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National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC)
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2016 Mar 21, 12:36am 37,590 views 57 comments
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55
Shaman
2018 Jul 17, 9:06pm
Shaman
2018 Jul 17, 9:06pm
I predicted in November 2016 that Trump would win California in 2020. Maybe this is how it comes to pass? I’ve been astonishingly accurate lately, so I can’t doubt myself!
56
curious2
2018 Oct 26, 2:59pm
curious2
2018 Oct 26, 2:59pm
"In 2016, I bought two voting machines online for less than $100 apiece. I didn't even have to search the dark web. I found them on eBay.
***
Within hours, I was able to change the candidates' names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate's name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.
***
[In 2018], I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as “next generation,” and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.
***
But while state and local election systems have been conducting risk assessments, we’ve also seen an 11-year-old successfully hacking a simulated voting website at DefCon, for fun.
***
By using a $15 palm-sized device, my team was able to exploit a smart chip card, allowing us to vote multiple times.
***
Since these machines are for sale online, individuals, precincts, or adversaries could buy them, modify them, and put them back online for sale.
***
But there’s an opportunity here to develop nationwide policies and security protocols that would govern how voting machines are secured. This could be accomplished with input from multiple sectors, in a process similar to the development of the NIST framework—now widely recognized as one of the most comprehensive cybersecurity frameworks in use."
Oddly, the author fails to point out the two most obvious methods to address this problem.
1) Require paper ballots. You can have a touchscreen machine print a ballot, but the voter must inspect it and, if accurate, feed it into a second machine that counts and stores the paper ballots. If the voter detects an error, that ballot gets cancelled visibly and the voter tries again. At the end of the day, the counts should match: the number of ballots printed by the printing machine, minus the number of ballots visibly cancelled, should equal the number of votes counted by the counting machine. If the numbers do not match, you can recount using the paper ballots. Otherwise, with a paperless system, you have no way to audit or recount: you have only what the easily hacked machine says, and no way to know if that is accurate.
2) Repeal NPVIC, or at least amend it, to require safeguards including paper ballots. By enacting NPVIC as written, Democrats are subordinating human voters to proprietary, easily hacked, and unaccountable machines controlled mostly by Republicans. It amazes me how Democrats can identify a problem and then propose only ways to worsen it. It makes me wonder whom are they really working for, and why. What would persuade a governor who is a Democrat to sign legislation subordinating human voters in his own state to easily hacked machines controlled by Republicans in another state? It reminds me of the "#Resistance" that seems to come at least partly from the CIA, which also invested in Palantir. If the goal is to automate election hacking, so that a deep state agency or similar actor can control the outcome of elections, then NPVIC as written would enable that.
Democrats complain that people in other countries, e.g. Russia, are skilled at hacking American computers including government systems. China and North Korea have also shown prowess. Yet, Democrats neither repeal nor amend NPVIC. They say they want the "popular vote" to determine the election result, by circumventing the electoral college, but that is not what they are doing. They are instead enacting legislation that would enable easily hacked machines to determine the election result. Why? Cui bono? What are they really trying to accomplish?
***
Within hours, I was able to change the candidates' names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate's name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.
***
[In 2018], I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as “next generation,” and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.
***
But while state and local election systems have been conducting risk assessments, we’ve also seen an 11-year-old successfully hacking a simulated voting website at DefCon, for fun.
***
By using a $15 palm-sized device, my team was able to exploit a smart chip card, allowing us to vote multiple times.
***
Since these machines are for sale online, individuals, precincts, or adversaries could buy them, modify them, and put them back online for sale.
***
But there’s an opportunity here to develop nationwide policies and security protocols that would govern how voting machines are secured. This could be accomplished with input from multiple sectors, in a process similar to the development of the NIST framework—now widely recognized as one of the most comprehensive cybersecurity frameworks in use."
Oddly, the author fails to point out the two most obvious methods to address this problem.
1) Require paper ballots. You can have a touchscreen machine print a ballot, but the voter must inspect it and, if accurate, feed it into a second machine that counts and stores the paper ballots. If the voter detects an error, that ballot gets cancelled visibly and the voter tries again. At the end of the day, the counts should match: the number of ballots printed by the printing machine, minus the number of ballots visibly cancelled, should equal the number of votes counted by the counting machine. If the numbers do not match, you can recount using the paper ballots. Otherwise, with a paperless system, you have no way to audit or recount: you have only what the easily hacked machine says, and no way to know if that is accurate.
2) Repeal NPVIC, or at least amend it, to require safeguards including paper ballots. By enacting NPVIC as written, Democrats are subordinating human voters to proprietary, easily hacked, and unaccountable machines controlled mostly by Republicans. It amazes me how Democrats can identify a problem and then propose only ways to worsen it. It makes me wonder whom are they really working for, and why. What would persuade a governor who is a Democrat to sign legislation subordinating human voters in his own state to easily hacked machines controlled by Republicans in another state? It reminds me of the "#Resistance" that seems to come at least partly from the CIA, which also invested in Palantir. If the goal is to automate election hacking, so that a deep state agency or similar actor can control the outcome of elections, then NPVIC as written would enable that.
Democrats complain that people in other countries, e.g. Russia, are skilled at hacking American computers including government systems. China and North Korea have also shown prowess. Yet, Democrats neither repeal nor amend NPVIC. They say they want the "popular vote" to determine the election result, by circumventing the electoral college, but that is not what they are doing. They are instead enacting legislation that would enable easily hacked machines to determine the election result. Why? Cui bono? What are they really trying to accomplish?
57
Shaman
2018 Dec 10, 1:38pm
Shaman
2018 Dec 10, 1:38pm
Can you imagine the Leftist tears when Donald Trump wins the popular vote in 2020 and California has to cast its electoral votes to him?
« First « Previous Comments 55 - 57 of 57 Search these comments
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has achieved 61% of the electoral votes necessary to overcome the Electoral College. All of the enactments have come from "blue" (Democratic) states.
Some opponents have pointed out a risk of fraud, but supporters seem to dismiss or at least underestimate that risk.
I tried to link directly to the text of the Compact on the NPVIC website, but it is buried in Chapter 6 of their ebook PDF. It says that "the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes...The chief election official of each member state shall treat as conclusive an official statement containing the number of popular votes in a state for each presidential slate made by the day established by federal law for making a state’s final determination conclusive as to the counting of electoral votes by Congress."
The Compact contains no provision for recounts, nor challenges, nor even paper ballots.
In a growing number of states, Republicans running state government mandated statewide paperless ballot machines, made by Diebold, which was run by a prominent Republican fundraiser for GW Bush. (Following a sale and change of corporate names, the machines are now made by "Premier Election Solutions," a renamed subsidiary of Dominion.) Computer scientists found the machines could easily be hacked, leaving no audit trail.
If the machines in Republican Ohio or Georgia declare that either of those states cast 10 trillion votes for the Republican nominee, why would Democrats want to commit their own states' electoral votes to follow? Back when Richard Daley ran Chicago, finding an extra 20 trillion votes might have been no problem, but is Rahm Emanuel up to the task? Why would Democrats, ostensibly the party of democracy, want to subordinate their states' votes to the Republican officials in Ohio and Georgia? After the 2000 election debacle, why would Democrats "reform" the system by making their own voters even more vulnerable?
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