Has there been any whisper of global electronic screwing around with votes?

Politics & Elections
21

I’m an elections worker in a purple town in a swing state. We find out the tallies (vote totals) for each candidate about ten minutes after the polls close, when they’re transmitted from the machine by a secure line to city hall (and printed on a ticket).

We spend the next hour or so, among other tasks, going through all the paper ballots (taken out of the machine), mainly to look for write-in candidates. We don’t pay attention to the regular votes on them, but we can’t help but notice them sometimes, and over the hour we almost subconsciously form an idea of the approximate relative count.

So, I knew by the end of that hour that the actual count was about 55 Harris-45 Trump in our precinct — which was exactly what had been transmitted to city hall an hour earlier. And, this was the reported total on the public web page the next day.

Extrapolating from our little neighborhood, I have no reason to suspect any shenanigans, anywhere. (Remember that our state —and specifically localities like mine — would have been the most cost-effective place for any monkeying around).

I’m sorry to report that the reality is much worse (one might argue). There REALLY are millions upon millions of selfish, willfully ignorant assholes in this country, of all ages and colors.

22

It looks like a small fraction of voting machines do have modems (but most do not). In theory, that does make them vulnerable to hacking (but, in practice, they might not be). However, I believe that the use of this sort of equipment is just used to get a quick answer out the door. They still follow up and double-check the results through statistical sampling, counting paper printouts, and etc. Hacking it won’t, in the long run, cause anything but an annoyance.

In 2020, there were genuine attempts to compromise the machines, physically. That’s likely because that’s what it is necessary.

We’d expect that to still be true and for any sincere attacks to require more hands-on methodologies.

23

Damn.

I’m sure you’re right. :frowning: