Speaker 1: Get in tests with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I am thinking
Speaker 1: this amount of enthusiasm and energy because I've been in
Speaker 1: the booth with Ben Boland for nearly two hours. Oh
Speaker 1: what a time we're having, buddy. Yeah. We recorded this
Speaker 1: epic episode about electronic voting machines and then talked about
Speaker 1: confidence in political systems, which ties very closely in with
Speaker 1: the topic of electronic voting machines. If you can't have
Speaker 1: confidence in the outcome of an election, then really the
Speaker 1: whole system starts to crumble. And we cast our votes
Speaker 1: during this uh at the close of our conversation, we
Speaker 1: cast our votes, and we decided democratically that this would
Speaker 1: be better as a two part series than a single
Speaker 1: bic length episode that would have stretched the patience of
Speaker 1: the most uh most forgiving of listeners. Now we have
Speaker 1: broken it up into two parts, so what you are
Speaker 1: about to hear is the conclusion of that two parts. Also,
Speaker 1: I should add that when we get to the end
Speaker 1: and we sign off, we did not know at that
Speaker 1: point that it was going to be a two parter,
Speaker 1: so we actually have already recorded the end of the
Speaker 1: episode that I'm recording the beginning of now, and yes,
Speaker 1: time travel does confuse me. So let's just segue in
Speaker 1: to part two of how electronic voting machines are going
Speaker 1: to ruin everything. Remember we mentioned that in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: that's when they started to appear on the scene. That's
Speaker 1: when Georgia. Actually they started to appear before two thousand two,
Speaker 1: but two thousand two is when Georgia became the first
Speaker 1: state to have just the electronic voting machines out there
Speaker 1: in the polling places. Um, many of those machines have
Speaker 1: not been updated since, and almost all of them are
Speaker 1: running on her vision of Windows XP, which hasn't been
Speaker 1: updated since April two thousan fourteen. So that means any
Speaker 1: security vulnerability that has been discovered since two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen is still there. Chances are some of the ones
Speaker 1: before two thousand fourteen are still there because I bet
Speaker 1: a lot of those machines have never received a patch.
Speaker 1: Right there, just these big, these machines that are being
Speaker 1: overseen by the government, and uh, you know it, Chances
Speaker 1: are a lot of them are unpatched. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of potential for people to tamper. And not only that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned the idea of either unconsciously or
Speaker 1: purposefully inserting a bias. That's a real concern too, right,
Speaker 1: because private companies are the ones designing these machines, they
Speaker 1: do so with using proprietary software that is not visible
Speaker 1: to the general public. Nor is it uh what's what's word,
Speaker 1: nor is it in any way compelled to answer to
Speaker 1: the general public, Like the public doesn't have a the
Speaker 1: quote unquote capital p public doesn't have a vote regarding
Speaker 1: which companies run these machines. You look at this and
Speaker 1: you see that everyone says, well, we can't reveal our
Speaker 1: code because if we did, uh, then our competitors would
Speaker 1: see how we do things, and then we can't compete
Speaker 1: in the marketplace anymore. And so meanwhile you've got security
Speaker 1: experts saying this should all be open source. And the
Speaker 1: reason it should be open source is so that the
Speaker 1: community at large would have the opportunity to look at
Speaker 1: the code and see if there are any vulnerabilities, and
Speaker 1: if so, make sure that those get patched before you
Speaker 1: get to a point where the code is being put
Speaker 1: into play in an actual election. So that those vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: can't be exploited because if something is proprietary and someone
Speaker 1: figures out an exploit to that software, then it's all
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. There's no way to address it, and
Speaker 1: you up with a huge problem. But but beyond that,
Speaker 1: you have companies that could insert a bias into the
Speaker 1: programming itself. And this kind of stems from an interesting
Speaker 1: story that happened in the early two thousand's. So two
Speaker 1: thousand three, Walden Wally O'Dell and I'm not making up
Speaker 1: the nickname Wally, that is what he would go by.
Speaker 1: Wally O'Dell was at that time the CEO and chairman
Speaker 1: of die Bald. Now di Bald is best known for
Speaker 1: making a t M S. But Dival yeah, well, they
Speaker 1: also for a while made electronic voting machines. There was
Speaker 1: a subsidiary called Diebold Election Systems, which the company has
Speaker 1: since divested itself of that particular property. But Diebold Election
Speaker 1: Systems made a lot of electronic voting machines and die Bald,
Speaker 1: by the way, is headquartered in Ohio, a very important
Speaker 1: state in national elections here in the United States States.
Speaker 1: It up swinging some meeting swing states for you know,
Speaker 1: there's probably I've got some listeners who are outside the US.
Speaker 1: You may have heard the term swing state, and you
Speaker 1: don't know what that means. So the way elections work
Speaker 1: in the US, you know, you've got your major two
Speaker 1: party system, and nine percent of the time that's the
Speaker 1: those are the only parties that really make an impact.
Speaker 1: So you've got your Republicans and your Democrats, and you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of states that that lean toward one
Speaker 1: or the other, and it is almost unheard of for
Speaker 1: them to support a candidate of the opposite party. Sure,
Speaker 1: like uh for one example of this would be UH
Speaker 1: state like Utah would be legendarily not voting Democratic, in
Speaker 1: a state like Vermont would be legendarily not voting Republicans. Right,
Speaker 1: So it would be an incredibly strange set of circumstances
Speaker 1: to see one of these states support a candidate of
Speaker 1: the opposite party that it tends to support. So for
Speaker 1: the most part, we just assume those electors in the
Speaker 1: elector oral College will support the traditional candidates that those
Speaker 1: states would support. But there's some states that could go
Speaker 1: either way. They could swing towards the Republican side one
Speaker 1: election and swing towards the Democratic side and another Florida
Speaker 1: Florida Pennsylvania. So the the electors in these states, uh,
Speaker 1: it may be that they are the ones that are
Speaker 1: chosen are the ones for Republican uh in one one
Speaker 1: election our Democrat and another election. So Ohio is one
Speaker 1: of those states, which means it's incredibly valuable, right. It
Speaker 1: means it's a battleground state. You want to win that
Speaker 1: state because you know you've got your your foundation that's
Speaker 1: almost guaranteed. Nothing's ever a guarantee, but it's almost a guarantee.
Speaker 1: And uh so you need to really concentrate on the
Speaker 1: states where you have the potential to flip it so
Speaker 1: it's on your side and not your opponents side. Well,
Speaker 1: Ohio is one of those states. Die Bald has its
Speaker 1: headquarters in Ohio, and Wally, the CEO of Diebold at
Speaker 1: that time, wrote a letter where he was uh committing
Speaker 1: himself to quote helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to
Speaker 1: the president end quote, president being George W. Bush at
Speaker 1: that time Sook, the CEO of a company that makes
Speaker 1: voting machine saying he's committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes
Speaker 1: to the president. Now, the company was quick to say, hey,
Speaker 1: he's not talking about using our products to push the
Speaker 1: elections personal fundraiser donor right, he's talking about campaigning. And
Speaker 1: but a lot of people said, hey, isn't there a
Speaker 1: conflict of interests if you've got the head of a
Speaker 1: company making the voting technology that people depend upon also
Speaker 1: openly supporting a specific candidate in the race. It's very
Speaker 1: It's very close to a member of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: saying like, I will do anything I can to get
Speaker 1: you elected, George, and then and then saying, oh, fiddle
Speaker 1: D D. We don't have time to recount the votes
Speaker 1: from Florida. We look, there's some things that are more
Speaker 1: important than making absolutely certain that the people's vote was
Speaker 1: reflected in the actual election. Like reasons. I just like
Speaker 1: saying fiddle D D. But I don't think the Supremes
Speaker 1: say that, But you're raised. I referred to them as
Speaker 1: I like that John robertson the Supremes. So many wonderful
Speaker 1: visions going through my head right now. Oh man, you
Speaker 1: should have seen the comedy show we did with that
Speaker 1: with that sketch presently well, but anyway that at that
Speaker 1: point inside, like what you're saying is really important here
Speaker 1: because let's assume if we were to take Wally at
Speaker 1: his word, then even with that, a PR firm would
Speaker 1: say the optics look bad. So when you when you
Speaker 1: make those sorts of statements, you have to be very conscious,
Speaker 1: conscious of what is going to happen. This is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is an environment wherein let's see what year was this,
Speaker 1: two thousand three, right, two thousand three was when you
Speaker 1: wrote the letter. Thousand four was the election. So people
Speaker 1: are already very sore off of the two thousand election,
Speaker 1: and we have seen an accelerating distrust in the American
Speaker 1: political system or sometime you know, and this this thing
Speaker 1: is just making it, exacerbating it. And I think in
Speaker 1: one of the Wired pieces I read it might have
Speaker 1: even been the one you just referenced. Uh there, the
Speaker 1: author of the piece made a really great point, which
Speaker 1: was that you don't need any case of tampering or bias.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to exist, but the possibility of it
Speaker 1: of it existing is enough to cause turmoil. Right, you
Speaker 1: can cause real world turmoil just from the possibility of
Speaker 1: this being a thing without any evidence of it actually happening.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to have evidence of someone purposefully
Speaker 1: trying to rig the system in order for people to
Speaker 1: not trust the system. As long as it's clear that
Speaker 1: it's a possibility. That's enough to have people say like, well,
Speaker 1: how can I trust anything? How can I trust the results?
Speaker 1: Because you know you're telling me there's no evidence, But
Speaker 1: how do I know there's no evidence? I know it's possible. Twice,
Speaker 1: you can't get fooled agein Yeah, thanks, it's a that's
Speaker 1: a that's a great quote that I'm not gonna make
Speaker 1: any fun of. All right, So then we've got the
Speaker 1: fear of hackers. We've got the fear of bias from
Speaker 1: the standpoint of the manufacturers of the voting machines themselves,
Speaker 1: and then we got the fear of hackers third parties
Speaker 1: that want to rig the results or prevent people from voting.
Speaker 1: Completely possible, absolutely, completely possible, because again, these systems are
Speaker 1: not terribly cure. Um. Now you've got a couple of
Speaker 1: different arguments about this. Right, You've got people who support
Speaker 1: d r s and they say, listen, hacking trying to
Speaker 1: trying to affect politics on a national level here in
Speaker 1: the United States is a fool's errand for multiple reasons,
Speaker 1: and a big one is that we have so many
Speaker 1: different types of electronic voting machines out there, and they
Speaker 1: are proprietary. They don't all work on the same software,
Speaker 1: so you can't develop a universal approach to affect all
Speaker 1: the machines. Now, if the entire United States, if all
Speaker 1: of us use the exact same kind of machine across
Speaker 1: all the states and the territories, then that could be
Speaker 1: a potential vulnerability. If in fact they were also connected
Speaker 1: to like the Internet, right, you would have an amazing
Speaker 1: target because you think, well, if I developed the right
Speaker 1: kind of software, I can affect every single vote cast
Speaker 1: in the United States. But that's not the reality of
Speaker 1: our situation. We have all these different types of machines,
Speaker 1: some of which are connected to the Internet, some of
Speaker 1: which aren't. You have running on different types of software,
Speaker 1: so you cannot create that one size fits all approach
Speaker 1: to affecting all of them. That being said, you could
Speaker 1: still affect specific ones, like you could target specific regions
Speaker 1: that you think are particularly important and and try to
Speaker 1: affect voting that way. But in fact, critics say that
Speaker 1: because the return on investment is so high, it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly tempting target for hackers. Like you might say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of work, but look at the outcome.
Speaker 1: The outcome is the effect of a national election. It's
Speaker 1: it's harder to have a bigger set of stakes than that.
Speaker 1: So you can say like, yeah, it's hard, but the
Speaker 1: the goal is so huge that justifies the hard work
Speaker 1: on the part of the hackers. Here's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be like the Liam Neeson taken
Speaker 1: level of hacker. You don't have to be anonymous or
Speaker 1: you know, some faction set operations. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have a particular set of skills. Yeah, exactly, And that
Speaker 1: was that was not very bad. I've had a little
Speaker 1: thing stuck in my teeth, that's all. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: you you don't have to be some amazing savant hacker
Speaker 1: with these crazy credentials and qualifications. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to be states a state sponsored hacker, like a you
Speaker 1: know from the Chinese military, right, No, you can if
Speaker 1: you're talking about systems runing on Windows XP that haven't
Speaker 1: been patched in two years at the very at best,
Speaker 1: they haven't been patched in two years. At worst, it's
Speaker 1: been much longer than that. Uh, And if there is
Speaker 1: a way to access the machines, either over the Internet
Speaker 1: or through physical contact with the machines. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: for someone to use code developed by somebody else and
Speaker 1: infect that machine. So yeah, so the diminutive term for
Speaker 1: these people, uh and my friend Shannon hates this term
Speaker 1: would be script kitties. Script kitties meaning a type of
Speaker 1: person who uh profits off of malicious code. But they
Speaker 1: didn't develop the code themselves. They went to some place
Speaker 1: that where that code is available. They either purchase the
Speaker 1: code or they download the code for free, depending upon
Speaker 1: the place that they're going to, and then they deploy
Speaker 1: that code. And in some cases the code is pretty
Speaker 1: much automated. It does everything for you. You just have
Speaker 1: to be the one. You just have to be able
Speaker 1: to deploy it somehow right, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: have any knowledge of how it works. All you need
Speaker 1: to do is just make sure the code gets the
Speaker 1: machine that you wanted to get on in the right direction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you've got a thumb drive with this
Speaker 1: code and it's in a file, so it will auto
Speaker 1: execute once it connects to a USB drive on a machine.
Speaker 1: You come out to a voting machine that happens at
Speaker 1: USB drive, which would be a terrible idea. I'm not
Speaker 1: even suggesting that there are electronic voting machines that have
Speaker 1: USB ports. I don't know if there are. If there are,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible idea. You plug in the thumb drive
Speaker 1: automatically executes runs the malicious code that has become part
Speaker 1: of the voting machines programming from that point forward, and
Speaker 1: you can no longer trust the results generates. Uh, that
Speaker 1: is entirely possible, assuming that, again, you have some way
Speaker 1: of of injecting the code into the machine. So if
Speaker 1: you do have that possibility, that would be bad um.
Speaker 1: And also you don't even necessarily have to set out
Speaker 1: to change votes, right like that, that's the way we
Speaker 1: mostly think of it. Like again, going back to the
Speaker 1: Reagan Carter example, we would think, oh, well, they programmed
Speaker 1: it so that it took that Reagan vote and flipped
Speaker 1: it to Carter. You could also just try and overload
Speaker 1: the voting machine so that no votes could be cast
Speaker 1: on it at all. You can take it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just taking down the machine you just wanted to
Speaker 1: to crash and be unrecoverable. And then you you really
Speaker 1: impact that the ability for people to cast votes. If
Speaker 1: you do that in enough places that have very particular
Speaker 1: political leanings, you can affect the outcome of an election
Speaker 1: simply because the people who wanted to vote were physically
Speaker 1: unable to do so. And unless you make special allowances
Speaker 1: for that, then those those votes will never happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of ugly too. Um. And also finally,
Speaker 1: uh turns out a lot of the results are unencrypted,
Speaker 1: which is crazy to me, Which is bizarre. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Votes recorded in plain t next
Speaker 1: in a file where you're not you haven't even encrypted
Speaker 1: the results, so there's no protection there. Like if someone
Speaker 1: does get access to that data somehow, no matter you know,
Speaker 1: whatever methodology you might need, they can make changes. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is not just theoretical. And the state
Speaker 1: of Virginia de certified hundreds of wind vote e v
Speaker 1: m s because they were insecure and according to the officials,
Speaker 1: you could change the votes in these wind vote machines
Speaker 1: undetected if you were anywhere within a half mile radius
Speaker 1: of the machine, even if you weren't like a knowledgeable
Speaker 1: hack like you don't want to have to get out
Speaker 1: of the car it's like Pokemon Go, but for election. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Now. I should also add that according to
Speaker 1: the Wired article where I've pulled that from, uh, they
Speaker 1: never found any evidence that someone had tampered with the votes,
Speaker 1: but they did discover that the vulnerability was there, which
Speaker 1: meant that there was always the possibility someone could tamper
Speaker 1: with the votes, which is why they were de certified. Um. Luckily,
Speaker 1: at least according to the officials, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: anyone actually managed to do that or took the time
Speaker 1: to do that, but that's that's a possibility that has
Speaker 1: to be addressed, right um. And that kind of brings
Speaker 1: us up to the hacking threat. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys have been paying attention here in the
Speaker 1: United States. Earlier in hackers gained access to the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention databases and they stole a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: emails and files, more than twenty thousand of them, and
Speaker 1: UH a lot of them were released by wiki leaks.
