Is your polling location in a church?

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heatherkay
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by heatherkay »

But even if we greatly increase the number of ballots submitted by the internet, we will still have to have physical polling places for people that can't or won't vote online. We will still need the same number of polling places if we we want them to be close to voters. Even assuming that we could close half the polling places in Johnson County, we'd still have to have the same number on the East Side. That being the case, we will still need to consider the use of churches. Internet voting won't change that, at least any time in the near future.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by earthling »

It would likely reduce the number of stations needed. It is highly likely participation would increase even if for some reason the same number of locations are needed.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by earthling »

Most compromises are from known exploits of common used system infrastructure and/or because of simple single password challenges, not typically proprietary systems with multiple challenges. Given that voting participation is way down, something like 50% for major elections and as low as 15% for minors, finding some way to make voting more convenient is worth researching, including using the Internet at least for a portion of the process.

It's a rainy Sunday so drew up another method....

How about a connection-less method between the receiving system and the tally system. If you think about how mail-in voting works, there is a disconnect between the end user and the system that tallies the results. The postal service is the independent 'wire' to get it to the voting center. How about using the Internet to send the form but using a closed network to process the results and using a non-network protocol to get it from the 'mail inbox' to the system that tallies the vote.

The 'black box' in the middle can be any method that is not network related or at least not TCP/IP/ethernet or common protocol so that attackers cannot get into the closed system. The sender computer would generate something like proprietary QR codes or other encoding and the processing system on a closed network (not in any way on the Internet) can receive the QR-like code. The black box would be no different than the US postal service. The black box doesn't have to be a QR like code transfer that is optical, it could be any proprietary networkless triple encrypted protocol to get from incoming system to processing system. This would prevent hackers getting into the closed system.

This would be no different than tallying mail in votes. Can then focus on the left side, authenticating the user similar to a notary and/or election judge. The election judge checks the address for physical attendance to prevent ballot stuffing among other reasons. The internet submission is pulled from user to prevent bulk stuffing, many levels of authentication/encoding/encryption could be used and the decoding and address wouldn't be validated in the accepting system to check for ballot stuffing or alteration, it would would be validated in the closed system and if there are duplicates or other authentication mismatch, both votes can be rejected and some contingency process could be executed.

I could go on with ideas but this is definitely worth researching, letting other countries test it first. If there can be a way to reasonably safely use the internet (not necessarily for the entire process), voting participation should increase.

Image

The closed network would not be in any way tied to the Internet, not even behind a firewall.

Also check this out. A mock election using commonly used punchcard systems came out with a 15% error rate.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/pnchcrd.htm
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by mean »

earthling wrote:Most compromises are from known exploits of common used system infrastructure and/or because of simple single password challenges, not typically proprietary systems with multiple challenges. Given that voting participation is way down, something like 50% for major elections and as low as 15% for minors, finding some way to make voting more convenient is worth researching, including using the Internet at least for a portion of the process.
This is correct, but I would argue that this is largely because A) those cracks are easier, and B) the targets aren't always particularly valuable. If you put up a highly valuable target, such as an election, the value of the target compensates for the difficulty of the work required to compromise it. Not only that, but it appears that you're talking about building a completely custom OS, kernel and driver modules, network stack, httpd, and probably a database and some kind of in-house dynamic web scripting language or, perhaps more likely, a tomcat/jboss style application server. After all, you're not going to want to build apache/mysql/php or whatever, complete with the undiscovered vulnerabilities they contain, on your new custom platform.

So, who does that work? Let's say the government hires a private software contractor. Ok. How much do they spend on this? More importantly, how do we audit it to ensure it is secure and doesn't contain any backdoors or election-rigging code? You can't put the source out there for the public to audit, because they'll discover vulnerabilities, so you have to do it in-house and behind a wall of secrecy and basically say, "We know what we're doing. Trust us with your election." I just don't feel good about that.

Not to mention the lawsuits. "I can't have lost, those machines were hacked!" Ohhh boy.
earthling wrote:The 'black box' in the middle can be any method that is not network related or at least not TCP/IP/ethernet or common protocol so that attackers cannot get into the closed system. The sender computer would generate something like proprietary QR codes or other encoding and the processing system on a closed network (not in any way on the Internet) can receive the QR-like code. The black box would be no different than the US postal service. The black box doesn't have to be a QR like code transfer that is optical, it could be any proprietary networkless triple encrypted protocol to get from incoming system to processing system. This would prevent hackers getting into the closed system.
Since there's no low level technical detail in your drawing, it's hard to say, but it looks to me like your black box basically bridges your closed network to the internet, or, at least, could possibly be compromised to do so.
earthling wrote:I could go on with ideas but this is definitely worth researching, letting other countries test it first. If there can be a way to reasonably safely use the internet (not necessarily for the entire process), voting participation should increase.
Yes, definitely let other countries test it first! Although, to be fair, I don't think Estonian elections would be as high of a priority for every single hacker in the known universe as American elections.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by pash »

