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Comment by youdontknowtho | Hacker News Reader

I did get a very sinky feeling when they scanned my vote and I didn't get a paper copy.

Lowest bidder development doesn't seem like it should be the way we engineer everything.

Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kodos...

The FEC should be in charge of the entire voting process. What is worse: a custom designed U.S. government voting machine for all federal elections made by the FEC, or tens of different companies, selling their closed source machines to state governments for profit.

I see issues in both systems, and in fact I'll take the current set up because my proposal requires me trusting the government more than I do now.

Part of the problem is voting is run at the local level. I'm not sure the federal government even has the authority to tell states and counties that they must use a particular voting machine.

So you make it so the states and counties and cities and voting districts that want to use a different process for their elections don't have to use the federal machines for anything but federal votes, but you still allow the federal machines to be used for down-ballot processes.

You're still assuming that the federal government has the authority to dictate the voting process used for federal elections. IANAL and I don't actually know what the legality here is, but my assumption is the federal government doesn't have that authority, given that if it did, it probably would have exercised it by now.

Even simpler, just ask the President to decide who won each Federal race.

"What is worse: a custom designed U.S. government voting machine for all federal elections made by the FEC, or tens of different companies, selling their closed source machines to state governments for profit."

Um, I see what you're getting at, but the government would definitely create a monoculture and may create a single point of failure. The choice is less obvious than you may think is based on your phrasing.

To which I'd say the solution is less about getting the FEC to do it, and more about the process. This needs to be an open and very public affair. It doesn't help us to have the FEC do it if they do it behind closed doors and create a closed-source computer-based system that requires all voting machines to be hooked over insecure networks to a central closed-source insecure server or something.

>It doesn't help us to have the FEC do it if they do it behind closed doors and create a closed-source computer-based system that requires all voting machines to be hooked over insecure networks to a central closed-source insecure server or something.

I did say the FEC isn't a good option now and I didn't really want to enumerate all my reasons, but you are covering a good number of them.

The incumbent government should NOT control the vote-counting machines.

The incumbent government is somehow more of a threat of hacking the elections than the private corporations now?

I can understand your opposition to the government as is, it's a closed off and opaque system with little interest in citizen affairs. How about you come up with some ways that we can make the government better and suggest those instead of just stopping the conversation with a big flat "no"?

You don't get a copy so nobody can bribe or coerce you.

There are ways of providing receipts that prove you voted and can be used to prove your vote was included in the final tally without revealing (by choice or otherwise) who you voted for. See Punchscan[0] or Scantegrity[1] for examples.

Pretty interesting stuff from a comp sci point of view.

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

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity

Also see the Rivest and Smith secure voting protocols:

http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html

Thanks for the link!

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