Why a Voting App Won't Solve Our Problems This November (fivethirtyeight.com) 355
XXongo writes: Although the problems with internet voting have been pointed out over and over again, with the arrival of COVID-19, the idea has again been brought up as a way to avoid the problems of in-person voting. If we can do banking by internet, why can't we do online voting? But, voting by an app is still a really stupid idea. If you want the government to belong to whichever hacking group can exploit a zero-day vulnerability first, this is it.
And, as Kaleigh Rogers of FiveThirtyEight points out, citing the co-founder of security consultancy firm Nordic Innovation Labs, "even if there was a completely secure system, there's currently no way to have an online vote that is both anonymous and auditable. An anonymous vote protects against voter coercion, suppression, or vote selling. An auditable vote protects against any errors or breaches, because officials can conduct a recount. But that combination, which is possible with a paper ballot, isn't yet possible online." And, even if the privacy and security issues were solved, online voting vendors would likely not be able to handle this fall's presidential election in time. "Nationwide would be a huge stretch," said Nimit Sawhney, co-founder and CEO of Voatz, one of the most prominent voting apps on the market. "We are a tiny little startup. There are about 25 people on our team. For us to be able to claim that we can do elections for 200 million people on a smartphone? That would be naive."
What the security experts are recommending a country do amidst a pandemic is to vote by mail.
"Planning needs to start now, to make sure ballots are printed off and mailed in time, and that voters know their options for casting a ballot," writes Rogers. "In-person voting will still most likely take place as well. But experts told me if we want those well-spaced lines for the ballot boxes to be less than a few miles long, we'll have to vastly ramp up mail-in voting by November."
And, as Kaleigh Rogers of FiveThirtyEight points out, citing the co-founder of security consultancy firm Nordic Innovation Labs, "even if there was a completely secure system, there's currently no way to have an online vote that is both anonymous and auditable. An anonymous vote protects against voter coercion, suppression, or vote selling. An auditable vote protects against any errors or breaches, because officials can conduct a recount. But that combination, which is possible with a paper ballot, isn't yet possible online." And, even if the privacy and security issues were solved, online voting vendors would likely not be able to handle this fall's presidential election in time. "Nationwide would be a huge stretch," said Nimit Sawhney, co-founder and CEO of Voatz, one of the most prominent voting apps on the market. "We are a tiny little startup. There are about 25 people on our team. For us to be able to claim that we can do elections for 200 million people on a smartphone? That would be naive."
What the security experts are recommending a country do amidst a pandemic is to vote by mail.
"Planning needs to start now, to make sure ballots are printed off and mailed in time, and that voters know their options for casting a ballot," writes Rogers. "In-person voting will still most likely take place as well. But experts told me if we want those well-spaced lines for the ballot boxes to be less than a few miles long, we'll have to vastly ramp up mail-in voting by November."
Hackers? (Score:5, Informative)
If you want the government to belong to whichever hacking group can exploit a zero-day vulnerability first, this is it.
The real worry is the government belonging to whichever party or agency or cabal is in control of the app and the tally. Elections need to be audited by independent observers at every step of the process, and it's very hard to audit computerized voting or counting in a meaningful way. Paper ballots work well because every Tom Dick & Harry can take part in the audit. There are plenty of paper-based elections where large scale fraud is being committed, but these are always cases where the government is in control of the election without constant oversight (same as electronic voting), and in almost all cases everybody is fully aware that fraud is being committed, they are just powerless to do anything against it. The scary part of electronic voting is tampering without our knowledge... and in that respect I fear our governments a whole lot more than "hackers"
apple may need to bypass app store rules (Score:2)
apple may need to bypass app store rules.
Remote Voting = Opportunity for Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Voting needs to be in person, in a real polling place, with all the safeguards that entails. Preferably with paper ballots and identification of the voter. The only exception to this should be the absentee ballot, arranged by your county, with its own safeguards, well ahead of the election.
