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I'm Israeli and I was recently shocked to learn the rest of the world trusts electronic voting and vote by mail. We have a very simple and strict voting process

by gadi1993 5y ago

I'm Israeli and I was recently shocked to learn the rest of the world trusts electronic voting and vote by mail. We have a very simple and strict voting process here - the key feature which builds the trust in voting is that every 4 poll workers are responsible for the integrity of only up to 800 votes. We don't have fraud allegations because you would have to blame over 150 different people simultaneously (and often much more, on the order of hundreds of people, when you take into consideration the practical constrains) to change a single seat. It's very simple to convince a person of the integrity that this process. We have a high turnout which completely contradicts the claim that mail / electronic voting increases turnout. Electronic voting / mail voting give the power of changing the results to a handful of people who control the voting machines / know the voter rolls. Whether they will or had abused it is anyone's guess - but pretending that controversy over election process is inevitable is plainly wrong. The entire premise of elections is to prove to the losing side that the process was fair, so I find it unbelievable so many countries overlook that and give things like convenience and corona safety a priority.

ant6n 5y ago
Most western democracies don’t have a problem with fraud allegations in voting. It’s really only the US. And even there, the allegations are mostly a political ploy to push for policies that disenfranchis voters of other parties. Which again doesn’t exist in other Western democracies.
- gadi1993 5y ago
  French had massive mail voting fraud in 1975, after which they banned it. The entire point of elections is proving your government is trustable, you can't trust your government with it because then it's like a self signed certificate, circular trust problem. Who rigs elections in Russia? The government. Who is most likely to rig elections? The government. You can't trust government with elections, and just because the government shows you documents doesn't mean anything. Governments fabricate documents all the time. If all you require from corrupt politicians to remain in control is a bunch of mailed documents, you can be sure they'll get those documents mailed. I'm just completely dumbfounded people living within countries with these elections think they are democracies.
  - ant6n 5y ago
    Russia isn’t a western democracy. 1975 is almost 50 years ago.
    - gadi1993 5y ago
      Of course Russia isn't democracy, the entire point was to prove to you who is rigging undemocratic elections.
hash872 5y ago
>We have a very simple and strict voting process here - the key feature which builds the trust in voting is that every 4 poll workers are responsible for the integrity of only up to 800 votes Can you say more about this? So at each polling place 4 workers are assigned 800 votes, and then they rotate out to a different group of 4? I don't see how that inspires more trust than our current system, the government could simply be lying that they rotated the 4 poll workers out. Or, in a large city this would be a complete cluster as you'd need hundreds of poll workers on standby to rotate in & out every 30 minutes or so. I would definitely be interested in hearing more though

ant6n 5y ago

Most western democracies don’t have a problem with fraud allegations in voting. It’s really only the US. And even there, the allegations are mostly a political ploy to push for policies that disenfranchis voters of other parties. Which again doesn’t exist in other Western democracies.

gadi1993 5y ago
French had massive mail voting fraud in 1975, after which they banned it. The entire point of elections is proving your government is trustable, you can't trust your government with it because then it's like a self signed certificate, circular trust problem. Who rigs elections in Russia? The government. Who is most likely to rig elections? The government. You can't trust government with elections, and just because the government shows you documents doesn't mean anything. Governments fabricate documents all the time. If all you require from corrupt politicians to remain in control is a bunch of mailed documents, you can be sure they'll get those documents mailed. I'm just completely dumbfounded people living within countries with these elections think they are democracies.
- ant6n 5y ago
  Russia isn’t a western democracy. 1975 is almost 50 years ago.
  - gadi1993 5y ago
    Of course Russia isn't democracy, the entire point was to prove to you who is rigging undemocratic elections.

hash872 5y ago

>We have a very simple and strict voting process here - the key feature which builds the trust in voting is that every 4 poll workers are responsible for the integrity of only up to 800 votes Can you say more about this? So at each polling place 4 workers are assigned 800 votes, and then they rotate out to a different group of 4? I don't see how that inspires more trust than our current system, the government could simply be lying that they rotated the 4 poll workers out. Or, in a large city this would be a complete cluster as you'd need hundreds of poll workers on standby to rotate in & out every 30 minutes or so. I would definitely be interested in hearing more though