7 ms·

Receipts would not have mattered here. The guilty parties were literally casting votes for people they knew would not show up. It’s an identity issue, much ha

Receipts would not have mattered here. The guilty parties were literally casting votes for people they knew would not show up. It’s an identity issue, much harder, and with its own set of controversies.

jxramos 4y ago
Wow so we need some explicit record of abstaining that the voter can submit and check the status on.
- anikan_vader 4y ago
  What elections you vote in is, in many cases in the US, pretty much public information.
- afandian 4y ago
  Is there an officially recognised category of spoiled ballot paper in the US like in the UK?
  - yardie 4y ago
    Yes. I’m a poll inspector. Spoiled ballots go into a separate lockbox. At the end of the night everything is tabulated (winners, losers, provisional ballots, spoiled ballots) and posted at the voting precinct. The spoiled ballots box is sealed and taken to the election office to be inspected. This is for 1 state. Every state manages elections differently. BTW, if you can sign up to be a poll worker. It’s a thankless job that takes 1 day a year. Most poll workers are retirees and I was one of the youngest there.
- michaelt 4y ago
  Leaving aside the question of whether it's realistic for the system to depend on non-voters checking their vote's status - what would be the procedure if someone claimed they were wrongly shown as having voted? After all, it's easy to imagine a situation where certain groups might want to manufacture evidence of voter fraud.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    In Pennsylvania at least, that is handled by the filing of a provisional ballot followed by a court system. One challenge to that solution is that there are hard limits on how long it can take for the election to resolve, so it is possible for that window to close before an investigation on an allegation of voter fraud to complete, and if it cannot be proven that that provisional ballot should be counted, the ballot is discarded. The recourse should a person's vote be stolen that way is proof that the vote was stolen followed by punishment for the thief, and that punishment can be fairly severe because vote tampering cannot be taken lightly given the impact it can have on the process itself.
makomk 4y ago
Yes. Specifically, pro-Democrat media and organisations have spent the last several years arguing that measures to make fraud like this harder, such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging. There are endless headlines counting every single entry removed from the electoral roll or even just marked for extra checking as a vote suppressed. Again, this includes people who won't vote because they're not living in that state anymore! They've been campaigning against checking if votes are being cast under the same person's identity in more than one state too, so using their identities is basically an easy and safe way to add fraudulent votes in much of the US. There was even a theory in widespread circulation on social media that the 2016 election was rigged in favour of Trump, based on counting every person whose voter registration was flagged as inactive and requiring further confirmation as a stolen vote for Clinton.
- pas 4y ago
  I despise the inefficient media screeching just as much as anyone with a few brain cells, but the cause of why it happens is pretty clear, because there is a lot of partisan fuckery around voting in many states. https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b9fb2868c7c1a0e1f4f7e8f7c0f1da4b19d02bb0/c=0-75-3000-2325/local/-/media/2020/10/06/Austin/ghows-TX-201009362-f4d23243.jpg?width=640 https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b9fb2868c7c1a0e1f4f7e8f7c0f...
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging Unregistering has had some serious problems of hitting active voters in the past, though I'm not an expert there. But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable. Agreed. The issue is the Democratic solution is to never ID, instead of coming up with a way to easily get people IDs. That makes me rather suspicious of their motives.
nerdponx 4y ago
Isn't this exactly what (in theory) systems like PKI or even PGP are supposed to fix? I know this is probably techno-utopianism, but it'd be pretty cool if every resident were issued a certificate (for free) with their state or federal government as the certificate authority, which would be used for voting, paying taxes, etc. instead of ad-hoc verification systems like Name + SSN + Address. I can imagine so many horrible problems with implementing such a system in any US state (let alone federally), but it would be pretty damn cool.
- cobbzilla 4y ago
  (dons mad scientist hat) Create a system like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 for voting. Voters remain anonymous yet can still verify their particular vote was counted correctly (and in fact that all votes are counted correctly) You’d still want a paper trail.
  - greyhair 4y ago
    "You'd still want a paper trail" <<<<<<<<<<< this Our new voting machines in our county are awesome, I hope they are used across the state (NJ). You get a blank piece of paper that you insert into the machine. You vote electronically, and it prints your vote out in plain readable text on the paper, and presents it to you protected under a piece of glass (maybe pexiglass?) to validate your choices. If there is something wrong, you can reject it at this point. If you accept it, it records your vote electronically, and swallows the paper ballot as a record. Nice clear printed text. No chads.

