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reverendsteveii t1_isu3lky wrote

Reply to comment by thunderGunXprezz in U.S. Supreme Court backs Republican in Pennsylvania ballots case by MandoFett123456

Software engineer checking in here: no. God no. Take that idea a hundred miles out into the desert, bury it ten feet deep in the ground, then launch an orbital nuclear bombardment at it.

Edit: if you're about to tell me that I'm wrong and this is easy, I recommend you consult the opinion of every other actual developer in this thread. You'd be hard pressed to find an engineer who would trust their elections to modern software capabilities and practices, and the reason is because it will be vulnerable. Not maybe, not eventually, but to a determined and well-funded actor it will be critically vulnerable from day one and it will remain critically vulnerable for the entire lifetime of the system.

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trs21219 t1_isu808x wrote

Another Software Engineer here. Completely agree. Paper ballots with digital scanning is the best way. Anything else can and will be hacked.

Also love the XKCD reference there.

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BluCurry8 t1_isucvjc wrote

Anything can be hacked. Even paper ballots that are scanned. At the end of the day you are still using software to tabulate the outcome. Ughhhhh

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trs21219 t1_isud933 wrote

On a small scale sure. But if the tabulators are only able to push data, not allow incoming connections, and you have an auditable paper trail with a certain percentage of machines being randomly audited you can be pretty damn secure while still having fast results.

Way less attack vectors than online voting though.

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heili t1_isuh23m wrote

> and you have an auditable paper trail

The voting machine should print me a receipt of my votes as it recorded them.

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BluCurry8 t1_isud11f wrote

Ok so basically you are saying, your experience with software development is so bad that you cannot build a secure system.

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heili t1_isuhf0w wrote

I am also a software engineer, and I agree with every other software engineer in here. Internet/Online voting is a terrible idea.

There is no such thing as invulnerable code. There are no networks anywhere connected to the internet that cannot be hacked. Shit hackers have even managed to cross air gaps to exploit systems.

I am absolutely saying that no way in hell would I be able to code an unhackable, uncheatable, unbreakable software solution to allow online voting, and any software engineer who tells you they can is either lying or not a software engineer.

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reverendsteveii t1_isum27f wrote

When every other software engineer you ever meet shares this opinion with me, you're gonna wanna revisit this comment

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