Warren Wants to Replace Every Single Voting Machine to Make Elections 'As Secure As Fort Knox'

[babylonsister]

Elizabeth Warren Wants to Replace Every Single Voting Machine to Make Elections 'As Secure As Fort Knox'
By Abby Vesoulis
June 25, 2019


Russian agents targeted 39 state election systems, sent spear-phishing emails to more than 120 election officials, and successfully infiltrated the websites or databases of seven states ahead of the 2016 election. Now, Elizabeth Warren has a plan to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

If elected President, the Massachusetts Democrat wants to replace every voting machine in the country with with state-of-the-art equipment, lock all federal voting technology behind a security firewall, and require states to adopt uniform election ballots to prevent common ballot mishaps like hanging chads.

Outdated technology is a root cause of America’s election security problem. More than 40 states use voter registration databases that are over a decade old, and 12 states still use voting machines that don’t leave a paper trail to confirm votes were counted correctly.

“Our elections should be as secure as Fort Knox. But instead, they’re less secure than your Amazon account,” Warren wrote in a Medium post published Tuesday morning. “State and local officials take their jobs seriously, but they often don’t have the resources to secure their elections.”

Warren also vows to make voting more accessible.

Her plan would mandate automatic same-day voter registration, early voting and vote-by mail. The progressive 2020 candidate would make Election Day a federal holiday and ban states from purging voters from the rolls unless there is “objective evidence” they died, moved or otherwise became ineligible to vote. In all states, people who completed prison sentences would be re-enfranchised.

more...

https://time.com/5613673/warren-election-security/?fbclid=IwAR1jU0IeRafMlZOi6kWkfhqkrdiuoOVRvTarKzCRg7qzvZ5KLeYSTw7Pk1s

[Meadowoak]

1. Hand counted paper ballots.

[Pachamama]

4. +10000

Agree - and it shouldn't matter if counting and verification by representatives from all parties at each voting location takes weeks to know the final results.

[padah513]

6. Yes

[FakeNoose]

22. The media will never go for that

I agree that it's the best and least cheat-able way to hold our elections. But the news media want to have everybody glued to their TV sets waiting for results that show up in a few hours. If it takes days to count the votes, then everybody turns off the TV and goes to bed.

[Eric J in MN]

2. Elizabeth Warren has a lousy plan for election security.

Last edited Thu Jun 27, 2019, 01:11 AM - Edit history (1)

She advocates a “paper trail” instead of paper ballots.

When electronic machines print a receipt most people don’t check it.

Her plan says nothing about audits or recounts.

Update: I was mistaken about the first part. Later in her post, she advocates “hand-marked, voter-verified paper ballot machines.”

[marylandblue]

5. The article doesn't say what "paper trail" means

It could be paper ballots read by machine.

[Eric J in MN]

36. You're right. I was mistaken. NT

NT

[Blues Heron]

3. Unsinkable!!

Don't hide my vote in a machine. Let me cast a ballot which is counted with human eyes.

[padah513]

7. +1

[moreland01]

17. It needs to be done with both methods.

I've worked on elections in Florida, Utah, Colorado and Minnesota. From hanging chads to hand-drawn circles to machine ballots with and without receipts. In my opinion, the correct way is a hand-drawn circled ballot that is machine counted and then randomly audited for accuracy. Re-counts (when needed) should be done by hand (not machine).

At the end of the night, the precinct totals are typically sent to the county office and then on to the state via electronic means (each state uses different means). The proper way to do this is to have the vote totals (for each precinct) sent in electronically followed up by a verifying phone call. This way the electronic totals can't be manipulated in transit.

[forgotmylogin]

23. I don't understand why they don't use something like a bingo-dauber or a stamp pad.

Last edited Wed Jun 26, 2019, 11:44 AM - Edit history (3)

Make the ballot a large sheet, and each candidate or issue is on one wide-bordered line in a box with enough separation between them that it's impossible to inadvertently mark two of them with one stamp or "daub".

The voter gets a ballot and a stamp with fast-dry ultraviolet machine-readable security ink. Stamping ink anywhere in a box votes for that item. This makes voting take less time since the poll is not limited to how many stations they can run - a machine is not required for the actual voting process. All the voter needs is a ballot and a flat surface with a little privacy - a clipboard even - and the stamp. Voters can take all the time they need and not feel pressured by people waiting for stations.

Voters can just stand or sit anywhere - on couches or even school desks. The stamp needn't be special or official - just a large dot the size of a fingerprint with special ink visible to humans and machines. Perhaps some precincts can design stamps with an official logo. Or the voter could even just use their thumb. In fact, poll workers could just hand out ballots and daubers to everyone as they walk in, and only check registration when the ballot is presented for the tally.

