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by madmax108 4932 days ago
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are machines that (literally) determine the fate of a nation, and in democracies, it is of utmost importance that they are thoroughly tested and validated by security experts.

In India (one of the largest democracies using EVMs), security researchers are crucified if they point out flaws in EVMs, the most memorable of these events being: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jhalderm/electronic-votin...
2 comments
luckystarr 4932 days ago
Don't call this things "voting machines", call them what they primarily are: computers.

The word machine implies predictability and being built for one purpose only. Computers are not predictable and are furthermore designed to solve any problem, including committing election fraud.

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CookWithMe 4932 days ago
> The word machine implies predictability [...]. Computers are not predictable [...]

First of all, computers can be mechanical - the first computers have been [0].

Furthermore, computers are predictable. If a CPU would not be predictable, how would you program it? If you write a program, you assume that your computer is predictable and that your instructions will be carried out. (If that assumption is not met, a fault occurred - but this happens in mechanical systems as well) In fact, you can perform computation in lockstep to detect errors.

Of course, it can be practically impossible to exactly predict a network of computers with several layers of software deployed... but that is not the issue here.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_computer

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luckystarr 4932 days ago
Please don't twist it to make them appear safe for voting purposes. They are not.

With today's computers that have any non-trivial piece of code on them it is for all practical purposes unpredictable that they will carry out the task that they are supposed to do, even if every piece of code is known.

The task at hand it "perform a universal, secret, equal and verifiable vote without any fraud involved". I doubt that this can ever be achieved.

If even a small sub-task of this is violated, I consider that such that it didn't carry out the task.

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DennisP 4932 days ago
The difference is that a computer can emulate any machine, and it might not be emulating the one you think it's emulating.
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mtgx 4932 days ago
Not to mention that it should be an absolute priority for the software to be open source, and easily verifiable by anyone, which doesn't seem to be the case for many such voting machines. And I think that should literally be a crime. It should be illegal for states or local governments to buy voting machines with proprietary software.
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