5 ms·

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and

My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff getting on the phone with them to have them restart a service that had gone sluggish. Some amount of support is provided by the secretary of state, but the SoS elections office is also very small, and even the state's department of IT doesn't have a meaningful security department. I honestly think that the election system in the United States is simply too decentralized. Counties, even larger ones like mine, struggle to afford to hire a staff or retain contractors that have any kind of serious security expertise - or even expertise in reliable services. The federal elections commission was created to address some of these problems by providing centralized resources to states and counties, but it hasn't gone nearly far enough in my opinion. I have a had time imagining a way to make a serious improvement here without moving just about the entire platform for voting systems under the federal government.

bo1024 8y ago
I agree to some extent, but paper ballots seem to solve a lot of these expertise problems (in addition to all the security and reliability ones).
- jcrawfordor 8y ago
  Counties cannot afford to hand-tally paper ballots for the same reasons they can't afford to hire security expertise.
ISL 8y ago
The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't have to believe that someone in Washington DC is doing things right. Instead, I can interact directly with our state's secretary of state and our local county elections office. Decentralization with heterogeneous procedures makes election compromise a much greater logistical challenge for any nefarious actor. It is probably a lot easier to spend money on lobbying. Edit: Finally -- if you want your local/state elections infrastructure to have more resources, your voice and your vote are your tools.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  Decentralization may make targeted attacks easier compared to similar investment in a centralized equivalent (would be my guess at the argument here)
- everdev 8y ago
  In principle, yes. In practice, a halted recount in FL in 2000 affected who represented 100% of Americans as President. The number of true "toss up" states is unfortunately fairly small.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  > Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. If only populations were so evenly distributed. 1/2 of Americans live east of the Mississippi, on 1/3 of the Continental US, and about 1/2 of the rest live on the West Coast. The mideastern states have very few residents.
  - Armisael16 8y ago
    What are the mideastern states? If you mean the Midwest then I regret to inform you that Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are all in the top 10 most populous states.
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      Yes, those 3 Mideastern states are east of the Mississippi. They're in the middle of the continent, and east of my state, so they are mideast to me. Not to be confused with Arabia, east Mediterranean, and Persian gulf.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Don't agree. Just look at the history of Alec to see how local and regional governments are easily captured by self-serving actors. These are nice sentiments but the underlying assumptions are painfully naive.
r00fus 8y ago
I'm almost in agreement... I'd rather have centralized and constantly updated/audited standards which are mandated for all national level elections, and are enforced rigorously with federally funded programs. The actual implementation of how these standards are met should be left to the states. Updating the standards to eliminate exploits and loopholes would minimize gaming of the system. Ideally I also feel that somehow the entire nation should be incented to increase voting %. Just not sure how to do that though without creating unforeseen consequences.
revscat 8y ago
Why is it so taboo to talk about the fact that a significant portion of the political ruling class is eager to actively subvert democracy, no matter what technical solutions are available? The Republican Party does not care about electoral fairness, whether it’s papwr, electronic, or a physical show of hands. It is democracy itself they are opposed to, and will continue to amass power until bloodshed forces change. Proposing technical solutions assumes all players wish for fair elections. This is not the case.
- colemannugent 8y ago
  >It is democracy itself they [The Republican Party] are opposed to, and will continue to amass power until bloodshed forces change. So in your opinion, the solution to Republicans subverting democracy isn't well considered democratic action, but rather bloodshed? That seems rather anti-democratic. >Proposing technical solutions assumes all players wish for fair elections. This is not the case. So you can't think of any technical solutions that assume bad intentions on behalf of most of the involved actors? What about the protocol your browser used to send your comment to the servers that run this forum?
  - adjkant 8y ago
    I'm not in agreement about violence being the answer, but when the democracy has already been subverted, democratic action is very unlikely to be possible to fix it. It's then a populist power struggle that usually leads to violence. No one in the US government these days actually does much more than lip service to the idea of democracy, and we have long been going away from direct democracy for quite some time. The regularity that public opinion mismatches policy actions is staggering, and the amount of pressure of disagreement it takes to stop an unpopular policy is crazy.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      JFK put it simply: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
  - 8y ago

bo1024 8y ago

I agree to some extent, but paper ballots seem to solve a lot of these expertise problems (in addition to all the security and reliability ones).

jcrawfordor 8y ago
Counties cannot afford to hand-tally paper ballots for the same reasons they can't afford to hire security expertise.

ISL 8y ago

The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug. The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't have to believe that someone in Washington DC is doing things right. Instead, I can interact directly with our state's secretary of state and our local county elections office. Decentralization with heterogeneous procedures makes election compromise a much greater logistical challenge for any nefarious actor. It is probably a lot easier to spend money on lobbying. Edit: Finally -- if you want your local/state elections infrastructure to have more resources, your voice and your vote are your tools.

marmaduke 8y ago
Decentralization may make targeted attacks easier compared to similar investment in a centralized equivalent (would be my guess at the argument here)
everdev 8y ago
In principle, yes. In practice, a halted recount in FL in 2000 affected who represented 100% of Americans as President. The number of true "toss up" states is unfortunately fairly small.
stephengillie 8y ago
> Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. If only populations were so evenly distributed. 1/2 of Americans live east of the Mississippi, on 1/3 of the Continental US, and about 1/2 of the rest live on the West Coast. The mideastern states have very few residents.
- Armisael16 8y ago
  What are the mideastern states? If you mean the Midwest then I regret to inform you that Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are all in the top 10 most populous states.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Yes, those 3 Mideastern states are east of the Mississippi. They're in the middle of the continent, and east of my state, so they are mideast to me. Not to be confused with Arabia, east Mediterranean, and Persian gulf.
anigbrowl 8y ago
The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country. Don't agree. Just look at the history of Alec to see how local and regional governments are easily captured by self-serving actors. These are nice sentiments but the underlying assumptions are painfully naive.

r00fus 8y ago

I'm almost in agreement... I'd rather have centralized and constantly updated/audited standards which are mandated for all national level elections, and are enforced rigorously with federally funded programs. The actual implementation of how these standards are met should be left to the states. Updating the standards to eliminate exploits and loopholes would minimize gaming of the system. Ideally I also feel that somehow the entire nation should be incented to increase voting %. Just not sure how to do that though without creating unforeseen consequences.

revscat 8y ago

Why is it so taboo to talk about the fact that a significant portion of the political ruling class is eager to actively subvert democracy, no matter what technical solutions are available? The Republican Party does not care about electoral fairness, whether it’s papwr, electronic, or a physical show of hands. It is democracy itself they are opposed to, and will continue to amass power until bloodshed forces change. Proposing technical solutions assumes all players wish for fair elections. This is not the case.

colemannugent 8y ago
>It is democracy itself they [The Republican Party] are opposed to, and will continue to amass power until bloodshed forces change. So in your opinion, the solution to Republicans subverting democracy isn't well considered democratic action, but rather bloodshed? That seems rather anti-democratic. >Proposing technical solutions assumes all players wish for fair elections. This is not the case. So you can't think of any technical solutions that assume bad intentions on behalf of most of the involved actors? What about the protocol your browser used to send your comment to the servers that run this forum?
- adjkant 8y ago
  I'm not in agreement about violence being the answer, but when the democracy has already been subverted, democratic action is very unlikely to be possible to fix it. It's then a populist power struggle that usually leads to violence. No one in the US government these days actually does much more than lip service to the idea of democracy, and we have long been going away from direct democracy for quite some time. The regularity that public opinion mismatches policy actions is staggering, and the amount of pressure of disagreement it takes to stop an unpopular policy is crazy.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    JFK put it simply: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
- 8y ago