To clarify, he was convicted after organizing an official event with ambassadors from various countries to claiming the Brazilian electoral system was fraudulent. This discourse was usual throughout his term. He repeatedly claimed to have evidence, but never presented any. We now know that there was a plot for a coup [1], which failed to materialize due to a lack of support from a section of the military. Even though the superior courts have a political nature, Bolsonaro went against the law in an attempt to overtake the political system. The same way a murder trial is a crime, a coup trial also is. Today is a big day for Brazilian democracy!
So what if he did? How the hell is that a crime? "Abuse of political power"? What a joke. Completely made up nonsense. Out of all the questionable dumb shit he said during the pandemic, this is what he goes down for? It's obvious they just wanted to destroy the guy and everything he represents.
Remember what the TSE judge-king said? The voting machines are "unquestionable". It's trivial to raise reasonable doubt against such standards of perfection if you bother to look. The military audit for one said the voting machine software's makefile would download unaudited libraries off the network and link them to the final binary. It's fruitless to try to convince laymen who barely understand what source code even is of the importance of that fact but I'm sure anyone here on HN will appreciate the potential for a supply chain attack on the voting machines. You know, the very same type of attack people submit blog posts here on HN about every few months, same attack vector that compromises developers of big tech corporations. Faced with such criticism, they should have released the signed binaries that ran on election day so we could reverse engineer them. Instead, they grepped the report for the words "there was fraud", didn't find it and censored everything as "fake news". Literal censorship. You call this a democracy?
You apparently forgot all about the relentless, nearly unilateral censorship campaign against Bolsonaro in the months leading up to the elections. Lula defends abortion but it's fake news to claim he did. Lula is friends with communist dictators but it's fake news to say he is. Lula is a socialist himself but it's fake news to say he is. Lula was condemned by multiple judges for corruption but it's fake news to say he was. Only yesterday he went to his communist forum and openly said he's proud to be called communist. I just saw news that there will be "military exercises" with the countries of Lula's dictator friends, hell he welcomed the Venezuelan dictator on our soil.
You call this a democracy? These supreme court judges are openly biased and they think nothing of blatantly unconstitutional political censorship. Who are you supposed to turn to when your supreme court judges start openly shitting on the constitution? I'm supposed to believe my country even has laws after witnessing that? Whatever bullshit the judge-kings write on their paper is law.
I'm not convincend this coup nonsense is anything but smoke and mirrors. Actually I wish these people had the balls to attempt it. Given the entire justice system turned into this circus, only the military could possibly bring order to this mess. As far as I'm concerned, the judiciary planned and executed their own coup, they practically named Lula president. Even you admit it yourself: "Even though the superior courts have a political nature".
Big day for brazilian democracy? We aren't one. It's a judiciary dictatorship. They're working to censor Bolsonaro friendly radio stations right now. Ever seen a democracy do that?
>It's a judiciary dictatorship. They're working to censor Bolsonaro friendly radio stations right now. Ever seen a democracy do that
Selective outrage judiciary system is a hallmark of Tier-3 dictatorship.
That means that government's law enforcement, spy agencies, and other instruments directed at combating criminal activities inside the country or unfriendly regimes -- are now turned to be used against political opposition.
Selective outrage judicial system, obviusly means that justice is not blind.
That, in turn means -- the justice is lost.
Tier 2 dictatorship -- will be legislative changes curbing dissent (in both elections into legislative bodies and the laws themselves around elections, financial instruments, etc).
Tier 1 -- will be constitution changes solidifying the extended rule of one or several individuals for unlimited amount of years.
Tier 2 has already been implemented, just ask Google what happened when it tried to campaign against "fake news" censorship. They hit them with bullshit like "abuse of market power" just like Bolsonaro. Same judge-kings involved in the Bolsonaro trial ordered Google to censor a post on its own website.
I'm seeing subtle tier 1 shades as well. Lula and his people used official government social media accounts to celebrate Bolsonaro's fate. That's prohibited because it implies they are the government but they did it anyway.
I dislike Bolsonaro but I find it ironic that the current president (Lula), a convicted criminal, was not barred from office but Bolsonaro, who was never convicted, has been barred.
The political nature of superior court in Brazil is disgusting and will destroy the democracy.
Yeah. Witnessing this circus makes me sick to my core. They destroyed democracy a long time ago when they started censoring "fake news", these are just the final nails in its coffin.
Yeah sure. The biggest corruption scandal in the history of the country, it's all a sham, right? All that testimony and evidence, must have been nothing but lies because of some jurisdiction technicality. Had a new trial held in Brasília and the first thing they did was throw out all the evidence.
I watched god knows how many politicians get arrested. I saw one get caught with dirty money in their literal underwear. Now I get to watch the supreme court presided by these same judge-kings erase everything they did one by one, and censor anyone who reminds people of facts because they're "spreading fake news". I get to watch Lula give them government positions where they make about 30x what the average brazilian makes on salary alone. That's the "father of the poor" right there.
