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[Max™]

What is 'airgapped'?

No physical/logical connection to anything outside the system. To whatever degree one deigns necessary.  Dedicated landlines between nodes would be one extreme (whilst a verified secure VPN running atop of public communication systems might be sufficient to others.)  It could involve zero data connection (eyeballed screen data is typed up on a more public system for publication) or a sneakernet connection used to transfer the final/intermediate/staged data masses from the secure system onto the 'realworld' ones.

'sneakernet', I like that word used for physical transfer.

It's a real thing too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

[Starver]

To verify fully end-to-end, whilst keeping the same principles of secret-and-private ballots¹ the only thing I can think of is to get a hashed value of voterId and the voteCast (singular or array) giving something reasonably non-repeatable so that the voter can take away a small printout that they can later positively verify as also existing within the accumulated list of data at the 'counting' end.  But not returning their actual vote.

Trouble is that there are still opportunities to intervene in the process (mislabel touchscreen buttons and onscreen/printout "confirmation" lists²), so there's additional validation necessary.


¹ Any mechanism that allows you to go in there and from the final batch of votes and say "see, that's my vote, I voted for you guys like I said..." is going to allow pay-per-vote practices the like of which the "no photography within the polling booth" rule is intended to prevent.

² For a simple "Vote A or B", intended to bias towards B, perhaps for every 50 instances or so (and only after the first 1000 votes have been cast, even, to allow limited testing to proceed without 'error'?) make the "A" button actually record "vote C".  All local queries/printouts at the voting station re-render "voted C" as "voted A", but at the actual collation/counting stage(s) all "vote C" examples are taken as "vote B".  hash(Voter1234,VoteC)!=hash(Voter1234,VoteA), of course, but if you're rigging the system this way then you just falsify either voter-end or collator-end hasher the appropriate way to grant apparent consistency.

[Lord Shonus]

129,085,403 votes were cast in the 2012 Presidential Election. That is roughly 8 times the total population of the Netherlands. Counting all those votes accurately would take a huge investment in manpower and a great deal of time; the former would be rather expensive while the latter would mean that an extremely important question would hang in the balance for days or even weeks.

Absolute population numbers should be irrelevant. You can count 1 billion votes just as fast as 1 million votes, as long as the ratio of counters : voters remains the same.
Sure, there'd be some delay from conferring the results from all teh counting hubs to counting central, but that should not be days or weeks. Having a larger population would actually be an argument in favour of counting with paper and pen, because more risk spread.

Things of this matter do not scale linearly. A larger population spread over a much greater area is going to have many, many more counting hubs, which will require more infrastructure, and cost more money. Checking and rechecking these ballots takes time. Or you can do it the way we do it now and usually know who won within an hour of California's polls closing.

The electronic ones print out a paper ballot anyway (which you are supposed to verify before casting your vote - you can reject it a few times and vote again in case of any errors) to create a paper trail, so any electronic errors would be caught in any election close enough for them to matter.

While the system sounds good, it would still be vulnerable to the situation described by Max

I like to think Soros could afford to have it display one thing and record another, you don't do voter fraud in a way that makes it obvious to the voter while they're doing it.

That is why most such machines have the paper ballot, which you are prompted to review before casting. In the event that the election turns out oddly, either by diverging wildly from the polls or by being extremely close, any such fraud would be discovered very quickly, and the perpetrator would face serious federal charges up to (and possibly including - the technical definition could be made to fit) treason.

[smjjames]

Looks like Trump and his Trumpites are setting themselves up for some massive confirmation bias. I was looking at http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-rigged-election-guide-230302 and saw this:
"Stone’s plan, mounted through a non-profit group named “Stop the Steal,” will involve sending 1,300 volunteers to conduct exit polls to check whether the percent of survey respondents interviewed after they’ve voted match up with the vote totals released by local and state officials. In an interview, Stone said he’d make his exit polls public if they show a difference that’s greater than 2 percent, a variance that he said would suggest something suspicious has happened." (bolded part for emphasis)

I'm currently trying to research how much the difference between the exit polls in 2012 and 2008 were vs the actual results. Having trouble finding something that shows the percentage of people who said they voted candidate x vs candidate y without all the extra data, but I'm starting to see that the exit polls simply don't work that way. Plus, this article says that the average margin of error in 2008 was 4.7 percentage points and sometimes swung a large degree.

