be hacked, just a matter of when, not if.

[endgame]

Just use paper, and count by hand on the day.

You need to present an election system that will convince Joe Q. Public, who is almost certainly not as tech-literate as this forum, is probably not even white-collar or university educated, and likely also suspicious of globalisation. "Tamper-proof Indian system-on-a-chip" does not have that property. Otherwise you get increasingly unhinged arguments over the election results until something breaks.

[akira2501]

A high speed electronic ballot reader with a mechanical counter display. So you can stand there and watch it count. Then run it through a duplicate machine. It should say the same thing.

Appropriately documenting these occurrences should not be hard. Appropriately archiving them would be moderately difficult but would serve as the evidence of the final tally. The final tally of all precincts could then be calculated by any number of independent organizations.

There can't be any hard to understand computer voodoo, deleteable audit logs, or single vendor reporting the final tally. No one should trust that anyways.

[CaliforniaKarl]

Unfortunately, hand-counting causes more errors than electronic counting, except in very small communities.

Ref.: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...

[Cthulhu_]

It's not so much about errors tbh - paper votes can be re-counted as often as needed. The fear is that voting machines are insecure, its input or results tampered with, and then you can't do a recount. Unless they generate a paper receipt as well that the voter has to confirm before the vote is counted.

[CaliforniaKarl]

> Unless they generate a paper receipt as well that the voter has to confirm before the vote is counted.

Indeed! I've volunteered at polling places where this is done.

I think one reason polling places have gravitated towards the "use paper ballots for everything, which are then scanned" option is because you're likely going to have something like that anyway, for mail-in ballots. It does bring problems, but you still have the paper to fall back to.

[cwalv]

The machine prints a paper record at the same time. Couldn't they just read off the paper record as easily as recounting paper ballots?

[dragonwriter]

The voter-verified paper record for use in audit (including recount) purposes has been a federal law requirement in effect since January 1, 2006, for voting machines (adopted under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.)

[arp242]

> paper votes can be re-counted as often as needed

That's not exactly what happened in Florida 24 years ago.

In principle I don't really disagree, but just saying the problems run rather deeper than just hand-counting vs. electronic voting. The one time a recount actually would have been useful it was stopped for highly legalistic reasons that are hard to explain to a normal person. Not only that, it's highly likely – perhaps even probable – that Gore won Florida, although we'll never know for sure.

I see no reason it would play out any different today. We all saw what happened during the last election.

Not only that, with the full-on cult of Trump and the perceived victimhood of his supporters, I'm not really sure to what degree hand counts can always be trusted. Given the very small margins in some states, even a very small error rate (malicious or otherwise) can really matter. Perhaps this is paranoid, but I fully expect Trumpdroids to try to cheat. Any idiot can cheat a handcount "by accident" (prove it otherwise), but actually tampering with voting machines is operationally much more complex, and not something any ol' yahoo can easily pull off (need not just technical knowledge, but also physical access).

tl;dr: it's all pretty fucked no matter what.

[CaliforniaKarl]

> That's not exactly what happened in Florida 24 years ago.

Which is one of the reasons why the Help America Vote Act[0] was passed two years later.

> The one time a recount actually would have been useful…

I understand things are stressful, but please avoid resorting to hyperbole. There are other times in American history when a recount has changed the result. For example, see the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election[2].

> Not only that, with the full-on cult of Trump and the perceived victimhood of his supporters, I'm not really sure to what degree hand counts can always be trusted.

> tl;dr: it's all pretty fucked no matter what.

Be an observer.

Seriously: Be an observer. For example, Orange County (California) has their public notice[2] inviting "the public" (that's you!) to observe election operations. Tomorrow, assuming you're in a place that allows early voting, go to a polling place or vote center (or whatever they're called there) and observe. On (and after) Election Day, go to your county's registrar of voters (or whatever they are called where you are) and observe the tally. Learn how to call out when something is wrong, and learn how to "observe the observers" to call out if they say something is wrong (assuming you think their call is BS.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act

[1]: https://ocvote.gov/sites/default/files/elections/gen2024/Pub...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_...

