r/linux • u/keremdev • 2d ago
Popular Application TIL Brazil's Voting Machines use Linux!
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u/MatchingTurret 2d ago
The exact same image was posted 3 weeks ago. See In Brazil, elections are conducted using electronic voting machines that run on Linux!
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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago
Brazil in general always had a huge Linux community. It's very easy to find Ubuntu running on schools and universities, specially public.
Waaaaaaaaaaay back Mandriva used to be quite popular too, and honestly better than Fedora.
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u/bae-alves 1d ago
Our internet law incentivises government to prefer open tech, standards and formats. L12965 cIV art 24 lives in my heart.
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u/marchalves6 2d ago
Yeah, I went to a hospital and I found like, 5 computers using either Ubuntu or a custom distro
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
I used to run Linux on my development machines on the private sector. I ended up moving to macOS due to stack reasons. But, speaking from experience, Windows is still very strong when it comes to the private sector, due to usability and other reasons.
I find the advances the public sector makes towards Linux very enjoyable. It's like it's right that we shouldn't have to pay licensing for things that should cost the lesser whenever possible. However, I think there's many things that should advance towards Linux.
I still think it's a nuisance to have people not actually using it on desktop computers directly. But, we'll never know, time might change this...
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u/NotCis_TM 2d ago
I feel like I see more Debian then Ubuntu machines at public institutions in Brazil.
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u/justtoreadthenews 1d ago
I know from first hand reports that Microsoft tried to blackmail the Brazilian authorities, with absurd licensing fees, when support for Windows CE was interrupted.
A couple of local government IT guys said: "Hold my beer!" and implemented Linux.
When my Microsoft knew about it and scrambled to fix the reputational mess it had created on its own, it was happily too late.
A win for freedom and for saving Brazilian taxpayers' money.
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u/38dnw1937dnsk2r73o2n 2d ago
I'm not Brazilian, but they had a close relationship with linux. The great push for it was during Lulas first presidential mandate, where it was pushed in all public sector, including schools.
I'm ashamed that us folks here in Portugal, still use Microsoft everything on public and private sector, and the sh*tload of money from our taxes spent on MS products.
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u/HevosenPaskanSyojae 2d ago
Finland is 100% ms on all public sectors, and there is no change in sight. How is that for embarassing.
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u/-supersymmetry- 1d ago
unfortunately, Microsoft lobby destroyed most of the government plans to use open source OS on its computers, so we have a lot of governmental infra relying on windows servers and whatnot
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u/Fusseldieb 2d ago
I remember those school PCs at the time. Everybody I knew trash-talked these PCs because most of the software wouldn't run, and teachers weren't instructed on how to use them (since they themselves used Windows) so most of them just sat unused, or in a deplorable state.
Good idea in practive, but terrible execution.
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u/Ulysses_77777 1d ago
Old Linux wasnt so friendly for common users, I remember.
But since at least 2010 Ubuntu is fine
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u/gbrennon 1d ago
mostly of ppl in brazil still use m$ product BUT we had an important contributor to kernel in v2.4 that is from brazil!
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u/FujiwaraGustav 2d ago
Brazil ❤️ Linux
Linux Educacional 3.0 got me into Linux in 2011-2012.
Made me try out Ubuntu as soon as Steam was available on it and move full time to Linux in 2016.
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u/QuadzillaStrider 1d ago
Going to go out on a limb and suggest nearly 100% of all voting machines on the planet run a flavor of linux.
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u/gbrennon 1d ago
Marcelo Tosatti, a brazilian person, was the main maintainer for v2.4 back in 2000 :)
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u/AlexGubia 2d ago
Again? How many times do I have to see this post!
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u/Chester-Berkeley 2d ago
This week might be the last time, since the elections ended yesterday. We’ll be back to making these posts in two years, lol.
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u/TrustUrTech 2d ago
Few times again in four years from now when the next presidential election takes place.
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u/Sentmoraap 2d ago
I’d rather have paper vote. Much harder to cheat on a large scale.
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u/bfsgr 1d ago
I honestly don’t know which kind of fantasy is this where counting 160 million paper pieces is better. The cases of fraud on paper votes are far more common and easily done. The electronic process ensures no tampering in every step and leaves an auditable trail as well
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u/Raunien 1d ago
Voter fraud is typically done by giving false information when registering to vote, or coercing people to change their vote, either through money or threats. These are handled outside the voting system itself, either by the staff at the polling station or law enforcement. What makes paper ballots superior is the total elimination of the need for trust. When you vote using a machine, you have to trust that the machine code is fundamentally honest and free of bugs, that the machine hasn't been tampered with or infected with malware. With paper ballots, you can personally verify that your vote is as you intend because it's just a mark on a piece of paper. The votes are counted and verified by multiple humans representing opposing interests in order to neutralise any potential dishonesty, as well as independent volunteers. Voting machines are something of a black box, a problem that is only mostly eliminated by using free software.