Speaker 1: Around twenty thousand were released by wiki leaks, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that that's all of them. And there were
Speaker 1: a lot of questions like who the heck hacked into
Speaker 1: the d N C. Yeah, and we were pointing out
Speaker 1: a specific country, and that country is Russia. Thank you,
Speaker 1: but but it's okay, yeah, all right, Well, so here's
Speaker 1: here's one of the things that makes this an interesting story.
Speaker 1: And into some degree the reports of it remind me
Speaker 1: a little bit of the famous Sony hack, right where
Speaker 1: they talking about North Korea being and you and I
Speaker 1: explored that together as well. So one of the big
Speaker 1: questions is to what end, to what what value would
Speaker 1: Russia's state sponsored hacking branch, which does exist, what what
Speaker 1: value would it see in interfering on such a minimal
Speaker 1: level at this point? Is this a buy in for blackmail?
Speaker 1: Further down the line, is this to discredit something? Because
Speaker 1: the d n C is a domestic facing organization, so
Speaker 1: it's a lot, it's much more. Um, it's entirely different
Speaker 1: animal in comparison to something like a State Department server
Speaker 1: which would have stuff about Russia. Yeah, yeah, any of
Speaker 1: those things like c I A are you know that
Speaker 1: would be another or n s A right, like the
Speaker 1: targets that you would think of if you wanted to
Speaker 1: gather a lot of intelligence. Yeah, And so the issue
Speaker 1: here initially, I I don't know about you. But initially
Speaker 1: I was skeptical because I thought this, all this bear
Speaker 1: poking that's going on now is not gonna it's not. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not gonna it's not gonna pay off.
Speaker 1: Because there is a reason that the Putin government has
Speaker 1: been in power for as long as it has, and
Speaker 1: it's it's because you know, this this government is seen.
Speaker 1: American presidents come and go, and they have a maybe
Speaker 1: a longer horizon politically sure when they contemplate these things.
Speaker 1: So I it's strange to see what appears to be
Speaker 1: harmless rhetoric trotted out against them. However, I had to
Speaker 1: rethink my skepticism on this when more than one security
Speaker 1: firm came out saying evidence indicates it's probably these guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, a security firm immediately, pretty much
Speaker 1: shortly after the leak was was made public, said that
Speaker 1: the signs were pointing towards a Russian actor. Um that
Speaker 1: the methodologies and software used were the same that had
Speaker 1: been employed by Russian state sponsored hacking groups in the past.
Speaker 1: And uh, there are some folks who said, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I don't think so. In fact, one
Speaker 1: um jusipher two point Oh hacker came out and said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was me. I'm a lone wolf. I did it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. I was the one who stole all that
Speaker 1: and gave it over to Wickilli and uh, although they
Speaker 1: also claimed that he was Romanian or he or she
Speaker 1: the hacker claimed that he or she was Romanian, but
Speaker 1: then when people were trying to communicate with him or
Speaker 1: her in Romanian, UH, the responses did not seem particularly coherent,
Speaker 1: which seems to give the lie that they are in
Speaker 1: fact Romanian. But other security firms ended up corroborating the
Speaker 1: findings of the first one. They said, yeah, the the
Speaker 1: exploits that were used, the malware that was used is
Speaker 1: identical to the type of malware that has been used
Speaker 1: by this Russian hacking group. It is exactly the m
Speaker 1: O that we've seen in other cases, including a case
Speaker 1: that involved the German parliament in so UH, either it's
Speaker 1: again another Russian hacking group, or it's someone who learned
Speaker 1: everything they know from a Russian hacking group because it
Speaker 1: was identical in nature. So why would Russia want to interfere?
Speaker 1: Interfere with the DNC? And I think the most distinct
Speaker 1: way of putting that is that Pewton doesn't like Clinton. Huh.
