8 ms·

Honestly, I don’t see how people can be concerned about an audit trail without being concerned about voter id. It seems like the two go hand in hand. Why bothe

Honestly, I don’t see how people can be concerned about an audit trail without being concerned about voter id. It seems like the two go hand in hand. Why bother with the audit trail if you can’t verify the voters themselves?

danharaj 8y ago
Large scale voter fraud is much more difficult to pull off, especially if the rest of the process is well audited?
femto113 8y ago
One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. One person hacking a voting system can feasibly alter vote totals by hundreds or thousands.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. Yeah, and scaling voter fraud up in many if not all states is _extremely_ hard. You need at least: - a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote at each voting location; even one double-vote could blow your operation - a large number of people who are willing to actually cast the fraudulent ballots - logistics to shuttle your malicious voters between voting locations to cast their multiple ballots, without raising suspicion.
  - plasticchris 8y ago
    Like the scene from gangs of new York? Where they vote, shave, vote again...
  - masonic 8y ago
    a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote You can indentify large numbers of such candidates with high accuracy even without complex programming, let alone anything approaching AI, and the number of prospects can be huge in registrars which don't purge dead/moved voters. There is often an order of magnitude more unvoted ballots than the vote margin for most offices and measures. And generally, the party central committees get both registration data and turnout data for the entire county for free.
  - charleslmunger 8y ago
    If you control the machines, then it's actually pretty easy - you simply alter the votes of people who actually voted. There's no paper receipt or general mechanism for voters to verify they voted how they think they did. And it's absent for a good reason, which is that a nonrepudiatable vote receipt opens elections to coercion. A malicious machine could use a registration database (available to campaigns) to target elderly or otherwise likely tech unsavvy voters - people, who even if they found out their vote was altered, would probably have their complaints dismissed as user error like butterfly ballots in 2000. If your manipulation is spread across counties, and flips what would have already been a close election, it would almost certainly be undetected. Even if it was detected, the winning party (who doesn't even have to be in on the con) will defend the result. And without ironclad evidence of malfeasance, courts will be hesitant to give the appearance of overturning an election result. It's critical that we have real security in our elections.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  So have both? > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    > But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals. ...unless you make even a single mistake in your assumption of who will keep the secret or who will not vote so you can vote in their place.
    - masonic 8y ago
      But it's essentially risk-free. A false voter has left behind no identification, and video at the polling place is not allowed. Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless.
      - Redoubts 8y ago
        > Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless. That seems incorrect.
        masonic 8y ago
        It is correct. Think about it. How would you pull that ballot back out of the system to invalidate its votes? Those votes are by definition secret.
monocasa 8y ago
Because legislators pushing for voter ID have outed themselves consistently to be using the tactic to disenfranchise large swaths of citizens?
snowwrestler 8y ago
Voters are ID'd. When I go vote I have to volunteer my name and my address. That's identification. But it's also public info, right! What if someone else just walks up and gives my info?? Then I won't be able to vote. I'll have to file a provisional ballot and a complaint that someone stole my vote. These sorts of things are tracked and it turns out it's very rare. As a means of altering an election outcome, it just does not scale. Even to fraudulently elect a town dog catcher, you would need hundreds of people to fill out fraudulent ballots, one by one by one. Where are you going to get those people from? Why would they spend their time doing that? What's in it for them? What incentive would that have to keep it a secret? Can you see why it is dumb to worry about this kind of vote fraud?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- merlincorey 8y ago
  > Even to fraudulently elect a town dog catcher, you would need hundreds of people to fill out fraudulent ballots, one by one by one. Where are you going to get those people from? Why would they spend their time doing that? What's in it for them? What incentive would that have to keep it a secret? What if someone (perhaps a political campaign or party) with some kind of vested interest and a whole lot of money broke off a couple hundred dollars for a few hundred people? Seems like there's money and possibly NDAs involved, in that scenario. What if someone (perhaps a political party member) with some kind of ends-justify-the-means mentality thinks its for the greater good if they go around voting fraudulently? What if that person convinces a few other like-partied folks that it's for the best and they go along with it? There's certainly many possible scenarios for people committing some form of election fraud.
  - mrsteveman1 8y ago
    > What if someone (perhaps a political campaign or party) with some kind of vested interest and a whole lot of money broke off a couple hundred dollars for a few hundred people? If those people are OK with committing a felony for a few hundred dollars, ok, but I doubt most people would even entertain the idea. It's a huge risk, a personal risk, and takes a large number of people who all have to be trusted. And then any NDA they sign will be made irrelevant as soon as one of them gets immunity for testifying against the organizer in what would inevitably become a RICO case.
smt88 8y ago
I gave you a vote because this seems like an honest question. I suspect the downvotes are because you seem to believe a highly political myth (that voters are not ID'd or that fraud is widespread). FUD about voter fraud has been debunked over and over again, sometimes even by Republican officials. It's hard to do and just doesn't seem to be happening.
- brightball 8y ago
  It is an honest question. I’m familiar with the debate and I honestly don’t understand why it’s such a hot topic. From a sheer systems design standpoint, it’s one of those things that seems like a reasonable thing and the opposition has never made a lot of sense to me. From an audit trail standpoint, if we are taking measures to better ensure integrity of elections it seems like you would want to do both. Do it with whatever measures are necessary to ensure that people who would have difficulty obtaining an ID have some means to do it. It just seems like if we have a goal of removing questions about election integrity, we should go the whole way.
  - maym86 8y ago
    It's because it disenfranchises people without ID for no good reason. Fraud of this type doesn't happen. All voter ID does is make it harder to vote as it requires people to do more unessessary work to vote. From a "systems design standpoint" it's adding a feature for a high cost that that isn't needed and makes the result of the system worse as fewer people will participate. Overengineering at the expense of the user. In a perfect world I understand your point and in an ideal system everyone would be easily able to get the ID they need. In reality some people will find it harder than others to obtain the ID. The difficulty could be raised in areas where people in power wish to suppress the vote by limiting supply and people with less free time or money may not be able to get it. Making it even harder for people to vote is undemocratic and there is no reason to add this extra layer because there isn't really a problem that is solved by it. If there was strong eveidence then the trade-off might be acceptable but this really isn't the case. There is also a high added cost to the system. The discussion only exists because fewer voters generally means proportionally higher turnout for republicans and this is why they are cynically suggesting it. The true intentions of the populace in an election would be effected much more by the number of people who are excluded by a voter ID system than they ever would be by the statistically insignificant levels of direct voter fraud. I genuinely hope this helps you understand the other point of view.
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
Why is it when voter ID laws are proposed by legislators, they never propose a way to get IDs into the hands of eligible voters who don't already have them? Nothing about giving citizens IDs at 18, nor existing or easy pathways to get a voter ID if you don't have one. Nothing about registering for IDs at the polls, nor programs to ensure that vulnerable populations like the elderly have IDs. There's no assurance given that polls won't enforce ID requirements until a majority of voters have IDs, which should be the default stance of such laws. Voting is an important right and I'd expect our elected representatives to treat it with deference.
- travmatt 8y ago
  >Why is it when voter ID laws are proposed by legislators, they never propose a way to get IDs into the hands of eligible voters who don't already have them? In an odd and absolutely unrelated coincidence, republicans who push these laws also close dmv’s in minority areas, change their hours to make it harder for working class drivers to access them, and instruct dmv personnel to obscure the fact that id’s are free.

