Re:Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability
by scoot on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:21AM
(#12884262)
So someone could spoil all the votes by breaking the seals?
Re:Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability
by azernik on Sunday November 06, 2016 @07:19AM
(#12884775)
Sure. And they could also spoil all the votes with an armed robbery - at many polling stations, there's no actual police presence until/unless someone calls them in.
The main intent of all the security measures is that any such tampering be obvious, and that it be clear whose votes (or at least, which precincts' votes) were compromised.
Re:Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability
by shshhdhs on Sunday November 06, 2016 @02:12PM
(#12886546)
Sure, but that doesn't address an attack that certain precincts that vote a specific party line could be compromised. If 100 attackers at 100 precincts slit some seals than that could swing a swing state
Re:Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability
by azernik on Sunday November 06, 2016 @07:45PM
(#12888020)
When you have a consistent pattern of ballot spoilage, elections are not counted as normal; at that point you'd have court cases, recounts, assorted forensic attempts to verify valid votes, etc. The system is not a rigid machine - it is a set of rules for the common case, and a set of safeguards that trigger special-case handling.
Re:Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability
by anonbanker on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:45PM
(#12887233)
Basically, a team of 20 voters with boxcutters could spoil the results from an entire precinct.
EDIT: Note that we use these machines with an optional paper-printout add-on, and they're a non-default option mostly used to increase ballot accessibility - most people vote on paper ballots that are fed into a scanner on-site, so the scanner results can be cross-checked against the physical ballots in case of a disputed result.