US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief

US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Jen Easterly and her counterparts from the UK and EU want the world to know that, when it comes to securing elections, they've never been more prepared. Easterly, EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) COO Hans de Vries and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) …

[Vincent van Gopher]

'. . . or unwitting Americans . . ' Dear, dear Mike Pillow (nee Lindell). He absolutely believes that the 2020 election was stolen but doesn't (can't) show his proof. It's far more likely that the 2016 election was the one with actual interference. Trump the arch projectionist pretty much confirms it by his projection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Mike. €5Million. Ouch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that Mike is an actual crackhead. Even if he’s off the pipe, there seems to be permanent brain damage.

[Helcat]

No election is free of some element of fraud, interference or meddling.

The question is: How much was there and would it make a difference?

In the 2020 US presidential election, there was fraud found, and there was one instance where it was discovered to have flipped the outcome, but for the most part it was not deemed sufficient to change the outcome. This is nothing new - it's normal, depressing as it might be.

Fraud ranges from people voting multiple times to candidates directly interfering with the count. There are efforts to address this (needing ID to vote in the UK for example), but such fraud is rarely sufficient to change the outcome of the vote, and where it is, the outcome tends to be very close and will trigger a recount anyway, and that's where most discrepancies are found.

That's the reality of elections: If there's a way to cheat, someone will try. The only question is: Is it sufficient to change the outcome, and what's been noted is where it is, it's also rather easy to uncover.

As to the 2020 election being stolen - that seemed (to me) to be more a case of Biden did little in the way of campaigning which baffled Trump, and the postal vote favoured the Democrats more, so yes, it would impact the outcome. That doesn't mean anything illegal happened, just that it wasn't a 'normal' election in some regards so it was harder to see what was going on.

I think what didn't help was that with the 2016 election results there was a vocal movement to oppose Trump's presidency 'by any means necessary'. Tends to set things up for the image of skulduggery and criminal acts. But people are people and they say and do things that oft times make no sense to the casual observer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Recounts

And then there are the additional boxes of ballots that always seem to be found in car trunks or closets during recounts.

[Benny Cemoli]

Re: Recounts

And those additional boxes of ballots invariably benefit the democrat candidates and put them just enough past their opponent to win.

[tyrfing]

Re: Recounts

There's a reason it takes days to weeks to count votes in US elections. They're finding out how many boxes of additional votes to find, and they need the time to plant them.

[jdb3]

Re: Recounts

I'm hoping that was sarcasm, otherwise your reply and the others above you indicate exactly what the people in the article were talking about.

"extra" ballots may appear at least from an outside perspective, as they are brought into the elections office. But as always (at least in my state) every one is verified to be from a legitimate voter before anything happens with it.

People seem to think that the second any piece of paper shows up, it's counted. No, they have checks in place for this. Note that after the 2020 election, every one of the audits done (including both in-house and outside contractors) found that there were no significant issues. In fact, in Arizona, they were verified 3 times - 2 in-house, and one from "Cyber Ninjas". Results were that they were the same if not more for Biden...

Is any process 100% accurate? Of course not. However, the point is to make them ~99.99(however many 9s you want) accurate. Despite numerous attempts by certain politicians to say differently, no one has conclusively shown that there were SIGNIFICANT issues with the election. Note that this includes taking it to courts that were "friendly" to various objections, as well as the counts being done by members of the same party as the one that objected.

[MachDiamond]

"That's the reality of elections: If there's a way to cheat, someone will try. The only question is: Is it sufficient to change the outcome, and what's been noted is where it is, it's also rather easy to uncover."

With electronic voting, the impact of cheating could be very problematic in comparison to what it would take to cheat using paper ballots issued and filled out at polling locations.