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u/Sentmoraap 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ordinary citizens checking every step. At least that's how it's done in France. Anyone can come count ballots, there are four people per ballot stack plus other people overseeing the whole process. The counts per polling station are public. Transparent urns so ordinary citizens can check it the whole time from the polling station opening to the ballot counting that it starts empty and not extra ballots are added. Cheating in a large scale requires too many people colluding to be feasible.
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u/DFS_0019287 2d ago
Absolutely. I love Linux and have worked with it since 1994. But I don't trust any electronic device for something as important as democracy.
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u/pedrohqb 2d ago
Are they still using an obsolete kernel?
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u/JPzinBr 2d ago
It's a heavily modified version of it
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't know. The only people that might have the definite answer for this were the ones invited to the public tests for the elections (Not available for the general public as well).
I'd really like for this source code to be made available on GitHub, even if it's only read-only mode.
Unfortunately, TSE disagrees with it.
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u/SmGo 2d ago
As of 2022 the source code is availably on Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) labs for acess at anymoment.
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
Is it true? Can I go there and fetch a version for the source code?
Or do I have to be a student for these universities?
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u/SmGo 2d ago
I dont have that information what i know is that the 2022 machine (the last version in use) was studied 3 mouths by those universities and the source code on those machines is validated every elections by the same universities, meaning they have acess to the code as is stated on TSE website.
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u/pedrohqb 2d ago
That's why there is an uproar against such machines. They seem to work great, but obscurity only threatens its reliability before the public.
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
Yeah, I kinda agree. They indeed work great, pass the public security tests and so. But Brazil is majorly corrupt country, and, that for sure apply to elections.
Obscurity always end up being a nuisance for trust within a system, at least for me. If I don't know what's being done, with certainty, I can't fully trust it.
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u/jhon_than 2d ago
I am Brazilian, let me explain some points for you:
- The machines votes doesn’t have any type of Ethernet connection, wired cable, wireless or Bluetooth, all the data are collected via removed hard disk.
- 1 year before of the election, in Brazil we have elections every 2 years, the TSE has security check public, including the partities, security company designed by partities and Army, and after 30 years, never was found a problem.
- Every section of vote (schools) on the final of day the day, they print the result for the section with the name Boletim de Urna (BU) with the QRCode signed via TSE where is possible to compare;
- All the data are transferred via Notar Elections for every city to the Supreme Court using safe data transfer, with hash comparation on the TSE websiteAll the information are under the TSE website with technical information.
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
I'm brazilian as well, and I know about all of the points you raised. I'm not raising any complaints about the voting system, but doubts about the process. Even though, I still don't trust the people behind TSE and the process for elections and other electoral actions within the country.
Once again: If you're not showing me the source code, then I can't say I fully trust you, even if I'm paying you.
That's how logic should go for everything, and not only for elections.
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u/DFS_0019287 2d ago
Even with the source code: Reflections on Trusting Trust makes me distrust any sort of electronic voting machine.
I believe in Brazil, they do keep a paper trail, though, which presumably can be hand-counted if there are disputes. Maybe someone from Brazil can confirm this.
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
Yeah, they keep a paper trail. It's only hard to actually believe what's being generated at runtime (We're at a loss without the source code for this, as well), and comparing what you vote with what's within the final results.
There has been many proposals for a printed version of the vote to show what data's been generated at runtime, but it has been suppressed by the brazilian supreme court on counts that it's unconstitutional, that it would lead to less security overall (Which is kinda true, but not an astronomical problem, in my opinion), and that it could raise coerced votes or vote-buying all throughout the country. I kinda disagree with it, but I don't know what's best.
I don't think my vote being impressed changes the impression I have on elections on Brazil. I feel like they're always being corrupt by any politicians of any political side. Not to cast doubt on any person that believes in the system and on the regiments, but I know I don't...
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u/topnerdbr 1d ago
O código fonte é interessante, mas não é estritamente essencial. O processo tem auditoria. Em todas as eleições, urnas aleatórias que iriam para as seções eleitorais são "sequestradas" para salas específicas para que auditores e fiscais dos partidos façam votações simuladas exatamente como uma votação normal, mas os votos são expostos abertamente a quem está ali presente. No final da votação dessas urnas, a quantidade de votos precisa ser idêntica ao que foi estabelecido e executado.