Any scheme for remote voting, whether it be by app or by mail, is just asking for trouble. Mail certainly isn't secure... both postal and non-postal employees are caught stealing and monkeying with the mail all the time. And as for electronic means, we have multiple clusterf#&%s as examples (Hello, Iowa Democratic Caucuses).
There are many misattributed quotes on the subject, the truth of the statement itself is clear: how the votes are counted is important.
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We should certainly pioneer any sort of remote voting in primaries through multiple hotly contested elections until we demonstrate experimentally that we've found something harder to temper with than the current system. We shouldn't switch to anything on the word of "experts", without experiments to back it up.
Just because experts say they don't see a way to hack a system (and no reputable security professionals recommend electronic voting, but even if they did) doesn't mean that's true, it just means they
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Actually, experts are telling us not to trust this. https://xkcd.com/2030/ [xkcd.com] The people pushing this are pols who don't understand it and marketing droids who see a buck to be made.
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Yes, it's "experts" vs security professionals. However, if someone's goal is vote fraud, they will certainly find "experts" who will explain at length why its fine, needed even.
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I'd be terrified if all three had exactly the same counts.
Re:Remote Voting = Opportunity for Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting needs to be in person, in a real polling place, with all the safeguards that entails.
What safe guards? Just because you vote in person doesn't mean that anyone is going to count your vote.
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Mail? (Score:3)
Mail
In the present system AFAIK no one touches my ballot but me. Even during counting, or in recounts. How manty people would touch a mail in ballot, Each of which can tamper with it.
Re:Mail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tampering with the mail is a federal crime. Nobody is tampering with your ballot.
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]
Aren't you supposed to be on Reddit?
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There is some embarrassing egg on your face, "DG (989)". You should read more carefully and hold off on the sarcasm until you actually have the goods.
If (Score:5, Interesting)
>"If we can do banking by internet, why can't we do online voting?"
If we can do grocery shopping, why can't we do in-person voting?
There isn't more risk with voting than other necessary activities we have been doing all along. Take sensible precautions and there is no issue. For those without pre-existing conditions, the odds of dying from COVID-19 while taking reasonable precautions probably aren't higher than dying driving to the grocery store or voting location. If you can't deal with the minuscule risk, there is absentee voting.
Start trying to mess with "apps" and "online" voting and there will absolutely be major issues. Online banking is not supposed to be ANONYMOUS. It isn't a right. It isn't collecting a decision. It doesn't change the nature of the bank with the outcome. And it isn't in government control.
>"But experts told me if we want those well-spaced lines for the ballot boxes to be less than a few miles long"
The lines shouldn't be much longer in DURATION than without precautions. I don't care how physically long a line is, as long as it is moving at a reasonable rate. Now, if we do stupid stuff, like restrict the number of locations to vote, reduce the poll hours, reduce the number of voting booths, limit parking, forcing people to fill out stupid questionnaires, etc, then that is not the fault of in-person voting nor COVID-19, but of stupid procedures.
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Now, if we do stupid stuff, like restrict the number of locations to vote, reduce the poll hours, reduce the number of voting booths, limit parking, forcing people to fill out stupid questionnaires, etc, then that is not the fault of in-person voting nor COVID-19, but of stupid procedures.
So far, it seems like the intent of in-person voting only is for voter suppression. That's why it wasn't enacted alone by the primaries in many states - it was in addition to all of the above.
Re:If (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:If (Score:5, Informative)
Paper good / mobile bad (Score:2)
I don't trust and computer to register my vote. Not with out a paper trail. Mail out ballots seem ok but how do you know who is writing on them.
We go shopping and that works, I hope. We need the same precautions voting, no more. Give the Voting officials N95 masks, they deserve them.
P.S. don't get me started on any thing mobile. It's what should be classified as an illegal tax. Think "Taxation without representation". The mobile network is just there to milk us for money Call it what you want It is no
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Even if I did trust it because I could audit it, how many can?