There ARE many things that can be called cheating and changing/not counting votes that have been cast is only one aspect. Being able to vote is usually restricted to citizens so if non-citizens are allowed to vote if the system has made it almost automatic that they would be registered to vote, that's a big issue. For an election to honest be a reflection of the people's will, the roles must be maintained on a constant basis. Fraud must be harshly punished and looked for. I've seen many politicians say there is little fraud, but that can be due to nobody looking into it which means if they do and fraud is found, that politician will be covered in false and that can't be allowed to happen, can it?

Nearly as important as an honest election is the appearance of an election being honest. This means a process that's as transparent and understandable as possible by the vast majority of people. If one needs a degree in computer science to comprehend how the vote is being safeguarded, that's not going to work and will only lead to conspiracy theories and angry masses.

[Pascal Monett]

"convincing people not to buy into the propaganda"

That might be easier if US politicians didn't treat elections like their own personal propaganda platform . . .

You set yourselves up for this. You deal with the consequences.

[Rosie Davies]

Re: "convincing people not to buy into the propaganda"

Hmmm...maybe I'm misunderstanding what it is you're trying to say but isn't the whole point of an election campaign to convince people that one particular set of problems is more important than another and that you are the best person to solve those problems? Which, at least in my head, falls into the fairly broad definition of what could be called propaganda.

Not that I'm defending the self-promoting, fantasy definitions of "problem" and "solution" that are getting thrown around far too much at the moment.

Rosie

[Yorick Hunt]

Re: "convincing people not to buy into the propaganda"

South Park, season 8, episode 8 - watch it for full insight.

[Gary Stewart]

But the "big lie" continues

Several years ago then republican Governor Rick Perry and then republican Attorney General now Governor Greg Abbott spent three years and 10 million taxpayer dollars looking for the "massive" voter fraud they said was occurring in Texas. After investigating 5 years of voting they found 11 cases, only two of which were considered prosecutable. Most of them (6) were for mailing the voter registration form from an address that was not the home address, although technically this is not voter fraud since it does not indicate that illegal votes were actually cast. So while there was voter fraud it was microscopic not massive, and not even close to relevant to the results of any election. When asked by the Dallas Morning News if this was a proper use of state resources and money their reply was that they did find voter fraud! To this day, Greg "heeeey" Abbot talks about massive voter fraud in Texas.

The estimated amount of voter fraud in the United States is between 0.00006% and 0.0009%. Judging by the results of the previously mentioned investigation and other investigations in other states this appears to be accurate. So if you want to claim massive voter fraud I need to see proof, real proof. All the evidence to date indicates that it does not exist except in the minds of some very gullible and some very dangerous people .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But the "big lie" continues

I was looking for more info on this case and this was the first result I found. It's a different scenario, but 1400 invalid votes found in a single congressional district with a margin of victory of 450 votes.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4725069-abbott-calls-out-voter-fraud-in-houston-judicial-race/

I don't think your claims are worth pursuing any further unless you're willing to drop receipts.

Claiming that virtually no voter fraud exists in a nation that doesn't even require an ID to vote is facially absurd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But the "big lie" continues

Yes, really, when 1 out of 21 challenges to election results, filed [in 2022] by unsuccessful Republican candidates in Harris County, results in a new election being called for that 1 case (per your link: none of the other 20 cases resulted in any change in electoral outcome or new vote), there clearly is MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD (batting below 50, aka .05, a 5% success rate, 95% failure)!

Geez Louise.

[MachDiamond]

Re: But the "big lie" continues

Gary, if you need to find an alternative to sleeping pills, read the transcripts of those cases. So many things get excluded, sealed and undiscoverable due to security requirements that the cases don't have any chance of putting a finger on the truth (as we were taught it was as children).

