181–190 of 532 posts
Tom Scott made a solid video on this years ago[0]. I would love to go back to paper elections, even with all its problems (hanging chads anyone?). Let's make attack scaling as difficult as possible. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
"Go back to"? How are you voting now?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’re less worried about a low-scale low impact fraud my many people that is unlikely to alter results, than a systematic mass fraud by few people who can choose a result
That's the wrong perspective. The minute votes go into the mail system there is no way to know just how many mail-in votes might be subject to fraud. In other words, your characterization has no basis in evidence. Note that I am not asserting that massive fraud has been committed anywhere. That statement would be as impossible to support with evidence as yours. The only thing you can state with absolute certainty is…
Just as there is nothing to prevent a person threatening or physically coercing 8 members of their household to vote as they direct.
This is hard to scale up into the hundreds.
WRT mail-in ballots, these are common place in Australia.
You post in a provided envelope to the AEC address, that outer envelope indentifies you against the voter rolls, just as you are identified when you attend a physical voting location.
The inner sealed envelope contains your voing slip - this is removed and passed on to the "votes from district" counting bucket .. just as all the voting slips from physical voting locations are.
In the checksumming of the election the same person being marked down as having voted multiple times, whether at various locations or by multiple mail in ballots, gets caught and investigated.
At this point voters are marked off against registration rolls and actual votes are anonymous.
This is important in an Australian election as no one should know that someone drew a crude suggestive image of their local member and submitted that.
The real downside of mail in voting is missing out on a sausage sizzle with others in your district at a voting location on voting day.
Voting is not a monolithic process. It's actually a combination of 3 things: - How votes are cast - How votes are counted - How votes are custodied In order for an election to be trusted, all three steps must be transparent and auditable. Electronic voting makes all three steps almost absolutely opaque. Here's how Mexico solves this. We may have many problems, but "people trust the vote count" is not one of them: 1.…
What I failed to understand is why only in the US the voting procedure is so controversial. Want paper vote? That's racism. Want counting in a day? That's xenophobia. Want to limit certain time window for counting? That's definitely racism. It's funny that the US criticized that EU countries were getting less democratic. Well, at least those countries have a much more sane voting process.
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The ballot has to be anonymous, or unable to be tied back to the voter once cast. It’s a hard requirement for a variety of reasons
You have to trust the voting place/ballot receiver in all cases. Like, after they take your name, you need to make sure that they aren't secretly associating your name with the ballot you are filling in. Likewise, if you vote by mail, you need to make sure that they aren't associating your identity on the envelope with the anonymous ballot inside the envelope.
It is an unsolvable problem for mail in voting, which is why it should be prohibited in most cases.
Voting is not a monolithic process. It's actually a combination of 3 things: - How votes are cast - How votes are counted - How votes are custodied In order for an election to be trusted, all three steps must be transparent and auditable. Electronic voting makes all three steps almost absolutely opaque. Here's how Mexico solves this. We may have many problems, but "people trust the vote count" is not one of them: 1.…
1. Everyone votes on paper.
2. An electronic tallying machine tallies the vote.
3. Vote counts are sent to a central system, IDK if it's electronic or not.
4. Candidates can challenge and start a hand recount at anytime.
I think this combo is pretty close to the ideal. The actual ballots are easy to audit. Discrepancies can be challenged. And the machine doing the tallying isn't connected to the internet, it's just a counting tool that gets the job done fast.
For people with disabilities, poll workers can come in and help with the vote.
Voting is not a monolithic process. It's actually a combination of 3 things: - How votes are cast - How votes are counted - How votes are custodied In order for an election to be trusted, all three steps must be transparent and auditable. Electronic voting makes all three steps almost absolutely opaque. Here's how Mexico solves this. We may have many problems, but "people trust the vote count" is not one of them: 1.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of the U.S. votes on paper: https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/ . Most of the rest of the country votes using Ballot Marking Devices that produce paper ballots; less than 5% of the population lives somewhere where the only or default choice is electronic voting.
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Mail voting has routinely been proven to be extraordinarily difficult to exploit at scale. For as much feverish dedication there is to the idea of how terrible it is (for quite obviously partisan benefit) there is absolutely no evidence of any kind of substantial fraud. It's a right wing fever dream exercise in post hoc logic to justify depriving the 'right' people in our society of their vote. Simple as that.
Mail voting is common in many systems, it's convenient, and worst of all ... More people vote!! All of which is very dangerous to the power of a certain class of politicians.
Voting is not a monolithic process. It's actually a combination of 3 things: - How votes are cast - How votes are counted - How votes are custodied In order for an election to be trusted, all three steps must be transparent and auditable. Electronic voting makes all three steps almost absolutely opaque. Here's how Mexico solves this. We may have many problems, but "people trust the vote count" is not one of them: 1.…
What I failed to understand is why only in the US the voting procedure is so controversial. Want paper vote? That's racism. Want counting in a day? That's xenophobia. Want to limit certain time window for counting? That's definitely racism. It's funny that the US criticized that EU countries were getting less democratic. Well, at least those countries have a much more sane voting process.
There are historical factors that contribute to those things you brought up. American minorities are disproportionately affected by things like limited hours, for example. You'd know that if you were an American POC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even the most cursory research into mail-in voting shows a number of safeguards designed into the process; one summary can be found at https://responsivegov.org/research/why-mail-ballots-are-secu... . Instances of mail based voting fraud are extremely rare despite the extremely high motivation of some actors (such as the current US federal leadership) to find any evidence to the contrary.
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It’s not impossible - I won’t deny it. But we haven’t had any substantial evidence despite the current administration trying to claim otherwise.
If we are to roll back mail in ballot, let’s also make voter ID free and easy, and also make Election Day the weekend or a public holiday, rather than the various frictions including long lines at the poll.