[Spivak]

Ironically in the US the current nonsense about election fraud might push electronic ballots further. If you're going to cry wolf over paper ballots then you might as well do whatever you want, literally nothing will ever satisfy them. There's no sense even trying to appease.

[z3ncyberpunk]

"nonsense about election fraud"... the very real election fraud happening all over the place, just as it did last election (in which the legal truths are just being made public)?

[Spivak]

Look, I don't know who you are or what has led you to this position, but it's worth I think giving an appeal a chance. You are being tricked and manipulated for someone else's political gain. I know it sucks to hear and every human's response to shut down the thoughts, because admitting to yourself that you've been had is an uncomfortable thought. But I'm asking you to at least entertain the possibility.

We talk a lot on HN about people's beliefs being a reflection of the systems they're placed under— you show me the incentives I'll show you the outcome— and the incentives are clear as day. Democratic voters have two nice properties that are being exploited, Democrats are generally concentrated in major metro areas, and Democrats vote early and by mail. Being concentrated makes those counties easy targets for lawsuits hoping to tie up the process with vague nothingness and rule-lawyering to try and turn away voters. Attacking mail in voting very cleanly affects almost entirely Democrats. And pre-undermining the election results act as a hedge to explain away a loss. Because this is a must-win election for Trump's GOP, two losses in a two risks pushing the "MAGA" faction of the party into irrelevancy.

And so that's what you see, it's a narrative that has been pushed hard designed specifically to carry out the exploit. It's genuinely clever and once it reaches critical mass the people who are tricked into actually believing it outnumber the original concern-trolls so it's naturally self-perpetuating.

So look, I have no expectation that you'll change your stance, I just hope at least that if you really bought into it that going forward you'll at least do it on purpose and be in on the game.

[Molitor5901]

I think random, serialized paper ballots are the way to go. When the polls close you know the serial numbers of every vote cast, so no new serial numbers should be added to that unless a very good reason. Keep them or destroy them afterwards is another issue, but it's a step in the right direction.

I have some distrust in the American voting system, first with the computerized systems, but also that federal elections are run at the state level. With so many states and jurisdictions, I can't help but feel that fraud is happening. If the federal elections process was truly federalized, and funded if it is not already, managed and controlled by the federal government, then I think there could be greater control and security.

[ForHackernews]

https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/08/vg-2024-how-your-vote-gets-co...

Colorado ballot envelopes already have a bar code - essentially your "serial number".

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because everyone who thinks there's widespread election fraud seems to not know anything about how elections work.

[EasyMark]

Virtually all the election deniers live in a sphere of unreality where they only listen to what their politicians/keepers tell them, they don't care about reality.

[akira2501]

> who thinks there's widespread election fraud seems to not know anything about how elections work.

Does your knowledge imply the system is perfect? Is there more than one type of voter fraud? Do we mean just one or two particular federal elections or all elections at every level? What about internal party elections, have those all been extremely fair and above board lately?

There's obvious advantages to perpetrating this class of fraud. Historically we know this fraud has interfered in all types of elections at all levels. Why would this not continue to be a target?

I mean, even in your link, Step 1 includes mailing ballots in. Even recently we've seen the simple flaws in this insecure mechanism. How could you have such a level of confidence in this system? The fact the smart and well meaning people do is all the more reason to engage this subject more rigorously.

Perhaps a more generous interpretation to people making these claims is to understand that we are still not doing a good enough job at making our elections secure, easy, free and fair. For Hacker News this should easily be understood to be a technical challenge and one that the USA has yet again completely failed to succeed at.

[ForHackernews]

It's not a technical challenge, it's a sociological one. No amount of technical security features or published explanations will convince a group of people who have already decided they are being screwed by "the system".