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Last edited by pash on Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
earthling
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by earthling »

mean wrote: Since there's no low level technical detail in your drawing, it's hard to say, but it looks to me like your black box basically bridges your closed network to the internet, or, at least, could possibly be compromised to do so.
earthling wrote:I could go on with ideas but this is definitely worth researching, letting other countries test it first. If there can be a way to reasonably safely use the internet (not necessarily for the entire process), voting participation should increase.
Yes, definitely let other countries test it first! Although, to be fair, I don't think Estonian elections would be as high of a priority for every single hacker in the known universe as American elections.
There are already a few countries doing or looking into remote e-voting in some form or other...
http://aceproject.org/ace-en/focus/e-voting/countries


On the black box idea, it could be any non-network way to get the forms into the closed system like they already do today with mail-in votes. The black box could be a printer that prints the QR encrypted coded form that contains the voting/ID/authentication info on the left, and a bulk QR scanner on right. It's connection-less to the tallying system and so a hacker can't get into the closed system. The system on the Net is essentially just a printing machine. If a hacker sends a bulk of QR codes to the remote printer, they could also mail them in. The QR code would have to be structured with the user authentication info that the user got maybe when registering for a car license or state ID. There are other best practices of connection-less data transfer and the QR code printing/scanning way is just one. So the focus would be ensuring the desktop to remotely printing of the QR code and authenticating once on the closed system. The system that complies the results would be identically closed as with mail-in votes, so nothing new there but the closed system would also do the authenticating of the QR data, not the printing system. It's automating the scanning of what comes in printed via the net rather than sent through mail. If the QR code is triple encrypted on the desktop before sent, it would actually be more secure than an open text form that goes into snail mail.

Internet voting or some form of remote e-voting from home will come for better or worse. It will be more surprising if in 10 years we don't have it.

pash, yeah, this is one of the systems that MO uses for on-site voting. Curious that it uses Linux and TomCat and refers to firewalls. I didn't read the whole audit in detail but I wonder if it sends results over a network to a central location. If the case, the backend tally system doesn't sound closed to me. What I'm suggesting is not much different than mail-in voting, which likely uses a closed backend system for tallying the forms (if not, it should).

http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Page/Append ... v.%20B.pdf
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by earthling »

heatherkay wrote:But even if we greatly increase the number of ballots submitted by the internet, we will still have to have physical polling places for people that can't or won't vote online. We will still need the same number of polling places if we we want them to be close to voters. Even assuming that we could close half the polling places in Johnson County, we'd still have to have the same number on the East Side. That being the case, we will still need to consider the use of churches. Internet voting won't change that, at least any time in the near future.
Another possibility is to go entirely vote by mail as Wash state did. It has raised participation to one of highest in country, or at least minor elections are closer to major election turnout. Oregon too. Apparently they don't require a notary.

http://crosscut.com/2012/01/20/crosscut ... op-nation/

Internet voting or internet encrypted form print to a voting tally site as proposed would likely raise participation even higher and might even be more secure and reliable than by mail. Those who cant do by net can then do by mail.

Another advantage of both is they can have a 2 to 3 week window of voting instead of slamming into one evening.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by mean »

pash wrote:
mean wrote:More importantly, how do we audit it to ensure it is secure and doesn't contain any backdoors or election-rigging code? You can't put the source out there for the public to audit, because they'll discover vulnerabilities, so you have to do it in-house and behind a wall of secrecy and basically say, "We know what we're doing. Trust us with your election." I just don't feel good about that.
All of these problems already exist with today's electronic voting machines. Ars Technica has published a bunch of articles on the subject over the past several years.
Indeed. That's why I don't like them, either. That and the CEO of Diebold saying that he was going to deliver the 2004 election to Bush.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by heatherkay »

earthling wrote:Another possibility is to go entirely vote by mail as Wash state did. It has raised participation to one of highest in country, or at least minor elections are closer to major election turnout. Oregon too. Apparently they don't require a notary.
Yet another reason why I hope the post office stays in business
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by earthling »

mean wrote:
pash wrote:
mean wrote:More importantly, how do we audit it to ensure it is secure and doesn't contain any backdoors or election-rigging code? You can't put the source out there for the public to audit, because they'll discover vulnerabilities, so you have to do it in-house and behind a wall of secrecy and basically say, "We know what we're doing. Trust us with your election." I just don't feel good about that.
All of these problems already exist with today's electronic voting machines. Ars Technica has published a bunch of articles on the subject over the past several years.
Indeed. That's why I don't like them, either. That and the CEO of Diebold saying that he was going to deliver the 2004 election to Bush.
There isn't any reliable/safe method. With punchcards, there is often a 7-15% error rate plus all the handlers in between, potential for more human error (or corruption). Even manual punchcard count machines are now connected to networks that apparently send to a central location. No matter what you do, there are potentials for holes. May as well get rid of the notion of election sites, all the handlers, all the different technologies and standardize on something simple like mail in voting or using the internet to send in the vote that is tabulated on a separate system. Plus, trying to get everyone to vote on a single day has lower voter turnout than if doing mail/internet voting that could have a 2-3 week window.

