3 ms·

You’re asking someone to prove something that can’t be proven by design. No identification requirements, same-day registration, no signature verification, no c

You’re asking someone to prove something that can’t be proven by design. No identification requirements, same-day registration, no signature verification, no chain of custody requirements, completely irreversible and unauditable ballots... Partisans have created a system designed for abuse and now are incredulous that anyone question the results. You’ve effectively deleted the server logs, claimed your system is perfect and impenetrable, and are now asking anyone with questions to prove otherwise.

djbebs 6y ago
This is the core issue at stake here, and why neither side will be able to ever rightfully claim their side won the election.
- oezi 6y ago
  No, the GOP will continue to push the myth that the democrats didn't win. The democrats will rightfully claim that they won. Despite all talking it is just that easy.
- zo1 6y ago
  Agreed - One can't look at the system from the outside and honestly say it's perfect and incorruptible. So instead it relies on us having "trust" in the institutions that facilitate them and the "election officials" with potentially ridiculous training, no audit, no recordings and no mandated certification, all topped with the real potential for bias because hey, we're humans. And we know that trust in governmental institutions and politicians is not universal. I'd go out on a limb and posit that a good chunk of the individuals here would advocate and insist on all sorts of various audit trails, cryptographic hashes, check-digits, security layers and "oversight" with privacy and security guarantees with certification and training and and and... if this were health data. But when it comes to something like the leadership of a nation, we suddenly revert to "it's okay, trust the election officials and pieces of paper with dubious transportation mechanisms and security", don't worry, there were official "processes" to ensure no irregularity.
titzer 6y ago
> You’ve effectively deleted the server logs, claimed your system is perfect and impenetrable, and are now asking anyone with questions to prove otherwise. I'm all for auditable, verifiable processes, paper trails and all of that. Thankfully election security officials do work on that! But the people standing up to claim massive fraud are not claiming that because they have evidence, it's because they lost and they are pissed off about it. What they are proposing for remedies is to just throw the whole process out and declare Donald Trump won. Interestingly, they are not challenging any Senate results (Georgia TBD), House results, or even local results. People are claiming massive fraud because of complete lies. They aren't claiming "something might be fishy here, let's check, recount, etc." Because we did that. All of the swing states recounted their votes, some twice, by hand. They went into the signature verification, observation process, the whole show. No, instead, the crazies go right to the rails and the people who yell the loudest are out there right now showing us exactly what they think of the US Constitution, the law, and this whole process.
oezi 6y ago
I don't know about the US, but mail-in voting should be no different from voting in person (in person verification being the only difference). It must highly traceable in that a registered, actual person can cast only a single vote. Unless tampering happens during vote counting, there is the same keeping of records / audit possibilities.
jcranmer 6y ago
There was an audit in GA of ~20,000 mail-in ballots for signature verification. 8 ballots were adjudicated to have mismatched signatures; another 2 were improperly signed. All 10 of them, when followed up with the purported voter, were found to be valid. This gives you a rough estimate of voter fraud of having an impact of <0.01% of the election results. The tightest race this year was 0.25% margin--that's a full 20× a reasonable upper bound on the incidence of voter fraud. Fraud doesn't change election results. On the flip side, some of what you claim about--particularly ID rules--has a real disenfranchising effect on people. Having valid ID isn't an issue if you're someone who drives, but if you're someone who is physically incapable of driving and can't get a driver's license, well, obtaining that ID can be quite difficult. (Even getting a driver's license in my state requires going to a particular building in the hours of 9-5 M-F--sucks if you have an hourly job you can't get time off to get an ID!) A lot of the rest of what you complain about... [citation needed]. The complaints I've seen about signature verification aren't about requiring a signature on the ballot, it's about requiring a second signature (IIRC, unrelated to you!) to "witness" you doing the ballot yourself. In all the states I'm aware of, the voter is still required to sign the ballot themselves.
- salawat 6y ago
  Signing the ballot defeats the purpose of anonymous voting. What State has you personally sign your ballot?
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    You give up an element of this anonymity and repudiablity when using a mail-in ballot system instead of a truly anonymous in-person voting system. The votes are still tallied anonymously, and it's impossible to post-hoc validate who you voted for, so it serves the anonymity purposes since you can't check whether your investment in buying votes was successful. Every state that does mail-in voting at all requires a signature. Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Missouri also require a witness -- Missisipi requires a notary.
  - Macha 6y ago
    My understanding is the process in a lot of these states is that you put the anonymous ballot in an envelope, then put that envelope in an outer envelope and sign the outer envelope. The idea being that the officials check the signature on the outer envelope, if it's valid and non-duplicated they open it and put the now-anonymous envelope with the sealed ballot in the pile of votes to be counted. This is then opened by the vote counter, and this person who has no idea of the origin is the first to see what the contents of it are.
dillondoyle 6y ago
There are many states that require for instance including a scan of your license on your first mail in vote. Others that make it almost impossible to get a mail ballot in part because of 'identity' requirements

djbebs 6y ago

This is the core issue at stake here, and why neither side will be able to ever rightfully claim their side won the election.

