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Can you please point to where I contradict any of that? It's like telling your grandma to install security updates, and her coming back saying no one has broke

Can you please point to where I contradict any of that? It's like telling your grandma to install security updates, and her coming back saying no one has broken into her computer so it must be secure (while gramps insists someone has). The simple fact of the matter is our elections are NOT secure, and making them secure would be cheap, and easy. We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. That doesn't mean anyone stole this election. That certainly doesn't mean Democrats stole this election. But it does mean we should secure them. Of course, physical security is a cheap and easy step. The harder part is gaming our media. If attackers can help direct where voters vote with $$$, that's a cheap attack too. As a footnote, if I were an attacker, of any type, I wouldn't even bother with the November election. The easiest place to attack is primaries. Both 2020 and 2016, we had among the weakest candidates among the crop win. We're going from a con artist to a senile mildly corrupt lifetime politician of limited accomplishment. UPGRADE! I'll expect we'll move from major corruption to minor corruption, without an attempted coup. What I think we deserve, though, is a politician with intelligence, vision, and integrity. That requires fixing systems, rather than GOP pointing to DNC, and vice-versa.

adamsea 6y ago
> The harder part is gaming our media. If attackers can help direct where voters vote with $$$, that's a cheap attack too. Let’s be real that’s basically a part of politics. That’s not an issue with elections per se. Plus it’s clearly easier to just use social media and targeted propaganda to manipulate voters. I’m all for secure elections and improving that security. But my understanding is that to date when people have taken a serious look they’ve found no meaningful evidence of fraud. The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college then the presidency wouldn’t come down to a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few states.
- wolco3 6y ago
  Gaming of the media is a title/position. Probably the easiest part of an attack-
- toyg 6y ago
  > The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college I reckon the US system needs to self-reform if it wants to survive. All democracies change their electoral laws from time to time. The current system appears unsustainable: roughly two thirds of the electorate now feel fundamentally disenfranchised (one third thinks it's racist; the other that it's corrupt).
  - woofie11 6y ago
    ... and it's both racist and corrupt. I agree we need reform if we're to survive. Between BLM this spring, DC now, the fringe militant elements, we're seeing more and more violence. I will mention that the split-down-the-middle thing isn't a property of electoral college. That's how you win in a democracy. If voters are distributed between 1 and 10 on some issue: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 I win by picking 5.5. Whatever you pick, you get a minority of voters. That's complicated by primaries. In the same system, if I want to be a ballot candidate, though, I can't do that. I want to pick 2.75 or 7.25 so the majority of my party votes for me. Of course, things like charisma fit in a bit too, but for the most part, if one party runs a 2.74 candidate and the other a 7.24, the 7.24 has an advantage, and vice-versa for 2.76 and 7.76. All that things like electoral college do is shift weights. Tight elections just means politicians have learned to play the game well. A system where someone with 40% or 60% of the vote wins isn't fundamentally broken -- the underlying check-and-balance works. What is fundamentally broken are when incentive structures misalign.
orestarod 6y ago
Perhaps out of relevance about the discussion, but if you are an American, can you explain to me why everyone seems to not freak out/be ok with the fact that Biden is, from the looks of it, senile?
- woofie11 6y ago
  Mostly, because the alternative (Trump) seems worse, and there's a mass effort to look the other way. Ditto happened with Clinton Inc in the last election. Hillary was openly corrupt. Ditto with Trump on the right. It's partisan politics at play.
- lftl 6y ago
  If he is senile (and a fair amount, but not all, of the "evidence" for that is propaganda), then it probably means that his cabinet will mostly run the show or that he'll be removed from office. This same line of thinking gave me some peace of mind on Trump, and it really held for about a year and a half that it took him to fill the cabinet with more pliant people.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    The whole fabricated evidence thing has been pretty funny. With both Biden and Clinton, the number of fabrications meant that the few times real things came up, they were simply ignored by the main stream media. The main stream media has engaged in slightly less fabrication, but there was definitely some of the same "boy who cried wolf" dynamic in the other direction too.
  - simonh 6y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that Biden has a stammer. He hides it extremely well and has had extensive therapy throughout his life, but it still comes out occasionally and is the root of most of these concerns.
  - orestarod 6y ago
    Of course there is a cabinet around him, and if his condition is really serious he will step down. What strikes me, and what I want to say, is why pick someone like HIM out of all people available, and why does everyone seem to ignore his condition? Seeing him talking, it seems like himself and everyone around him try really hard not to put something cognitively challenging in his head, that will have to translate to comprehensible speech. Do those in charge think one's name and past deeds campaign on their own, as opposed to the actual candidate showcasing himself with his present words and image? Does the need to bring Donald down give a blank canvas to the other side to put in front someone unfit? I am semi-sure the President can be a puppet - not by definition, but can happen sometimes I guess - since Bush Jr, that creature with the obviously sub-par IQ and cognition, was elected - and again, nobody in the US seemed to actually freak out 24/7 with having such a man as the president. Just remember on the reason he cited for deciding to attack Iraq - and I am not talking about the false WMD claims, but for "God told me", which he stated in complete seriousness. So, when I saw that guy governing, I said to myself - it can't be this thing having the actual power here, he does not have the mental capacity to achieve that on his own. Same with Biden. He obviously does not have the mental capacity to rule, and Donald going away is not enough reason to be ok with that. I don't even see a consensus of the type "Yeah he is an old senile guy, we'll just use him to take down Trump and then we see how it goes" - everyone pretends he is normal, and that's what baffles me.
thedufer 6y ago
> We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. Of course we do. Georgia did a full hand recount this election, finding no evidence of anything like what you're alleging. And many states do random-sample hand recounts every election. We didn't check every single vote, but "absolutely no idea" is way off the mark.
- woofie11 6y ago
  > finding no evidence of anything like what you're alleging Indeed. A recount provides absolutely no evidence in either direction on what I'm alleging. Fortunately, if you'd like evidence, you can look for the auditable source code for my local voting machines on github. Didn't find any? There's your evidence of a transparency issue. What many of these posts did provide evidence for are reading comprehension issues on web forums. But we knew that already.
  - sblom 6y ago
    >A recount provides absolutely no evidence in either direction on what I'm alleging. Georgia electronic votes were all backed by voter verifiable auditable paper ballots. That's independent of whether the software is competent at arithmetic. A hand recount does, in fact, protect against fake totals. Unfortunately, there are a handful of states that don't mandate paper backups. The solution for machines of that sort isn't open source—it's adding auditable paper.
    - simonh 6y ago
      It's really a waste of time. These people don't care if the election was fair, don't care that Republican appointed officials responsible for implementing the voting systems in Republican run states verified everything. They don't care how audit-able the votes were. They don't even care that Trump and the Republican leadership have no interest in vote reform despite repudiating the results of the vote. It's simply a flat out repudiation of democracy.
      - 6y ago
SantalBlush 6y ago
>We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. We never have. The only way to know would be to personally verify the voter's driver's license, watch them vote and submit their ballot, count their ballot, and repeat for every single voter in the United States. Since this will never, ever happen, one could always make vague claims about authenticity. But without concrete evidence of fraud, it doesn't matter.