We're living in a time of rampart conspiracies, and people have believed more harebrained conspiracies than "the winner rigged the election". With a paper ballot you can always dump the voting slips on him and tell him to recount himself. It's something that requires the skill of counting papers and seeing where a cross has been made.
Auditing a computer voting machine is far, far harder to do. And far, far easier to manipulate as the past has sho
Smartphone? (Score:3)
Why are smartphones even mentioned? What would be naive is to expect everyone to have a smartphone capable of running your app. Are you going to support iOS v.1 and Android v.1? And even if you did, some people don't have a smartphone at all.
And if you think everyone has a recent-enough smartphone, you don't have low-income friends or you're not visiting your parents/grandparents enough.
The biggest and UNSOLVABLE problem is trust (Score:2)
Trust is the biggest thing when it comes to democracy. Now you can wish for a world for people just *trusted*. Yet, people generally don't and often for good reason.
As a result, any election process has to be able to be understood by an average person.
The average person curious enough to look into how elections work in Western Democracies is able to understand it enough to generally trust it. Paper ballots. People from all parties at each voting location to observe. Recounts are possible... They might have
Ballot Harvesting (Score:5, Insightful)
From an article by Jennifer Van Laar
Ballot harvesting is when a person who is not related to a voter, and who may be employed by a political campaign, a political party, an interest group, a PAC, or whomever, or who may simply be a volunteer, takes possession of a completed, sealed mail ballot from a voter and returns that ballot to elections officials for the voter.
Ballot harvesting is illegal in all states except California, where it was made legal in 2016. It’s a law that was spearheaded by Democrat Asm. Lorena Gonzalez (of “Fuck Elon Musk” fame) and voted against by every Republican in the legislature.
As an advocacy group, Counted as Cast, warned while the bill was under debate:
“AB 1921 would allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote by mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion, “granny farming,” and automated forgery. AB 1921 solves no problem that a simple stamp can’t solve.”
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So I asked my coworker, "I'm going to the post office, do you need me to drop off anything?" And then I was a criminal.
I think a reasonable and proper solution is to allow notaries to collect ballots.
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I think a reasonable and proper solution is to allow notaries to collect ballots.
Perhaps a reasonable and proper solution would be to simply let their relatives do it? Which is already the case, as the OP already said:
Ballot harvesting is when a person who is not related to a voter
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So...perfectly valid votes are being counted. And this is a problem why?
Technically we should be able to do this (Score:2)
I don't understand why the SSA can't actually help here. Yes in theory you are not required to have an SSN but in practice all 'eligible voters' for a national election should. I would say we ought to really just go ahead and make that a requirement, in the name of fraud prevention. Surely someone can reach out to the handful of centennials out their who might have a number and take care of that.
All that would really be required is:
1) The SSA key pair for each SSN assigned to someone, living and over the ag
Ah, no (Score:2)
What we need is National Vote By Mail (Score:2, Insightful)
Also Automatic Voter Registration and Universal Suffrage (i.e. _everyone_ gets to vote. No more using criminal "justice" to strip people of voting rights, if you've got so many ax murders and pedophiles they can swing elections you've got bigger problems).
While we're at it give us Ranked Choice voting (e.g. you get to rank candidates in order of your preference and your vote goes to whichever is still in th
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all elections (and no more caucuses, they're specifically designed to make it harder to vote). Also Automatic Voter Registration and Universal Suffrage (i.e. _everyone_ gets to vote. No more using criminal "justice" to strip people of voting rights, if you've got so many ax murders and pedophiles they can swing elections you've got bigger problems). While we're at it give us Ranked Choice voting (e.g. you get to rank candidates in order of your preference and your vote goes to whichever is still in the race). That'll get us viable third party candidates, no more picking between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. As a Bernie Bro this is one of the reasons I'm swallowing my pride and voting for Biden. The Democrats put National Vote By Mail on the table, while the GOP says things like this [theguardian.com].