I do agree that America is failing this test.

[gotoeleven]

Oh hey looks like I found one of the ballots sent to everyone in the state and filled it out and sent it back in.

It's literally that easy in Colorado.

[ytpete]

No it's not. Your signature would have to match the one on file.

Further, if the person the ballot rightfully belonged to actually wants to vote, they'll either request a new one or vote in person - either one of which would invalidate the earlier mailed ballot.

[mulmen]

It’s not that easy and knowledge of how it works is one search away. Here’s a source that explains the process: https://www.cpr.org/2022/10/17/colorado-elections-ballot-cou...

[saxonww]

What do you do when duplicate serial numbers start showing up? I'm assuming you won't know who was issued which serial number, and if it's truly randomized you wouldn't even know where they were sent.

[Cthulhu_]

Then you have clear proof of election fraud and the FBI, NSA, etc can get to work. Invalidate the election results and do a new one.

[macintux]

> Invalidate the election results and do a new one.

The chaos that would ensue from this is staggering.

[zo1]

Much better to just deny it till after the new government is in, then make a nothing-burger out of all the news that is reported "afterwards"? Meanwhile, 50% of your country is disenfranchised for X-years because it was "less chaos" to just accept the vote and move on.

[ImPostingOnHN]

How would they "get to work"?

And your proposed resolution means someone could DoS an election by copying their ballot and submitting it.

[artificialLimbs]

'Just do a new election' is not a valid fallback.

[kmoser]

Not valid why? Lack of political will, or logistically unfeasible?

[SubiculumCode]

For one duplicate?

[zie]

Go be a poll worker in your local election. See if you change your mind.

[SubiculumCode]

The last thing we need is to Federalize voting. Our system is robust BECAUSE it is local. The last thing I'd want is a Federal system under a President's influence.

[hollerith]

Can you think of a reason why the people who wrote the rules we have now would want to avoid putting federal elected officials in charge or running federal elections?

[neverartful]

When I was a kid living in Louisiana (a state well-known for political shenanigans), they had big mechanical voting machines for elections. The machines were very large and heavy and were stored in warehouses. Probably not much fun for the workers who had to move them to/from storage to polling places (they did have wheels though).

Anyways, you would walk into it and throw a big mechanical lever that would close a privacy curtain behind you. Then you would have to manually turn an individual mechanical switch for each choice. When finished voting, you would throw the big mechanical lever back to the original position. Moving the lever back would cause all of your votes to be counted, reset all voting switches, and open the privacy curtains. There were mechanical counters for all possible voting options. Then, when the polls closed the votes would be read off the counters (and presumably verified by multiple individuals) and then reported to the whoever they reported the results to.

This was before the internet, but the same machines could (and should) be used in the internet age. There's nothing to hack into electronically as the voting machines contain no electronics (at least for communications, for sure).

The only big downside is that the machines have to be stored somewhere and they take up a sizable space. Also, they incur expenses to be moved from storage to polling places (and back).

Someone will bring up voters with disabilities, but there were voters with disabilities back then too. I'm sure there was a protocol for accommodating voter disabilities.

All in all, I think it's a sensible and pragmatic solution to thwart hacking and hopefully garner more confidence in voting integrity.

[ndiddy]

Mechanical punch-card voting machines fell out of use after the 2000 election showed that they're more error-prone than either electronic voting machines or paper ballots.

[albert_e]

Curious to know more. Is there a good source of information on the security of the hardware and software used for elections India.

As an Indian citizen I see the casual lack of security mindset in large swathe of things implemented by both public and private actors. Many things get better only though iterative failures and corresponding reactive fixes.

What type of failures and improvements have happened here, or instances of demonstrated hardness against those with motivation and access to machinery.

[viewtransform]

Electronic Voting Machine/Elections in India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlHJZrXrnyQ

The Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) do simple counting of key presses and keep tally of the totals.