Totally. The actual judges who tried him? Shams. It's these politician-appointed supreme court judge-kings who are impartial, fair and all knowing. I totally believe you.
So Lula was disqualified by being in prison. Then the courts decided to release him and remove his conviction- on very specious grounds. Now they’re removing his main opposition.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just cancel the election and choose the President themselves?
If Bolsonaro had not made fun of covid victims and needlessly spilled hate on every other word that came from his mouth, he'd be the current president of Brazil.
A moderate right wing candidate will likely win for 2026, just like an hypothetical moderate Bolsonaro would have won last year.
"Never fish in the Rubicon", Auron McIntyre [0], sums it up pretty well. Bolsonaro did not have the guts or the military support to go after his enemy, which of course has not such qualms.
The US has its own analogy: FBI interference with the Hunter Biden investigation, as documented by the IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, while heavily prosecuting Trump. You don't need to be a MAGA flag waving GOPer to see there is some imbalance there.
To recap the non-exhaustive list of what went down with the DOJ:
- Tipped off Hunter Biden's legal team about a search warrant on his storage unit
- Prevented investigators from executing a search warrant on his house
- Ordered a "cease and desist" on investigating Hunter during the 2020 election
- Prevented investigators from asking questions about the "big guy"
- Verified his laptop was real in 2019 and then went to Big Tech and told them to censor it during the election
- And didn't even have the key witness in the case testify before the grand jury.
This is simply how it works, not just in Brazil. The deep state isn't neutral, how could it be?
What do you think about Kushner's personal enrichments during the Trump administration? His dealings with the Saudis?
I hear about Hunter Biden 100 times more than Kushner.
I'm all for equal applications justice. I see lots of pure-evil privilege, modern indulgences for the gentry.
I think all finances of a President, justice, and Congressperson and their family should be public and in a blind trust. And severe criminal liability for any attempts to enrich themselves.
I think the solution is to do it like Singspore, and pay head of states similarly well as big company CEOs, combined with strict lobbying, transparency and trading regulations.
Everything else creates perverse incentives and attracts parasites.
If someone wants to make an accusation of voter fraud, that accusation needs to go in front of the courts. Either it's true, and the state has committed a crime, and some people need to go to jail. Or it's false, and the person made the accusation cynically, recklessly damaging democracy, which should be a serious crime akin to defamation, and the accuser needs to go to jail. There's a third possibility, which is that the person made the allegation in good faith even though the allegation is false. But it should be up to the courts to figure it out. Because trial by media where someone can make false allegations freely -- far more damaging and evil than defamation towards a single individual, yet somehow not a crime even if the claims are lies -- is clearly not working.
Why don’t they just release the source code and schematics for the voting machines and related systems? Why do they insist on only allowing a select number of professionals, picked by finger whom have to sign an NDA to audit the system?
Please note that I’m not claiming fraud here but the sheer arrogance of the Brazilian government in positioning themselves as a source of truth. “It’s safe because I say so”. Am I being unreasonable? Here is a decade spanning thread of the Brazilian government trying to convince Mozilla to accept their super CA audited by… themselves: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825
So just open source it and add a feature citizens can verify the firmware. It will shut up the rightoids or any future sore losers of course but it will also bring the attention to every field related researcher on the planet to find the ugly vulnerabilities and shitty software quality and they don’t want that.
And why the hell something that decides the future of a country the side of Brazil is closed source and kept in secrecy? No other reason than conceiving a terrible job I would say but while I’m assuming incompetence I can’t also blame whoever claims foul.
Let me begin by saying that I wholeheartedly agree the they should open-source it, not only the source code, but perhaps the hardware designs as well.
> “It’s safe because I say so”.
That's not quite the case. There are members from different parts of society, including regular civilians, who audit the system. Moreover, the political parties (the most interested parties in this whole thing, arguably after the general public) all have representatives who can audit the system.
O procurador regional eleitoral deve indicar, então, um representante do Ministério Público para acompanhar os trabalhos da comissão. Os partidos políticos, as coligações, a Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB), o Congresso Nacional, o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), a Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU), o Departamento de Polícia Federal, a Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (SBC), o Conselho Federal de Engenharia e Agronomia (Confea) e os departamentos de Tecnologia da Informação de universidades também podem indicar representantes para acompanhar os trabalhos do grupo.
Loosely translated:
The regional electoral attorney must indicate a representative of the Ministério Público [0] to follow the works of the committee. The political parties, the alliances, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the National Congress, the Supreme Federal Court (STF), the Controladoria Geral da União (CGU), the Federal Police Department, the Brazilian Society of Computing (SBC), the Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy (Confea) and the IT departments of universities may also indicate representatives to follow the works of the group.