Situations like this https://www.redstate.com/miran... [redstate.com] are why people think mass fraud will result from your proposal. It's harder to fake people turning up in line one at a time than merely sending out ballots like junk mail. If the only way you can win elections is Chicago style you should rethink the platform. Plus the other side may start cheating in turn and then voting as a whole is lost. People have to trust the system or they won't accept the results. I've seen far too many people say something
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with a huge grain of salt. Also I have to question should the practice of Ballot Harvesting be illegal? It's just people going around and asking for ballots from people so they can mail them in. Keep in mind I'm also saying that voting should be mandatory (albeit as a tool to stop voter suppression). So I have no qualms about ballot harvesting as long as the ballots don't go missing (which has happened, although I seem to remember it being a Republican who got caught doing it in South Carolina...). Basically, the premise of the article you linked to is still "voting should be hard". But is that really democracy? I say no. If you're putting up barriers to voting then you're just creating an oligarchy.
I can tell you didn't watch the video. It was someone who was only there to pick up Democrat ballots. They can also 'help' fill out the ballots if you're so addled that you can't figure out how to vote. It's ripe for fraud and is most certainly partisan. The 'barriers' are ID and coming out in person to make sure fraud isn't done. If you really think that removing things that build trust is wise you should consider democracy only works when people trust the results. If they don't trust the results the
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The only thing that will fix the voting problem (Score:2)
is to stop stupid people from voting.
A Bigger Problem Than Methodology (Score:2)
This debate only points out the much larger problem in the United States today; that the "Republican" and "Democratic" subsidiaries of the Party have an almost complete stranglehold on the political process.
We are in our current situation thanks to decades of voting for "the lesser of two evils," which has increased the overall level of evil and mistrust to the point that only the most rabid and delusional fanbois think that their candidate is actually worth voting for.
Unfortunately, the only two solutions
We tried this... (Score:2)
Because Florida voters were too stupid to work a punch-card ballot, the Democrats INSISTED that we needed to implement even more idiot-proof electronic voting (ala Idiocracy, if you think about it).
Now we have electronic voting that is FAR simpler to systematically influence without having to involve legions of people in the cheat. Brilliant improvement.
Honestly, some days I think we should go to the 3rd-world solution that you dip a finger in permanent ink to show you voted. It's not a bad solution both
What the left needs to understand (Score:2)
How should it? (Score:2)
A voting App cannot solve not having a real choice.
Absolutely not (Score:2)
Mail in voting is ripe for fraud.
You send out ballots to every person in the city, some of whom don't even live there anymore and you end up with ballots left in mailboxes that can be rounded up, marked for the selected candidate and turned in. Or the head of the household takes all the ballots for the house and marks them for their candidate.
People have their welfare checks stolen out of their mailboxes en masse - how hard would it be to steal ballots?
And yes, this is a faux news link - but it speaks to t
Who cares (Score:2)
Trumps propaganda is going to win because Trump has the best propaganda.
Vote-By-Telegram (Score:5, Funny)
Biden Unveils Vote-By-Telegram Proposal [babylonbee.com]
"Voting by the ol' telegram is guaranteed to eliminate all kinds of malarkey," Biden said. "I'd like to see the Russians try to hack the ol' Western Union system. It's unhackable, totally unhackable. When I was a young lad, we hooligans would hop on the ol' party line and listen in to the neighborhood gossip, as was the custom at the time. But the telegraph, now that's a safe system."
Frantic aides tried to shut down the video feed, but Biden kept going.
Re: Blockchain voting (Score:3)
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Correct. By design, the wallets adresses aren't anonymous and all their transactions are kept forever in the blockchain, visible to everyone.
But the fact that the blockchain isn't anonymous isn't a problem.
What you want is anonymity from the wallets adresses. If you can't associate someone with a wallet address, it's anonymous.
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"even if there was a completely secure system, there's currently no way to have an online vote that is both anonymous and auditable" False - see bitcoin for examples. There should be a blockchain voting system where you can verify that your vote was counted and not tampered with.
Anonymous in this context alsto means that noone can see who you vote for when you do it. This limits coercion (e.g. the husband or employer making vote requirements) and vote purchasing. I don't see how this is possible with mail or electronic voting.