Speaker 1: Kind of kind of what it boils down to is
Speaker 1: that Pewton uh and would not want Clinton and the
Speaker 1: White House. Yeah. Also as an active secretary of State
Speaker 1: at times when NATO and NATO and Russia as well
Speaker 1: as its allies were engaged in geopolitical tensions that sparked
Speaker 1: into Right now, there's an ongoing proxy war in Syria
Speaker 1: and it's between Russia and between the US. No, of
Speaker 1: course it's not being reported that way or marketed that way,
Speaker 1: but unless you're reading any media outside of the US
Speaker 1: or right, in which case everyone says Russia who backs
Speaker 1: the Syrian government, and the US that backs the rebels, like,
Speaker 1: and that goes across political spectrum. I'm glad you pointed
Speaker 1: that out. So you know, a very very um historically
Speaker 1: conservative papers of note in England, like like the magazine
Speaker 1: The Economist or the much more liberal paper The Independent,
Speaker 1: will both pretty much say what it is. It's just
Speaker 1: we don't talk about it here on CNN. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is there is an antagonistic thing, So I would say
Speaker 1: there's probably resentment or concern about having a commander of
Speaker 1: chief who knows all the state departments skeletons and including
Speaker 1: the Russian ones. And then additionally, and there always has
Speaker 1: to be a question when there's this level of nepotism
Speaker 1: in American politics, where the because we had the son
Speaker 1: of a former president become president somehow in a meritocracy,
Speaker 1: and then multiple right right, multiple times, and then having
Speaker 1: them the spouse of a former president be in the
Speaker 1: running for president. What's really crazy is if you ever
Speaker 1: see a family tree of all the presidents and see
Speaker 1: how much except for that one, there's like one guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but everyone is pretty much everyone else's cousin at at most.
Speaker 1: And there's an interesting mathematical aspect to that because if
Speaker 1: you go for far enough out or the further you go,
Speaker 1: the more people you're related to, Like I've probably you're
Speaker 1: probably sixteen cousins with someone that would completely it would
Speaker 1: completely baffle you. Yeah, and so that I mean, that's true,
Speaker 1: but I could see that it. I could see the
Speaker 1: Russian government having that kind of concern. But also funding wise, uh,
Speaker 1: funding wise, and infrastructural wise, they're pretty strapped for cash
Speaker 1: right now and strapped for manpower as well. So it's
Speaker 1: a question of how well equipped they are as well
Speaker 1: as how motivated they are. And and let's also point
Speaker 1: out that hacking the d n C is different than
Speaker 1: hacking an election, because, like I said earlier, with the
Speaker 1: electronic voting machines, you have all these different targets, with
Speaker 1: all these different softwares, Whereas hacking the d n C
Speaker 1: means focusing on a single target, not looking at a
Speaker 1: bunch of different targets across the United States. So that
Speaker 1: requires less of an investment. I mean, it's still, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously requires a great deal deal of work in order
Speaker 1: to find to create a vulnerability or to exploit a vulnerability,
Speaker 1: But it's different than having to target a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different machines. But it has raised the question A
Speaker 1: lot of people have asked, well, if they hacked the DNC,
Speaker 1: could Russia also interfere with the actual election of six uh?
Speaker 1: And and Wired's Brian Barrett, who wrote one of the
Speaker 1: articles I read for this episode, specifically says he does
Speaker 1: not think so, UH, mostly because if in fact Russia
Speaker 1: wanted to interfere with the election, it would not have
Speaker 1: also targeted the DNC database and hacked UH into it
Speaker 1: because once everyone finds out about that, then you are
Speaker 1: on high alert for the election. Uh. And so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to hack the election, you would not want
Speaker 1: people to know that you were capable of doing something
Speaker 1: on that scale before you did it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to You don't don't monologue in front of James Bond
Speaker 1: before you push the button exactly exactly. And it's not
Speaker 1: their first time at the geopolitical rodeo. So they've done
Speaker 1: this if. Yeah, they're they're old hands at UH. And
Speaker 1: as as is the United States. I'm not giving the
Speaker 1: US a Passah, We've got any major player in geopolitics.
Speaker 1: There's some dark stuff going on, which in regimes the
Speaker 1: way that people named Chad change cargo pants. Right, So
Speaker 1: probably Russia is not gonna be UH involved. And plus
Speaker 1: again it would it would require a much broader attack
Speaker 1: that would require multiple strategies and where for you to
Speaker 1: play it out. So but the fact that the possibility
Speaker 1: has been raised again creates uncertainty among the US public
Speaker 1: and that alone is enough to cause uh a lack
Speaker 1: of confidence and results. Right, we've already seen I mean
Speaker 1: Trump has even said, like I expect there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of tampering involved in this uh in this
Speaker 1: election already bringing into question the results which haven't happened yet.
Speaker 1: It's like he's it's like he's already said, we can't
Speaker 1: trust what the results will say, and we haven't even
Speaker 1: gone into the voting booths. So what do we think?
Speaker 1: How do we wrap this all? Uh? Well, first we
Speaker 1: should remember that while in Georgia it's hard, it's easy
Speaker 1: for us to forget we're in the minority. Not everyone
Speaker 1: is using an electronic voting machine to cast their vote.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to uh Um Pamela Smith of Verified Voting,
Speaker 1: about the nation will vote on some form of paper
Speaker 1: ballot in the two thousand and sixteen election, only us
Speaker 1: using other methods. So there's not some maniacal corporate super
Speaker 1: villain who's out to rig the election across the nation
Speaker 1: for the Clinton campaign, the Trump campaign, or Gary Busey.
