This is how it's supposed to work: https://youtu.be/ViK9pe9Pv_s?t=27
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayor-pete-buttigieg-gay-iowa-c...
Good old progressive enhancement. Not sure why people want to rip out the old functionality (paper) until the new functionality (e-voting) has a solid track record on it's own.
The challenge is: is the person submitting the results who they say they are, and are they authorized to submit results for said precinct, did their data submission transform on transit. The misconception seems to be that any of the data is private.
Issuing 1700 instagram accounts and having each precinct post and tag a photograph would have been both more secure, and instantly verifiable. Anybody could go back later and go "yep thats the photo I posted." "Yep that is the account that we expected the photo to come from." "Yep, the account wasn't improperly accessed."
Everyone in the public can see the live results real time, and hand verify the summarization. A worst case scenario would be someone doctoring one of the Math Sheets, printing out a near perfect duplicate, and creating confusion over which document is the "real" one. Breaking into a physically secure area with a fake piece of paper may cause a situation with an unverifiable truth. Having a public, timestamped photograph minimizes counterfeiting and forgery.
Providing a csv/xlsx file, and having a whitelisted list of senders would have worked, along with a bot ingesting the files as they came. A onedrive with 1700 shared spreadsheets would have worked, each precinct manager would have just needed a copy of mobile excel. The technology that generates my fantasy football cheat sheets seems more advanced.
The goal here should be to get a definitive answer posted into the public record, timestamped and proven to be the appropriate sender.
The "pin" nonsense is the scary part of all this. Did anybody who shouldnt have download the app, and submit the wrong results?
>he had to sign in with an email and password, provide a two-factor authentication, and enter a one-time password generated by the Google Authenticator app.
What is the point of 2fa/authenticator, if the person is registering for the first time the night of the primary? Wouldnt 2fa be for preventing access to the account youve already made, not to prevent someone from creating your account? Unless somehow the phone numbers were already on file, and a sanity check took place before the 2fa step, which I doubt. Is 2fa anything more than security theater in this application?
I'm pretty comfortable with that.
Either way in a caucus you are NOT electing a president, you are just choosing a delegate who goes on to the national convention where the president is chosen. There are rules so that the caucus results feed who is supported at the national convention, but there are ways around those rules if you want to go to the national convention and then support someone who wasn't even running in the first place - though you pretty well better be assured of a win before you think about trying those tricks as the media will go nuts. (the same rules exist in primary states, technically there is a caucus somewhere that chooses the delegate to the national convention who can then vote for someone else)
yes, the general public now understands how bobo this operation is!
The Republicans do ballots - on paper, but the democrats don't have a ballot at all.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-c... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/20/texas-voter-...
Watch Broward County FL this November. Whole boxes of filled out ballots will be "found" mysteriously. Just like every election.
All four voted for Trump, but that's not super relevant. What's relevant is that it was four out of 127,000,000 votes. Even if the problem were 1,000 times worse then we know it still would have had no effect on the election, even if they were all in Wisconsin.
Folks can take home the stub to ensure non-repudiation etc..
They can look up the serial number on the stub they take home to see for sure it was recorded.
FYI we should also have basic ID requirements for voting. The arguments against it are kind of ridiculous, and federal or state ID should be free.
There should be no 'voter registration' required either: the state knows your address and that's that.
For lighter elections like city alderman, you can use your ID + passcode to SMS or email your vote.
Maybe make a law requiring that any tech used for legal voting has to get the thumbs up from the NSA or some super amazing agency that is also secular in nature. None of this 'quickie app for voting' rubbish.
At this point, I hate politics so much, I think every nation needs a 'caretaker' Pres/PM from the bureaucracy - someone who can clean out the cobwebs, get rid of a bunch of old laws, clean up the tax code, take on the public unions (I mean reform not destroy, I mean teachers probably need higher salaries) and basically do a big, operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics.
Theoretically a group can win delegates in a caucus with just an issue not a candidate - for example you can all agree that the most important issue is Oranges (a fruit that doesn't grow in Iowa...) and get a delegate without committing to a president. Of course in practice most people show up only for the president poll and leave as soon as that is over.
You realize that every single thing you said there is political, right?
'Simplifying' the tax code could be ideological, but it's only overtly political given the interest groups of those who profit from complicated taxes.
But by that virtue - every little policy of every government agency implies 'politics' and so we'll get nowhere.
There's quite a lot of things that Americans widely support, even on some of the heavy 'litmus' issues, it's surprising how much Americans have in common.
So yes, you're right, everything would be pulled apart by Fox and MSNBC, but there's a lot that would be less divisive.
> "clean out the cobwebs"
This isn't specific enough to respond to.
> "get rid of a bunch of old laws"
Which ones, and why? Sure there are probably some like where people can tie up horses or something that aren't especially relevant, but having them there causes no harm because they aren't used.
> "clean up the tax code"
There is no way to do this without creating winners and losers. Choosing who wins and who loses is a political act.
> "take on the public unions"
Taking on unions is one of the most political acts you can do. Whether or not it is "right", unions are a powerbase of some political groups.
> "operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics"
What - specifically - do you mean? The two examples you give here are highly political.
Going back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is imperative.