3 ms·

Nothing you just stated is evidence.

gwright 6y ago
If we are at the point that we have to have "evidence" (in the legal sense) that fraud has occurred in order to resolve the outcome of an election, then the water is under the bridge. Voting process and procedures should all be designed to build and strengthen transparency, to fortify the process against actual fraud and vague assertions of fraud that can't be trivially disproved. We find ourselves in a situation where the processes have been constructed in such a way that there is suspicion about the outcome and logistical difficulties at disproving what should be by design trivially disprovable, this just creates a terrible feedback loop of mistrust. The argument that we don't need better controls until actual widespread fraud can be proved in a court of law seems mistaken to me. We need the controls to keep us from getting to the point where a forensic analysis is needed to discern what happened during an election. I realize that there are legitimate concerns that better voting controls can result in "voter suppression" but our haphazard approach to voting controls and process transparency has left us in a place where large numbers of people are suspicious and there doesn't seem to be any effective way to counter those suspicions in part due to the haphazard controls.
- mewse 6y ago
  With respect, that isn’t why large numbers of people are suspicious.
  - gwright 6y ago
    That is just too cryptic to respond to specifically, but I certainly don't claim that my comments explain everything that is going on.
zo1 6y ago
Arguments are distinctly different to evidence/facts.
orblivion 6y ago
I'd argue we need evidence that there was a fair election, not evidence that there was fraud. If there's non-trivial ambiguity, there's room for fraud, and people will likely enough exploit it. Stupid example: What if only Republicans were allowed to count ballots, and the only result you got was a number of votes that they told you, and they threw away all of the records. It would be impossible to get evidence, but you wouldn't need any evidence to rightfully distrust the result. Purely electronic voting systems are analogous, though it differs in the details and degrees of things.

If we are at the point that we have to have "evidence" (in the legal sense) that fraud has occurred in order to resolve the outcome of an election, then the water is under the bridge. Voting process and procedures should all be designed to build and strengthen transparency, to fortify the process against actual fraud and vague assertions of fraud that can't be trivially disproved. We find ourselves in a situation where the processes have been constructed in such a way that there is suspicion about the outcome and logistical difficulties at disproving what should be by design trivially disprovable, this just creates a terrible feedback loop of mistrust. The argument that we don't need better controls until actual widespread fraud can be proved in a court of law seems mistaken to me. We need the controls to keep us from getting to the point where a forensic analysis is needed to discern what happened during an election. I realize that there are legitimate concerns that better voting controls can result in "voter suppression" but our haphazard approach to voting controls and process transparency has left us in a place where large numbers of people are suspicious and there doesn't seem to be any effective way to counter those suspicions in part due to the haphazard controls.

mewse 6y ago
With respect, that isn’t why large numbers of people are suspicious.
- gwright 6y ago
  That is just too cryptic to respond to specifically, but I certainly don't claim that my comments explain everything that is going on.

zo1 6y ago

Arguments are distinctly different to evidence/facts.

orblivion 6y ago

I'd argue we need evidence that there was a fair election, not evidence that there was fraud. If there's non-trivial ambiguity, there's room for fraud, and people will likely enough exploit it. Stupid example: What if only Republicans were allowed to count ballots, and the only result you got was a number of votes that they told you, and they threw away all of the records. It would be impossible to get evidence, but you wouldn't need any evidence to rightfully distrust the result. Purely electronic voting systems are analogous, though it differs in the details and degrees of things.