adamsea 6y ago

> The harder part is gaming our media. If attackers can help direct where voters vote with $$$, that's a cheap attack too. Let’s be real that’s basically a part of politics. That’s not an issue with elections per se. Plus it’s clearly easier to just use social media and targeted propaganda to manipulate voters. I’m all for secure elections and improving that security. But my understanding is that to date when people have taken a serious look they’ve found no meaningful evidence of fraud. The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college then the presidency wouldn’t come down to a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few states.

wolco3 6y ago
Gaming of the media is a title/position. Probably the easiest part of an attack-
toyg 6y ago
> The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college I reckon the US system needs to self-reform if it wants to survive. All democracies change their electoral laws from time to time. The current system appears unsustainable: roughly two thirds of the electorate now feel fundamentally disenfranchised (one third thinks it's racist; the other that it's corrupt).
- woofie11 6y ago
  ... and it's both racist and corrupt. I agree we need reform if we're to survive. Between BLM this spring, DC now, the fringe militant elements, we're seeing more and more violence. I will mention that the split-down-the-middle thing isn't a property of electoral college. That's how you win in a democracy. If voters are distributed between 1 and 10 on some issue: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 I win by picking 5.5. Whatever you pick, you get a minority of voters. That's complicated by primaries. In the same system, if I want to be a ballot candidate, though, I can't do that. I want to pick 2.75 or 7.25 so the majority of my party votes for me. Of course, things like charisma fit in a bit too, but for the most part, if one party runs a 2.74 candidate and the other a 7.24, the 7.24 has an advantage, and vice-versa for 2.76 and 7.76. All that things like electoral college do is shift weights. Tight elections just means politicians have learned to play the game well. A system where someone with 40% or 60% of the vote wins isn't fundamentally broken -- the underlying check-and-balance works. What is fundamentally broken are when incentive structures misalign.