The machines are not reprogrammable, run on alkaline batteries and have no WiFi/Bluetooth, USB or ethernet.

[samarthr1]

IIRC it uses tamper evident hardware.

There was an interview with one of the Profs who designed the EVMs here.

[db1234]

Regarding Indian voting machines, there is also randomization involved at various levels during distribution making it difficult to game the system but still I always wonder if there is any way to hack the system. I hope people in charge have a process to continuously evaluate the security procedures and improve it.

[recursivecaveat]

I never understood the desire to have any kind of machine at all. Paper ballots are a perfectly efficient and scalable system used for many large elections. Even if complicated machines are theoretically safe against malfeasance, keeping it simple increases public confidence.

[unethical_ban]

Scalable? Not for same-day. I'd be fine waiting a few days if needed, though. Heck, early voting means I wait for weeks now.

Ranked choice voting is essentially doing multiple elections at a time, having to recount portions of votes every time a candidate drops out. That's a lot easier with computers.

I think the totals from every precinct could be made public in a way that they are verifiable from a central database, where the numbers add up to the total for the state and eventually federal count.

This is probably already happening, but people don't seem to think so.

[bpye]

The UK manages to produce results within a few hours and all ballots, at least for general elections, are hand counted.

I agree that for voting systems other than FPTP it is more work and may take longer - but it’s not an intractable problem.

[wreckdropibex]

Same-day? It is not a problem at all. For example Finland calculates enough paper ballots in hours to give a definitive result, I am sure there are other countries that manage it as well. Your imagination is stuck in the world of voting practices of your side of the pond.

[crooked-v]

In the case of India, keep in mind that the country still has a significant illiteracy rate (about 20% as of 2018) and plenty of people who have literally never used a paper form in their lives. One of the key design goals of the machines is to try and reduce the education needed as much as possible while still keeping things more private and efficient than voice votes.

[cafard]

I should say, the speed of tabulation. An American election can include ballot lines for president, senator, member of congress, state senator, three state representatives, a county councilmember or two, a member of the board of education etc.

[anon291]

If the speed of tabulation is the main reason then why are results no longer known by election night? They're saying it might be days again. When we had paper ballots, we knew that night. (For America)

[gruez]

>When we had paper ballots, we knew that night. (For America)

You forgot about 2000. Also, the main reason for the delays are mail-in ballots, which could be delayed for days/weeks, depending on how lenient the deadlines are.

[chrisco255]

2000 was punch cards and it came down to a razor thin 500 votes in a single swing state.

By law the mail-in ballots have to be in by election day.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

More bits of paper. The ballot papers around here are bloated oversize monstrosities (picture A3 sized) due to the number of parties and candidates but you get a separate one for each election. Unfortunately not every area is paper only.

[Ekaros]

Here we don't even put names on the ballot, instead there is number assigned for each, this scales up to hundreds of candidates. This does prevent write ins, but I see no reason why you could not have own ballot for each purpose and then say colour code them and append letter or two in front of each candidate for each election.

[erik_seaberg]

I don't see how the median voter can be confident in making no mistakes. Not even programmers are willing to write out a list of opcodes anymore.

[samarthr1]

Scale is a bit of an issue.

We need results in as short a time as possible, ws have about 100 crore registered voters, of whom about 70% on average vote, meaning that the ECI must process 70 Crore votes, in under 10 hours.

Making that happen in a free and fair way is a logistical challenge, one that we undertake every 5 years.

One more large advantage of EVMs is making booth capture very expensive (because EVMs have a inbuilt rate limit, but a ballot box does not).

At any rate, with VVPAT being there, it adds another layer of security.

[echoangle]

For everyone wondering: 100 crore is 1 billion, 70 crore is 700 million.

Why do you need the result in under 10 hours?

[jfengel]

Tell me you're under 24 years old without telling me you're under 24 years old.

