[ExI] Immaculate Election

Dave Sill sparge at gmail.com
Wed Jan 13 02:04:07 UTC 2021


On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 8:31 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Vendors usually find find out about zero-day vulnerabilities well
> ahead of the general voting public which is why they push out software
> patches without being asked to by the end-users.
>

35-year IT pro here, so I'm well aware of IT security issues. Vendors find
out about zero-day exploits at the same time as everyone else: when their
product is being exploited and someone reports it. They might find
exploitable problems on their own or when a white hat notifies them, but
zero-days are found in the wild.

> Suing them for what, exactly? Having bugs isn't illegal. Not fixing bugs
> > that they've been made aware of isn't illegal. Maybe it should be, but
> it's
> > not.
>
> False advertising perhaps? Obviously, they made their sales by
> claiming that their technology was superior to paper ballots when any
> guy with minimal education can audit paper ballots but only the elite
> can audit voting machines.


Sure, the marketing guys might have said that, but the fine print of the
license agreement between the vendor and the buyers will be very explicit
about what the vendor is and is not responsible for. They're not stupid.

Lack of transparency is negligence when it
> comes to voting machines. Remember the goal here is not necessarily to
> win the lawsuit but to bring this issue before the American people in
> a way that can't be swept under the rug by the media.


Getting any traction on a suit like that will take serious money and
effort. In the end, I think caveat emptor will apply. Nobody held a gun to
anyone's head and made them buy crappy voting machines.

The news cannot
> hide that every American who voted got a notice in the mail that they
> may be entitled to a couple of dollars in compensation because voting
> machine developers can't PROVE that the election wasn't stolen.
>

Nobody pays attention to class action settlements. And why should vendors
have to prove anything unless that was part of the contract they signed
with their customers?

> Maybe the blame should be on the government officials who buy voting
> > machines from vendors who aren't committed to transparency and security.
>
> Most assuredly that where the blame SHOULD lie. Unfortunately
> governments have sovereign immunity to lawsuits except for very
> specific offenses that are codified into law. Lack of election
> transparency is unfortunately not one of those offenses. Even though
> the goal is not to win the lawsuit, it has to get its day in court to
> accomplish its aim.


Voters should just demand election transparency and not vote for candidates
opposed to it. Going after voting machine manufacturers is not directly
addressing the problem.

But feel free to give it a go.

-Dave
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