[0] Similar to the USA's State Department, if I'm not mistaken
[1] Not sure what would be an equivalent. They're a Government organ responsible for taking care of public patrimony, provide transparency, fight corruption and other things
So you see, there's a lot of space for people from outside of the Government, the Electoral Court and the political system in general to take part in the audit proceedings.
I personally know someone who has followed the audit process. He's also fighting for opening up the source code but has vouched for it. In fact, one of his arguments for opening up is precisely the fact that the audits have all come out well (with observations for improvements).
Who cares about source code? The build system links unaudited libraries downloaded off the network. The very definition of a supply chain vulnerability. Source code literally doesn't matter.
I will not be satisfied until they release all the signed binaries that ran on the machines on election day for the whole world to see. None of this "nothing but pen and paper" bullshit imposed by the courts either, we have reverse engineering tools for a reason. What are they so afraid of?
They should have to prove beyond shadow of doubt that this system is not compromised. Open source both the software and hardware and release the binary artifacts used on election day. Let the whole world take the whole thing apart in Ghidra. If the system is so "unquestionable" as the judge claims, no one will find anything wrong with it. If that happens, I'll never again speak of this matter.
What do they do instead? Censorship, arbitrary fines, intimidation, persecution.
> The build system links unaudited libraries downloaded off the network.
How do you know this? I thought it was all inauditable! Also, what does it matter if "the build system links" whatever libraries, if said libraries are not used by the program? Or do you admit that the source code would in fact show that usage? If it's the latter, then I suspect the answer to your very first question should be obvious.
> I will not be satisfied until they release all the signed binaries that ran on the machines on election day for the whole world to see.
Good stuff! Neither you nor I should be satisfied!
Note:
As for the rest of what you wrote, I won't engage. I've already seen plenty of your behaviour on this website and it's mostly of the "enraged Facebook/WhatsApp uncle" / "old man shouts at clouds" / "someone is wrong on the Internet" type. If you'd like to discuss more of the above, in objective terms or subjective but civil, I'm happy to do so. Otherwise this is my last comment on this branch of the comment tree.
They observed network connections during the compilation of the voting machine software. Software libraries that have not been audited are downloaded and linked.
> I thought it was all inauditable!
I never said that. I only ever claimed the audits were insufficient. Especially TSE's limited "pen and paper" audits. I even gave you an example of an audit I personally would deem sufficient.
> Also, what does it matter if "the build system links" whatever libraries, if said libraries are not used by the program?
If you link malicious code to your binary, it's pretty much game over. Of course it matters. Are you saying the libraries aren't linked to the voting machine program? How do you know that?
> Or do you admit that the source code would in fact show that usage?
I admit nothing of the sort. I state that it's precisely the opposite. You can have perfectly good source code and still end up with a malicious result. Earliest example of such a thing is of course the famous text Reflections on Trusting Trust. More recently, there are numerous examples open source software libraries with malicious code shipped to package managers like npm and pypi. Supply chain attacks that have compromised people from this very site. One of the reasons reproducible builds exist is to mitigate exactly that attack, it works by establishing cryptographic relation between the compiled binary and the source code used to build it.
> I've already seen plenty of your behaviour on this website and it's mostly of the "enraged Facebook/WhatsApp uncle" / "old man shouts at clouds" / "someone is wrong on the Internet" type.
Look who's prejudiced now.
If you don't want to reply to me because you don't like me or what I think, I'm okay with that. It's not acceptable for you to paint me as some unthinking moron though. Perhaps I came across as "uncivil" in my words because of my disgust for the status quo but I never did anything of the sort to you. My hatred is reserved for the brazilian institutions which I perceive as total failures. So either refute what I said or leave it be but don't accuse me of being some "enraged WhatsApp uncle".
Thanks, I didn't forget but because I only pressed return once it's inline with [0]. I'll update it for better formatting and with this new information.
Yes. The fact that you didnt dispelled any of my critics about independent auditing. None of those institutions operate outside of the government sphere of influence (even private universities). In the end you just said "it's safe because they told us so... and by the way I know a guy".
Seriously I'm appalled if you think your arguments are reasonable.
That's a very classic brazilian response, to have trust and faith in the smart people doing the work for you. It's probably a scar from the times of dictatorship.
Despite your disrespectful and prejudiced response, I will try to address some of your criticism.
> I don't trust. I want to verify.
Please re-read the very first sentence in my original comment. Hopefully uou'll see that we agree in this point.
> None of those institutions operate outside of the government sphere of influence
No one is outside of the government's sphere of influence. What that committe is, is a reunion of many different organisations with different points of view and participation of people from all levels of society.
I would hope that you don't think Bolsonaro's PL and the PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil) both have the same interest in defrauding the elections or letting a bad system stay in place. SBC, Confea and the universities all have regular people, some of whom any one of us know, are or have worked or studied with.
That's where the "someone I know" anecdote comes in.
