The Public Ballot

A Down-to-Earth Explanation about Hacking the Secret Ballot

My previous post on the matter was just a cut-and-paste job with our press release, which was overly formal, according to Yury; others (myself included) agreed. To recap:

It is possible to see out how someone voted. This includes a particular person’s selection of candidates, as well as their decisions on ballot initiatives, referendums, etc. To be clear: this is tied to their name and address!

• Who could that ‘someone’ be?
• They reside in one of ten specific Ohio counties (or in any other state which employs a similar system).
• They voted at the polls (i.e. not by absentee ballot).
• They voted in the past decade or so.
• How accurate is your technique?
• Generally speaking, the technique is highly accurate – my best guess is 95%+, but the depth of technical analysis required for more precise figures has yet to be performed.
• What do you mean ‘anyone’ can do it?
• A person only needs to go to a county courthouse or place where an election’s ballots are stored, and perform the necessary aggregation and analysis. In our experience, it was pretty easy. We just called a county courthouse, asked to examine the ballots, and had a meeting scheduled within the week. Still, the precinct we decoded was small, which made it easy to perform the data aggregation by hand. It’s not difficult to do this on a mass scale; it would simply require some scanning/OCR equipment.
• So have you guys done this?
• Yes. In order to show people that this can actually be accomplished, and isn’t just theory, James Moyer and I have figured out how people voted on a particular ballot issue in a small precinct in Delaware County, Ohio. Immediately before voter confidentiality was breached, each voter was assigned a unique, anonymous ID.
• Wait, did you just say you can tell how people voted?
• For the second time, yes. Please read my previous post. This is a big deal.

If I can actually get people to read about this, then I’ll post an in-depth technical follow-up (“mini-whitepaper”?), which will include raw and processed poll data, as well as a step-by-step discussion of the methodology involved. Additionally, a list of affected Ohio counties will be provided.