I like to play with numbers and some of the elections "with almost no fraud" don't add up. If you look at things such as census information in an area you can wind up with voter turnouts with such a high percentage that they have to be fraudulent. There's also other oddities where it appears that many people are only casting a vote on a couple of ballot items and not others. Sure, not everybody will vote on every item, but there are brackets for that sort of thing and the percentages are outside of the bars. I would think it more likely that a ballot box is being stuffed if the discrepancy is slanted towards the voting method. If dropped off ballots are more likely to have just one or two items selected where voting at polling centers have a much higher percentage of participation, that could be an indication of fraud (along with video showing people stuffing handfuls of ballots at a time into the drop boxes).

[Anonymous Coward]

Elections must be provably secure

It's not like the world doesn't have a very, very long and inglorious history of election fraud.

It's not the job of conspiracy theorists and random malcontents to bring evidence that an election was stolen. It's the job of the government to reasonably prove that it can't be. In the US, this is accomplished by the government and the corporate press saying "go fuck yourselves" to every question about election integrity, from the most absurd to the quite reasonable.

What, there's no auditable chain of custody for the ballots? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, there's no eligibility or identity requirement besides "trust me, here's my signature" when getting a ballot? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, you aggressively push voter registration on anyone and everyone with a pulse that interacts with certain government agencies? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, there's no physical or electronic constraints on a person voting more than once? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, you allow the people running the elections to self-audit their own processes, procedures, compliance, and results? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, you outsourced vote tabulation to a highly-partisan NGO (in my state)? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, there were more ballots counted than there were eligible voters in a district? "Go fuck yourselves."

What, you just arbitrarily expanded the rules for ballot eligibility during the vote counting process? "Go fuck yourselves."

And on, and on, and on. Elections in the US make Venezuela look flawlessly legit by comparison. Does this prove there's cheating? No. But it does breed conspiracy theories. Some of these conspiracy theories are unreasonable. Some of them are quite reasonable. If your election is designed to breed conspiracy theories and then conspiracy theories are bred, that is not the fault of the conspiracy theorists. It's the fault of the people running these clown circus elections.

Can the cheat? Absolutely. Process security is an absolute farce. They can claim electronic security. But this is in a nation whose top "intelligence" agencies have all suffered massive electronic security breaches, and the effort going into preventing those was infinitely higher than what has gone into electronic security for elections. Everyone here works in IT. Go look into the technology being used in these voting machines. Go look into every public security audit that's been done on these voting machines. The skill level demonstrated so far is that of the corporate intern who thinks their 15-line Excel formulas are safe and reliable, managed by the pointy-haired boss who thinks that security is having a checklist that the corporate executives all agreed upon. Forgive me for not having faith.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: Elections must be provably secure

It wasn't conspiracy theorists and random malcontents bringing 60 court cases. It was all done by expensive lawyers paid for by various "friends" of Donald Trump and lawyers directly representing Donald Trump.. The rest of your screed shows you have no idea how ballets are handled and counted.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Elections must be provably secure

"It was all done by expensive lawyers paid for by various "friends" of Donald Trump and lawyers directly representing Donald Trump.."

YOU can't bring that case due to you not "having standing" to do so. That's what some courts have decided.

[Joe 59]

Re: Elections must be provably secure

And instead of addressing each of those points, the bad actors downvote you here. Ironic, people who claim there's no voter fraud don't want you to make the elections more secure. What is this, Reddit?

[cmdrklarg]

Re: Elections must be provably secure

**** It's not the job of conspiracy theorists and random malcontents to bring evidence that an election was stolen.

Bullshit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The burden of proof MUST be on the ones making the claim of a "stolen election".

The Florida Orange Man and his cronies tried this tactic in the 2020 election and failed. Dozens of lawsuits and recounts (only in states he lost, hmmm) resulted in one conclusion: any fraud found was inconsequential to the POTUS election (with most of the fraud done by the ones making the claim of "stolen election"). It is almost certain that he will try again should he lose the election.

Of course it will all be fair and square if he wins, right? *wink wink nudge nudge* The same system that elected him in 2016 is the same one that rejected him in 2020. I'm sorry, but making a lot of noise about a "stolen election" means absolutely nothing if you can't prove it.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Solving the wrong problem?