I'm not saying anyone should believe or trust this random person who's an aquantaince of another random person on an Internet forum. It's just an anecdote to illustrate a point. There's no need to be rude about it.
> Seriously I'm appalled if you think your arguments are reasonable.
That's your prerrogative, I have no power over what appals you.
> That's a very classic brazilian response
This is prejudiced and offensive. Please refrain from this kind of comment.
> to have trust and faith in the smart people doing the work for you.
Not my point, but please tell me how much auditing and verification you do on every single other aspect of your life. Or do you trust people "smart people" to, I don't know, write your banking software? The e-commerce websites you buy from? The banking system behind payments and transfers? The systems that hold your investments, your pension... Please, I'd love to hear about all of that auditing and verifying you do.
> It's probably a scar from the times of dictatorship.
I have no idea what you mean by this. It honestly makes the opposite of sense to me, but if you could elaborate a little, perhaps you'd help me understand.
> No one is outside of the government's sphere of influence.
By sphere of influence I mean payroll and permission to operate. Even so it's not true considering anonymous and foreign researchers or pretty much anyone who can clone a git repo on the internet.
> What that committe is, is a reunion of many different organisations with different points of view and participation of people from all levels of society.
You don't seem to understand how problematic is this idea that there are groups of people who are guaranteed to have the populations best interest in mind. All while in the payroll of the entity they are supposed to audit.
I get you trust such a committee but you shouldn't expect everyone doing the same.
> This is prejudiced and offensive. Please refrain from this kind of comment.
Its not. I am brazilian and have lived over there for a long time. I'm guessing you are too so you are familiar with the term "carteirada" don't you? You on the other hand is condescending:
> Not my point, but please tell me how much auditing and verification you do on every single other aspect of your life.
I verify signatures for every important software I download. Even if I don't there are tools doing this for me like package managers. My main work basically hovers around verifying data every 10 minutes or so. Chances are your computer boot loader and most of its applications are signed.
But somehow for voting we just trust the pros?
And this is besides the point. If a normal citizen cannot attest and verify for the trustworthiness of the digital election system that is deciding the future of his life for the next 4 years then the system is flawed and you can't really blame the people who are calling it a sham.
> I have no idea what you mean by this. It honestly makes the opposite of sense to me, but if you could elaborate a little, perhaps you'd help me understand.
"Don't question. Just trust the authorities" is a scar of a time where such things would put you in jail. The idea that a normal citizen cannot interfere in government affairs and instead leave it to a group of elites is common in dictatorships.
I don't even know why are you arguing about this. Why are you trying to convince me into trusting third parties when we agree the best solution is to have government release the source code and let anyone audit it?
> By sphere of influence I mean payroll and permission to operate.
But that's te thing, everyone and every organisation needs permission from the government to operate. Even you as an individual do. You have to pay taxes, you have to abide by rules and regulations, you are not allowed to purchase or operate certain substances or equipment unless you have the proper permits etc.
In terms of payroll, unless you mean that every single individual in every organisation that's in the committee are somehow being paid by the electoral court, I don't understand your point. Even in the last elections, when the administration was fiercely attacking the whole process, the auditors still came out with a positive analysis of the system. If the government had that much power over them, how come the committee didn't side with the government?
> You don't seem to understand how problematic is this idea that there are groups of people who are guaranteed to have the populations best interest in mind.
I don't think they're guaranteed to have the best interest of the population. I'm of the opinion that they have a very broad set of points of view, some widely opposed to others, and they still all come out with overall positive analyses of the system. There are proper technical people doing those analyses, and they're just regular people. They could be myself, or yourself. Which is, again, the point I was making about actually knowing someone, a regular individual, who has been part of the committee.
> you shouldn't expect everyone doing the same.
I don't. I don't expect anything from anyone. You're free to trust or distrust whomever you like.
> I am brazilian and have lived over there for a long time.
This doesn't shield you from being prejudiced against Brazilians. Surely you've heard the phrase "complexo de vira-lata" (loosely translated, for the foreign audience, "stray dog complex").
Your comment was:
That's a very classic brazilian response
This is prejudiced. Not only you completely misinterpreted my thoughts, but you then proceeded to attribute your interpretation of them to the fact that I belong to a certain group of people.
> I'm guessing you are too so you are familiar with the term "carteirada"
Surely am. That's usually when individuals use their position to get around limitations that apply to most people, as if they belong to a superior caste. I don't see how that's related to the voting autit committee.
> I verify signatures for every important software I download.
Do you verify the entire chain? Or do you trust someone to attest validity of keys at some point?
> You on the other hand is condescending
Fair point, apologies for the snark.
> Even if I don't there are tools doing this for me like package managers.
Which again are based on trust. Trust that the developers who signed the packages are in fact trustworthy. Trust that the package manager doesn't contain bugs that could make the verification process moot, or have been compromised otherwise.