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Anonymous in this context alsto means that noone can see who you vote for when you do it. This limits coercion (e.g. the husband or employer making vote requirements) and vote purchasing. I don't see how this is possible with mail or electronic voting.
one approach is allowing multiple votes, from anywhere, making only the last one count. additionally, a vote in person might override all others. the person coercing you would need total control over you to be able to prevent you from changing your mind afterwards, to a degree that odds are you would be coerced regardless of the mechanism.
but that's not anonymity, that's privacy. anonymity can be achieved by handing out every voter a random key and mixing the ballot boxes in an audited processes. with this
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
Mail in ballots are a recipe for fraud... if you can't manage to go vote then you shouldn't get to vote.
This is an extreme position I don't think is really supportable. First of all people DO have to vote in their precinct. Currently, independently as to if you agree with it or not, there is a geographic component ALL federal elections. There are legitimate reasons you may not be able to vote in your district/precinct. You might be in the military and compulsorily deployed overseas. You might be in hospital, you might traveling for business etc. You might have some other inescapable obligation like a court date on election day.
I don't think these things should prohibit you from voting. I DO think voting by mail should be restricted to those individuals who will on pain of Perjury for both the voter and the ballot whiteness swear they really were unable to vote in person. We should also require votes to be cast near the election, none of this lets cast an uninformed vote 6mon early BS. Strict rules should be in place like an offical US postmark date must be on the ballot envelope not after election day and not more than perhaps 7 business days prior.
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If Republicans were pushing for mail in ballots the assumption in the media would be that those rascally Republicans were up to something fishy. I'll go further and say this push for vote-by-mail will continue until the first time mail-in ballots put a Republican majority in all branches of the government. Mail-in ballots will suddenly become crypto-racist.
I'd like somebody to explain to me why universal franchise is a priori such a great idea. We already know that pure democracy is a terrible idea--two wol
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What is the benefit of low- or no-information voters putting their 2 cents in?
Because the well-educated wealthy voters who have time to leave work and go vote don't care about those people's interests. If everyone voted for the common good and not their own interests, it wouldn't be such a concern - but that fact is changing rapidly.
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In your formulation, so long as a candidate promises to give things to certain people, and those people vote for them, that's acceptable, even desirable.
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Oh come on, you either don't really believe this or you are not thinking honestly about it.
You can't vote in favor of your interests if you don't know at least have a good background in whatever the major issues of the current political cycle are. NAFTA is a good example. A lot of the Bill Clinton constituency was especially hurt by it. It was apparent to a lot of people that the effect even if a net positive for things like GDP would be an expansion of the space between the haves and have nots (wealth-gap
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Outrageous! I'm sure Republican's commitment to the core principles of democracy are at least as strong as everybody else's.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
We already know that pure democracy is a terrible idea--two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner and all that.
That quote is often used to say democracy is bad when it's not, it doesn't fix the problem of a majority abusing a minority but it doesn't mean a small elite exploiting the masses is better. If we appointed a dictator by dice roll the sheep still gets eaten two out of three times and if the sheep somehow got in power the wolves would conspire against him. The legend of the noble leader keeping the savage primitives at bay is best left for fairy tales and colonialists. In fact the opposite is true, if we have two sheeps and a wolf then in a democracy you have no problem. But if the wolf manages to seize power then both sheep are on the menu.
It's true that you should appeal to grander principles in a constitution, but that won't work here because both wolves are already against you. A better situation is that you have a wolf, a sheep and a pig. In theory you might think the sheep and pig have common interests, but the wolf is trying to cut some kind of deal and both are afraid the other will switch sides. Better you than me, right? So they make some kind of ground rule that nobody gets eaten. It's a protection against exceptionalism like "nobody gets eaten, except ants" because the ant eater lobbied for it but it won't help if there's actually more predators than pray. Every part of the constitution exists because there was a majority for it.
