[DISCLAIMER: I am not associated or affiliated with any political party (I am an American)]
DISCLAIMER: This blog post is not alleging that any fraud in the 2020 U.S. election has occurred. While I use the Dominion Election Management System (EMS) as an example, I am not specifically singling them out, but using them as a hypothetical model of any similar system of voting that allows for the potential of fraud (in my opinion).
If you look at the diagram above, you can see that there's a lot of equipment involved at multiple steps between the voter and the official tallies. Some of these steps can be observed by humans to insure the integrity of the votes, but some of the others are not observable at all. Essentially, the votes go into a black box and then the results come out of the black box.
Question: Is the output data the same as the input data?
Answer: Maybe.
Aside from equipment failure and operator error, there are two major components to the guaranty of vote integrity: (1) the honesty of the poll workers and (2) the honesty of the programmers behind the polling equipment.
The former has been with us for several thousand years while the latter is a relative newcomer to the game. Regarding the second component above, let's assume that I'm a programmer working for a voting machine company. Furthermore, let's assume that I'm basically a good person, but I really hate one of the candidates. Is there anything that I can do to make sure that "my candidate" wins? Is there any way that I can rig the outcome in some undetectable fashion?
The short answer is "Yes." In fact, there are many ways to do so. Even more if one or two of my coworkers hate the same candidate. And yet even more ways if a willing poll worker or two helps out.
A simple example: can you tell by looking at this sample ballot if the barcode choices match the others?
Whether or not it happens, voting fraud is likely to be unprovable, even with access to the source code. Whatever code is in the balloting system during the election may not be the same code that is intended to be there. If I were a programmer that rigged the election for "my candidate," even though I thought it was a Good Thing, I would be leery of ever telling anyone. To do so is against the law which, in some cases, carries some severe penalties for violating it.
Soon we will all be voting with our smartphones and we will get the results of the elections almost immediately. Since not everybody has a smartphone, we will begin a new generation of disenfranchisement. Not to mention never knowing what happens to our votes in the cloud. Paper ballots marked in person on the day of the election may sound terribly old-fashioned, but it is the most secure method available (in my opinion).
No comments:
Post a Comment