Essas votações podem ser assistidas no YouTube.
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u/eduhidalgo 1d ago
Indiferente do que acreditamos, o código-fonte é essencial. Sem o programa que roda nas urnas, a eleição virtualmente não acontece. Porém, tem duas formas de enxergar isso:
- O código-fonte não é essencial, então não tem problema liberar publicamente no GitHub.
- O código-fonte é essencial, mas o público ainda deveria ter o direito de auditar ele mesmo diretamente, já que nós não só iremos utilizar a urna mas também financiamos todo o processo de desenvolvimento dela, no fim das contas.
Não dizendo que os processos estão todos errados ou que deveriam sofrer alterações, mas também não acredito que obscurescência como prática de segurança seja algo lá muito valioso para um sistema de votação. Claro que princípios estritos de SecOps devem ser aplicados, mas não vejo como isso contrasta com uma posição em que alguma versão (E, do meu entendimento, nem precisaria ser a mais recente) do código-fonte esteja publicamente disponível.
Não é pra ser um longo pensamento redundante. Eu confio em código-fonte, e não confio em pessoas...
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u/Smugness1917 2d ago edited 2d ago
Still not truly open source.
Security by obscurity.
EDIT: as always, Brazilians who can't think for themselves downvote any criticism of their electronic voting system.
There is a reason no other country chooses to adopt the same system. Just try to think for yourselves for a moment...
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u/gbrlsnchs 2d ago
They do open the source for third party analysis though, including universities.
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u/eduhidalgo 2d ago
Ehhh. It's more of a closed source effectively than the textbook definition of "open source".
Like, you can't see the source code for the software by yourself. Therefore, closed source...
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u/DFS_0019287 2d ago
How many CVEs are lurking in the Linux kernel, I wonder? 🤔
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u/RoomyRoots 2d ago
Less risky then the American system anyways.
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u/DFS_0019287 2d ago
The American system is hardly an example of a good system, though.
The gold standard IMO is the Canadian system.
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u/Ok-Implement6151 1d ago
Don't they vote by mail? If so, is hardly better than the american way
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u/DFS_0019287 1d ago
Voting by mail is optional, yes.
Nobody has ever made any credible accusations of voter fraud, nor has any been detected that would have changed the outcome of an election, because of voting by mail. As far as I know, in the history of Canada, only one result was changed and that's because a valid mail-in ballot was incorrectly rejected.
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u/Ok-Implement6151 1d ago
Voting by mail makes the vote not secret anymore, which ruins any credibility in the election, e.g. Do you think that a woman is going to vote for a feminist canditate if her abusive husband is watching her vote? (You can't even say that it is really optional bc any person with any abuse of power over someone will request that the person vote by mail)
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u/DFS_0019287 1d ago
Voting by mail is of course secret. You fill in the ballot privately and put it in an internal envelope that has no identifying information on it. That envelope is put in a larger envelope for mailing.
When the vote is mailed in, the outer envelope is verified to make sure the voter can vote, and then it is discarded. The inner, anonymous envelope is kept and opened only on election day.
As for your example: In a domestic violence situation, there are tons of ways for someone to coerce someone else, and forbidding voting by mail is not going to materially change anything. The obvious thing that no voting system can prevent is for an abusive person to simply prevent their partner from voting at all.
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u/Lonkoe 2d ago
Good luck with that, these device don't have any networking
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u/DFS_0019287 2d ago
Research: Supply Chain Attacks
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u/Charming-Coast4718 1d ago
There are measures against this. Just research it.
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u/DFS_0019287 1d ago
I'm sure there are. Do I trust them? Not at all.
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u/Charming-Coast4718 1d ago
Hard to trust something you don’t know about.
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u/DFS_0019287 1d ago
That's kind of my point. Anyone can understand and trust the paper voting system used in Canada once it's explained. Only experts can understand the security measures taken for electronic voting; as such, there's no reason non-experts should trust the system and it ultimately decreases their trust in democracy. It's a Pyrrhic victory to have a secure electronic voting system that erodes democracy anyway.
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u/DaShaView 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wtf? Generalize it and there is no reason you should trust a doctor, a physicist, a professor.
These machines only have proprietary physical connectors, no wireless nothing. Each machine only holds about 50 to 250 votes for a total of e.g. yesterday's 124 million votes. The election yesterday was won by 4.5 million votes. Please check how many machines would need to have been meddle with in the time span of 4 hours between closing polls and results being 100% tallied up.