Again, they are just setting themselves up for massive confirmation bias this way. Not to mention that they should be exit polling in Republican areas because, well, who knows, maybe the 'fraud' will be there and not Democrat areas.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If the Clinton landslide happens, I wonder if they'll be shocked out of claiming fraud or double down on it. "How could Crooked Hillary win Texas, the heart of America!? You know it's rigged!"

I'm certain they'll claim rigging if it's a narrow Clinton win just for the thirst of being almost there. Interestingly, this seems to suggest that if there's any Clinton win they'd be least likely to object to, it's the "Copy & Paste Obama 2012" one.

[wobbly]

How long did he beat the birther horse after it was clearly dead & should be buried? I think there's close to zero chance of Trump or his supporters not kicking up a stink if they lose, no matter how badly.

Look at it this way, if he gets crushed he's either a "loser" or the election was rigged. His ego will demand it be the 2nd.

[smjjames]

I'm gonna admit here that I have no idea how to read the exit polls, or at least read them the way that Stone and co. (co. being Boulder, Rock, and Pebble) want to read them. If anything, it sounds like they're doing it wrong because exit polls don't show the number of who voted for who.

Would be interesting to see how they compare with the professional exit polls.

How long did he beat the birther horse after it was clearly dead & should be buried? I think there's close to zero chance of Trump or his supporters not kicking up a stink if they lose, no matter how badly.

They are literally setting themselves up for confirmation bias, I can see it a mile away here.

[mainiac]

It's kinda amazing the way people can decide that something convenient is true.  They start off without the belief.  But overtime the convenience of the belief means they gravitate to it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Framing is 9/10ths of truth. Once you get good at argumentation and logic, the facts can be made to fit a wide number of scenarios. Those that society settles upon win out through popularity.

[redwallzyl]

Framing is 9/10ths of truth. Once you get good at argumentation and logic, the facts can be made to fit a wide number of scenarios. Those that society settles upon win out through popularity.

this is the reason you should not look for support for a idea but instead look for negation. you can find support for anything but only the truly true things can not be shown to be false in any unbiased circumstances. unfortunately the scientific method approach to truth is fairly uncommon among trump supporters. otherwise they would not be trump supporters.

[Rolepgeek]

It's kinda amazing the way people can decide that something convenient is true.  They start off without the belief.  But overtime the convenience of the belief means they gravitate to it.

Motivated reasoning is powerful, and when you consider that challenging someone's beliefs is more likely to make them hold their ground all the firmer than reevaluate their position... the brain is very good at convincing itself of falsehoods. Hell, that's practically the point of the conscious mind; to be lied to by the rest.

Changing someone's mind is hard. Guiding them through changing their own mind, on the other hand, is called 'teaching'.

[Strife26]

It's kinda amazing the way people can decide that something convenient is true.  They start off without the belief.  But overtime the convenience of the belief means they gravitate to it.

Motivated reasoning is powerful, and when you consider that challenging someone's beliefs is more likely to make them hold their ground all the firmer than reevaluate their position... the brain is very good at convincing itself of falsehoods. Hell, that's practically the point of the conscious mind; to be lied to by the rest.

Changing someone's mind is hard. Guiding them through changing their own mind, on the other hand, is called 'teaching' propaganda.

[smjjames]

Lol on that edit Strife....

Anyways, I wonder if the sudden price hike in Obamacare is going to count as an October surprise (if a late one)? I guess it would be more applicable as it's not something directly connected to either candidate*. Probably won't have a major impact, but there could very well be some kind of shift.

*Some would argue it's directly linked to Clinton because she supports it.

[mainiac]

I used to disagree with RPG but then I read that post and changed my mind.  But then I read Strife's post and changed my mind again.

[Rolepgeek]

I used to disagree with RPG but then I read that post and changed my mind.  But then I read Strife's post and changed my mind again.

Yes, how witty. >.>

I could find the studies, if you like?

And nah, Strife, propaganda is telling someone what they're supposed to think. Guiding someone through changing their own mind has significantly less telling and significantly more getting them to reevaluate what they currently believe and see if they think that's accurate.