[ELECTIONS] Ballot tampering by Google IP

[Sir Lüc]

Azul, I'm afraid the Chancery is currently investigating 5 ballots that were improperly submitted on the Database.

One of the five voters wrote me this morning detailing, with clear pictures, how his receipt showed a straight PRESENT ballot despite the confirmation modal on the voting page showing a fully compiled ballot.

I investigated the case through the logging and certification functions of the Database and found that the pattern in all five cases is the following:

• The legitimate (human) voter accesses the ballot;
• Some external (likely non human) actor, with an IP belonging to a Google block and a different UserAgent from the legitimate voter, immediately accesses and submits the ballot;
• The legitimate voter attempts to submit the ballot, but as a ballot in their name was already cast, they get redirected to the receipt for the external actor's vote instead.

In all five instances, the ballots were recorded as straight PRESENT choices. (EDIT: Additionally, it always takes exactly 6 seconds for the ballot to be submitted once accessed by the external actor.)

In three out of five instances, the external actor UserAgent, interestingly, was the same across all instances, and never appeared on any other ballots, EXCEPT for S:r Tzaracomprada's improperly submitted ballot (which also was recorded as straight PRESENT, and which EDIT: took 7 seconds to be submitted), and one single legitimate voter, which I already verified looks normal.

In the other two instances, the UserAgent was only different by a digit and shared by 6 other legitimate voters.

I am honestly at a loss; my theory is some sort of AI agent or bot by Google messing with the regular casting of votes. Either way, this isn't a Database problem, which paradoxically makes it more difficult for me to fix it.

The Chancery will immediately contact all affected voters to explain the situation and offer to recast or correct their ballots.

The Chancery will also explore ways to mitigate the issue going forward, e.g. blocking the Google IP range from which the external actors submitted the ballots, or adding a Captcha of some sort to the Database ballot, which might be challenging with an election actively underway.