So the ballot boxes and processes for counting are 100% cyber-secure - great

But certain single letter messaging sites sending you to voter registration pages that aren't actually registering you, just collecting your info for marketing - doesn't count because it's not 'election technology'

[Version 1.0]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

Having talked with a local senator several years ago and taking a lot of time looking at the networking in the local voting site, I'm locally confident that the system in the USA is safe. After all, the hacking of elections was originally a sub-framework American effort about 30 years ago so you can't "blame" China for learning how to repeat it.

The positive side of this is that we've seen the original efforts and virtually every country now knows what they need to do to stop voting being hacked these days and observe every hacking effort.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

>virtually every country now knows what they need to do to stop voting being hacked these days and observe every hacking effort.

Use cutting edge voting technology = paper + pencil + army of little old ladies counting ballots

[Claptrap314]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

You know, I'm about as hard-core conservative as they come (and quite male), but for this---I would be a little old lady.

"Sorry boss, I'm counting ballot that week."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

>Sorry boss, I'm counting ballot that week.

Most places get it done in a few hours and the staff are local council worker volunteers.

Don't know if they get paid overtime, I think you used to just get the next day off ?

[Helcat]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

My mother was one of those 'Little old ladies': The tales she had of shenanigans during the count were... enlightening.

Specifically: Candidates that tried to distract one of the 'Little Old Ladies' so they could shift some ballot papers from one pile to another*, or add a few more to the pile waiting to be counted. True, they're usually caught, but not always, as my mother noted: She got caught out a few times until she learned the tricks, as did most of the new 'Little Old Ladies' joining the counting team. Yes, there were people watching for this, but there were also candidates that were 'old hands' at such skulduggery, and new how to reduce the risk of discovery.

So while I applaud your recognition of the integrity and superiority of the Little Old Lady counting ballots (and my mother loved the overtime for doing so!), there's still problems and opportunities for scumbag interference...

* This is in the UK, and candidates and their appointed observers can walk around the counting tables to watch the count. One technique they used to distract the counter was to question a particular paper and when the counter's attention moved to that paper, that's when the underhanded action would take place. My mother cottoned on to this, as did the more experienced counters, and caught a few observers in the act. That's when the more experienced candidates marked her station as one to not try messing with.

[Dimmer]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

“ President Of Voting Machine Giant Smartmatic Indicted On $1 Million Bribery, Money Laundering Charges”

Just came out. I would post a link, but it is better if you research it yourself.

[Dave 13]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

Have you ever done business with the Phillipine government? Bautista likely shook down Smartmatic for a bribe and they fell for it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

"Specifically: Candidates that tried to distract one of the 'Little Old Ladies' so they could shift some ballot papers from one pile to another*, or add a few more to the pile waiting to be counted. True, they're usually caught, but not always, as my mother noted: She got caught out a few times until she learned the tricks, as did most of the new 'Little Old Ladies' joining the counting team. Yes, there were people watching for this, but there were also candidates that were 'old hands' at such skulduggery, and new how to reduce the risk of discovery."

Nobody but the official staff should be able to get close enough to pull those sorts of things. It's not hard to install an elevated platform around the counting floor so the counting can be watched in a way that doesn't allow for access to and from the counting floor. Little things like not having any drapery on the tables where boxes of "ballots" can be "stored" would be a good idea. Incoming sealed ballot boxes are checked into a secure pen and brought to the line as needed and after counting, are secured in another secure pen that's not accessible by people staffing the incoming pen and vice versa.

The beauty of tangible ballots is the process is easy to watch and keep track of.

[cmdrklarg]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

Not necessary to involve little old ladies counting.

In MN our ballots have circles to fill in next to your chosen candidate. When done, you feed the sheet into a scanner that tabulates your votes, like a scantron sheet. The ballots are kept so they are available for recounts if needed (then the army of little old ladies are mobilized).