Vote-by-mail takes away many possible points of failure but there is still someone manually compiling the forms and unless certified mail may not deliver, plus there is an open text form via mail. With the method I'm proposing, the backend compiling system is entirely closed from the Net and the Net is used to just print an encrypted form to a central vote compiling location. Essentially no manual handlers. If the internet 'printer' is hacked, they could block the transmission or try to change the encrypted QR code in transit (not likely in realtime if triple encrypted, like truecrypt), and if blocked a contingency could trigger, like telling user to mail the QR encrypted coded form in.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

For the most part I think punchcard usage is going down, being replaced by OCR (think that is what fill in the circle is called) and to a certain extent computer at the polling place. Mail-in voting has more potential for fraud and would still be handled by someone who receives the mail or puts the card into the reader.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by splash »

WSPanic wrote: I have more of a problem with electioneering at the polling places. While it's not supposed to be allowed, they set up on the sidewalk outside of the polling entrance and force interaction.
Electioneering is allowed in Missouri, as long as it takes place further than 25 feet from the entrance. Generally, this is marked in some way (chalk or by the 'vote here' sign). People are not allowed to harass you or do anything to prevent you from voting and if that happens, inform an election judge.

As far as the original question goes, my polling location is a church and I have no problem with that, even though I'm an atheist. With the exception of the 2008 general election, I've never actually been in the depths of the church where I vote. I think the room where I vote is some kind of cafeteria or small meeting room and the lines are generally pretty small. In 2008, things were completely different and the line stretched all throughout this long hallway throughout the church.

Also, as far as election judges go, I'm fairly certain that you don't get to pick your location if you sign up to be a judge. So I'm guessing that any kind of church doctrine pressure would be moot.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never encountered any pressure from poll workers. The most interaction I've had with them is signing my name on the roll, answering whether I want to do paper or electronic, and saying thank you to the sticker person.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by Highlander »

Why is this even an issue?

The bigger issue may be the 25' rule. That's less than half the distance between pitchers mound and home plate. Unless you are deaf and extremely near sighted, people supporting a candidate 25 feet away will be hard not to notice.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by splash »

You're not supposed to be chanting a candidates name or anything disruptive like that.

I feel like I have two opinions on the issue of electioneering. Before I did it, I thought the people standing outside of polling places were, at most, a mild annoyance. I've encountered very few who were at all aggressive and most were very nice. However, after doing it, I can understand why it's done. It's a good way to reach INTERESTED voters, meaning those who would like to have more information on a candidate and what they stand for. I had several good conversations with voters, from both parties, who were curious about the issues. If people asked me about an issue, I would answer, but would make it clear that I was giving my opinion and I never gave my opinions unsolicited.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

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The Ballot Cops
The King Street Patriots, as they called themselves, started by scrutinizing voter rolls, ostensibly to weed out ineligible voters, dead people, and duplicate entries. But because the activists focused on addresses with six or more registered voters, poor people and minorities tended to attract the most scrutiny. What’s more, critics charged that the group sometimes based its challenges on technicalities, and they picked up on occasional hints of racial animus. One early promotional video reportedly included a photo of an African American protester carrying a placard that had been doctored to read I only got to vote once!....

Two weeks later, on Election Day, poll watchers streamed into poor black and Latino precincts around Racine, hunting for evidence that people were cheating. They didn’t find much, though D’Abbraccio later claimed otherwise, apparently in a bid for a recount in a state-Senate race. (Racine’s sheriff investigated the allegations but found no evidence of fraud.) Reports of voter intimidation, however, abounded. Carolyn Castore, the Wisconsin election coordinator for the League of Women Voters, told me that her organization received more than 50 reports from Racine-area voters complaining that True the Vote volunteers had hovered over registration tables and aggressively challenged voters’ eligibility. (In previous years, it had fielded only half a dozen or so complaints about observers.) Other reports had poll watchers tailing vans that were transporting voters to the polls, snapping photos of voters’ license plates, even directing voters to the wrong polling places.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

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The only bigger code phrase than "voter fraud" is "state's rights".
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Talked with someone from the old neighborhood and te longtime polling place at a school has been changed to a church.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

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I voted in a dead mall on Saturday afternoon. Missouri you need to get on early voting.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by chingon »

KCMax wrote:I voted in a dead mall on Saturday afternoon. Missouri you need to get on early voting.
Unlikely given the radical rightward swing in our legislature. Making voting easier/expanding voter turnout is not part of the Republican Party platform or its strategy. Kansas is lucky to have it.
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Re: Is your polling location in a church?

Post by shinatoo »

KCMax wrote:I voted in a dead mall on Saturday afternoon. Missouri you need to get on early voting.
You have been able to vote in Downtown KC and Independence for about a month already. I voted Friday.
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