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Security Privacy United States Politics

Election Was Most Secure In American History, US Officials Say (bloomberg.com) 423

"The Nov. 3rd election was the most secure in American history," state and federal election officials said in a statement Thursday. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Bloomberg reports: The statement acknowledged the "many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections" and urged Americans to turn to election administrators and officials for accurate information. The statement was signed by officials from the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which shares information among state, local and federal officials, and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, which includes election infrastructure owners and operators.

Among the 10 signatories were Benjamin Hovland, who chairs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and Bob Kolasky, the assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. Key officials at the cybersecurity agency, including its head, Christopher Krebs, are stepping down or expecting to get fired as Trump refuses to concede. Krebs, who has enjoyed bipartisan support for his role in helping run secure U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020, has told associates he expects to be dismissed, according to three people familiar with internal discussions. His departure would follow the resignation of Bryan Ware, assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, who resigned on Thursday morning after about two years at the agency. In addition, Valerie Boyd, the assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CISA, has also left, according to two other people. Krebs and Ware are both Trump appointees.

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Election Was Most Secure In American History, US Officials Say

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:09PM (#60722036)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:39PM (#60722140) Journal
      Voting machines are not secure [blackboxvoting.org], and haven't been for a long time.
      • Yeah, we know (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:46PM (#60722172)
        which is why places with the dodgyist machines and politicians created paper trails. Georgia did it, and funny that right after they did the state turned blue.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 )
          Great, you just legitimized the voter fraud narrative. Georgia went blue because of strong turnout (and Stacey Abrams).
          • Re:Yeah, we know (Score:5, Informative)

            by Ambassador Kosh ( 18352 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @04:53AM (#60723094)

            I read that entirely differently. Once Georgia added a paper trail so the election could be hand audited suddenly the voting machines started matching the hand recounts. That makes me think there was cheating before.

          • they literally thing Democrats showing up to vote is fraud. I can't argue that, it's too crazy. I don't think you're buying into it entirely, but the fact that you were willing to think of it in the way you did shows the narrative has traveled far and wide.
        • by c-A-d ( 77980 )

          Am I missing something? Why is it even necessary to use electronic machines? Are people unable to count these days?

    • Call me paranoid, but I doubt elections that use computerized devices can possibly be more secure than back when it was manually counted paper ballots.

      Yeah, nothing could be more secure than having William Tweed count the votes.

      When it comes to counting, computers are just better. I wouldn't want votes to be fully digitized, where you use a computer than sends your vote through a network, but scantron ballots that are counted by a machine are much more reliable than a person counting paper ballots. I don't know about you, but the old farts working at my Board of Elections would still be counting if they had to do it manually, and it certainly wouldn't be

      • one from each party. The last few recounts were off by hundreds of votes, not thousands. Counting votes with people works, it's just slower than snail shit in winter.
        • I just don't see the point. I like the paper scantron ballots because they can be manually checked if need be, but the machine provides a very accurate and fast result. If the election is extremely close, by all means have a hand recount. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.

          I also think it's bullshit that, in most states, Boards of Elections are comprised of people from the two parties. We have baked a party duopoly into almost all of our political institutions and there is no justification for it.

    • like Florida & GA created paper trails. Ballots were counted by two people at a time. And a huge amount of mail in voting means lots of paper that can't easily be faked.

      You can't steal an election with fake votes because it requires tens of thousands of votes which in turn requires a lot of people to fake those votes. Conspiracies only work when there's a very limited number of people in on the conspiracy.
    • Not saying you are necessarily wrong, but electoral fraud is not new, nor came into being with electronic voting devices. Wikipedia's article lists more traditional forms of fraud, such as Misleading or confusing ballot papers, Ballot stuffing, Misrecording of votes, Misuse of proxy votes, and Destruction or invalidation of ballots.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by michaelmalak ( 91262 )

      Yes. People have forgotten about how Diebold stole the 2004 election for Bush, and about the 2004 book Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century [amazon.com]. Back in 2003, Congress was debating whether paper trails should be required -- here is my blog post about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20061218140456/http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1119&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 [archive.org].

      Digital voting is isomorphic to cryptocurrency. Without anonymiz

  • Trump supporters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:22PM (#60722086)

    Trump literally tweeted this was the most secure election ever thanks to him, while at the same time saying he lost because of cheating.

    Moronic supporters of his believe that though â" since when has contradiction mattered to Trump supporters? He will win in 2024 given how dumb people are.
    I mean he is even touting vaccine and yet the anti-vaxxer nutcases still support him. They donâ(TM)t mind him lying as long as he gets rid of the Mexicans and Muslims.

    • Re:Trump supporters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @10:31PM (#60722324)

      It has been a weird experience to be reading Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism during the election:

      The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. ...

      The essential conviction shared by all ranks, from fellow-traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating...

      I came away from the book not feeling that we're on our way to totalitarianism, but that some of the tactics are being used.

    • Moronic supporters of his believe that though â" since when has contradiction mattered to Trump supporters?

      I remember seeing the announcement of Biden winning and one of the CNN correspondents said now was a time of healing. He lamented how he voted for Trump and was called stupid by other people and that he felt insulted because of it.

      Maybe he shouldn't feel insulted but rather like alcohol addiction realise that admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it. It's amazing what Trump supporters say in his support and I'm unfortunately convinced that many people believe both his and their own bulls

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:26PM (#60722096)

    With so much at stake and so much misinformation around it seems that all election officials were put on high alert, making sure procedures set up to detect and avoid election fraud from happening.

    And guess what it seems to have worked.