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The constitution starts with "We the people." Or to rephrase as Abraham Lincoln did, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
That is, the constitution is ratified by the people. Not "We the male land owners", or "We whose ancestors arrived here before yours did", or "We the members of the one true political party". The people create the government and thus the people need the right to vote.
Note that the 14th amendment says, passed after a bloody war waged to get these words out: "But
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Mail in ballots is a recipe for fraud is supported.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/h... [wsj.com]
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Mail in ballots are a recipe for fraud... if you can't manage to go vote then you shouldn't get to vote.
This is an extreme position I don't think is really supportable.
It doesn't even deserve analysis. There are multiple US states that do elections entirely by mail, so there is actual data to look at about rates of fraud. If the accusation is that they are a "recipe for fraud," we can simply weigh that right now, there is no opinion contained in the claim; it is factual claim. The borders aren't well defined, but it is still a factual claim since the difference is not theoretical.
And fraud goes down. The debate before enacting vote-by-mail also included this prediction of
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Oregon switch to mail-in ballots in 1987. Starting in 1988, the State also began voting for Democrats for President, never another Republican.
Washington isn't as clear because they phased things in more, but 1983 is when special elections could be all mail-in ballots and by 1991 everyone could do a mail-in ballot. They also voted for Democrats from 1988 on.
Colorado started in 2016. They've voted for Democrats from 2008 on.
So all mail-in ballots has definitely been a Democratic Party thing, which they obviously believe favors them in various ways.
Here's the type of thing Republicans are afraid of: California changed their law for the 2018 elections to all ballot harvesting for mail-in ballots. As a result, they flipped at least 6 House seats based on collected votes. A GOP guy in NC tried the same thing in one House District, but it's illegal there, so they had a new election instead.
Ballot harvesting, influencing people's mail-in votes, losing or finding a few, etc... is the type of thing machine politics in big cities are good at. That's also dominated by the Democratic Party.
Re: No (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now my 85 year old grandmother who lives alone only feels safe going to 2 places: the post office and the grocery store. I guess she's just not worthy of the right to vote. My wife works in a senior living facility so if she gets sick her residents are at risk. I guess she doesn't get to vote either. Are there any other groups you would like to categorically disenfranchise to assuage your smug sense of superiority?
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Rather than telling other people to change society to fix her problems, maybe you can drive her to the polling place? Charity just isn't hard, and it feels good man.
Sure, let me just drive 6 hours from my house to her house in another state. Guess I don't get to vote now, either.
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How dare you talk sense?
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They're not immune, but it takes a massive operation to do something in significant volume. Also you can't swing the votes in a few districts to be massively different than polls without drawing attention. Like, the countries where the elections are corrupt you know it because so many croonies have to get involved. An electronic vote? Sure you can't go wild but you can nudge an entire state or nation's vote with one exploit. Particularly in elections with cut-off limits or winner takese it all you can get
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I'll just add that people shouldn't be going to Home Depot. They're only open because construction is an essential business. The majority of people there don't need to be there. And Wal-Mart - so much extra square footage open just because part of their store happens to sell groceries. They're not trying to abide the intent of the guidelines at all.
I'll agree with one thing - voting by an app is stupid. Especially since voting is handled primarily at the state and county levels. But most states alread
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I'm saying shouldn't. I'm not demanding anything from anyone - I'm just not going to these places when they're overrun. The stupidity will pay for itself.
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Not without commentary. That's my right.
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Fair enough. But do recognize there are states trying to impose some bizarre totalitarian shit right now.
I've always said that the villians in Ayn Rand's books were so shallow and comically 1-dimensional that when you spot someone acting that way in real life, that's pretty sad. But I never though to see politicians acting like the villain from the Book of Revelation, FFS.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the certificate of the beast, or the app signed by the number of his certificate.
OK, a bit of a modern translation, but come on, the very concept of legally mandated contract tracing apps should just scream "evil dic
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
There's been enough hysteria about "election influence" and efforts to delegitimize results that people didn't like without widespread mail in voting and the last thing this country needs is more of that, which is all we'll get (regardless of who wins) from the losing party for the next four years.
