computers and voting – USA Gov Policy

The New York Analysis concludes its study of electronic ballots vs. paper voting.

A study in the Atlantic by Dan Gilmor notes that “Accountability is a crapshoot. In some jurisdictions, voters use machines that create electronic tallies with no ‘paper trail’—that is, no tangible evidence whatsoever that the voter’s choices were honored. A “recount” in such places means asking the machine whether it was right the first time… For reasons that remain unclear, Congress has been largely uninterested in doing what’s needed to make voting safe, secure, and verifiable (perhaps because the existing system is how members got elected)…Barring a national commitment to getting this right, maybe the answer is to change direction entirely. Maybe we should abandon electronic voting systems and do everything on paper, and count by hand. We’d wait longer for results, a lot longer. If it ensured accurate results, though, I’d call that a reasonable trade.

Fox News reports that Georgia is looking to return to paper ballots. “The most secure elections in the world are conducted with a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Georgia State Rep. Scot Turner. “It allows you to continue into the future to verify the result.” Turner has proposed a bill that would retire Georgia’s electronic touch-screen voting machines and switch to paper ballots that voters would fill out and then be counted by optical scan machines. The technology has been in use for decades to score standardized tests for grade-school students.”

You should prevent hand practice and indulge in lovemaking with viagra brand online a trusted female. If any of these serious symptoms are noticed then immediate visit to doctor is essential. cialis tadalafil online The best thing about penis enlargement supplements is cost of viagra pills that they also improve overall sexual stamina. Well, it viagra free shipping is all a false. Cyperscoop reasons that “Paper ballots may seem like an antiquated voting practice, but hacking fears are now pushing an increasing number of states toward a return to the basics. State legislatures and election directors are heeding warnings from Washington that hackers may tamper with electronic voting systems in the 2018 midterm elections. On the national level, lawmakers have made several attempts to push legislation aiming to strengthen election cybersecurity through grants to upgrade equipment and to increase cooperation between the federal government and lower jurisdictions. So far, no such legislation has passed either chamber of Congress. Amid all this national attention, a number of states have started to act on their own bolster the integrity of elections they run. With these states, the focus has been on doing away with direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs) that don’t produce a paper record. Experts and advocates say it might be impossible to create an unhackable system, so the next best thing would be to ensure that a system is fully auditable, so that any tampering would be detected with a review.”

The National Association of Secretaries of State notes that “Just as we must have contingency plans for floods and all kinds of natural phenomena, we must also be ready to deal with man-made threats. The risks posed by foreign government hackers, cyber criminals and everyday hacktivists are not new to election officials. States and localities are committed to working with national security agencies and other federal partners, including the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to solicit input on threats and risk mitigation in our elections. States are already deploying numerous resources for this election cycle, including extensive testing for cyber threats described by the recent FBI alert, and best practices guidelines produced by the EAC. Additional steps may be taken based upon credible or specific threats that are identified in the run-up to Election Day. Secretaries of State are also part of a DHS Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group, created for sharing resources, best practices and technical advice. To be clear: The equipment that people vote on is NOT connected to the Internet. Vote counting is NEVER done with systems connected to the Internet, and tabulation systems are not networked. Election systems must be physically secured when not in use, with public accuracy and performance testing that anyone can observe. Post-election audits can help to further guard against deliberate manipulation of the election, as well as unintentional software, hardware or programming issues. Again, there are no documented cases of flawed voting results linked to alleged cyber hacking.”

Of course, there have been calls in some states to allow voting via internet, despite the NASS statement.

Accurate voting is vital to the American system of government, and an area of bipartisan concern. Yet, according to some critics, a potential threat to the security of balloting has been voluntarily adopted, and there are now calls for a reversal of that process.

The replacement of simple lever machines and even more basic paper ballots has swept across the nation, particularly since 2010. A Stanford study examined the merits of electronic voting: “One of the significant benefits of this new system is the possibility for increased efficiency. With Electronic Voting Machines voters can submit their votes, and be reasonably confident that their vote will count (namely avoiding the “hanging chad” problem that handicapped the 2000 presidential elections in the United States). New Electronic Voting Machines can also stop voters from common election faults, such as picking too many or no candidates, also thereby increasing the general effectiveness of voting… technology adds more steps to the process and thus increases the possibility of error with each additional step, all of which are largely unseen by the voter.

“Not only does the technology create more errors in the electronic workings, but the voters can also commit mistakes due to confusion with the user interface. The terminology is confusing, different machines produce different interfaces, and even the audio guides to help the disabled may prove more confusing than helpful.

“With the advent of electronic machine voting also comes the higher possibilities of fraudulent machines and practices. First of all, the technology is ‘black box software,’ meaning that the public is not allowed access into the software that controls the voting machines. Although companies protect their software to protect against fraud (and to beat back competition), this also leaves the public with no idea of how the voting software works. It would be simple for the company to manipulate the software to produce fraudulent results. Also, the vendors who market the machines are in competition with each other, and there is no guarantee that they are producing the machines in the best interest of the voters and the accuracy of the ballots.

“Lastly, vote accuracy is also an issue, because voters have no way of confirming there vote, and there is also no way of conducting a recount with direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting. With DRE, there is no paper trail, no verification, and thus no scrutiny of the processes. Voter anonymity is also a problem. Voters have to provide much of their personal information to the systems for voter verification, and with that comes the problem of keeping voter information safe and keeping voters anonymous.”
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The attraction of electronic devises has been explained by Jesse Emspsak, writing in Live Science: “With all the vulnerabilities of machines, why not simply use paper ballots, and hand-count them, as some smaller districts do, or even some major democracies…The answer comes down to U.S. election structure, [according to Warren Stewart, communications director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting technologies.] Americans vote on several candidates in each state, and in California and some other states, voters also weigh in on ballot measures…Of course, one could go to paper-based systems and hand-counting, but it would take a lot longer to count the votes. That might not be a bad thing, Stewart said.

But significant unease about the potential for tampering, either by partisan interests within the nation or by hostile nations abroad, exists.

Bruce Schneier a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School who serves on the advisory board of Verified Voting, recently noted in a Guardian editorial: “Today, we conduct our elections on computers. Our registration lists are in computer databases. We vote on computerized voting machines. And our tabulation and reporting is done on computers. We do this for a lot of good reasons, but a side effect is that elections now have all the insecurities inherent in computers. The only way to reliably protect elections from both malice and accident is to use something that is not hackable or unreliable at scale; the best way to do that is to back up as much of the system as possible with paper. Last year, the Defcon hackers’ conference sponsored a Voting Village. Organizers collected 25 pieces of voting equipment, including voting machines and electronic poll books. By the end of the weekend, conference attendees had found ways to compromise every piece of test equipment: to load malicious software, compromise vote tallies and audit logs, or cause equipment to fail. It’s important to understand that these were not well-funded nation-state attackers. These were not even academics who had been studying the problem for weeks. These were bored hackers, with no experience with voting machines, playing around between parties one weekend.”

The Report Concludes Tomorrow.

Illustration by Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.