Elon Musk condemns the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in general elections in some countries. : whitepeopletwitter

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 138 points 4 months ago

A broken clock etc etc

Also, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030/

[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 75 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

A classic. By the way electronic with paper trail gives you faster counts, a way to validate the results and recompute them by hand when there’s an issue.

And doing voting over multiple days and/or by mail in ballots gives you time to count everything.

The people pushing for same day and only that day with all votes counted that day just ignore the logistics and practicality of having people vote. Or, I suspect, rather like that it makes it impossible for highly populated areas to have their votes counted while lower populated areas votes are counted.

I’ve seen pushes for mail in ballots to be held and not counted until Election Day and then only those ballots counted by the end of Election Day counted. Which is absurd. Do mail in, count them up to and after. Or count them up to and give people with mail in ballots access to them a lot earlier. So they can be accurately counted leading up to Election Day.

Of course the logistics of having people able to monitor those ballots over a larger period of time is tricky too. Hence why they’re often not counted until day of and so, by extension, result in ballots not being fully counted for a few days.

[-] friek@sh.itjust.works 55 points 4 months ago

One day only in person voting is purposeful suppression of votes.

Also, am coder, 100% agree with xkcd. I'm still amazed the Internet itself works.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It is theoretically possible to devise a mathematically secure electronic voting system using cryptography, but only if everyone can follow instructions perfectly and people can understand how it works and why their vote is secure. In other words, not in any way that would work in real life.

The principal benefit of pen-and-paper voting is that it is really easy to convince people that taking a ballot paper into a booth, marking it, and then depositing the ballot into a locked glass box which is later counted in front of a room of independent observers is a secure way to run elections. It is impossible to convince the average voter that cryptographically secure voting schemes are actually immune from tampering.

Edit: I never understood why we have "election days". Why not have an "election week"?

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[-] NakariLexfortaine@lemm.ee 28 points 4 months ago

Having multiple days of open voting would be a game changer for some people. It can be absurdly difficult to actually get the day off, depending on the employer, and I've had ones try to treat it as a "perk", like it shouldn't be the damned baseline that we're able to actually take part in the democratic process they're parading around like a shiny bauble.

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Personally I think they should do something like opening the polls on October 1st and then have November 1st be closing day, and all through October we take a page from the aussies and just have a rolling cookout/party at each of the polling places.

Ya get your "I voted sticker" any time in the month and can walk right in for beer and hot dogs and heck maybe even some of Kronk's spinach puffs if that one guy can make Babish's recipe work like he said he was gonna at the planning meeting for who's bringing the goods, and best of all, it's rolling for a month, so you've got every opportunity to stop in and cast your ballot, or just to come back with your "I voted" sticker to keep enjoying the festivities!

This is our most sacred institution as a nation, we should be making a celebration out of it!

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[-] bitchkat@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

In Minnesota, the law requires employers to give employees time off (of their choosing) to vote. At my previous job where they were anal about time in the office, I made a point of voting in the middle of the day which would require another commute. When I got the nasty email about "break too long". I just replied with a link the statute. And made sure all my co-workers knew what their rights were.

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

Yah, on this particular thing, he's not wrong.

Everythinge else, though, he's fucking batshit.

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[-] Daxtron2@startrek.website 119 points 4 months ago

"Hacked by AI" fucking lol

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 61 points 4 months ago

"All my information about AI comes from watching Avengers films"

[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 30 points 4 months ago

"All my information about AI comes from AI."

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 68 points 4 months ago

Reminder that this fucking moron is pushing Twitter as a financial tool. He wants you to use X like you would use your credit card.

But voting machines are insecure?

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

He wants you to use X like you would use your credit card.

I won't even use xitter like social media. Why in hell would I consider it as a credit card? Oh, I get it. The target audience is the idiot army.

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[-] ShaunaTheDead@fedia.io 60 points 4 months ago

Wow. I actually agree with Elon Musk about something for once, what a shock!

Tom Scott has a very good video explaining why electronic voting is terrible all around and it will probably never be secure.

Tom Scott's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs Tom Scott's video via the Computerphile channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI&t=1s

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago

It is actually possible to have a cryptographic structure that allows independent verification of the counts. Of course we will never have that because Repubs prefer buggy ES&S machines. (IIRC those are also the ones Kemp used to rig elections in GA.)

https://archive.is/2020.09.15-120013/https://www.wired.com/story/dana-debeauvoir-texas-county-clerk-voting-tech-revolution/

[-] Snowclone@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

But is scantron voting electronic voting? Is mail in voting and early voting electronic voting? Is being ID'd on the voter registry because you know your SSN and address, name, signature, without having to use yet another ID electronic voting?