danharaj 8y ago

Large scale voter fraud is much more difficult to pull off, especially if the rest of the process is well audited?

femto113 8y ago

One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. One person hacking a voting system can feasibly alter vote totals by hundreds or thousands.

tomjakubowski 8y ago
> One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. Yeah, and scaling voter fraud up in many if not all states is _extremely_ hard. You need at least: - a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote at each voting location; even one double-vote could blow your operation - a large number of people who are willing to actually cast the fraudulent ballots - logistics to shuttle your malicious voters between voting locations to cast their multiple ballots, without raising suspicion.
- plasticchris 8y ago
  Like the scene from gangs of new York? Where they vote, shave, vote again...
- masonic 8y ago
  a priori knowledge of who is registered but will not vote You can indentify large numbers of such candidates with high accuracy even without complex programming, let alone anything approaching AI, and the number of prospects can be huge in registrars which don't purge dead/moved voters. There is often an order of magnitude more unvoted ballots than the vote margin for most offices and measures. And generally, the party central committees get both registration data and turnout data for the entire county for free.
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  If you control the machines, then it's actually pretty easy - you simply alter the votes of people who actually voted. There's no paper receipt or general mechanism for voters to verify they voted how they think they did. And it's absent for a good reason, which is that a nonrepudiatable vote receipt opens elections to coercion. A malicious machine could use a registration database (available to campaigns) to target elderly or otherwise likely tech unsavvy voters - people, who even if they found out their vote was altered, would probably have their complaints dismissed as user error like butterfly ballots in 2000. If your manipulation is spread across counties, and flips what would have already been a close election, it would almost certainly be undetected. Even if it was detected, the winning party (who doesn't even have to be in on the con) will defend the result. And without ironclad evidence of malfeasance, courts will be hesitant to give the appearance of overturning an election result. It's critical that we have real security in our elections.
rdtsc 8y ago
So have both? > One person committing voter ID fraud can feasibly vote a handful of times. But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > But a bus full of people driven around committing voter ID fraud can alter voter totals. ...unless you make even a single mistake in your assumption of who will keep the secret or who will not vote so you can vote in their place.
  - masonic 8y ago
    But it's essentially risk-free. A false voter has left behind no identification, and video at the polling place is not allowed. Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless.
    - Redoubts 8y ago
      > Even if the affected genuine voter eventually casts a successful provisional ballot, the fraudulent ballot is also counted and included regardless. That seems incorrect.
      - masonic 8y ago
        It is correct. Think about it. How would you pull that ballot back out of the system to invalidate its votes? Those votes are by definition secret.