[MachDiamond]

Re: Solving the wrong problem?

"Use cutting edge voting technology = paper + pencil + army of little old ladies counting ballots"

I'd suggest modernizing that to PEN + paper and OCR tabulators where the ballots are scanned 3 times by 3 different machines with 3 different operators, only during open hours under supervision of nominated people from the various political parties. If a stack of ballots doesn't scan the same, it fails and has to repeat the process. If it fails the second run, it gets counted by hand which is compared to the machine readers and an effort is made to spot why there was an issue (ink blots, creases, etc). A code can be generated during each read that, once it has cleared the first step, would be used to make the official count. The audit trail would be impressive, but it could also be processed different ways to give an added several layers of verification of a 'true' vote.

[SammyB]

Would he be willing to bet his life on that statement?

[tekHedd]

Would you call that a high bar?

I don't believe "have never been more secure" is quite the reassuring statement he thinks it is.

(I'm not saying I think there *is* massive voter fraud... It's just not worth the effort in most districts, and where it does matter, the monitors are diligent. The beauty of the US system is that because of gerrymandering and the stifling limitations of the two-party-plus-electoral-college system, massive fraud is largely unnecessary. :( )

[Khaptain]

Re: Would you call that a high bar?

"have never been more secure"

All that truly means is that it is a tiny bit better than last time.. Even 0.0000000001% better is considered a plus.

[Helcat]

Re: Would you call that a high bar?

Yup - most security is reactive, not proactive, so they'd first have to discover how a fraud was taking place in order to put in measures to counter it.

At which point the scumbags are figuring out new ways to fiddle with things.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Would you call that a high bar?

"Yup - most security is reactive, not proactive"

There should be a group trying to come up with ways to game the system and figure out how to mold the process to prevent that, but crooks can be oh so clever. Once spotted, you take those impossible cheats and modify the process. Over a few hundred years, it should be nigh on impossible to cheat on a large scale.

One of the issues with electronic voting is once a machine/system has been compromised, it might be necessary to scrap the lot rather than modifying it. The infrequency of use means those machines may have been used once or twice and had to be secured in a warehouse somewhere for months and months. That's a massive cost over a load of folding tables, scantron machines and tea for a murder of little old crows.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Would you call that a high bar?

quite the reassuring statement he thinks it is

"He" who? That's a quote from Easterly, who is a woman. Your argument (such as it is) might be more persuasive if it showed you'd actually paid attention to what's in the article.

[BasicReality]

Yeah, we'll see. We need paper ballots and to get rid of early voting and mail in voting. It's supposed to be election day for a reason.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

That's would help keep a lot of elderly voters away, we could also put the polls on top of mountains or just 100yards from a parking spot.

[Dimmer]

“elderly voters away,”

In my area, the elderly voters are the first in line. It’s like the trips to the doctor every week. It is a big thing for them and no cookies and cream for you if you don’t take them.

[MachDiamond]

"It's supposed to be election day for a reason."

I don't see a big problem with voting DAYS on a given week to help accommodate people's schedules. Even if made a holiday, some people work in jobs that can't close such as police, fire and hospital staff. I'm all for an accurate and honest count over speed so voting one week with results available the next is fine.

[Claptrap314]

So from Dec 2014 on, this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI was considered the standard response to electronic voting. It was updated with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs in Dec 2019.

Tell me which of the issues raised in these videos have been address to fix the problem.

I've worked about 30 elections. I've been an activist since 1994. Election machines, physical or electronic, exist for one purpose: to allow election fraud. There was a documentary I saw in the '80s about this.

Scantron ballots, fill in the bubble just like in school. Audit the results of the counting machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There was a documentary I saw in the '80s about this."

I saw one about how computers would become so small that every home would have one...

Oh, and personal jetpacks...

[Kevin McMurtrie]

So, they were never as secure in the past?

<ducks, runs for cover>