Trump to delay the election

[Nobel Hobos 2]

33% accuracy. There are 3 apostrophes, 2 of them for plurals where -ies was correct.

Almost certainly a spell checker did those.

Velarland, what you have in the second paragraph is a "run-on sentence" aka text diarrhoea. If you really can't be arsed to end sentences with a period, perhaps just use a line break to make a new paragraph.

There were four apostrophes, unless I'm seeing things.

50% accuracy then.

[Thermodolia]

BTW, young Americans here should look into being a poll worker this election.
Seems there's going to be a shortage with the traditionally-old poll workers reluctant to expose themselves to covid.
Particularly if you've already had covid, consider it. You also get paid.

Not much and many young people have to work so the idea of taking a day off of work to work the polls for less than half a days pay isn’t going to happen

[Nobel Hobos 2]

BTW, young Americans here should look into being a poll worker this election.
Seems there's going to be a shortage with the traditionally-old poll workers reluctant to expose themselves to covid.
Particularly if you've already had covid, consider it. You also get paid.

Not much and many young people have to work so the idea of taking a day off of work to work the polls for less than half a days pay isn’t going to happen

"Many young people have to work" therefore "no young people are available"? Not your best thought.

[Thermodolia]

Not much and many young people have to work so the idea of taking a day off of work to work the polls for less than half a days pay isn’t going to happen

"Many young people have to work" therefore "no young people are available"? Not your best thought.

Unfortunately yes. The reason why old people are the poll workers is because they are retired and have time to spare.

The rest of everyone else has to work and the majority can’t afford to take a day off to run the polls, especially when the poll workers get paid less than minimum wage.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

"Many young people have to work" therefore "no young people are available"? Not your best thought.

Unfortunately yes. The reason why old people are the poll workers is because they are retired and have time to spare.

The rest of everyone else has to work and the majority can’t afford to take a day off to run the polls, especially when the poll workers get paid less than minimum wage.

Firming it up won't help. You're now claiming that all young people have to work that day.

How much they're paid depends on which state (or county?) and the ONE example I saw was $13 an hour.

Why are you so determined to undermine my encouragement of young people to do their duty to help Americans vote? You've brought "they can't" and "the pay sucks" as reasons not to. Do you see anything good about long queues to vote after work, because the local authorities couldn't muster enough workers to open more polling places?

[Eahland]

BTW, young Americans here should look into being a poll worker this election.
Seems there's going to be a shortage with the traditionally-old poll workers reluctant to expose themselves to covid.
Particularly if you've already had covid, consider it. You also get paid.

Not much and many young people have to work so the idea of taking a day off of work to work the polls for less than half a days pay isn’t going to happen

Just want to note here that for the same reason we have a shortage of poll workers, we also have record numbers of unemployed.

I probably don't qualify as "young" anymore, but I've been planning to call the town clerk and ask about volunteering here. I always see the same faces at my local polling place, and all of them are at least a decade older than me.

[Esternial]

It really isn't. It's virtually impossible to implement all of the requirements of American elections in a digital system. Hell it's so difficult to do it in general that we consistently fuck up even on paper.

Security isn't the only concern, although it is a chief one.

The "requirements of American elections" are actually very simple. Security is the ONLY concern.

The really insoluble problem is ensuring that all the computers/devices people use are secure. For computers I propose a government-issued bootable OS (linux-based of course) to vote with. Devices however, I doubt it's possible to boot them from a USB stick.

With the right investment of resources, it's definitely attainable. Whether that will actually ever be done is a question I can't answer, so it's not worth exploring.

What this application would need to ensure is that it can be reliably sure that whomever is authenticating themself is who they say they are. In Belgium I use either an eID scanner or an app called "Itsme" to authenticate myself when logging into my government's web services.

Using a similar approach for voting would put more responsibility in the hands of the people. Giving other people access to your credentials (e.g. you passphrase associated with your eID) potentially means someone can vote as you. Mail-in ballots also has similar vulnerabilities - if you give someone your ballot or someone steals it, they can vote as you. Ultimately, methods other than voting in person have a tradeoff, being that they require the people to be more responsible, but I don't see this as a problematic factor.