    But of course Trump being Trump and Trumpers being Trumpers have a lot of difficulty dealing with either reality or rules that don't work out in their favor are kicking up conspiracy after conspiracy in a vain attempt to roll back reality.

    The result: currently Trump is 0 for 14 in court challenges. No evidence. Thrown out.

    But this is all part of the playbook. Like Obama before, Republicans simply don't recognize the legitimacy of any government other than their own and we can look forward to at least four years of this from the "Eff-your-feelings" crowd. I was told to "get over it" in 2016 and now it is their turn.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      I think the Trumpeteers don't care if it's valid or not, they think the wrong person won and it's worth breaking the country over it. I suspect some of them honestly believe the delusion that they're saving the country from communism, and to them that is more important than democracy or the rule of law.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Well, good thing you are here to read minds and tell us all about what you have sensed.
    • by allcoolnameswheretak ( 1102727 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @01:46AM (#60722836)

      To be fair... us elections are always rigged. In a legal way. It's called the electoral college and favors the low-population rural areas and states over the high-population areas. This is how in the US conservatives get an edge over progressives, and therefore we got Bush instead of Gore in 2000 and Trump instead of Hillary in 2016 - candidate with least votes wins.

      Can you imagine what that would have meant for the world, had the people's voice actually counted?
      Gore instead of Bush - no useless war in Iraq and collapse of the state of Iraq - no Isis, no global wave of Islamic terrorism, no civil war, atrocities and cultural heritage lost in Syria. Instead, more environmentalism and common sense.

      Hillary instead of Trump - no constant barrage of fake news from the White House, no strengthening of global populism, no backup from US for crooks like Bolsanaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary, no fawning towards Vladimir Putin and questionable links to Russia, no wave of nutjob conspiracy movements like QAnon. Instead, more common sense in the world.

      The messed up US democracy has cost the world 12 years of idiocy vs. common sense in the White House with global impact.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Gore instead of Bush - no useless war in Iraq
        [...]
        Hillary instead of Trump

        Wait? You don't want useless wars but you did want Hillary?

        Meanwhile,

        no Isis, no global wave of Islamic terrorism, no civil war, atrocities and cultural heritage lost in Syria

        Wrong President. Those all happened under Obama not Bush. While the instability in Iraq was undoubtably Bush (and Blair) he wasn't the cause of Bin Laden, the expansion of violent Islamic terrorism, the instability in Egypt, Libya or Syria.

        no strengthening of global populism, no backup from US for crooks like Bolsanaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary, no fawning towards Vladimir Putin and questionable links to Russia

        Globalism is no better than global populism, and indeed a strong cause of it. Which crimes has Orban committed? Why is building friendly relationships with Russia wrong, and can you for the love of human

  • Trying too hard (Score:2, Informative)

    If they simply said there was no evidence of mass fraud, I'm guessing the majority of Trump voters would have believed it. However making a very bold statement that is not supported by evidence can only raise suspicion.

    • by Brama ( 80257 )

      > making a very bold statement that is not supported by evidence can only raise suspicion

      That is literally Trump campaign's strategy.

  • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:44PM (#60722160)

    There is only one path out of this. One.

    They need to do manual ( read that, non-computerized ) recounts in any State that is suspect using individuals who did not participate in the first counting. The ballots need to be verified in accordance with the State Laws they were cast in. Any ballot that doesn't meet the criteria for being valid, should be discounted.

    Let me explain why.

    It doesn't matter if anyone actually cheated or stole an election.
    Let me say that again: It - doesn't - matter.

    This election can be one hundred percent legitimate, but the problem is this:
    A very large number of folks in this country -believe- it was fraudulent.

    The reason for the recounts is to ensure that your populace continues to have faith in your election system as a whole.
    You absolutely have to prove, beyond any doubts, that Candidate X won or lost in a fair election.

    If you fail to do this, you will further erode the trust of a nation and if you think this will simply fade away peacefully, you
    are naive. It will only get worse and, considering how fantastic a year it has been so far, we really don't need " worse "
    right now.

    This is neither about Trump or Biden. Republicans or Democrats.
    This is about the future of this country.

    The only way a Government works is if its people maintain some level of trust in it.
    Take away that trust and things will go full stupid in very short order.

    • Someone Mod this post up.
    • I think it's actually a small number of very loud people claiming there was fraud. A recount by hand of every ballot will take longer than a couple of months. The laws as they are have very had and fast deadlines. And even if we change the laws, do you want the precedent that after every election in the future, not just for president, there is a 4 month back end hand count because some doofuses refused to accept that their Lord and Savior Trump might actually have lost? Worse, you finish the hand count

    • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      I don't think any states are suspect at this point. A recount like that would be long and expensive - we already have robust ballot counting procedures which is why the existing counts can be trusted

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @10:52PM (#60722428)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • On the other hand, maybe we should just always have a recount in any contest where the results are close, period. That would improve election confidence, however slightly.

  • by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:44PM (#60722162)

    According to Russian election officials. When have we become so brainwashed that we take such self serving statements at face value? Banks hire independent auditors and tiger teams to harden their computer systems and then use two factor authentication for account access, how is democracy less important?

  • This isn't going to change anyone's mind. The deep state conspiracy theory thought process is now such that every statement like this is just more evidence of the corruption at every level. It's a convenient and simple minded version of reality that makes it easier for people to stick with their chosen beliefs.They believed it would be corrupt before it even started, they then went hunting for fraud no matter how the actual process proceeded and now they are just re-affirming their original view. Sadly, the

  • by Tulsa_Time ( 2430696 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @01:09AM (#60722764)

    Those 3 lines of code....

    https://youtu.be/Ztu5Y5obWPk?t... [youtu.be]

    MIT Data analyst ...

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Working...