5 ms·

There are no do-overs in an election. If a system is compromised, either legitimately or through political gas lighting, there won’t be a paper trail to fall ba

There are no do-overs in an election. If a system is compromised, either legitimately or through political gas lighting, there won’t be a paper trail to fall back on. There’s also some theories that voting at home on something like your phone is far more subjected to coercion. This is why some states refuse to go 100% mail-in this year, even at the expense of public health. Sure, someone can always threaten you to vote a certain way, but polling places are designed to prevent that as much as possible. Then there’s just us, the population. We live in an age that people doubt vaccines, or think the earth is flat, or that COVID 19 is a fake crisis manufactured by the Democrats to win the election. If 100% of votes are done digitally, some group will undoubtedly not believe the outcome of the election.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> There are no do-overs in an election Sure there are, quite literally Ordering a new election from scratch is a not-unheard-of remedy for election irregularities for which there is no other way to correct the irregularity.
- jarjoura 6y ago
  Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone? In 2000 Bush vs Gore, the Supreme Court canceled the recount. That’s the closest I’ve seen to the courts stepping in to fix a mess.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone? The (completely optional) popular elections for US Presidential electors don't generally have laws that would support a judicially-ordered revote as a remedy because they have a built-in after the fact legislative remedy, since the legislature ultimately decides the mechanism by which electors are assigned (and can simply do so itself), and can revise it's decision even after a public balloting has occurred (in principle, such an retrospective change removes the states electoral votes from the safe harbor provision that applies to procedures fully adopted in advance, but then the safe harbor rule itself is unenforceable and effectively a symbolic statement of intent.) But that's a fairly special case, and a result of the peculiar design of US Presidential elections, not something general to elections. This doesn't prevent a do-over, it just means that it wouldn't come from judiciary. It also means that the decision would be highly partisan. While not about do overs (but potentially about legislative intervention in other ways), that's why the anti-mail-ballot propaganda (and Trump's double voting advocacy) is heavily targeting Republican-legislative-majority states that are polling close or leaning Biden.
  - sudenmorsian 6y ago
    Not a presidential election, but the 1974 New Hampshire senate election was redone in September 1975 following multiple contested recounts producing different winners [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_and_1975_United_States_Senate_elections_in_New_Hampshire?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_and_1975_United_States_Se...
- toast0 6y ago
  Ordering a new election from scratch and obtaining an air of legitimacy requires either that the rules for that were written ahead of time, or that the winner of the disputed election ask for the new election. In the US, I haven't seen any indication we have rules for a new election. We certainly don't have such rules for the president, except that the electors can be selected by state legislators and if the electors don't provide a result, US legislators can select the president.
  - motardo 6y ago
    For example, a new election was ordered for the 2018 NC 9th district congressional race. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-candidate-mark-harris-calls-new-election-north-carolina-disputed-n974176 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-candida...
- mNovak 6y ago
  Agreed. See the recent Austrian presidential election [1]--it was completely repeated because some irregularity in the mail-in ballots (which numbered enough to swing the outcome) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_ele...

dragonwriter 6y ago

> There are no do-overs in an election Sure there are, quite literally Ordering a new election from scratch is a not-unheard-of remedy for election irregularities for which there is no other way to correct the irregularity.

jarjoura 6y ago
Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone? In 2000 Bush vs Gore, the Supreme Court canceled the recount. That’s the closest I’ve seen to the courts stepping in to fix a mess.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Do you have an example of a presidential election that was redone? The (completely optional) popular elections for US Presidential electors don't generally have laws that would support a judicially-ordered revote as a remedy because they have a built-in after the fact legislative remedy, since the legislature ultimately decides the mechanism by which electors are assigned (and can simply do so itself), and can revise it's decision even after a public balloting has occurred (in principle, such an retrospective change removes the states electoral votes from the safe harbor provision that applies to procedures fully adopted in advance, but then the safe harbor rule itself is unenforceable and effectively a symbolic statement of intent.) But that's a fairly special case, and a result of the peculiar design of US Presidential elections, not something general to elections. This doesn't prevent a do-over, it just means that it wouldn't come from judiciary. It also means that the decision would be highly partisan. While not about do overs (but potentially about legislative intervention in other ways), that's why the anti-mail-ballot propaganda (and Trump's double voting advocacy) is heavily targeting Republican-legislative-majority states that are polling close or leaning Biden.
- sudenmorsian 6y ago
  Not a presidential election, but the 1974 New Hampshire senate election was redone in September 1975 following multiple contested recounts producing different winners [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_and_1975_United_States_Senate_elections_in_New_Hampshire?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_and_1975_United_States_Se...
toast0 6y ago
Ordering a new election from scratch and obtaining an air of legitimacy requires either that the rules for that were written ahead of time, or that the winner of the disputed election ask for the new election. In the US, I haven't seen any indication we have rules for a new election. We certainly don't have such rules for the president, except that the electors can be selected by state legislators and if the electors don't provide a result, US legislators can select the president.
- motardo 6y ago
  For example, a new election was ordered for the 2018 NC 9th district congressional race. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-candidate-mark-harris-calls-new-election-north-carolina-disputed-n974176 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-candida...
mNovak 6y ago
Agreed. See the recent Austrian presidential election [1]--it was completely repeated because some irregularity in the mail-in ballots (which numbered enough to swing the outcome) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_ele...