Proposed: The [Optional] End to the Secret Ballot

 The Secret Ballot

• We think of the secret ballot as fundamental to our rights, and indeed to our democratic system, and in many ways that belief is correct.
• But in the days when ballots were cast in boxes, using paper, there was little risk run by those who cherished the secrecy of their choices in such a system because the ballots could always be recounted.

The Brennan Center for Justice points out that half of America is voting on electronic machines that are near the end of their usable lives

• The machines are vulnerable to missing or obsolete parts that cannot be replaced, to breaking down, or to viruses
• Many districts use electronic machines which do not give a paper document for each vote
• While the number of jurisdictions using DRE machines has fallen dramatically in recent years, nearly 26 million registered voters in 16 states live in jurisdictions that still use DREs for some or all voters as of February 2022
• Louisiana passed a bill last year requiring new voting systems to "produce an auditable voter-verified paper record"
• Texas has a new Texas law that requires the state to phase out DRE systems by September 1, 2026
• Indiana has a bill in January requiring jurisdictions with DRE to add VVPAT printers by 2024
• New Jersey has required VVPATA since 2009
• Nearly half of all states and the District of Columbia conduct post-election audits
• It is becoming increasingly important for qualified election officials to conduct legitimate audits of their own

The old ways to vote

• Enter a private booth with a curtain around it and pull the 1950s-era-seeming thick metal arm solidly in an arc from left to right. The metal tooth locked into its groove at the end of the gesture with a satisfying ca-chunk, to physically register your physical vote.
• Fill in the little ovals carefully, one by one on a ballot, and fill in the rest of the paper ballot if there is any question at all about the outcome
• Digital machines with little screens like ATM machines in the middle of the room, under glaring fluorescent lights
• Gestural barriers “for privacy” on either side of the screen

It is ridiculous and dangerous that Americans by the millions are going to vote on Tuesday on electronic machines, whether with or without a "VVPAT".

• Citizens in our system are supposed to be the ones observing, protecting and guarding the counting of the vote. These citizens are doing just what their duty is.
• If there is a contested outcome, there should be citizen-verified audits of the ballots.

An algorithm does not need to count one vote as one vote

• It counts as a vote whatever the programmer told it to count
• The analogy I use in The Bodies of Others to explain how easy it is to lie with algorithms and digital counting is a supermarket
• People assume that digital vote count is like a shipment of apples being loaded into the back of a supermarket loading dock, unpacked, put on display in the supermarket; then selected by consumers, who then scan the apple at the checkout line
• This is not how the algorithm is counting anything
• A scanner can be set to count all apples as apples, or all oranges as apples
• Whatever was counted as apples will be displayed at the end as the tally - of "apples"
• If those who are running the system then announce the final tally, that "this is the total number of apples sold" then the world will think that the total of all the apples, but also all of the meat, and oranges, and paper towels, and the cat food, that were also sold, but scanned by the algorithm, is the same number

We have digital voting systems

• In the last election, warnings were raised that some of the voting machines in use connected to the internet - should set off giant alarm bells

A development team, or hacker, located anywhere in the world, can in twenty minutes change the way our code "on the backend", where no one facing our platform can see this happen

• They can change how the code counts our users' engagements, no matter that our users may be in the United States; and I, a user, will not know that there is a change in how my engagement has been weighted.
• As long as the machines are connected to the internet, they are indeed vulnerable to cyberattacks, especially from state-sponsored cyber warfare.

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/proposed-the-optional-end-to-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=676930&post_id=82813969&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email