> Chances are your computer boot loader and most of its applications are signed.
By a supposedly trusted entity.
I bet you also trust that Intel ME or whatever equivalent your CPU has is not doing anything malicious, or that your BIOS/UEFI system is not working against your interests in any way, right?
Have you taken a peek at your browser's trusted CAs? I bet there's scary stuff in there, and you trust them implicitly by using the browser. I'm almost certain you haven't vetted each of those CAs, and even if you did, you're still trusting that they haven't been compromised since then.
> But somehow for voting we just trust the pros?
Not just for voting, as I have hopefully demonstrated above.
> If a normal citizen cannot attest and verify for the trustworthiness of the digital election system
As opposed to how it was before? I have some scary stories to tell you about the old school paper ballot counting.
> you can't really blame the people who are calling it a sham.
I'm not blaming anyone for anything. Just pointing out that in my opinion it's wildly exagerated, and trying to demonstrate why that's how I think.
> "Don't question. Just trust the authorities" is a scar of a time where such things would put you in jail.
That's not me, I guarantee you that - and I will point out that it's again prejudiced of you to assume so.
> The idea that a normal citizen cannot interfere in government affairs
My idea actually comes from the opposite point-of-view: that the government serves the "normal citizens". The government cannot be seen as the enemy. They need to be seen as our employees, and the people need to act like such. Yes, that still means we need to push for better public auditing, for better systems, for improvements all around. We absolutely should. After all, they work for us.
> Why are you trying to convince me into trusting third parties
I'm not. :)
> we agree the best solution is to have government release the source code and let anyone audit it
That we do!
Our difference in opinion seems to be just about how good or bad the current system is.
I don't have a "complex de vira lata". Brazilians are awesome, it's the whole public sphere and its incentives to push down on the population that stinks. :)
You are wrong about package trust. It is indeed signed by people but anyone is still able to verify it, even obscure blobs like IME. The same can't be said about the firmware of the voting system audited by a few chosen.
Mentioning CAs is a straw since there are degrees of trust. A let's encrypt certificate on acesso.gov.br (I guess in the end they gave up on trying to shove that bogus CA?) just means the host matches the certificate. The contents are malicious.
And about where we disagree you trust a set of governmental entities to audit the government while I find the idea preposterous.
Curious about the context here. I know there are a lot of Brazilians in here but there seems to be more here.
I also wonder how far states will distort democracies using the judicial system, until humans decide they ve had enough and replace politicians with AIs
One side will claim the trial was unfair or overreaching or political. The other will claim that the judicial system did work as expected and followed the rules it set forth well before the 2022 elections began.
I have my own take, but then again it is heavily influenced by my own bias. It's hard to share an unbiased opinion here.
The idea that Lula is using his political power to take Bolsonaro out of the game is laughable, IMO.
Good point. And that is where Lula and Maduro are very similar being both byproducts of a sophisticated political elite operating behind the scenes in Latin America. (some people use "deep state", but I think it is too much of a US based terminology. In Brazil we say "sistema", the system, and we are more used to it.)
This elite in Venezuela is responsible for keeping Maduro where he is today. And its Brazilian counterpart is responsible for releasing Lula from prison and making him a president within a 2 year time span.
Maduro and Lula cannot do any of that by themselves.
> The idea that Lula is using his political power to take Bolsonaro out of the game is laughable, IMO.
Huh? He literally said he ran for president out of a petty need for revenge against everyone who wronged him. Everything he said he would do, he's doing right now. There was even a torture and assassination attempt against the judge who convicted him and his family about a day after he openly and publicly said he was going to fuck the guy.
> The idea that Lula is using his political power to take Bolsonaro out of the game is laughable, IMO.
I doubt Lula is calling up Superior Court justices and telling them what to do-but he doesn’t need to. It is like the 2000 US case of Bush v Gore-all the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices voted for Bush, all the Democratic-appointed justices voted for Gore. The first outnumbered the second, so Bush won the Presidential election. Neither candidate or party ordered the justices to vote a particular way-they didn’t need to.
The US court system has been corrupted by politicisation. The same appears to be true of Brazil-and Argentina too. Indeed, I wonder if there is any judicial system in the Americas which is free from that disease. (Canada, maybe?)
Unfortunately, the Superior Court of Brazil has become very political and has been overreaching its scope in the last few years and that is materially eroding the democratic process.
People have been saying the same thing about China and Russia since they got in a pissing contest in the '50s. Or if some fraction of Africa ever decides to work collectively. There are lots of 'what if...' scenarios that will radically change geopolitics and do wake me up when one of them comes to pass...
It depends. If you are right-wing, this was actually a very much great day: Bolsonaro is the worst candidate the right has ever produced in Brazil, and his removal from the next elections make it almost guaranteed that the left will not take it again.
If you are left-wing, this was actually a terrible day. If you disagree, you are not paying attention.
