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Of course it's possible. And it probably happens. But can it realistically affect the outcome of an election? As I've said, about 1.5M people vote in Minnesota
by beat 8y ago
Of course it's possible. And it probably happens. But can it realistically affect the outcome of an election?
As I've said, about 1.5M people vote in Minnesota alone. Altering the outcome by 1% would require 15,000 additional votes. And this would need to be completely one-sided, so the "anyone can do it" threat you bring up should cluster around the mean - about the same number of "extra" votes are cast for each side.
Don't get caught up in scope issues. The problem we are trying to solve here is the legitimacy of elections. Does a little noise around the edges actually undermine the legitimacy of the outcome? Can it do so?
Also, remember there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Any mechanism that detects multiple votes by the same individual will produce a number of false positives - thus denying people who are not cheating of their vote. This is actually the pernicious, immoral logic of Voter ID laws in the US. They're marketed as ways to prevent fraud, but the actual intent is to reduce turnout in certain (mostly poor) communities. This is why support for these laws is so deeply partisan - one party is pushing for them, and one is fighting them, and the party pushing for them isn't actually that interested in fraud. Their political interest is partisan advantage, and their mechanism is misleading citizens about their intent, so people will tolerate what should be intolerable.
- travisoneill1 8y agoScope and distribution is a good point, and I'm not trying to say that this is an issue that routinely affects elections (and if it is I would look at small local elections with tiny turnout), but it can't be disproven in the current system and this is a problem. A system that ties each registered voter to a unique ID which is basically implemented for you if you require ID at the polls will have a false positive rate of ~0 much lower than our current system. This is actually a side benefit.
- beat 8y agoThat fails to address my points, either that there will be a cost in false positives (have fun stopping that), or that the motivation for making political hay out of this is partisan advantage from the false positives, not actually reducing a threat to democracy.
- travisoneill1 8y agoActually pretty easy. Thought of it after that post. No physical id requirement. Look into camera and enter SSN/DOB/name into PIN pad. If no match no vote. In case of identity theft there will be a collision and in that case let them through but send the photos and data to the police to arrest the faker.
- CydeWeys 8y agoFun fact, not everyone has a social security number, and they thus aren't required to vote. There is no single national ID number that would work for this purpose. The closest thing would be some kind of state-based voter registration ID, but no one is going to have that memorized.
- ppseafield 8y agoFlorida's election fiasco in 2000 won Bush the election.
- CydeWeys 8y agoYes, but that was a completely different issue from fraudulent voting (which wasn't found at any scale there); rather, it was a problem of bad ballot design and bad voting machines that didn't fully punch through the paper.