oezi 6y ago
No, the GOP will continue to push the myth that the democrats didn't win. The democrats will rightfully claim that they won. Despite all talking it is just that easy.
zo1 6y ago
Agreed - One can't look at the system from the outside and honestly say it's perfect and incorruptible. So instead it relies on us having "trust" in the institutions that facilitate them and the "election officials" with potentially ridiculous training, no audit, no recordings and no mandated certification, all topped with the real potential for bias because hey, we're humans. And we know that trust in governmental institutions and politicians is not universal. I'd go out on a limb and posit that a good chunk of the individuals here would advocate and insist on all sorts of various audit trails, cryptographic hashes, check-digits, security layers and "oversight" with privacy and security guarantees with certification and training and and and... if this were health data. But when it comes to something like the leadership of a nation, we suddenly revert to "it's okay, trust the election officials and pieces of paper with dubious transportation mechanisms and security", don't worry, there were official "processes" to ensure no irregularity.

titzer 6y ago

> You’ve effectively deleted the server logs, claimed your system is perfect and impenetrable, and are now asking anyone with questions to prove otherwise. I'm all for auditable, verifiable processes, paper trails and all of that. Thankfully election security officials do work on that! But the people standing up to claim massive fraud are not claiming that because they have evidence, it's because they lost and they are pissed off about it. What they are proposing for remedies is to just throw the whole process out and declare Donald Trump won. Interestingly, they are not challenging any Senate results (Georgia TBD), House results, or even local results. People are claiming massive fraud because of complete lies. They aren't claiming "something might be fishy here, let's check, recount, etc." Because we did that. All of the swing states recounted their votes, some twice, by hand. They went into the signature verification, observation process, the whole show. No, instead, the crazies go right to the rails and the people who yell the loudest are out there right now showing us exactly what they think of the US Constitution, the law, and this whole process.

oezi 6y ago

I don't know about the US, but mail-in voting should be no different from voting in person (in person verification being the only difference). It must highly traceable in that a registered, actual person can cast only a single vote. Unless tampering happens during vote counting, there is the same keeping of records / audit possibilities.

jcranmer 6y ago

There was an audit in GA of ~20,000 mail-in ballots for signature verification. 8 ballots were adjudicated to have mismatched signatures; another 2 were improperly signed. All 10 of them, when followed up with the purported voter, were found to be valid. This gives you a rough estimate of voter fraud of having an impact of <0.01% of the election results. The tightest race this year was 0.25% margin--that's a full 20× a reasonable upper bound on the incidence of voter fraud. Fraud doesn't change election results. On the flip side, some of what you claim about--particularly ID rules--has a real disenfranchising effect on people. Having valid ID isn't an issue if you're someone who drives, but if you're someone who is physically incapable of driving and can't get a driver's license, well, obtaining that ID can be quite difficult. (Even getting a driver's license in my state requires going to a particular building in the hours of 9-5 M-F--sucks if you have an hourly job you can't get time off to get an ID!) A lot of the rest of what you complain about... [citation needed]. The complaints I've seen about signature verification aren't about requiring a signature on the ballot, it's about requiring a second signature (IIRC, unrelated to you!) to "witness" you doing the ballot yourself. In all the states I'm aware of, the voter is still required to sign the ballot themselves.

salawat 6y ago
Signing the ballot defeats the purpose of anonymous voting. What State has you personally sign your ballot?
- freeone3000 6y ago
  You give up an element of this anonymity and repudiablity when using a mail-in ballot system instead of a truly anonymous in-person voting system. The votes are still tallied anonymously, and it's impossible to post-hoc validate who you voted for, so it serves the anonymity purposes since you can't check whether your investment in buying votes was successful. Every state that does mail-in voting at all requires a signature. Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Missouri also require a witness -- Missisipi requires a notary.
- Macha 6y ago
  My understanding is the process in a lot of these states is that you put the anonymous ballot in an envelope, then put that envelope in an outer envelope and sign the outer envelope. The idea being that the officials check the signature on the outer envelope, if it's valid and non-duplicated they open it and put the now-anonymous envelope with the sealed ballot in the pile of votes to be counted. This is then opened by the vote counter, and this person who has no idea of the origin is the first to see what the contents of it are.

dillondoyle 6y ago

There are many states that require for instance including a scan of your license on your first mail in vote. Others that make it almost impossible to get a mail ballot in part because of 'identity' requirements