81–90 of 211 posts
On what basis? Because there aren't any rumors of Russian meddling being sowed by the opposition this time? There are multiple states with no paper audit trail, closed source electronic voting machines, multiple dubious last-minute decisions made around postal ballots due to COVID, no easy way to verify the voter roll. Making a claim like this reeks of partisanship.
Your comment assumes the nature of wrongdoing is equivalent on both sides.
Eight states[0] still have electronic voting systems without paper backups. They're un-auditable. I'm not going to weigh in on the current politics of this situation, but US Election security is awful, now, and since at least 2000. I actually did my degree thesis on designing electronic voting systems (and built one), and ultimately concluded it was impossible to make them fully secure. The best you can do is paper b…
"Pennsylvania, Georgia and South Carolina are on course to replace all paperless voting machines by 2020, while Arkansas, Virginia and Delaware have already completed this process."
We're lucky; they made it just in time. Imagine if this was a potential concern for Georgia or Pennsylvania right now.
To save you a click, the 8 remaining states are Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey. I hope Texas and Indiana, at least, follow suit soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every person legally allowed to vote should be able to vote. No votes should be cast by people not allowed to vote. Mail-in ballots are not secret ballots and that's dangerous. There's a reason a workplace cannot be unionized in the US without a true secret ballot.
Mail-in ballots are secret ballots. The way they work is that they have two envelopes: you put your ballot in the inner envelope, which has no indication of who is casting the ballot. All of that information is on the outer envelope. When processing the ballot, the information is checked on the outer envelope; once verified, the inner envelope is then handed to another station to be opened and fed into the counting m…
I’ve knocked on doors in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many registered Democrats (usually the wife) denied being Democrats when their partners were around. I thought this was an error in our data until I revisited the neighbourhood. Husband wasn’t home. Wife scolded us. He is an ardent Republican and wouldn’t appreciate how she votes.
Mail-in ballots let voters verify their vote to third parties. That opens them up to external influence, positive (pay for votes) or negative (fired for voting wrong).
We had no choice this year. But there is a real tradeoff in privacy for vulnerable people. We shouldn't lose sight of that trade-off while pushing for turnout.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s your thinking on the “request” process of mail-in ballots? To me, it’s wild to think all one needs to request a ballot is a name, address and ssn... and on top of all of that, you can get the ballot sent to a different address...
To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?
> Here is what we found. Besides the United States, there are 36 member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Forty-seven percent ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad, and 30 percent require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Fourteen percent of the countries ban mail-in voting even for those living abroad.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/11/12/pennsyl... I don't understand how you can say the Election was the "most secure" when you literally have a Court in Pennsylvania throw out 10,000 ballots! If the system was so "secure" it shouldn't have even gone to the Courts in the first place and instead the electoral system should have found out the discrepancies on its own! The truth is that US electoral syste…
That they were segregated and ruled upon by a judge before being included in the election results arguably counts in more in favor of the election being secure than anything else. And it was on a simple technical argument (an extended deadline during a pandemic isn't fraud).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/11/12/pennsyl... I don't understand how you can say the Election was the "most secure" when you literally have a Court in Pennsylvania throw out 10,000 ballots! If the system was so "secure" it shouldn't have even gone to the Courts in the first place and instead the electoral system should have found out the discrepancies on its own! The truth is that US electoral syste…
> have a Court in Pennsylvania throw out 10,000 ballots * The Constitution says that the state legislatures set the election mechanism. * The Secretary of the State decided to change the rules on her own without the state legislature's approval. * The Court ruled that the ballots that were accepted by the Secretary's adjusted rules but that would not be accepted by the legislature's approved rules can not be consider…
I don't disagree with this at all. I never said I disagree with the ruling anywhere. I am happy the Courts did their job. I am talking about the electoral system not the Courts. I am saying that if it needed a Court to rule that the ballots needed to be discarded then the electoral system, by itself, is not robust enough. Court must be the last resort. Imagine if the Trump legal team hadn't challenged this in the Courts. What would have happened to the ballots? Would have been counted right? The crux of the matter is the subject line: "November 3rd election was the most secure in US election history". Not secure at all if you are changing the rules illegally. The Secretary of State's decision to change rules should have been overturned by the Electoral system itself. It should never have gone to the Courts. It went to the Courts because there was a failure to overturn the decision when it mattered.
And think of it this way: It not only doesn't favour Trump but also doesn't favour Biden. Many might have not sent in their ballots on time thinking there is still time (till November 6th). Now have those voters been disenfranchised?
> My understanding is that the ballots in question are not part of the current vote count in PA and so this ruling changes nothing with regard to the electoral votes from PA.
Yes because those ballots were "not allowed" to be counted. If the Trump legal team hadn't challenged it in courts, it would have been counted inflating the numbers even more. This is just one instance. The more lawsuits are filed the more the mess gets uncovered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every person legally allowed to vote should be able to vote. No votes should be cast by people not allowed to vote. Mail-in ballots are not secret ballots and that's dangerous. There's a reason a workplace cannot be unionized in the US without a true secret ballot.
Mail-in ballots are secret ballots. The way they work is that they have two envelopes: you put your ballot in the inner envelope, which has no indication of who is casting the ballot. All of that information is on the outer envelope. When processing the ballot, the information is checked on the outer envelope; once verified, the inner envelope is then handed to another station to be opened and fed into the counting m…
A secret ballot is one in which each voters vote is anonymous to EVERYBODY.
Spouse, parent, landlord, employer, union boss, social worker.
Case in point https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/limestone...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand the connection to the OP url
The possible connection I see: who watches the watchers? What's the difference in trusting CISA vs PRISM? I have no ill intent, and I find all of this stuff distressing.
The first thing that came to mind was that quote from the Richard Jewell movie (which is a good watch). Jewell's lawyer has a secretary with an Eastern European accent and they are talking about a newspaper article where the gov't says they have evidence that Jewell is the Olympic Park bomber. “Where I come from, when the government says someone's guilty that's how you know they're innocent,” she says. “It's differen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me it’s wild that anyone would want voting to be anything but universal. Shouldn’t they send ballots to every person legally allowed to vote?
Isn’t it reasonable to want the people who make a decision to know what they’re making a decision about? I want all the informed voters to vote but, by and large, uninformed voters make the outcome arbitrary.
> The greatest thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote.
> The worst thing about a democracy is that every idiot is allowed to vote.