Speaker 1: Right right, Gary Busey can try and infect as many
Speaker 1: computers as he wants, but, as it turns out, unless
Speaker 1: he's figured out away to replace all the choices on
Speaker 1: the paper ballot with Gary Busey, which would be amazing.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to see an official ballot that just,
Speaker 1: says Gary Busey, as all the different options like including
Speaker 1: including the resolutions that are exactly unless he's able to
Speaker 1: do that, then it's not going to have that big
Speaker 1: of a scale of impact. So so this is also
Speaker 1: some of that fear, uncertainty and doubt right Like, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, yes, these just thems are not as
Speaker 1: secure as they should be. They aren't encrypting data, which
Speaker 1: they should be, or at least not all of them are. Um,
Speaker 1: they not all of them have paper trails. Even the
Speaker 1: ones that do have paper trails may not the state
Speaker 1: may not require a post election audit, which they absolutely
Speaker 1: lee should. Also, the paper trails may not be voter verifiable,
Speaker 1: which they absolutely should be. So that we can be well,
Speaker 1: so that we can have confidence that the results announced
Speaker 1: are in fact reflective of the actual choices that people made,
Speaker 1: whether it's in favor of your candidate or against your candidate.
Speaker 1: You want to know that the results that happened we're
Speaker 1: real and not reflective of someone else's machea Vellian plan
Speaker 1: to put put a specific person in power, or specific
Speaker 1: group in power, or specific set of laws into play.
Speaker 1: You want to feel like the process works and in
Speaker 1: order to do that, you need this verifiable voter trail,
Speaker 1: You need to have these post election audits, and not
Speaker 1: everywhere has that ability or option. So now that's one thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Another thing to remember is that, uh, it's hard to
Speaker 1: get these systems up to date and at that level
Speaker 1: where we could be confident in their results because again,
Speaker 1: it costs money, and it's politically difficult to convince groups
Speaker 1: to spend that money, specifically to upgrade election equipment. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that this is stuff that's used only a
Speaker 1: couple of times a year at most, right, Like you
Speaker 1: might have to if you are very active in your
Speaker 1: local community, you may be voting maybe a couple of
Speaker 1: times per year, depending upon how things are run in
Speaker 1: your area. Uh, some people only come out to vote
Speaker 1: for the presidential elections. They don't vote for any of
Speaker 1: the other ones. And so it's hard to justify, like
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend X billion dollars this year for equipment
Speaker 1: that you're gonna be able to use maybe in two
Speaker 1: elections before you need to like to general elections, before
Speaker 1: you need to upgrade the equipment. Again, and there's that
Speaker 1: great argument about open sourcing. Yes, the software exactly, so
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I would love to see more transparency,
Speaker 1: both on that open source approach, so people can make
Speaker 1: sure there's no inherent bias in the code, again, conscious
Speaker 1: or not, because there are times where people can insert
Speaker 1: of by us without even thinking they are right like that,
Speaker 1: that just happens because we're human. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be making a conscious decision to be a jerk to
Speaker 1: create bias. Yeah, and there's also there's also a perception
Speaker 1: problem that comes out post event, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: humans are intensely tribalistic. Yeah, it's we're not particularly fact
Speaker 1: based creatures, unfortunately, and because we were, we evolved to
Speaker 1: live off of per options. So what what inevitably happens
Speaker 1: is no matter what side of the political aisle you
Speaker 1: find yourself kicking it on the people who feel that
Speaker 1: their candidate has one or when a candidate wins, the
Speaker 1: supporters will say, the system works. These people who object
Speaker 1: to my candidate are just total Yeah, just sour grapes,
Speaker 1: these nincompoops. They don't understand. And of course I would
Speaker 1: be I would be a dignified, a dignified dissenting voice
Speaker 1: if I, you know, if I didn't pick the obviously
Speaker 1: the best candidate, which if the other candidate had one,
Speaker 1: which they didn't, but if they had, then I would
Speaker 1: have been a gracious loser. However, in the alternative, in
Speaker 1: the alternative university, schrod Injur's cat this for a second,
Speaker 1: what what would happen if the same people lost? They
Speaker 1: would say, well, the systems was rigged from the beginning.
Speaker 1: It was rigged because the media. The media reported things
Speaker 1: in such a way as to minimize the the opponents
Speaker 1: flaws and maximize my candidates flaws which didn't even really exist.
Speaker 1: They manufactured flaws and then they maximize them and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And this this is like a natural sort of thing
Speaker 1: that happens. We're not trying to vilify anyone in particular
Speaker 1: or any political party, to be honest, We've already seen
Speaker 1: it here in the US this year, just through the primaries.
Speaker 1: Primaries happened. You saw people who were like progressives, who
Speaker 1: were supporting Bernie Sanders refusing to believe that Clinton had
Speaker 1: won the primary. Um now there's another, uh, there's another
Speaker 1: wali Adell situation there. However, Yes, where you had the
Speaker 1: the chairwoman of the Democratic Convention who in some of
Speaker 1: those leaked messages that Wiki Leaks released. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: clear that she was favoring She she personally favored Clinton
Speaker 1: over Sanders. Whether that actually ever had any effect beyond
Speaker 1: her personal beliefs is less clear. In fact, the evidence
Speaker 1: doesn't really support that there was like a a concentrated
Speaker 1: effort to diminish Sanders to a point where he would
Speaker 1: be he would not be allowed to be a candidate. Um.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that it didn't happen. It just means
Speaker 1: that there wasn't like a smoking gun from that Wiki
Speaker 1: Leaks release. Yeah. But again, just like a PR company
Speaker 1: would say, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was the head of
Speaker 1: that who was the head of the convention at the time,
Speaker 1: did right and vociferously supported uh, the Clinton campaign. So
Speaker 1: whether or not there was any um shenaniganry. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just barely stumbled through that word. Whether or not there was,
Speaker 1: The fact of the matter is that it it increases
Speaker 1: uh distrust and you're an uncertainty you said earlier, Right,
Speaker 1: so you get this lack of confidence in the system. Uh.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's not the direction we want to move in.
