Our election systems are not secure

[kc78]

I'm not posting this to start a debate on the past election. If we go there this will quickly get shutdown, but this article shares some very interesting information about Russia's hacking attempts into our election systems last cycle and how insecure those systems really are.

As we continue to push our election systems into more digital means, we need to be very cautious about how this is handled. I'm convinced that any system without a paper trail is ripe for abuse that may never be noticed. IMO, the best system is the system that we've been using in FL with scantron's but even then, we were one of the states who were successfully hacked in some manner.

As an IT professional, I'm increasingly aware of how insecure anything computerized is. I don't believe our election systems should be.

***And Edit to add***
The title of this article is click-bait. There is no evidence that any votes were changed that we are aware of at least. There is evidence that attempts to get inside those systems and infiltrate them for some purpose absolutely happened.

https://www.theroot.com/evidence-sh...um=sharefromsite&utm_source=The_Root_facebook

 

[ReliableOstrich]

It would be naive to deny that a number of hostile entities have gained access to our voting technology and/or voter rolls.

As kc78 said, I don't know that they've used it for nefarious purposes yet. But YET is the keyword and it certainly seems as though we're doing next to nothing to prevent it from happening - borderline criminal malpractice/negligence with significant and existential national security implications.

It's not a partisan issue, the whims of foreign enemies might favor one party/candidate this year and another next year. Their end goal is sowing chaos and distrust in the bedrock of our democracy, the party they support is almost irrelevant.

Hacking an election IMO dwarfs physical attacks like 9/11 - structures can be rebuilt easily, faith and trust not so much.

 

[NoleMoreTears]

The fact we even question this stuff is evidence of the nefarious purposes. All it takes is a loss of trust.

Four years ago nobody used the term "fake news" very much...pretty much says it all. What cracks me up are the "strict constitutionalist" types that essentially have turned a blind eye to this so as not to piss off some voters.

 

[FSUdawg]

I will take it another step and not only say they are not secure, but they are broken. I mean, we have dead people casting ballots, non-citizens casting ballots, people hacking the systems.

I personally saw someone during the election of 2016 cast a ballot despite not being found on the voter registration log. Now they said it was a "provisional ballot" but it was handled the same exact way my vote was handled. So, who really knows if it was counted or not.

This certainly is not a partisan issue and is something that needs to be fixed. We (taxpayers across the country) already spend a bunch of money on elections, we need to make sure they are secure and correct.

 

[seminole97]

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

I haven’t read on it recently, but years ago went through plenty of in depth articles about how to break existing electronic voting safeguards. You really need to get someone with physical access, but the reality is a lot of the IT support around election time is coming from temp firms (my dad did it one year) and getting and agent into doesn’t seem impossible.
My own inquiry stemmed from interest in a FOSS platform that for whatever reason couldn’t find political support over companies like Diebold with proprietary code that people could demonstrate vulnerabilities against.
I also don’t understand why every locale wouldn’t adopt the scantron method, so in the end there is a paper record to reprocess.

I would trust touch screen voting about as much as online poker.