monocasa 8y ago

Because legislators pushing for voter ID have outed themselves consistently to be using the tactic to disenfranchise large swaths of citizens?

snowwrestler 8y ago

Voters are ID'd. When I go vote I have to volunteer my name and my address. That's identification. But it's also public info, right! What if someone else just walks up and gives my info?? Then I won't be able to vote. I'll have to file a provisional ballot and a complaint that someone stole my vote. These sorts of things are tracked and it turns out it's very rare. As a means of altering an election outcome, it just does not scale. Even to fraudulently elect a town dog catcher, you would need hundreds of people to fill out fraudulent ballots, one by one by one. Where are you going to get those people from? Why would they spend their time doing that? What's in it for them? What incentive would that have to keep it a secret? Can you see why it is dumb to worry about this kind of vote fraud?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
merlincorey 8y ago
> Even to fraudulently elect a town dog catcher, you would need hundreds of people to fill out fraudulent ballots, one by one by one. Where are you going to get those people from? Why would they spend their time doing that? What's in it for them? What incentive would that have to keep it a secret? What if someone (perhaps a political campaign or party) with some kind of vested interest and a whole lot of money broke off a couple hundred dollars for a few hundred people? Seems like there's money and possibly NDAs involved, in that scenario. What if someone (perhaps a political party member) with some kind of ends-justify-the-means mentality thinks its for the greater good if they go around voting fraudulently? What if that person convinces a few other like-partied folks that it's for the best and they go along with it? There's certainly many possible scenarios for people committing some form of election fraud.
- mrsteveman1 8y ago
  > What if someone (perhaps a political campaign or party) with some kind of vested interest and a whole lot of money broke off a couple hundred dollars for a few hundred people? If those people are OK with committing a felony for a few hundred dollars, ok, but I doubt most people would even entertain the idea. It's a huge risk, a personal risk, and takes a large number of people who all have to be trusted. And then any NDA they sign will be made irrelevant as soon as one of them gets immunity for testifying against the organizer in what would inevitably become a RICO case.

smt88 8y ago

I gave you a vote because this seems like an honest question. I suspect the downvotes are because you seem to believe a highly political myth (that voters are not ID'd or that fraud is widespread). FUD about voter fraud has been debunked over and over again, sometimes even by Republican officials. It's hard to do and just doesn't seem to be happening.

brightball 8y ago
It is an honest question. I’m familiar with the debate and I honestly don’t understand why it’s such a hot topic. From a sheer systems design standpoint, it’s one of those things that seems like a reasonable thing and the opposition has never made a lot of sense to me. From an audit trail standpoint, if we are taking measures to better ensure integrity of elections it seems like you would want to do both. Do it with whatever measures are necessary to ensure that people who would have difficulty obtaining an ID have some means to do it. It just seems like if we have a goal of removing questions about election integrity, we should go the whole way.
- maym86 8y ago
  It's because it disenfranchises people without ID for no good reason. Fraud of this type doesn't happen. All voter ID does is make it harder to vote as it requires people to do more unessessary work to vote. From a "systems design standpoint" it's adding a feature for a high cost that that isn't needed and makes the result of the system worse as fewer people will participate. Overengineering at the expense of the user. In a perfect world I understand your point and in an ideal system everyone would be easily able to get the ID they need. In reality some people will find it harder than others to obtain the ID. The difficulty could be raised in areas where people in power wish to suppress the vote by limiting supply and people with less free time or money may not be able to get it. Making it even harder for people to vote is undemocratic and there is no reason to add this extra layer because there isn't really a problem that is solved by it. If there was strong eveidence then the trade-off might be acceptable but this really isn't the case. There is also a high added cost to the system. The discussion only exists because fewer voters generally means proportionally higher turnout for republicans and this is why they are cynically suggesting it. The true intentions of the populace in an election would be effected much more by the number of people who are excluded by a voter ID system than they ever would be by the statistically insignificant levels of direct voter fraud. I genuinely hope this helps you understand the other point of view.

fucking_tragedy 8y ago

Why is it when voter ID laws are proposed by legislators, they never propose a way to get IDs into the hands of eligible voters who don't already have them? Nothing about giving citizens IDs at 18, nor existing or easy pathways to get a voter ID if you don't have one. Nothing about registering for IDs at the polls, nor programs to ensure that vulnerable populations like the elderly have IDs. There's no assurance given that polls won't enforce ID requirements until a majority of voters have IDs, which should be the default stance of such laws. Voting is an important right and I'd expect our elected representatives to treat it with deference.

travmatt 8y ago
>Why is it when voter ID laws are proposed by legislators, they never propose a way to get IDs into the hands of eligible voters who don't already have them? In an odd and absolutely unrelated coincidence, republicans who push these laws also close dmv’s in minority areas, change their hours to make it harder for working class drivers to access them, and instruct dmv personnel to obscure the fact that id’s are free.