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“It’s just not possible”

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Anything that can be hacked will be hacked. Electronic voting machines are no exception. Which raises the question, “Could you hack enough electronic voting machines to influence (rig) the outcome of the upcoming presidential election?” To answer this question, you need to have high confidence in the answers to three additional questions:

1) Are there a sufficient number of electronic voting machines in swing states?

2) Can you identify and tamper with (hack) the right machines in the right locations?

3) Can you infiltrate the required number of the more than 8,000 distributed, local, mostly offline, public polling places, and defraud a sufficient number of ordinary citizen volunteer election monitors, trained and credentialed partisan poll watchers, and the local and state officials who have a system in place to forestall both human error and any type of suspected tampering? […]

There’s a compelling and reassuring post by Chris Ashby, a Republican campaign finance and election lawyer, that clearly explains what would be necessary to “rig” an election. It’s a good read. In it, Chris opines: “To rig an election, you would need 1) technological capabilities that exist only in Mission Impossible movies, plus 2) the cooperation of the Republicans and Democrats who are serving as the polling place’s election officials, plus 3) the blind eyes of the partisan poll watchers who are standing over their shoulders, plus 4) the cooperation of another set of Republicans and Democrats — the officials at the post-elections canvass, plus 5) the blind eyes of the canvass watchers, too.”

What Chris means by “technological capabilities that exist only in Mission Impossible movies” is that even though hacking an individual machine is relatively easy, hacking the right machines in the right places to successfully and undetectably “rig” a national election would take an almost impossible-to-imagine coordinated effort by an army of technicians and wizened election volunteers from both political parties. […]

Between all of the hacked documents being released by WikiLeaks, the massive Yahoo email hack and the recent super-sized DDoS attack, it’s natural to wonder if a technical hack could impact or rig the upcoming election.

While conspiracy theorists, fear-mongers and attention seekers may want you to believe it’s probable, and while it is true that the chances that hackers might influence the outcome of the upcoming election are non-zero, in practice, it’s just not possible. The thousands of very well-distributed, mostly old-fashioned, partisan-monitored, local election polling places that make up our national election system are on full alert, and it is more than capable of defending our democracy on November 8th. So please, go out and vote with confidence. America needs you.

Ashby’s post is here.

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 12:45 pm

Comments

/Clap

Comment by PublicServant Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 12:55 pm
So much about this election is giving me 2004 flashbacks but from a different vantage point.

Now some Trump fans are passing along conspiracies about Soros controlling voting machines in 14 states. In 2004, the bogeyman was Diebold for its CEO being a Bush donor.

In 2004, you’d see fringe Dems pass along conspiracies about some bulge on W.’s back during a debate as a sign of some kind of transmitter feeding him answers. Now fringe Republicans came up with similar conspiracies for Hillary’s debate performance.

Makes me realize how silly us W haters looked to a lot of other people back then and better understand why the left was so bad at persuading against re electing him.

Comment by hisgirlfriday Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 12:58 pm
Conspiracy theorist and fear monger here. Perhaps you should read this; http://www.computerworld.com/article/3134746/security/fridays-iot-based-ddos-attack-has-security-experts-worried.html. This wasn’t a sophisticated, hostile government, sponsored group.

Comment by weltschmerz Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 12:59 pm
Until all firmware and code in the voting machines is open source / available in the public domain, I’ll respectfully disagree with conclusion.

Comment by RNUG Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:00 pm
weltschmerz, as we discussed last week, a DDoS attack could prevent results from being posted for hours or even maybe a few days, but it could not alter the results.

Sure, it’s worrisome, but take a breath. Also, your link doesn’t work.

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:05 pm
I do not place great faith in some of the persons recruited to serve as election judges in Chicago. Many are persons of modest means who simply need the paycheck. It is a long day and I doubt that anyone is computer tech savvy.

Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:11 pm
Why worry about machines when all you need is hanging chad

Comment by Rabid Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:21 pm
Panel of experts (C-span/Atlantic Council) discussing voting system security:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?417154-1/discussion-focuses-voting-system-security

Pretty depressing.
How was this not fixed after 2000/Bush v Gore?

Comment by TinbyDancer(FKASue) Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:23 pm
Panel of experts (C-span) discussing election safeguards, voter registration concerns, etc.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?417151-1/doug-chapin-tammy-patrick-discuss-election-integrity

This one’s a bit more upbeat, but without secure systems………

Comment by TinbyDancer(FKASue) Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:41 pm
It’s been several months since I voted, and a few years since I was an election judge, but aren’t all the electronic results printed onto a paper receipt? And aren’t all the individual ballots printed and then kept in physical form too?

Comment by JohnnyPyleDriver Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:47 pm
“I do not place great faith in some of the persons recruited to serve as election judges in Chicago. Many are persons of modest means who simply need the paycheck”

Just what does that mean, those folks don’t exist south of I-80? Try again but take the white hood off before you start typing.

Comment by Give Me A Break Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:10 pm
If somebody needs a paycheck, there are far easier and lucrative ways of breaking the law than sitting around a polling place for 14 hours

Comment by JohnnyPyleDriver Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:15 pm
Trump’s favorite conspiracy movie?

https://youtu.be/S7eHIga5RBU

Comment by HRC2016 Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:21 pm
The media and government class are not trusted.

