4 ms·

Such incredibly simple steps. Who thought it was a good idea to "disrupt" voting by going electronic?

arminiusreturns 8y ago
The same kind of guys who scrapped William Binneys working multimillion dollar thinthread project for a multibillion dollar project that didn't work... Eg, the oligarchs and good Ole boys
beat 8y ago
It's not just electronic voting. Let's look at a real attempt to subvert elections - Voter ID laws. Voter ID is presented as a solution to a problem that actually does not exist, given this system. In Minnesota, you show up at the polling place, say your name and address, they find you on the registration list, check you off, and hand you a ballot. No need to prove you are who you say you are. If someone pretends to be you before you vote, then it's immediately and obviously brought to the attention of the judges (and we aren't seeing a massive wave of fakery now). If someone pretended to be you after you vote, they'd get caught. Of course, someone could fake it, with someone's registration that they know won't vote. But if they repeated it at a single precinct, the odds of being recognized as a repeat voter by the election judges goes up. So they would have to move from precinct to precinct, with a list of viable registered non-voters to use. Now, consider scale. A statewide Minnesota election is about 1.5M voters. To move the outcome 1% requires 15,000 votes. If one person can manage to vote illegally ten times in a day, it would require 1500 people in a conspiracy. Plus data management, tight enough for no errors. And NO leaks while these 1500 people are trained (and probably paid, if you want that many). With that in mind, the idea of actually manipulating the election with votes that could be prevented with Voter ID is absurd. But! If we put ID laws in place, we could well reduce the number of voters by 1%, and that result would be biased toward people who are poor or otherwise not fully integrated into mainstream society. Election manipulation, completely legal, and more effective than the mechanism it purports to prevent. Ugh. And hey, if voters are dumb enough to fall for that, maybe we can get them excited for touchscreen machines!
- fossuser 8y ago
  Rather than these attempts at selling electronic voting systems - couldn't there just be a company that establishes 'tried and true' paper ballot voting based on the best existing systems for fairness/anti-cheating. It seems like you should be able to do things more easily, less expensively, and with lower risk in a repeatable way in every state.
  - ratacat 8y ago
    Yes but why pay more for it if not technology?
- pathseeker 8y ago
  >And hey, if voters are dumb enough to fall for that, maybe we can get them excited for touchscreen machines! People are partisan and will buy any story that explains why they lose. A non-trivial portion of Democrats think the Russian advertisements on Facebook changed the election to Trump's favor.
- function_seven 8y ago
  This comment has put me firmly in the anti-Voter-ID column. I've always been on the fence regarding Voter ID. One one hand, I can see the effect that it would have on the makeup of the voters: older, richer, more established. On the other hand, I couldn't shake the idea that voting is too sacred to not enforce some level of identity verification. You just swept away my "on the other hand". Thanks.
  - patejam 8y ago
    So I still think we should have Voter-ID, but I don't think we're ready for it yet. My arguments for: First, don't people have to register to vote in most places? I don't see how bundling your Voter-ID acquisition with registering to vote would be bad. Second, a valid state ID should be enough to vote even with Voter-ID. This DRASTICALLY reduces the number of IDs we need to handle. My main argument against not doing it right now: We'd need proper funding that we're not going to get in the current political climate. A half-assed solution would be BAD.

The same kind of guys who scrapped William Binneys working multimillion dollar thinthread project for a multibillion dollar project that didn't work... Eg, the oligarchs and good Ole boys

beat 8y ago

It's not just electronic voting. Let's look at a real attempt to subvert elections - Voter ID laws. Voter ID is presented as a solution to a problem that actually does not exist, given this system. In Minnesota, you show up at the polling place, say your name and address, they find you on the registration list, check you off, and hand you a ballot. No need to prove you are who you say you are. If someone pretends to be you before you vote, then it's immediately and obviously brought to the attention of the judges (and we aren't seeing a massive wave of fakery now). If someone pretended to be you after you vote, they'd get caught. Of course, someone could fake it, with someone's registration that they know won't vote. But if they repeated it at a single precinct, the odds of being recognized as a repeat voter by the election judges goes up. So they would have to move from precinct to precinct, with a list of viable registered non-voters to use. Now, consider scale. A statewide Minnesota election is about 1.5M voters. To move the outcome 1% requires 15,000 votes. If one person can manage to vote illegally ten times in a day, it would require 1500 people in a conspiracy. Plus data management, tight enough for no errors. And NO leaks while these 1500 people are trained (and probably paid, if you want that many). With that in mind, the idea of actually manipulating the election with votes that could be prevented with Voter ID is absurd. But! If we put ID laws in place, we could well reduce the number of voters by 1%, and that result would be biased toward people who are poor or otherwise not fully integrated into mainstream society. Election manipulation, completely legal, and more effective than the mechanism it purports to prevent. Ugh. And hey, if voters are dumb enough to fall for that, maybe we can get them excited for touchscreen machines!

fossuser 8y ago
Rather than these attempts at selling electronic voting systems - couldn't there just be a company that establishes 'tried and true' paper ballot voting based on the best existing systems for fairness/anti-cheating. It seems like you should be able to do things more easily, less expensively, and with lower risk in a repeatable way in every state.
- ratacat 8y ago
  Yes but why pay more for it if not technology?
pathseeker 8y ago
>And hey, if voters are dumb enough to fall for that, maybe we can get them excited for touchscreen machines! People are partisan and will buy any story that explains why they lose. A non-trivial portion of Democrats think the Russian advertisements on Facebook changed the election to Trump's favor.
function_seven 8y ago
This comment has put me firmly in the anti-Voter-ID column. I've always been on the fence regarding Voter ID. One one hand, I can see the effect that it would have on the makeup of the voters: older, richer, more established. On the other hand, I couldn't shake the idea that voting is too sacred to not enforce some level of identity verification. You just swept away my "on the other hand". Thanks.
- patejam 8y ago
  So I still think we should have Voter-ID, but I don't think we're ready for it yet. My arguments for: First, don't people have to register to vote in most places? I don't see how bundling your Voter-ID acquisition with registering to vote would be bad. Second, a valid state ID should be enough to vote even with Voter-ID. This DRASTICALLY reduces the number of IDs we need to handle. My main argument against not doing it right now: We'd need proper funding that we're not going to get in the current political climate. A half-assed solution would be BAD.