If anything, digital voting could be more secure vs. low-tech fraud attempts. You could additionally mandate the use of a webcam to identify yourself - research is being done on discerning "liveness" and spoofed faces. Naturally a secure passphrase kept securely is - in my opinion - always the simplest and best method.

There's so much potential in the software and algorithms being developed today I find it a bit disheartening that there would be so many people that consider something like this a thought that shouldn't be entertained. We can programmatically launch a rocket into space and return its booster rockets back to Earth for a synchronous landing, but this is just beyond the realm of possibility?

[Nobel Hobos 2]

The "requirements of American elections" are actually very simple. Security is the ONLY concern.

The really insoluble problem is ensuring that all the computers/devices people use are secure. For computers I propose a government-issued bootable OS (linux-based of course) to vote with. Devices however, I doubt it's possible to boot them from a USB stick.

With the right investment of resources, it's definitely attainable. Whether that will actually ever be done is a question I can't answer, so it's not worth exploring.

What this application would need to ensure is that it can be reliably sure that whomever is authenticating themself is who they say they are. In Belgium I use either an eID scanner or an app called "Itsme" to authenticate myself when logging into my government's web services.

Using a similar approach for voting would put more responsibility in the hands of the people. Giving other people access to your credentials (e.g. you passphrase associated with your eID) potentially means someone can vote as you. Mail-in ballots also has similar vulnerabilities - if you give someone your ballot or someone steals it, they can vote as you. Ultimately, methods other than voting in person have a tradeoff, being that they require the people to be more responsible, but I don't see this as a problematic factor.

If anything, digital voting could be more secure vs. low-tech fraud attempts. You could additionally mandate the use of a webcam to identify yourself - research is being done on discerning "liveness" and spoofed faces. Naturally a secure passphrase kept securely is - in my opinion - always the simplest and best method.

There's so much potential in the software and algorithms being developed today I find it a bit disheartening that there would be so many people that consider something like this a thought that shouldn't be entertained. We can programmatically launch a rocket into space and return its booster rockets back to Earth for a synchronous landing, but this is just beyond the realm of possibility?

While about half the eligible population voting shows how inconsequential a single vote is, even a small risk of thousands or millions of votes being changed by hacking on one day, is a concern that must be taken seriously.

I wouldn't try to develop such a system in one electoral cycle. I'd take 3 to 5 years to be absolutely sure we have it right, before letting any votes made that way into the final tallies. Beta testing with meaningful but non-binding referendums would be a part of that. Ideally I'd like it tested on a real election too, but only voters who are willing to forgo the privacy of their vote: it's necessary in order to verify that conventional votes and virtual votes match exactly. These people would be volunteers. Their conventional vote if cast correctly, would be the only vote of theirs counted.

[Thermodolia]

Unfortunately yes. The reason why old people are the poll workers is because they are retired and have time to spare.

The rest of everyone else has to work and the majority can’t afford to take a day off to run the polls, especially when the poll workers get paid less than minimum wage.

Firming it up won't help. You're now claiming that all young people have to work that day.

How much they're paid depends on which state (or county?) and the ONE example I saw was $13 an hour.

Why are you so determined to undermine my encouragement of young people to do their duty to help Americans vote? You've brought "they can't" and "the pay sucks" as reasons not to. Do you see anything good about long queues to vote after work, because the local authorities couldn't muster enough workers to open more polling places?

I’m not determined to undermine anything. Pretty much everyone has to work that day because nobody gets the day off, thanks capitalist america!. What I’m saying is that we need to have the pay at a level where it won’t hurt people who choose to volunteer.

$13/hour is quite a lot considering that your working close to a 16 hour day

[Esternial]

With the right investment of resources, it's definitely attainable. Whether that will actually ever be done is a question I can't answer, so it's not worth exploring.

