I've been seeing lots of chatter about the recent US presidential election being rigged through Starlink. I'm curious, is it actually feasible to rig an election using software? What might that look like in a realistic scenario? I'm not asking whether the rumors are true, but if someone were to try doing this, how could it actually happen?
5 Answers
As an election worker in Virginia, I can tell you that our poll books and voting machines aren't even connected to the Internet during elections. We use optical scan machines to ensure there's a paper trail. Each number is verified before we can leave, and the next day local officials double-check everything. While accounting errors can happen, there's a lot of oversight in place that makes large-scale fraud pretty unlikely. There’s no one system to hack because each state does things differently, and there are many honest people working hard to keep things in line.
Think about this: a service could manipulate data in between the user and the final database—decrypting, altering, then re-encrypting it. If someone has control of the system, it might not be too hard to do this, especially if they remove all traces afterwards. It’s tricky though—if it's encrypted end-to-end, that's a much tougher nut to crack. What about just denying or misclassifying certain votes? Blockchain tech could actually help verify votes and keep track, but it might expose individual voters if not handled carefully.
But if it’s designed securely with end-to-end encryption, the middleman shouldn’t have much chance to tamper with it.
I’d rather stick with GitHub than self-hosted solutions that might expose me!
In theory, yes, a voting system could be tampered with, particularly if votes are recorded only in software without a physical backup. It's easier to manipulate numbers if there's no paper trail. But major protections like audits generally catch these issues, especially in closely contested districts where votes are scrutinized more carefully.
The problem is, even small changes in close elections can have big impacts, so people trust machines all too easily.
There are countless ways to hack software; it mostly boils down to who has access. You could employ a malicious insider or find a way to exploit security flaws. But given the decentralized nature of voting systems across states, especially in the U.S., it would be very hard to rig a national election. Each county uses different machines and processes, which creates a robust defense against such tampering.
True, but the integrity of those systems relies heavily on the people operating them.
It might not be as straightforward as you think. If there's a flaw somewhere in the communication process between voters and the counting software, it could essentially ignore voter selections and report back whatever the programmer decided. So while it sounds far-fetched, there are ways it could go wrong if the software isn’t secure.
Sounds like the best system we could hope for.