Comment by Liberty Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:34 pm
What do you want the final tab to say?

Paper ballots in sealed containers with, beleive it or not, an inked finger a la the UN organized elections, works pretty well. Mexico’s system is far more robust and harder to finagle. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/02/8-things-the-u-s-election-system-could-learn-from-mexicos/

Comment by Touré's Latte Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:39 pm
My personal concern regarding cyber-security on Election Day would be the effect of a DDOS attack on the Democratic Party’s VAN/VoteBuilder system.

From phone-banking to cutting turf for walk-lists, that web-based tool is the backbone of virtually all Democratic GOTV voter-contact.

I don’t know what they’re doing for GOTV on the other side of the aisle — http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/26/trump-cuts-off-fundraising-events-for-republican-party.html — but it certainly seems possible that a DDOS attack against the east coast similar to the last one could measurably suppress the Democratic vote on Election Day.

– MrJM

Comment by @MisterJayEm Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:46 pm
=the cooperation of the Republicans and Democrats who are serving as the polling place’s election officials,=

apparently this guy has never visited a Chicago or South suburban polling place, where both “watchers” are Dems….

Comment by Illinois Bob Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:57 pm
This is why the drive for uniform high tech voting (like universal internet voting) is misguided. Low tech and decentralized voting is less likely to be hacked.

Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:58 pm
=the cooperation of another set of Republicans and Democrats — the officials at the post-elections canvass, plus 5) the blind eyes of the canvass watchers, too.”=

Welcome to Cook County and Chicago, Chris….

Comment by Illinois Bob Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 2:58 pm
=JohnnyPyleDriver - Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 1:47 pm: aren’t all the electronic results printed onto a paper receipt? And aren’t all the individual ballots printed and then kept in physical form too? =

NO

Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 3:19 pm
I know one time in a “county election” where the results showed the candidate had no votes, but the candidate knew that was not true. After an investigation, he found out all of the votes casted for him were electronically counted as a vote for the other candidate. Yes fraud happens.

Comment by Mama Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 3:23 pm
==but aren’t all the electronic results printed onto a paper receipt? And aren’t all the individual ballots printed and then kept in physical form too?==

In Illinois, yes. I’ve been an election judge for several years, and I have seen the paper trail for each ballot on a touchscreen machine.

In other states, not necessarily.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state

Comment by Tim Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 3:32 pm
Whenever I see a story about electronic voting machines, I think of two things: The Onion headline about Diebold leaking election results, and Andres Sepulveda.

Comment by Angry Republican Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 4:14 pm
There’s a tinfoil shortage in the stores with the number of people wearing tinfoil hats these days.

Comment by Demoralized Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 4:20 pm
Warning this one is going to be long…

As someone with two degrees in technology and experience being the official observer/party rep at my local election authority for every election except one in at least the last 16 years (if not longer) let me explain how hard this would be at least using the machines we use at the local election authority…

First and foremost there is a paper trail for everything, so even if you were to hack into equipment you would still have a fundamental miss-match between the paper and the results. Short of arson, I have no idea how you address that.

So we get the results from the machines by having the counting part of the machines (the touchscreen and scanners for those who use paper and pencil) when they are delivered to the counting center (election authority) by at least two election judges, one from each party. So if you were going to have ’shenanigans’ happen this would be the place. So you would basically need to get two grandmas (most of our judges are over 60) to agree to let someone break the seal on the machine (or figure out how to get access to the PCMCIA card without breaking the seal) and swap out or edit the card.

Even if you modified the card, you still have the following two problems.
You have every paper ballot (in our system every single voter produces a ballot page) so there is a paper trail.
A system summary including vote totals is produced by the machine at the end of the night at the polling place.
Your

When we first went to the machines from punch cards (which were at much higher risk of shenanigans IMHO) the other party wanted the audit tapes from each and every polling machine. The guy from the voting machine vendor kind of pushed back and took it as a personal offense. So I informed him that we were also making the request (so there was no doubt it was going to be done). When asked why later, I told him that I was more than happy for one or more active people from the other party to spend quality time looking at that vs working for a candidate .

So if you can’t hack a central election server as it were you are going to need a ton of people to pull this off. I know Illinois political corruption might be used as an argument against this next bit of logic but… In general, smart people are not willing to commit crimes for small rewards. You are going to need a host of very smart people to even attempt something (and fail) and good luck finding people who are willing to risk jail for something like this.

Would you?

I was involved in politics for a long time and never even met a candidate I was willing to have an awkward conversation with law enforcement about, no less commit a crime for.

In terms of a technology attack to try and modify and election, it just isn’t plausible nor worth the risks because of the paper trail.

Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 4:55 pm
I will say I think it would be stunningly difficult to hack the election. You’re dealing with several hundred thousand voting machines total, in varying states of repair, under varying conditions of supervision, and all of them incompatible and proprietary. States and boards of election that have not updated their equipment have garbage that’s so fossilized that each station would have to be manually hacked with cartridges, and the biggest risk with that type of equipment (widespread, for example, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey) is accidental or intentional mis-operation by the poll worker. Those who have updated their equipment have generally also updated their security.

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 6:26 pm
Where I live (rural), we still use the old paper and pencil ballots.

Comment by Mama Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 7:25 pm