Hell, we had the winning party of the last presidential election bitching about "voter fraud" just because he didn't also win the popularity portion of the contest. Even set up a bullshit commission to look for evidence for his made up claims. The fact is voter fraud hasn't been shown to be a factor in any modern major election (and believe me, people are looking for it every time). The nice thing about mail-in voting is that by it's very nature there is a paper trail so it is easily audited.
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Probably true, but what are the options if and physical distancing measures of 6 feet or more still need to be in place because the pandemic is not yet brought under control? I can guarantee that we are not going to have anything remotely resembling herd immunity by voting day.
Do you just say "fuck it", creating a situation that will cause the health system to be completely overwhelmed, and let nearly 2 million people die?
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Citation needed. Facebook groups and Nextdoor threads do not count.
How about video? https://www.redstate.com/miran... [redstate.com]
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Ahh yes, ballot harvesting. Where someone collects legitimate votes and sends them in. What a travesty!
So military votes are fraud? (Score:5, Informative)
The military has been doing vote-by-mail for decades. Are those votes fraudulent?
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Nope, mail is ballots are not fraudulent and and of themselves. But the mail in system is more ripe for potential fraud. Its fairly easy to catch fraud when mail-in ballots are a small percentage, but when mail in ballots become 90% of the vote, it becomes much more difficult to detect fraud. We also have issues of anonymity. Someone could pay or threaten you to vote a certain way. With mail in ballots you can prove you voted that way. With in person voting someone can't prove how they voted. We take this
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Literally no one is saying that existing military should not be permitted to vote... we're talking about not expanding mail in voting, not banning it outright.
Find another strawman, this one burned down.
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Neither is Mail in Voting. His point is valid.
Not really sure what your point is.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
That's because the Constitution leaves elections up to the states. Entirely. The only federally run election is for President, and that is done by the Electoral College - which is run by individual state laws. Any actual voter ballots are not part of a federal election. Those are state-run elections to direct the electors.
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Those state-elected voters can still vote for whoever they wish, so the votes of the actual American people are effectively worthless.
It's still very rare for this to differ from the popular vote. That's why gerrymandering is still so big of a problem. Plus, the vote tally is still public record. The US is not a pure democracy by any stretch. And that's actually part of the check and balance system.
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Originally, States were divided into electoral districts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and a little down the page, you will see that currently Maine and Nebraska use Congressional districts.
Other elections do exist [Re:No] (Score:2)
What does gerrymandering have to do with the Electoral College? Spoiler alert: Nothing We vote for electors representing the entire state, not variable districts.
That is for the presidential election only.
The discussion of subverting the voting system is not limited to the presidential election. That is the one that Americans are obsessed with right now, but the House of representatives is an election of equal importance.
How the electoral college was intended... (Score:2)
And there is the lie about "American democracy":
The voter ballots are to elect someone who will vote for them at the federal level. Those state-elected voters can still vote for whoever they wish...
It is not clear whether the electoral college members can vote for whoever they wish or not.
Whether the electors can vote for whoever they wish is an issue that is right now in front of the supreme court.
(seems clear to me that yes, this was what the writers of the constitution intended... but it's not how it is what people today want.)
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And there is the lie about "American democracy":
The voter ballots are to elect someone who will vote for them at the federal level. Those state-elected voters can still vote for whoever they wish, so the votes of the actual American people are effectively worthless.
Let me see if I understand your thesis here:
Because the Constitution says that the several states get to choose the president (via the electoral college) there is no "democracy" in the US?
So the direct election of city, county, state, and federal representatives, governors, mayors, school boards, judges, etc... don't count?
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It was designed differently, more like the EU model where the electors could have been (were?) appointed by the State legislature along with the Senators.
Remember there were no parties in 1789 and reading the federalist papers, it was expected the electors to have digression on voting to avoid populists and elect statesmen.