Speaker 1: We want to move in a direction where everyone is
Speaker 1: at least confident that their voices being heard. It may
Speaker 1: turn out that their voice does isn't powerful enough to
Speaker 1: make the change they want, which is frustrating obviously, but
Speaker 1: less so than feeling like you are being ignored or
Speaker 1: purposefully silenced. Right, you don't want that at all. But
Speaker 1: so is the direct democracy really an answer, because if
Speaker 1: we define direct democracy as well, let's see, for example,
Speaker 1: one of the best arguments against direct democracy, anyone with
Speaker 1: anyone within internet connection can go on there and say
Speaker 1: whatever they want. And now we're starting to see the
Speaker 1: priorities of a massive people without some kind of structure
Speaker 1: to their interaction. Well, uh I, I'm really in favor
Speaker 1: of um approaching this from a plurality standpoint, where at
Speaker 1: least in most areas of government, where you make sure
Speaker 1: that the representatives of government reflect the levels of support
Speaker 1: in the general population. So instead instead of it being
Speaker 1: like every single position is determined by a majority, if
Speaker 1: you have a plurality, then you say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: x percentage of Congress must be made up of this
Speaker 1: party because that reflects the the American voters. And then
Speaker 1: this why percentage must be of this other party because
Speaker 1: that represents and then these independents also won this amount,
Speaker 1: so they should take up these seats. But that would
Speaker 1: be a totally different approach to government than the way
Speaker 1: the United States is structured. They could get complicated. Yeah
Speaker 1: we go who from where? From what? This is already complicated.
Speaker 1: Could plug some stuff real quick. Absolutely all right. So,
Speaker 1: first off, thank you so much for having me on,
Speaker 1: and ladies and gentlemen, uh of the jury, I almost
Speaker 1: said of the podcast jury, thank you so thank you
Speaker 1: so much for checking out this episode. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in this. In this process, um, Jonathan and I have
Speaker 1: looked at some other some other tech related conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: including that Sony hack, and you've been on several episodes together.
Speaker 1: So you can find all of those in either one
Speaker 1: of our various internet uh presences. There are videos or
Speaker 1: a podcasts or you know, sometimes the mad scribblings on
Speaker 1: a blog somewhere, yes, yes, uh, the whispers of the
Speaker 1: whispers of a a person passing you buy on a
Speaker 1: moonless night at the crossroads. Occasionally you'll just be in
Speaker 1: the woods and you'll hear the sound of a baby laughing,
Speaker 1: and if you listen very carefully, just before the blair
Speaker 1: Witch gets you will here at any rate, right, yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's how we met. So there's another There
Speaker 1: are another couple of things that I think would be
Speaker 1: worth your time to check out if you're interested in
Speaker 1: this subject that's specifically applied to uh, the U S.
Speaker 1: Voting system and stuff. They want you to know. Has
Speaker 1: a couple of videos about this. We have one about
Speaker 1: the Federal Election Commission, one that's a grab bag of
Speaker 1: political conspiracies for sixteen and then one thing called five
Speaker 1: things you should Know about primary elections. So do check
Speaker 1: those out. They are free on the internet. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean are free, you know, assuming that you have an
Speaker 1: Internet connection, right, Yeah, the content is free. The manner
Speaker 1: of transmission may be uh somewhat less, so depending on
Speaker 1: whether or not you're at the local library. And I
Speaker 1: wonder this is maybe a forward thinking question that you know.
Speaker 1: Jonathan has another show called Forward Thinking because the Future
Speaker 1: of voting. So go ahead and hit me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a future Uh, it's a future facing show about the
Speaker 1: volution of tech. Did you did you touch on anything
Speaker 1: about machine consciousness or artificial intelligence and voting a couple
Speaker 1: of times? Actually we did an episode specifically about what
Speaker 1: it would be like to have a robot as president?
Speaker 1: Would you ever want a future where a robot could
Speaker 1: be president? Uh? The idea being that if you had
Speaker 1: a truly impartial, artificially intelligent creature that would be able
Speaker 1: to make choices that are the greatest benefit and the
Speaker 1: least detriment to the population. Would you want to do that?
Speaker 1: Or do you think humanity is absolutely essential in order
Speaker 1: for you to have a leader? We did an episode
Speaker 1: about that. We also did an episode about the future
Speaker 1: of voting and some of the pitfalls, including things like
Speaker 1: machine intelligence, uh in the future. That one was not
Speaker 1: too long ago that that published, probably was about a
Speaker 1: month or two ago maybe, So, Yeah, we've got some
Speaker 1: stuff that we've talked about. I personally think that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of problems we need to solve in
Speaker 1: the immediate future that uh, some of which would would
Speaker 1: avoid the machine learning artificial intelligence question for quite some
Speaker 1: time because, um, like there there have been people who
Speaker 1: have asked, well, what about the possibility of voting via
Speaker 1: the internet? The idea being that if you could vote
Speaker 1: via in an internet, you could drive up voter participation dramatically.