You're right about Bolsonaro, we have much better candidates now.
I still don't consider this a good day though. This blatant and shameless persecution and censorship makes a mockery of the very concept of justice. They had to bury the constitution to do this. Why should anyone take this circus seriously after all this?
As a software engineer and a huge fan of technology in general, I think electronic voting machines are the devil. Digital information is too easy to alter. Good old-fashioned paper elections are a well vetted technology that we know how to use and can be implemented and audited well. Electronic voting, not so much. It's not just important to have a free election, it's important that everyone has faith that it was a free election. Because if people no longer believe in the process, democracy will die. So it has to be transparent, audited by neutral and external parties, and it has to not just be impossible to tamper with, it also has to make everyone believe that it is impossible.
I hope the will of the people prevails over the supreme court in Brazil eventually.
All US CPUs are backdoored by Silicon Valley. Any data or computation can be changed, deleted or stolen. It uses radio, works even without Net access, including for BR voting machines.
There will be no computing freedom until the silicon trojans embedded in all US designed CPUs are removed.
If you want freedom, you will have to ensure that no unseen radiation is enabling remote control of your devices.
Ask me anything about BadBIOS and hardware trojans.
Yeah. I see these laymen on social media asking for source code without even understanding what source code even is. This is supposed to be a trustworthy, transparent system?
I agree with Germany's take on the matter: voting machines should be unconstitutional because citizens don't fully understand how it works. It's that simple. That's how a civilized country is supposed to work. Instead we have this circus where these judge-kings claim the machines are "unquestionable" and censor and fine and punish and ban from politics anyone who dares question anything.
In my country, New Zealand, we have fast reliable vote counting and it is all paper based and counted by hand. I don't understand how electronic systems make voting less complicated or cheaper.
We also have advanced (early) voting. You can vote one or two weeks early, election day is stress free.
Early votes counting starts at 9am in election day. So by the time that polls close most prelimary counting is already done.
The official count does take a couple of weeks, but around 10pm enough of the preliminary count is done that most electrotes have a winner.
Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population. We have election results 5h after election ends and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
> Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population.
How is that relevant? Australia is 29x the area of New Zealand and 5x the population; and like New Zealand, it uses paper-based instead of electronic voting. I see no reason why a paper-based process can’t be scaled to work for a country of any size, even one bigger than Brazil.
> We have election results 5h after election ends
A slower but more trustworthy process is superior to a faster but less trustworthy one. Nobody needs results ASAP
> and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
Elections should be held to a higher standard than merely “no positive evidence of fraud”. We should demand everything reasonable has been done to make fraud as hard as possible. I think elections in Australia meet that standard (and probably several other countries too, such as New Zealand and Germany). I think Brazil, and the US, among others, fail it. Their election systems fail to take every reasonable measure to prevent fraud, and hence fraud is inherently more likely - and the absence of any specific evidence does nothing to alter that conclusion. Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
Due to its size and historical reasons, we have regional power that many times could try to benefit from physical voting receipts. It was common for local leadership to offer favors in exchange for votes.
> Nobody needs results ASAP
You don't know Brazil. The system's speed reduces the change of undemocratic action by those in power. Since 1889 Brazil has faced ten coup trials by the army (eleven if we consider what happened on 8th Jan of this year), and six were successful. Our current system's new republic is the most prolonged period of political stability (and the most successful from the socioeconomic perspective) in the country's history, largely due to our election system. Australia, New Zealand, and other countries have different histories and, therefore, different needs.
> Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
Everything is auditable. Both civil and state institutions audit the system. It could be better. Making all open-source would be a massive step in transparency. But there are multiple mechanisms:
- random sampling checking comparing digital and printed results (each machine prints a summary of the votes)
- voters receive a number to double-check if their vote was counted (however, they can't see who they voted for to guarantee vote secrecy).
- parallel voting: in randomly selected locations, the vote is cast to a shadow voting machine and computed in parallel to identify discrepancies.
- public software and hardware inspection: any institution, civil or not, can inspect the entire system. The army (yes, the one that is proud of the multiple coups) was acting to reduce the system's credibility and did an inspection and could not find anything substantial.
We can't compare different countries without a historical and social lens. NZ electoral system in Brazil would be a disaster.
> Due to its size and historical reasons, we have regional power that many times could try to benefit from physical voting receipts. It was common for local leadership to offer favors in exchange for vote
That’s not how paper voting works in Australia or New Zealand. The voter never gets a “receipt” to say which way they voted - that would be illegal.
In Australia, the voter’s name is marked in a roll book (to detect duplicate voting), and then they are given ballot papers. They mark them with pencils and put them in cardboard boxes. Everything that is done with those boxes, and the counting of the ballots in them, is physically observed by representatives of the candidates/parties (scrutineers).