Your Republic has evolved, amendments making the Senate no longer appointed and traditions and State laws about the electors to make them voted in by popular vote with limited freedom how
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Yeah...we need to fix that one and go back to appointed senators....and take some of the money out of the elections and influence.
GP's point is that (Score:2)
This is like how the Voting Rights Act worked, e.g. where the Federal Government would step in to watch elections in the South where it was well known that heavy voter suppression was used to prevent blacks from voting, such that di
Right to vote is in the constitution (Score:3)
The word "democracy" does not appear in the Constitution.
Article XV of the constitution is "Rights of Citizens to Vote." Democracy is defined by voting, so your point is technically true, but completely irrelevant.
The voter suppression you describe was a pillar of the Democratic Party back then. Republicans are the ones who ended it with the Voting Rights Act.
You mean the 1965 Voting Rights act, fought for and signed by President Johnson, voted into law when the Democrats held large majorities [house.gov] in both the Senate and the House of Representatives?
Clearly not the Voting Rights Act in our universe, passed by a Democrat-majority House and Senate and signed by a Democratic president. I think you're thinking abou
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Don't confuse the parties here! There was a very major shift in party alliances due to civil rights. That is most of the Democrat segregationists switched loyalty and became Republican segregationists! Similarly many black voters who used to be solidly Republican switched to becoming Democrats because of the civil rights act.
There were a few segregationists who hated the republicans so much that they briefly became Dixiecrats before giving in and becoming loyal Republicans. The best example is Strom Thur
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It's also stunning that some states/localities are requiring ID just to enter a restaurant, but you're a racist if you dare suggest that for voting.
Restaurants don't have to allow everyone in. Elections need to allow pretty much everyone. And for as long as access to time off work - not just to vote, but to get identification too - is a problem, this will continue to be an institutional racism issue. Fraud is secondary to getting all the votes in. Let's deal with fraud if/when we see it rather than use it as a scare tactic to block voting.
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And this is going to be problematic when it is unlikely that the six feet physical distancing measures recommended by health officials will probably not be possible to relax without leading to hundreds of thousands or even a million or more deaths.
This pandemic will not be brought under control until there is a vaccine or we have herd immunity simply because so many people have caught it. The latter won't happen until we also see at least a couple of million
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Race is irrelevant. It is impossible to function in society without an ID.
You're right. The problem is Voter ID laws are always pushing in conjunction with efforts to make it harder to get an ID, such as by closing ID offices or restricting hours. If you want Voter ID, fine. Then make sure a photo ID i issued to every single voter, free of charge. Even if that means going from door to door. Otherwise you are pushing for nothing more than a modern day poll tax.
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To date, the biggest vote fraud
And by "biggest" you mean, a small, isolated incident.
and there has been a lot of suspicion of fraud that hasn't been proven
Here's a good list of some other things that haven't been proven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Until the next person, using the same pen and breathing the same air, comes in right after you. Over and over again all day. Even if the virus only lives on a surface for a few hours, it will be everywhere very quickly.
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provided voters hold their breath and avoid touching anything while in the booth, and since that's a naive assumption, you're ready to disinfect the booth for each and every voter. that's going to be a long election week.
the solution is online voting, imo. it's not an uninformed opinion, i've worked with those systems and they can be trusted if managed properly, which includes a hell of oversight and preparation but is possible. on the bright side the accountability beats anything you've had, it would be th
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
It is called the "Executive Office", not the "Political Office". I am happy we have a capable executive in the office for the first time... Since when? I don't think you can find me a better executive by November. Try for next time.
You have a very odd definition of capable....
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What is your suggestion for both ensuring security, and convincing non-specialists that online voting is secure. The top US intelligence agencies have been unable to protect themselves from hacking, so why should I believe an online voting system will be better
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But even for those that do go there, the difference is that those are open multiple days a week, some for 24hrs. That's not the case for a single day of voting.
Couldn't make it to Home Depot/Costco today? Oh well go tomorrow.
Couldn't make it to vote today? Tough Shit.