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qichael t1_isy2r93 wrote

Reply to comment by xariant in The Earth is subjected to a hail of subatomic particles from the Sun and beyond our solar system which could be the cause of glitches that afflict our phones and computers. And the risk is growing as microchip technology shrinks. by Sariel007

a bit flip due to cosmic subatomic particles changing the outcome of an election has actually happened before (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium, Reported Problems section)

not all computers (or voting machines, even) use ECC RAM because it is expensive, so this phenomenon is still something we have to account for.

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milton_radley t1_isy7jk1 wrote

i listened to an hour long podcast about this. it literally caused an election result error.

the winners votes were more than the total voters iirc

they showed an experiment where particles could be seen under the right conditions.

it was figured out and the results fixed. but it happened.

edit: 1 hour, not few hour. found the pod episode

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xariant t1_isy3ewv wrote

It would be really stupid for a voting machine to be designed that doesn't use error correcting technology. It is not THAT much more expensive if at all, these days.

Bugs in hardware and software design are extremely common and are nearly infinitely more likely to cause problems than cosmic particles that evaded hardware error correction schemes.

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LilacYak t1_iszes9j wrote

Just reading the paper ballot twice in the span of a second would be enough, ya? Store the data twice, what are the chances that two bits will flip?

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Franc000 t1_it0c8f4 wrote

Yep, exactly this. Even better, have the system read the ballot 3~5 times, and the confirmed vote is the one that the machine detect as most voted. Completely automated.

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jonathanrdt t1_isyobey wrote

“One likely explanation” is not an actual likelihood; that’s someone saying it’s likely.

Odds are still far greater that it was software error.

Edit: This is the source of the 'likelihood' quote. It says the code in the Belgian election system was so bad there was no point in trying to improve or reuse it. The review of the code process is not at all clear, and these were 486 machines in use in 2003. Cosmic ray is a massive stretch.

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qichael t1_iszfdit wrote

that's true, it totally could have been software. however, researchers spent hours combing through the source code of the voting machines and didn't find anything that could be a possible cause for a bit flip at position 13.

either all of them were wrong, or it was a single event upset, and the most probable cause for a single event upset is, you guessed it, a cosmic ray bit flip.

so no, odds are not far greater.

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