[-] charonn0@startrek.website 8 points 4 months ago

I would say that "electronic voting" means that the ballot itself is digital rather than physical. So, scantrons are not electronic voting and voter registries/ID/etc. are not ballots in the first place.

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[-] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 53 points 4 months ago

It’s pretty rich that one of his stans is harping about how the Left “steals elections”, yet his guy literally tried that in the last election cycle. Then there’s also Bush v Gore. But yeah, it’s those crafty lefties doing the stealing!

[-] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 22 points 4 months ago

Every accusation is a confession.

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[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 49 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

"hundreds of voting irregularities"

Out of how many votes? Oh, enough votes that hundreds of irregularities is statistically irrelevant? Cool, just checking.

Oh, a fraction of a percent of the thousands of manual votes that Republicans had and tried to have thrown out so that dumps could win in 2020? k, just checking.

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[-] MrMeanJavaBean@lemmy.world 46 points 4 months ago

Unfortunately Republicans are not good faith actors in this space. There are many issues to discuss about voting, but I'll just stick to one very important one, access. Republicans limit access to voting. They are not for mail in voting and continue to close down polling places forcing thousands of citizens to stand in line for hours. If they really cared, they would make it easier for the citizens to vote. But we know that's not their goal. They win when fewer people vote. So, whatever means to achieve that, that's what they'll do.

[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

If they were serious, there would a paid mandatory National Voting Holiday.

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[-] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 44 points 4 months ago

I agree. While we're at it, we can also make election day a holiday and require employers to give workers at least a paid half-day off so that they can vote, and create a citizenship ID that is free and easy to get rather than using ID with requirements like a driver's license. Then maybe we can try out ranked choice voting and eliminate the electoral college. You know, since we want the election to be fair.

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[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 44 points 4 months ago

Isn't this the doofus who wanted to send a submarine into a cave? Dude doesn't have the intellectual heft necessary to manage a QuikTrip in Topeka.

But, take this drivel seriously. They like it when rural, red areas report their vote totals first, so that the news outlets will report that Republicans are "leading" early in the evening, before the blue cities finish their counting and overtake the early totals. It's a cheap trick to sell the claim that the election was stolen to their followers, y'know, the people who think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

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[-] BaldDude@sh.itjust.works 44 points 4 months ago

Well, he's got that one right.

Elections should be as low tech as possible. Everything going on should be verifiable with your eyes and basic tools only.

Keep it simple and keep it monitored by at least 3 to 5 people at all times.

who cares if the counting takes a few days, as long as i can trust the results.

And dear fellows in the USA, for the love of god, move the voting day to a Sunday already.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 57 points 4 months ago

Counterpoint: There's a big difference between electronic voting machines and electronic counting machines.

The way we do elections in Canada, your vote is made on paper. The paper ballots are fed though electronic counting machines to get the initial tally, but the paper record is then kept and tallied up separately to check for discrepancies. This is both fast and secure.

Electronic voting machines, on the other hand, are an exercise in absolute insanity that security experts universally agree no one should be using.

Of course, Musk is railing against them because he's drunk the far right Kool-Aid about stolen elections, but actual smart, educated people have been saying the same thing for a lot longer.

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[-] epyon22@programming.dev 24 points 4 months ago

Seems almost paradoxical but yeah physical voting is the way to go https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 19 points 4 months ago

As others have said, the scalability ideal is to have electric/mechanical counters but with paper ballots. Keeps the paper trail for double checking, but also allows poll workers to deliver quick initial results to everyone breathing down their necks.

[-] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 months ago

Pretty sure that's how we do it up on Canada. I think random samples are hand-counted to make sure the machine count is accurate. There's early voting too so not all just in one day.

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[-] theonyltruemupf@feddit.de 7 points 4 months ago

Well here in Germany we have about 40-50 million votes to count in a federal election. Right when the booths close we get an exit poll that is already pretty close. After 1-2 hours there are extrapolations that are even closer and next morning, there is usually the certified result. All on paper, counted by hand.

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[-] pyre@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

not even joking, i find that if there's one Twitter account to act as a definitive guide to policy, science, technology and various issues, it's Elon's account.

just carefully read every tweet and do the exact opposite. there's no way you can go wrong with it.

[-] Maalus@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

Broken clock this time though. Electronic voting is risky.

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[-] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago

Even his good opinions need to overhype AI...

Anyway, we all saw that Tom Scott video, we know it's a bad idea.

[-] Linnce@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago

Brazil has used electronic voting since 1997 and has had no major issues since (there was a bad history of fraud in the paper ballot era). It runs on Linux and they hold a public safety test in the year before where they test the system's security.

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[-] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

Those must be the ones he can't pay to manipulate.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 months ago

Wow, this is one of the very few oppinions me and Musk share.

@OP why add an acronym when it is just a twitter post that doesn't even mention said acronym?

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