The US 2000 election was a fiasco of the failures of paper ballots. Officials spent weeks scrutinizing ballots and to this day nobody thinks they got it correct to within the margin of error.

That's when electronic machines came in. They are not necessarily better, but nobody who lived through that nightmare thinks fondly of the clarity of paper ballots.

[rcxdude]

That was punch-card ballots, which are also crap. Most of Europe uses a piece of paper you mark with an 'X' in pen or pencil.

[SoftTalker]

Those were punch card ballots and trying to determine if indented or “hanging chads” were votes or not

[bigstrat2003]

> They are not necessarily better, but nobody who lived through that nightmare thinks fondly of the clarity of paper ballots.

I lived through that, it wasn't that big a deal, and I still think fondly of the clarity of paper ballots. No system is perfect, but paper ballots work and work well.

[kkielhofner]

> The US voting machines are just waiting to be hacked, just a matter of when, not if.

The US election system is very distributed and fragmented - there is virtually no standardization.

Even in the tightest margins for something like President you'd need to have seriously good data to figure out which random municipality voting system(s) you'd need to target to actually affect the outcome.

[akira2501]

> to figure out which random municipality voting system(s) you'd need to target to actually affect the outcome.

As you said, no standardization, which means all precincts reports on wildly different time intervals, if you can interfere with just tallying during or after the fact, and you can get the information on other precincts before any other outlets, you could easily take advantage of this.

It's essentially the Superman II version of interfering with an election. Just put your thumb on the scale a little bit everywhere on late precincts all at once.

The fact that so many states let a simple majority of their state take _all_ electors actually makes this possible. If more states removed the Unit Rule and went like Nebraska and Maine this would be far less effective.

[CaliforniaKarl]

> As you said, no standardization, which means all precincts reports on wildly different time intervals

There is standardization within all precincts of a county. And from my past experience as a poll worker, I can tell you why precinct reporting times can vary wildly within a county.

(Note things I say here are specific to the county where I worked.)

Anyone in line to vote by 8PM is allowed to vote. We (the other poll workers and I) could not start closing the polls until every voter had voted. If the local community did not trust vote-by-mail, then that polling place will likely see delays in closing due to lines.

One polling place often covered multiple precincts, so you'll see multiple precincts delayed simultaneously.

After that, boxes go from one queue to another, with multiple queues consolidating into one or two. So, a one-minute delay in dropping off your box to a collection point, may mean a two-hour delay in that box being processed.

> if you can interfere with just tallying

First off, that would require a remarkable amount of fraud. Second, that's why there are observers. It doesn't matter if it's 2AM on the Wednesday after election day: If tabulating is happening, you are allowed to observe.

[ForHackernews]

Ironically America's fragmentary and incoherent electoral system makes it extremely hard to steal an election there.

[chrisco255]

The 2000 election was decided by 500 votes. You think it would be unfeasible to flip 500 votes in a critical swing state with such a system?

[acdha]

The question is how to know which county you need to do that in. The more you try, the greater the odds of being caught but with margins that small you’d need to attempt multiple states and predict rather accurately how many votes you need to win but not to attract too much scrutiny.

[SubiculumCode]

Moreover the problem there isn't the distributed/local control of voting, but the College.

[CaliforniaKarl]

You say "fragmentary and incoherent", I say "decentralized".

[goodlinks]

Decentralised could be each counter putting 5000 or so ballots into piles with people wandering around witnessing for various parties all working a rigid process accross the nation. Each count publically announced in the room before witnesses.

Totally standardised, coordinated, and decentralised. But fragmented (structuraly) or incoherent.

But agree would be a million times worse with a single electronic system

[IncreasePosts]

Wouldn't you only need to target a handful of battleground districts/states? No point in trying to turn Vermont red or Wyoming blue.

[next_xibalba]

Is this type of system not vulnerable to a supply chain attack?

[readthenotes1]

It's a matter of when, if, and, if we will ever know