The ballot is fed into a machine while the voter watches. It digitally scans it and counts votes. Ink anywhere in a box registers as a vote. If the machine detects ink on more than one box for an item, it prints large red and black diagonal stripes over the entire ballot which voids it visibly. If the ballot is valid, it prints an individual serial number on it. Then the ballot is digitally scanned as an image. If valid, it adds the votes to the main count; if voided, it sounds an alert immediately that it's invalid without counting the ballot and the voter must vote again. The voter can write their vote serial number down if they want, or maybe it's duplicated on a stub that can be detached for them.

The digital images of ballots from an individual election (including invalid, uncounted ones) are archived and published online for anyone to see and count if necessary. If a voter documented the serial number, they can look up their own ballot. The original paper ballots can also be physically archived.

[mitch96]

29. I wonder if you could use the blockchain principal for voting...

Once you cast a vote it would go to EVERY machine in the precinct/county/state... You might change one or two but all of them??
m

[LeftTurn3623]

8. This is long overdue

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. I wish she was President already! :)

[oasis]

10. That's a plan I like. nt

[Honeycombe8]

11. Not gonna happen. "State's rights."

There would be a furor over the federal government taking control of election systems in any way.

Making them all alike, in fact, would possibly make them easier to hack. But I'm no tech expert.

[eggplant]

12. I love that where I live (Columbia county NY), we hand count all ballots. Always.

We use optical scanners for preliminary results, but then we hand count.

[unblock]

13. lol, she even gets in a dig at amazon!

i certainly agree that it's scandalous how lame our ballot security is.

touchscreen technology is idiotic for elections. keep paper ballots. you automate frequent, routine tasks; you don't automate something people do once every two years. not worth the potential for bugs and security problems.

best use for technology for elections is lots of webcams to make sure that paper ballots aren't tampered with or destroyed.

[dlk]

14. True Democracy in Action - Go Liz!

Imagine that, living in a country where voting is easy and every vote is accurately counted.

[Butterflylady]

15. Repugs won't like that

Cant cheat.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. +1 Very needed. . . . nt

[calimary]

18. YES!!!!!!

[shawn703]

19. Just switched my candidate preference to Warren

Thanks for the article.

[turbinetree]

20. I will donate again to the Warren "I Have A Plan for That" agenda............and I will make sure

that I will vote for people in Congress that will back up her "I Have Plan for That" agenda............................to correct the malfeasance...........

November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough......................

[robbob]

21. But if the voting machines have already been hacked...

Any candidate pushing for honest elections will never get elected. Don’t know if we’re there yet, but I suspect we are close.

[loyalsister]

24. I'm not so sure about this one

Our municipal, county, and school board elections are held in the spring- separate from state and federal elections.
People actually pay attention to school board elections when they aren't overshadowed by presidential and state candidate elections.
Our county clerk is in the process of buying election equipment, after giving the public an opportunity to try them out.
Voting machines which produce paper ballots are replacing the older machines built for accessibility to people who are blind or unable to fill in a paper ballot using their hands. There are also still going to be fill in ballots for people who prefer them.
I'm not so sure I want the federal government to come in and disrupt the work that has been done here or to force changes on our current system.

[hughee99]

25. Not bad ideas but if I remember right, the election was stolen because

Russian agents used social media to get the lowest of the low information voters who were supposed to vote for Clinton to vote for Trump, not vote for Hillary, or not vote at all. This will do nothing to address that.

[Eliot Rosewater]

28. Yeah, that is what we have been told. We have been told "oh no, there is no EVIDENCE machines

were tampered with or votes or whatever"

No evidence. There wouldnt be if it was done right.

I for one will NEVER believe he actually won those 4 states, NEVER.

[mitch96]

30. "no EVIDENCE machines were tampered with"

At a white hat hacking convention a 11 year hacked a common Florida voting machine in 10 min... So much for secure...
m
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/an-11-year-old-changed-election-results-on-a-replica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes

[hughee99]

31. The story is actually about hacking the websites, not the voting

Machines themselves... and not the actual websites, but a simulation.

[mitch96]

33. Oops, your right!! ............nt

As Boss Tweed said in the movie "The Streets of New York"
Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results.
The Counters make the results!!!!! keep counting...
m

[hughee99]

34. Yes, and the ability to alter vote totals is effectively the same

Whether one is hacking individual machines or the location where the totals are kept, as long as no one looks into it too much.

[jberryhill]

26. Not so fast...

[woodsprite]

27. Be careful comparing things to Fort Knox. Remember, Mnuchin's field trip there. nt

[Trumpocalypse]

32. Screw Fort Knox

make them as secure as a Vegas casino.

[ProfessorPlum]

35. YESSSS!!!!!!!