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To you, an election where (say) only 25% of the electorate vote but there is 0 fraud according to the rules is "fair". Which it may be in some circumstances (e.

To you, an election where (say) only 25% of the electorate vote but there is 0 fraud according to the rules is "fair". Which it may be in some circumstances (e.g. if the reason for those not voting is solely them being lazy), but I'm sure you can imagine why a rational person might look at that and conclude it is in fact very unfair in other circumstances. It's a fact that voter turnout across the US is far too low. It has many causes, some political (like votes getting implicitly suppressed via brazen gerrymandering) and some not (like ballots just not being the easiest things to fill out), and some in-between (like indirect obstacles that make it difficult for some minorities to vote). The idea here seems to be to remove as many obstacles as possible to increase voter turnout. Of course if that happens to help your party then you'll like it and probably support it, and if it happens to help the other party then you'll dislike it and probably be against it. But at least on its face, it has a bona fide goal that any political party that seeks legitimate elections should be supporting. Compare that to brazenly unfair practices like the extreme gerrymandering we see that are clearly solely designed to manipulate election outcomes (and which might even discourage people from voting in the first place) and I think you can imagine why a "rational person" might look beyond the game rules when deciding fairness.

TechBro8615 6y ago
Of course I want voter turnout to be high. But I’m skeptical of any solution that lowers the scalability barrier to voter fraud. Ballot harvesting does that. Without ballot harvesting, voter fraud is difficult to scale. It requires coordination among large groups of malicious actors. But if you allow individuals to submit ballots in bulk, the scalability problem is reduced such that one bad actor can have an outsized effect on the fairness of the election. While I agree that increasing voter turnout is a noble goal, I do not agree it should be achieved “at all costs.” Everyone should vote, but everyone who does vote must know that their vote was counted, and that it was counted accurately. And nobody who did not vote should have a vote counted in their name. Ballot harvesting, IMO, seems to increase the difficulty of meeting these requirements of fairness.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I mean, your values are different, so you come to a different conclusion. I'm sure you can understand why, to other people, your position seems to be "0% voter fraud at all costs", when people have gerrymandering and other such things to deal with. So hopefully now you can see that the reason others come to different conclusions from you isn't that you're rational and they're irrational.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    No, sorry, I maintain the position that it’s irrational to think that legalizing bulk ballot harvesting leads to a net increase of fairness in elections. Note the qualifier of bulk. It’s perfectly reasonable to allow submitting the ballot of family members, or perhaps even neighbors, within limits. My problem is with the idea of bulk ballot harvesting, where one person has the ability to carry a box of hundreds of ballots to a polling place. Absent any sort of chain of custody, which AFAIK does not exist, how can you be certain that person did not modify the ballots, or that they even gave them to other voters in the first place? Compare this to the potential gain of ballot harvesting: increased voter turnout because people who could not submit ballots now can. Note that the cost of submitting a ballot is inserting it into a mailbox. IMO, it is irrational to think there are more members of the population who are unable to submit a ballot into a mailbox, than the number of false ballots that a small group of malicious actors could submit. In fact, it seems like any argument in favor of ballot harvesting is ameliorated by the ability to vote by mail. And in either case, I maintain that it’s crucial to introduce some system that allows provable chain of custody for ballots, so that results may be audited.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      Right, of course you're the rational one. Completely disregarding historical and ongoing gerrymandering, onerous voter ID laws, and all the other hurdles that have been brazenly thrown and which continue to be thrown in people's ways in bulk to discourage them from voting, make it more difficult for them to cast their ballots, and nullify the effects of their votes. Everyone else who disagrees is irrational. The ones who dare to try to remove one obstacle in bulk are irrational partisans trying to rig a completely fair game because their solution isn't scalable like AWS Lambda.

TechBro8615 6y ago

Of course I want voter turnout to be high. But I’m skeptical of any solution that lowers the scalability barrier to voter fraud. Ballot harvesting does that. Without ballot harvesting, voter fraud is difficult to scale. It requires coordination among large groups of malicious actors. But if you allow individuals to submit ballots in bulk, the scalability problem is reduced such that one bad actor can have an outsized effect on the fairness of the election. While I agree that increasing voter turnout is a noble goal, I do not agree it should be achieved “at all costs.” Everyone should vote, but everyone who does vote must know that their vote was counted, and that it was counted accurately. And nobody who did not vote should have a vote counted in their name. Ballot harvesting, IMO, seems to increase the difficulty of meeting these requirements of fairness.

mehrdadn 6y ago
I mean, your values are different, so you come to a different conclusion. I'm sure you can understand why, to other people, your position seems to be "0% voter fraud at all costs", when people have gerrymandering and other such things to deal with. So hopefully now you can see that the reason others come to different conclusions from you isn't that you're rational and they're irrational.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  No, sorry, I maintain the position that it’s irrational to think that legalizing bulk ballot harvesting leads to a net increase of fairness in elections. Note the qualifier of bulk. It’s perfectly reasonable to allow submitting the ballot of family members, or perhaps even neighbors, within limits. My problem is with the idea of bulk ballot harvesting, where one person has the ability to carry a box of hundreds of ballots to a polling place. Absent any sort of chain of custody, which AFAIK does not exist, how can you be certain that person did not modify the ballots, or that they even gave them to other voters in the first place? Compare this to the potential gain of ballot harvesting: increased voter turnout because people who could not submit ballots now can. Note that the cost of submitting a ballot is inserting it into a mailbox. IMO, it is irrational to think there are more members of the population who are unable to submit a ballot into a mailbox, than the number of false ballots that a small group of malicious actors could submit. In fact, it seems like any argument in favor of ballot harvesting is ameliorated by the ability to vote by mail. And in either case, I maintain that it’s crucial to introduce some system that allows provable chain of custody for ballots, so that results may be audited.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    Right, of course you're the rational one. Completely disregarding historical and ongoing gerrymandering, onerous voter ID laws, and all the other hurdles that have been brazenly thrown and which continue to be thrown in people's ways in bulk to discourage them from voting, make it more difficult for them to cast their ballots, and nullify the effects of their votes. Everyone else who disagrees is irrational. The ones who dare to try to remove one obstacle in bulk are irrational partisans trying to rig a completely fair game because their solution isn't scalable like AWS Lambda.