As a software engineer and a huge fan of technology in general, I think electronic voting machines are the devil. Digital information is too easy to alter. Good old-fashioned paper elections are a well vetted technology that we know how to use and can be implemented and audited well. Electronic voting, not so much. It's not just important to have a free election, it's important that everyone has faith that it was a free election. Because if people no longer believe in the process, democracy will die. So it has to be transparent, audited by neutral and external parties, and it has to not just be impossible to tamper with, it also has to make everyone believe that it is impossible.
I hope the will of the people prevails over the supreme court in Brazil eventually.
All US CPUs are backdoored by Silicon Valley. Any data or computation can be changed, deleted or stolen. It uses radio, works even without Net access, including for BR voting machines.
There will be no computing freedom until the silicon trojans embedded in all US designed CPUs are removed.
If you want freedom, you will have to ensure that no unseen radiation is enabling remote control of your devices.
Ask me anything about BadBIOS and hardware trojans.
Yeah. I see these laymen on social media asking for source code without even understanding what source code even is. This is supposed to be a trustworthy, transparent system?
I agree with Germany's take on the matter: voting machines should be unconstitutional because citizens don't fully understand how it works. It's that simple. That's how a civilized country is supposed to work. Instead we have this circus where these judge-kings claim the machines are "unquestionable" and censor and fine and punish and ban from politics anyone who dares question anything.
In my country, New Zealand, we have fast reliable vote counting and it is all paper based and counted by hand. I don't understand how electronic systems make voting less complicated or cheaper.
We also have advanced (early) voting. You can vote one or two weeks early, election day is stress free.
Early votes counting starts at 9am in election day. So by the time that polls close most prelimary counting is already done.
The official count does take a couple of weeks, but around 10pm enough of the preliminary count is done that most electrotes have a winner.
Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population. We have election results 5h after election ends and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
Why are you downvoted? This is a great post that provides a lot of context and references. I wasn't aware of some of these facts. Thank you.
I'd like to make sure you know you aren't alone on this site. Even here on HN people will downvote to suppress views they disagree with instead of actually refuting any points raised. This can give posters the wrong impression.
I appreciate the verve and detailed view into something I'd recoil from just because of the polarization attached.
I mean this in the nicest, least combative, way possible: I don't understand at all how this would help with vote auditing. How does printing a piece of paper, which remains in the possession of the machine, ease any concerns about fraud generally, or enable an individual to audit?
The paper vote records (anomymous, of course) become the source of truth. There are very well established methods (Risk-limiting Audits - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit) that can randomly sample a small fraction of the ballots to guarantee with high probability that the electronic results are correct. Without paper records, the source of truth lies with the code that was run to receive and register the votes, and that is almost impossible to verify and fully trust.
Election day is open to oversight from all political parties. All parties send their people (identified with badges, previously registered with the voting authority) and they have free access to all voting locations.
At the end of the day, the bag of paper votes is transported with their oversight (multiple parties from opposing sides) to a public place where all of them will count the papers, together, in a public session, with cameras.
It's actually what already happens when the e-voting machines fail and your backup also fails. You cast votes with paper and the votes are counted with this exact same process, with oversight from all parties.
The other two are superior courts, but they don't rule constitutional matters.
The reasons were (you can confirm by clicking on the link above):
Security and Secrecy of the Vote: The court argued that the printed vote would not maintain the current standard of security provided by exclusively electronic voting. The paper trail could potentially pose a risk to the secrecy of the vote, with the possibility of identifying which voter chose which candidate. This could threaten the free choice of the voters.
[I find this argument ridiculous to be honest. The paper trail is anonymous and there's no way it violates the secrecy of the vote]
Operational Difficulties and Costs: The court also noted the significant difficulties and high costs associated with implementing a paper trail. They argued that the potential benefits associated with the security of the electoral process were minuscule compared to the detriments stemming from the implementation of the measure.
Rapid Implementation: The court deemed that the law, which called for the immediate implementation of the paper trail in 2018, failed to consider the necessary time and resources for proper setup.
[For a country the size of Brazil, the 1 billion BRL (200 million USD) is actually cheap if it avoids the political distrust that the current e-voting system has - see what happened in January 8th with the invasion of Congress and the Supreme Court].
Brazil has 4 "Superior" Courts and 1 "Supreme" Court above them. Superior Courts are the issue-specific Superior Military Court, the Superior Labor Court, the Superior Electoral Court and the general Superior Justice Court. Above them the Supreme Federal Court.
slashdev|2 years ago
I hope the will of the people prevails over the supreme court in Brazil eventually.
leon_theremin|2 years ago
There will be no computing freedom until the silicon trojans embedded in all US designed CPUs are removed.
If you want freedom, you will have to ensure that no unseen radiation is enabling remote control of your devices.
Ask me anything about BadBIOS and hardware trojans.
Arnt|2 years ago
One size does not fit all (threat models).
matheusmoreira|2 years ago
I agree with Germany's take on the matter: voting machines should be unconstitutional because citizens don't fully understand how it works. It's that simple. That's how a civilized country is supposed to work. Instead we have this circus where these judge-kings claim the machines are "unquestionable" and censor and fine and punish and ban from politics anyone who dares question anything.
teruakohatu|2 years ago
We also have advanced (early) voting. You can vote one or two weeks early, election day is stress free.
Early votes counting starts at 9am in election day. So by the time that polls close most prelimary counting is already done.
The official count does take a couple of weeks, but around 10pm enough of the preliminary count is done that most electrotes have a winner.
mzitelli|2 years ago
matheusmoreira|2 years ago
I'd like to make sure you know you aren't alone on this site. Even here on HN people will downvote to suppress views they disagree with instead of actually refuting any points raised. This can give posters the wrong impression.
refulgentis|2 years ago
I mean this in the nicest, least combative, way possible: I don't understand at all how this would help with vote auditing. How does printing a piece of paper, which remains in the possession of the machine, ease any concerns about fraud generally, or enable an individual to audit?
rfonseca|2 years ago
isitademocracy|2 years ago
At the end of the day, the bag of paper votes is transported with their oversight (multiple parties from opposing sides) to a public place where all of them will count the papers, together, in a public session, with cameras.
It's actually what already happens when the e-voting machines fail and your backup also fails. You cast votes with paper and the votes are counted with this exact same process, with oversight from all parties.
pyuser583|2 years ago
isitademocracy|2 years ago
The other two are superior courts, but they don't rule constitutional matters.
The reasons were (you can confirm by clicking on the link above):
Security and Secrecy of the Vote: The court argued that the printed vote would not maintain the current standard of security provided by exclusively electronic voting. The paper trail could potentially pose a risk to the secrecy of the vote, with the possibility of identifying which voter chose which candidate. This could threaten the free choice of the voters.
[I find this argument ridiculous to be honest. The paper trail is anonymous and there's no way it violates the secrecy of the vote]
Operational Difficulties and Costs: The court also noted the significant difficulties and high costs associated with implementing a paper trail. They argued that the potential benefits associated with the security of the electoral process were minuscule compared to the detriments stemming from the implementation of the measure.
Rapid Implementation: The court deemed that the law, which called for the immediate implementation of the paper trail in 2018, failed to consider the necessary time and resources for proper setup.
[For a country the size of Brazil, the 1 billion BRL (200 million USD) is actually cheap if it avoids the political distrust that the current e-voting system has - see what happened in January 8th with the invasion of Congress and the Supreme Court].
nunesvn|2 years ago
convalescindrey|2 years ago
rodolphoarruda|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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