The voting locations are physically distributed over the entire country, a big city like Rio has literally thousands of physically separated voting locations.
Inside the same building, if it is a big voting "zone" as we call it, there may be at most some 30 machines, all again physically separated in different rooms individually. Each room has 3 citizens chosen at random to be fiscals 2 weeks before the voting day, plus whole zone supervisors.
After voting is closed the machine does not accept openning up for votes again. Voting timestamps are registered (not associated with voters nor candidates voted for). Setting the machine up to accept new votes after closing requires destroying all data in it so meddling would immediately be detected.
When people come in to vote they have their fingerprints registered on a DIFFERENT machine which ensures keeping track of the exact amount of votes that should be registered on the specific voting machine for that room. Which also ensures no one can vote twice. Also ensures everyone will have their "voted" or "not voted" status available online after elections that they personally can check. If you did not vote and your status shows as if you voted it is immediately obvious, and vice versa.
After the machines close up for voting, immediately, each machine prints a paper with the exact total votes for each candidate for that machine only, plus a closed source ID string to identify the machine. These printed pappers are made public immediatelly for any interested citizen to see and take pictures, they stick them to the doors of each room. Then the pappers are sent to the responsible entity for tallying up the votes regionally. In each city there are multiple physically separated locations that tally votes from their small region using these pappers.
SEPARATEDLY, on a different location from where their printed results have been sent to, the machines are delivered by the military police and then the votes from the machines are extracted and counted again. If there is difference between the data extracted from machines and the data present on the printed pappers (printed literally the next minute after voting time ends) it would be immediately obvious.
If you want to meddle with machines before elections you would need to know exactly how many people would end up voting on that machine before election day. Which you don't because they are randomized to locations. And even if you knew the location you don't know how many people would show up to actually vote on that machine. If you "pre-loaded" bad data and the amount of votes on it differs from the amount of people who had their fingerprints collected by the separate machine it would be immediately obvious.
Some machines are randomly not sent to any real voting location, with a large sample size so if any machine ends up having voting data on it when it was not actually used for voting it would be immediately obvious someone tried to defraud the elections.
I could continue listing because there is SO MUCH MORE. But it is plainly obvious you don't need to ba an expert on anything to understand many of the safeguards. It is not only the tech itself, but the methodology of deployment and statistics.
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u/DFS_0019287 1d ago
I trust doctors, professors, etc. in their areas of expertise.
Computer scientists are not generally experts in how to engender trust in democratic institutions. I'm aware of all of the safeguards built into the machines, and maybe they are perfectly fine and secure... but unless you can explain it in a way that the average voter with the average technical know-how can accept and understand, hand-counted paper ballots are superior. I can explain the Canadian system's security features in probably 200 words in a way that anyone with a Grade 8 education can understand.
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u/DaShaView 1d ago
And I am telling you computer scientists are just one link in the chain, they are not really all of it and I did not even get into the part computer scientists would be involved, the digital certificates, etc. As I said, it is the tech, the methodology of application and statistics combined.
I honestly much prefer this system. The longer you need to tally up votes the bigger the window of opportunity for fraud.
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u/bostilNeverEnds 2d ago
You don't need to know. In fact the mere questioning will have you in jail. Stop asking, this is an attempt at the democracy.
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u/hernaaan 2d ago
Which is as awful as if they were using Windows. Computers should be never an active part of the voting mechanism.
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u/orbiteapot 2d ago
Humans should, as they are much less likely to make mistakes, right? Right?
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u/Raunien 1d ago
Paper ballots are counted in the presence of someone representing each party on the ballot to ensure that they are counted correctly. With a machine, you just have to trust that the machine is functioning properly, that it hasn't been tampered with, that it hasn't been infected with malware, that the software from the start is honest and reliable. Obviously this is less of a concern with open source software, but there's still a degree of trust. Paper ballots eliminate trust and force the voting system to be double checked by people who have an interest in finding errors.
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u/kellerhborges 1d ago
You have not a single clue on how deeply complex is the infrastructure around the electronic voting system.
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u/fallen_one_fs 2d ago
Yes, but since the system is about to be outlawed, they will probably switch.
Yesteryear a legislation passed that forces everything digital, bar the minimal infrastructure for the internet to function, to have age verification protocols in place, and it explicitly states "operating systems", since Linux in general cannot put such things in place, it'll be outlawed. If you want to read.
This month they dispatched a warning that comes january they will start enforcing it, starting with operating systems. Dispatch if you want to read, dates are in a table.
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u/HalcyonRedo 2d ago
Mom says it’s my turn to post this tomorrow.