Why are you downvoted? This is a great post that provides a lot of context and references. I wasn't aware of some of these facts. Thank you.
I'd like to make sure you know you aren't alone on this site. Even here on HN people will downvote to suppress views they disagree with instead of actually refuting any points raised. This can give posters the wrong impression.
I appreciate the verve and detailed view into something I'd recoil from just because of the polarization attached.
I mean this in the nicest, least combative, way possible: I don't understand at all how this would help with vote auditing. How does printing a piece of paper, which remains in the possession of the machine, ease any concerns about fraud generally, or enable an individual to audit?
The paper vote records (anomymous, of course) become the source of truth. There are very well established methods (Risk-limiting Audits - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit) that can randomly sample a small fraction of the ballots to guarantee with high probability that the electronic results are correct. Without paper records, the source of truth lies with the code that was run to receive and register the votes, and that is almost impossible to verify and fully trust.
Election day is open to oversight from all political parties. All parties send their people (identified with badges, previously registered with the voting authority) and they have free access to all voting locations.
At the end of the day, the bag of paper votes is transported with their oversight (multiple parties from opposing sides) to a public place where all of them will count the papers, together, in a public session, with cameras.
It's actually what already happens when the e-voting machines fail and your backup also fails. You cast votes with paper and the votes are counted with this exact same process, with oversight from all parties.
The other two are superior courts, but they don't rule constitutional matters.
The reasons were (you can confirm by clicking on the link above):
Security and Secrecy of the Vote: The court argued that the printed vote would not maintain the current standard of security provided by exclusively electronic voting. The paper trail could potentially pose a risk to the secrecy of the vote, with the possibility of identifying which voter chose which candidate. This could threaten the free choice of the voters.
[I find this argument ridiculous to be honest. The paper trail is anonymous and there's no way it violates the secrecy of the vote]
Operational Difficulties and Costs: The court also noted the significant difficulties and high costs associated with implementing a paper trail. They argued that the potential benefits associated with the security of the electoral process were minuscule compared to the detriments stemming from the implementation of the measure.
Rapid Implementation: The court deemed that the law, which called for the immediate implementation of the paper trail in 2018, failed to consider the necessary time and resources for proper setup.
[For a country the size of Brazil, the 1 billion BRL (200 million USD) is actually cheap if it avoids the political distrust that the current e-voting system has - see what happened in January 8th with the invasion of Congress and the Supreme Court].
Could not agree more. I think one big problem with Bolsonaro's discourse about the election system -- he was absolutely correct that the current system is not fully verifiable -- is that it became too politicized, and that he or his supporters took this to mean that the election should not be trusted. This automatically made anyone arguing to improve the system be lumped in with those sewing doubts about the result, which eventually led to the backlash from the TSE and the whole Jan 8th debacle.
One big problem with the electoral court in Brazil is that it is the only public branch that concentrates the three powers in one entity: they legislate about elections, they execute the rules, and they judge any matters related to the election. As a result, they have chosen these arguments to shoot down any criticism or improvement suggestions to the election system.
The country deserves a non-politicized discussion on the ground of true technical and security merits of what the election system should be. Paper records with Risk-limiting audits would solve most of the problems. I agree with your [comments] above. The costs of implementing this pale in comparison to the benefits of having a more reliable voting process which is the basis of a strong democracy.
> and that he or his supporters took this to mean that the election should not be trusted
That's exactly what they should think. This is the system by which the power of the people is delegated to representatives. Why should they relinquish any power at all if there's any possibility the results were tampered with? They most certainly should not.
That's the standard of perfection the judge-king himself set when he said the system was "unquestionable". TSE needs to prove beyond shadow of doubt that it cannot be compromised. Anything short of that means the system cannot be trusted. So far I've seen nothing but censorship and persecution from the judge-kings. What are they so afraid of?
Brazil has 4 "Superior" Courts and 1 "Supreme" Court above them. Superior Courts are the issue-specific Superior Military Court, the Superior Labor Court, the Superior Electoral Court and the general Superior Justice Court. Above them the Supreme Federal Court.
I agree with you, but the members of supreme court don't seem to care. They use even shallower arguments to justify a ~1996 eVault model as "reliable" and "safe", and the public opinion has to buy it.
Bolsonaro decided to step up against all that, and the rest is history now.
In a country with 200 million people, do you think Bolsonaro is the only one that can carry the will of the people?
Bolsonaro was attacking democracy. Claiming the election was stolen and ginned his supporters up to try and cease power by force. That sort of person is incompatible with democracy.
I was talking with a Bahraini acquaintance who was an admirer of Iran, debating various electoral systems.
Him: "Iran is a democracy."
Me: "Not fully, because the Guardian Council reserves the right to decide who can run."
Him: "Well, you can't have some sheepherder become president."
I thought about that for a long time. And still am.
--
At its core, I think there can only be two unforgivable sins barring anyone from electability.