orestarod 6y ago

Perhaps out of relevance about the discussion, but if you are an American, can you explain to me why everyone seems to not freak out/be ok with the fact that Biden is, from the looks of it, senile?

woofie11 6y ago
Mostly, because the alternative (Trump) seems worse, and there's a mass effort to look the other way. Ditto happened with Clinton Inc in the last election. Hillary was openly corrupt. Ditto with Trump on the right. It's partisan politics at play.
lftl 6y ago
If he is senile (and a fair amount, but not all, of the "evidence" for that is propaganda), then it probably means that his cabinet will mostly run the show or that he'll be removed from office. This same line of thinking gave me some peace of mind on Trump, and it really held for about a year and a half that it took him to fill the cabinet with more pliant people.
- woofie11 6y ago
  The whole fabricated evidence thing has been pretty funny. With both Biden and Clinton, the number of fabrications meant that the few times real things came up, they were simply ignored by the main stream media. The main stream media has engaged in slightly less fabrication, but there was definitely some of the same "boy who cried wolf" dynamic in the other direction too.
- simonh 6y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that Biden has a stammer. He hides it extremely well and has had extensive therapy throughout his life, but it still comes out occasionally and is the root of most of these concerns.
- orestarod 6y ago
  Of course there is a cabinet around him, and if his condition is really serious he will step down. What strikes me, and what I want to say, is why pick someone like HIM out of all people available, and why does everyone seem to ignore his condition? Seeing him talking, it seems like himself and everyone around him try really hard not to put something cognitively challenging in his head, that will have to translate to comprehensible speech. Do those in charge think one's name and past deeds campaign on their own, as opposed to the actual candidate showcasing himself with his present words and image? Does the need to bring Donald down give a blank canvas to the other side to put in front someone unfit? I am semi-sure the President can be a puppet - not by definition, but can happen sometimes I guess - since Bush Jr, that creature with the obviously sub-par IQ and cognition, was elected - and again, nobody in the US seemed to actually freak out 24/7 with having such a man as the president. Just remember on the reason he cited for deciding to attack Iraq - and I am not talking about the false WMD claims, but for "God told me", which he stated in complete seriousness. So, when I saw that guy governing, I said to myself - it can't be this thing having the actual power here, he does not have the mental capacity to achieve that on his own. Same with Biden. He obviously does not have the mental capacity to rule, and Donald going away is not enough reason to be ok with that. I don't even see a consensus of the type "Yeah he is an old senile guy, we'll just use him to take down Trump and then we see how it goes" - everyone pretends he is normal, and that's what baffles me.

thedufer 6y ago

> We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. Of course we do. Georgia did a full hand recount this election, finding no evidence of anything like what you're alleging. And many states do random-sample hand recounts every election. We didn't check every single vote, but "absolutely no idea" is way off the mark.

woofie11 6y ago
> finding no evidence of anything like what you're alleging Indeed. A recount provides absolutely no evidence in either direction on what I'm alleging. Fortunately, if you'd like evidence, you can look for the auditable source code for my local voting machines on github. Didn't find any? There's your evidence of a transparency issue. What many of these posts did provide evidence for are reading comprehension issues on web forums. But we knew that already.
- sblom 6y ago
  >A recount provides absolutely no evidence in either direction on what I'm alleging. Georgia electronic votes were all backed by voter verifiable auditable paper ballots. That's independent of whether the software is competent at arithmetic. A hand recount does, in fact, protect against fake totals. Unfortunately, there are a handful of states that don't mandate paper backups. The solution for machines of that sort isn't open source—it's adding auditable paper.
  - simonh 6y ago
    It's really a waste of time. These people don't care if the election was fair, don't care that Republican appointed officials responsible for implementing the voting systems in Republican run states verified everything. They don't care how audit-able the votes were. They don't even care that Trump and the Republican leadership have no interest in vote reform despite repudiating the results of the vote. It's simply a flat out repudiation of democracy.
    - 6y ago

SantalBlush 6y ago

>We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. We never have. The only way to know would be to personally verify the voter's driver's license, watch them vote and submit their ballot, count their ballot, and repeat for every single voter in the United States. Since this will never, ever happen, one could always make vague claims about authenticity. But without concrete evidence of fraud, it doesn't matter.