What this application would need to ensure is that it can be reliably sure that whomever is authenticating themself is who they say they are. In Belgium I use either an eID scanner or an app called "Itsme" to authenticate myself when logging into my government's web services.

Using a similar approach for voting would put more responsibility in the hands of the people. Giving other people access to your credentials (e.g. you passphrase associated with your eID) potentially means someone can vote as you. Mail-in ballots also has similar vulnerabilities - if you give someone your ballot or someone steals it, they can vote as you. Ultimately, methods other than voting in person have a tradeoff, being that they require the people to be more responsible, but I don't see this as a problematic factor.

If anything, digital voting could be more secure vs. low-tech fraud attempts. You could additionally mandate the use of a webcam to identify yourself - research is being done on discerning "liveness" and spoofed faces. Naturally a secure passphrase kept securely is - in my opinion - always the simplest and best method.

There's so much potential in the software and algorithms being developed today I find it a bit disheartening that there would be so many people that consider something like this a thought that shouldn't be entertained. We can programmatically launch a rocket into space and return its booster rockets back to Earth for a synchronous landing, but this is just beyond the realm of possibility?

While about half the eligible population voting shows how inconsequential a single vote is, even a small risk of thousands or millions of votes being changed by hacking on one day, is a concern that must be taken seriously.

I wouldn't try to develop such a system in one electoral cycle. I'd take 3 to 5 years to be absolutely sure we have it right, before letting any votes made that way into the final tallies. Beta testing with meaningful but non-binding referendums would be a part of that. Ideally I'd like it tested on a real election too, but only voters who are willing to forgo the privacy of their vote: it's necessary in order to verify that conventional votes and virtual votes match exactly. These people would be volunteers. Their conventional vote if cast correctly, would be the only vote of theirs counted.

I definitely agree it should go through the necessary checks and balances to optimize application, from a security perspective and others.

Privacy is indeed a good point to raise, though I wouldn't say these people would forgo their privacy. If there would ever be such a digital voting system in place, it should be able to interact with the manual voting system - which means an upgrade may be needed there as well. That would ensure no human would have eyes on the voting records. As these details are not very relevant to developers, etc. this system could obfuscate these records whenever they need to be debugged - as is the case with other sensitive data.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

While about half the eligible population voting shows how inconsequential a single vote is, even a small risk of thousands or millions of votes being changed by hacking on one day, is a concern that must be taken seriously.

I wouldn't try to develop such a system in one electoral cycle. I'd take 3 to 5 years to be absolutely sure we have it right, before letting any votes made that way into the final tallies. Beta testing with meaningful but non-binding referendums would be a part of that. Ideally I'd like it tested on a real election too, but only voters who are willing to forgo the privacy of their vote: it's necessary in order to verify that conventional votes and virtual votes match exactly. These people would be volunteers. Their conventional vote if cast correctly, would be the only vote of theirs counted.

I definitely agree it should go through the necessary checks and balances to optimize application, from a security perspective and others.

Privacy is indeed a good point to raise, though I wouldn't say these people would forgo their privacy. If there would ever be such a digital voting system in place, it should be able to interact with the manual voting system - which means an upgrade may be needed there as well. That would ensure no human would have eyes on the voting records. As these details are not very relevant to developers, etc. this system could obfuscate these records whenever they need to be debugged - as is the case with other sensitive data.

The point of beta testers forgoing the privacy of the vote, was that to properly test the new system, a volunteer tester would have to vote twice: once conventionally and once online. The two versions of their vote would have to be tracked by their ID up to the point the two were compared. And I still have concerns that some of the volunteers might deliberately sabotage the system being tested, ie deliberately casting contradictory votes.

And I'm talking about a real election, in which the conventional vote of the volunteers would count. I'm going to need their consent to violate the privacy of their vote, because if something goes wrong with the software being tested, that might happen by accident!

Of course, everyone would still be allowed to vote conventionally. Nobody would have to give up privacy of the vote. And nobody would be given any incentive to participate in the beta testing, since it might by accident give up their privacy.