1 - There must always be as unbiased of an election process as possible, so that candidates can most clearly be judged on their merits and platforms.
2 - There cannot be any intent to change or remove the election process.
Other than that, let sheepherders compete fairly! But there are many world leaders of "democratic" countries that fail that test, precisely because they have mettled with one of those two principles: Xi, Putin, Orban, Erdogan.
Transgressions can be of greater or lesser severity, but at the end of the day any level of transgression should be unacceptable.
An authoritarian who submits to regular democratic elections is much less of a threat than one who removes that check.
> An authoritarian who submits to regular democratic elections is much less of a threat than one who removes that check.
This all gets pretty sticky. Putin, for example, followed both rules 1 and 2 (at least publicly). It wasn't until he'd consolidated enough power that he attacked #2 "for the good of the people". He was in office at the time.
That's where I think really healthy skepticism around "stolen election" claims needs to be in play. When someone claims the elections are unfair (even when they win!) that's a sign they aren't making those claims in good faith.
Then they can do what every other nation that has lost democracy does, elect a dictator with enough party members to undo democracy and kill off the opposition. Heck, they can get Bolsonaro back in power with exactly this playbook.
It'll generally help if the party runs on a moralist/religious platform. "We've sinned and need to bring the nation back to god." That way, as the party breaks laws they can claim to do it in the name of god so that's ok. This even often gives them some wicked heathens to hate. Having a common enemy really brings people together. However, if they can't find that it's easy enough to blame outsiders for all the problems. Perhaps a conspiracy or two about how "those foreigners are taking all our jobs, resources, and are generally making everything here worse. If it wasn't for them, our country would be amazing. Let's make their lives a living hell because they've harmed everyone with their presence"
In a democracy, the only way forward from a democracy, legally speaking, is through laws. Specifically a new constitution.
And the constitution (at least in Brazil) is very clear on what happens of you try to depose the democracy by force.
It's always possible to remove democracy democratically. But the (legal) mechanism for doing this is made difficult on purpose, and rightly so. It's usually going to require a constitutional amendment, which requires a supermajority or referendum or something, not just a simple majority vote as if we are passing laws on mundane things like parking tickets. That's good, because it should be hard to remove people's fundamental rights on a whim during a temporary wave of hysteria and passion. Democracies have these safeguards to make it difficult on purpose.
I'm going to repeat myself with my response. If people want to democratically remove democracy, then they can. If they want to make murder not a crime, they can. If they want to remove everyone's rights, they can. There are democratic mechanisms that can achieve all these idiotic things if the people really want to achieve them. Revoking these rights is made difficult on purpose because, over a period of 50+ years, the majority of people have decided that we shouldn't revoke said rights if only 50.001% of people wish to do so over a timeframe of 1 day. They built mechanisms to make very sure that it really was the will of the people if said rights were to be permanently revoked.
Since you don't like that word, what should we call trying to use fraud or violence to steal an election? A traitor? A candidate for a firing squad? A guy trying his hand at a bit of high treason?
The expression "move forward" is just an idiom. It's like "circling back" except about the future and with a more forward-thinking can-do and proactive attitude.
Maybe the thing that wasn't compatible with democracy was giving politicians a free pass to commit crimes by making it taboo to talk about holding them accountable.
Basically: The demos isn't prohibited from deciding something that conflicts with its own later will.
There's a vaguely similar case in Germany at the moment, where a political party and its voters was in favour of a a rule to keep fringe parties out of parliament, and now that same party is in danger of falling below the threshold it helped set, even if it wins every seat for which it fields a candidate. The voters for that party wanted the threshold then, wanted it to apply to future elections including the upcoming election, and if their party is below the threshold in the upcoming election, their past will conflict with their present vote.
Nothing compels the demos to have conflict-free preferences.
Excellent point! If 100% of Americans (and the EC as well of course) voted to make King Charles President, he still wouldn't be, since he's ineligible by law. That also would defy the will of the people but I think most of us are okay with that.
The will of the people is expressed in vote and then indirectly applied by the elected officials.
If 100% of Americans decided to make King Charles president, then they will amend the laws allowing him to do so.
If literally 100% of Americans are voting to make Charles III their President, that 100% must include Congress unanimously voting to approve the constitutional amendment to make him eligible to run for President, and all the state legislatures voting to ratify it. If any of them vote against that amendment, then your premise that 100% of Americans vote for him would be false.
How is it not? Election laws exist, if you break them, it's your problem.
Not enforcing election laws is what's incompatible with democracy, because it results in a loser being declared the winner.
When you're caught tampering with an election, there's no reason to give you a chance to try again. When you're caught organizing a coup, there's no reason to give you a chance to try again, either.
We wouldn't democracy to become a popularity contest, where the country is run by whoever most people prefer. The safety and security of the Homeland is too important for that.
[1] - https://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/politica/2023/01/50659...