Speaker 1: You've the more you reduce the investment required to participate,
Speaker 1: the more people will participate. That's the idea, right, So
Speaker 1: if you make it less of a chore to vote,
Speaker 1: more people will vote because that that's one of those
Speaker 1: ongoing narratives in the United States, right, that's such a small,
Speaker 1: relatively small percentage of our population actually participates in the process,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's not a presidential election, then those numbers
Speaker 1: plumb it. Yeah, I think though, I think that people
Speaker 1: should I know this is controversial, but I think people
Speaker 1: should be required to vote. I think should be part
Speaker 1: of the stuff you have to do, and there's not
Speaker 1: there's not very much stuff you have to do. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you were born here to be a citizen's service,
Speaker 1: there's actually way more stuff that you aren't supposed to do.
Speaker 1: There's a much bigger list of do not. But I
Speaker 1: think it's While it's controversial, it's a good system to
Speaker 1: consider because then we will see all of the people who,
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, we're not able to get
Speaker 1: time off to vote. We're not able to get which
Speaker 1: is which is, by the way, illegal. You are supposed
Speaker 1: to be your employer is supposed to allow you the
Speaker 1: time to vote. That's it's illegal. In theory, it's a
Speaker 1: legal in theory and practice, it is much different, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, just like we were talking about with
Speaker 1: the electronic voting machines. Ideally it works one way, in
Speaker 1: reality it may work a totally different way. There are
Speaker 1: countries that have compulsory voting. Because often when you see
Speaker 1: the United States the voting number is the percentage of
Speaker 1: people participating, it'll be compared against other nations and say, look,
Speaker 1: how terrible the US turnout is compared to these countries.
Speaker 1: And then you start looking like, yeah, but four of
Speaker 1: those countries you listed require everyone to vote. So therefore,
Speaker 1: first of all, that none of them are at a
Speaker 1: so someone slacken. And secondly, that's not fair to to
Speaker 1: hold up a country that doesn't have compulsory voting against
Speaker 1: ones that do. Um. I don't know that I whoever
Speaker 1: go with compulsory I kind of I kind of feel you,
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of I want I want to
Speaker 1: see more people involved in it, whether it's but I
Speaker 1: also don't know the reasons behind people not voting. Right,
Speaker 1: If they're not voting because there is an uh A
Speaker 1: hardship on them in order to participate in the system,
Speaker 1: It's not like I can blame them, right, if there's
Speaker 1: some form of hardship, whether it's economic or it's just
Speaker 1: you know, practical, like how do I get to the
Speaker 1: voting station, whatever it may be. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy for those people. And I even have sympathy
Speaker 1: for people who have lost confidence in the system and
Speaker 1: the reason they don't vote is because they feel like
Speaker 1: their vote doesn't really have um an impact. And I
Speaker 1: can certainly see, especially based upon the rhetoric that you
Speaker 1: tend to be subjected to in the election seasons, how
Speaker 1: you can get disillusioned and sad, and therefore you're like,
Speaker 1: I kind of just want to disappear until this is over. UM.
Speaker 1: Although this every time there's an election, it's really important,
Speaker 1: very very important, including at the local level, maybe especially
Speaker 1: at the local level. UM. Here in the US, we
Speaker 1: give a lot of attention to the presidential elections. Truth
Speaker 1: to be known, your local elections are going to have
Speaker 1: a much larger impact on your day to day life
Speaker 1: than your national ones. UM. But obviously that's not the
Speaker 1: big story. You're looking at. Who who's who's sitting on
Speaker 1: the on the throne. I'm sorry in the oval office.
Speaker 1: I'm a royalist, so I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different view on things. Um, I'm not really a royalist.
Speaker 1: So well that that was a great discussion about it.
Speaker 1: Obviously we got a little philosophical and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to base their political opinion on
Speaker 1: anything I say. I think it's very important for you
Speaker 1: to form your own even if I fully disagree with it.
Speaker 1: I respect the fact that you guys have a political opinion.
Speaker 1: So I'm not trying to sway anyone to my side. Um,
Speaker 1: which is good because your side is crazy. My side
Speaker 1: votes Reagan. Uh in this election. Yeah, he's he's he's
Speaker 1: passed on and yet I write it in. Also, by
Speaker 1: the way, you may not be able to write in
Speaker 1: a president presidential candidate. Not all states allow it. I
Speaker 1: think it's like forty seven states allow it, so there's
Speaker 1: like three that do not. Something like that probably happened
Speaker 1: somebody was screwing around too much with what they thought
Speaker 1: was a great bit, and they were like, guys, we
Speaker 1: cannot make we cannot make the pink panther the state senator,
Speaker 1: or build a cat, or build a cat. Bloom County
Speaker 1: has run the presidential candidacy quite a few times. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh, maybe it's just the joke gone wrong. But
Speaker 1: if you're in one of the vast majority of states
Speaker 1: and you want to write a vote in the civic
Speaker 1: citeca right as a citizen of the United States, some
Speaker 1: would argue your moral responsibility depends on your on your
Speaker 1: perspective on the candidates, I suppose, But at any rate,
Speaker 1: there you go. See. At any rate, that's how you
Speaker 1: know it's me when you hear that voice in the woods.
Speaker 1: Thank you again, Ben for being on the show. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, maybe a guest to have on the show,
Speaker 1: anything like that, send me a message the email addresses
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle it.
Speaker 1: Both of those is tech Stuff hs W and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com.