jxramos 4y ago

Wow so we need some explicit record of abstaining that the voter can submit and check the status on.

anikan_vader 4y ago
What elections you vote in is, in many cases in the US, pretty much public information.
afandian 4y ago
Is there an officially recognised category of spoiled ballot paper in the US like in the UK?
- yardie 4y ago
  Yes. I’m a poll inspector. Spoiled ballots go into a separate lockbox. At the end of the night everything is tabulated (winners, losers, provisional ballots, spoiled ballots) and posted at the voting precinct. The spoiled ballots box is sealed and taken to the election office to be inspected. This is for 1 state. Every state manages elections differently. BTW, if you can sign up to be a poll worker. It’s a thankless job that takes 1 day a year. Most poll workers are retirees and I was one of the youngest there.
michaelt 4y ago
Leaving aside the question of whether it's realistic for the system to depend on non-voters checking their vote's status - what would be the procedure if someone claimed they were wrongly shown as having voted? After all, it's easy to imagine a situation where certain groups might want to manufacture evidence of voter fraud.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  In Pennsylvania at least, that is handled by the filing of a provisional ballot followed by a court system. One challenge to that solution is that there are hard limits on how long it can take for the election to resolve, so it is possible for that window to close before an investigation on an allegation of voter fraud to complete, and if it cannot be proven that that provisional ballot should be counted, the ballot is discarded. The recourse should a person's vote be stolen that way is proof that the vote was stolen followed by punishment for the thief, and that punishment can be fairly severe because vote tampering cannot be taken lightly given the impact it can have on the process itself.

makomk 4y ago

Yes. Specifically, pro-Democrat media and organisations have spent the last several years arguing that measures to make fraud like this harder, such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging. There are endless headlines counting every single entry removed from the electoral roll or even just marked for extra checking as a vote suppressed. Again, this includes people who won't vote because they're not living in that state anymore! They've been campaigning against checking if votes are being cast under the same person's identity in more than one state too, so using their identities is basically an easy and safe way to add fraudulent votes in much of the US. There was even a theory in widespread circulation on social media that the 2016 election was rigged in favour of Trump, based on counting every person whose voter registration was flagged as inactive and requiring further confirmation as a stolen vote for Clinton.

pas 4y ago
I despise the inefficient media screeching just as much as anyone with a few brain cells, but the cause of why it happens is pretty clear, because there is a lot of partisan fuckery around voting in many states. https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b9fb2868c7c1a0e1f4f7e8f7c0f1da4b19d02bb0/c=0-75-3000-2325/local/-/media/2020/10/06/Austin/ghows-TX-201009362-f4d23243.jpg?width=640 https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b9fb2868c7c1a0e1f4f7e8f7c0f...
Dylan16807 4y ago
> such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging Unregistering has had some serious problems of hitting active voters in the past, though I'm not an expert there. But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable. Agreed. The issue is the Democratic solution is to never ID, instead of coming up with a way to easily get people IDs. That makes me rather suspicious of their motives.

nerdponx 4y ago

Isn't this exactly what (in theory) systems like PKI or even PGP are supposed to fix? I know this is probably techno-utopianism, but it'd be pretty cool if every resident were issued a certificate (for free) with their state or federal government as the certificate authority, which would be used for voting, paying taxes, etc. instead of ad-hoc verification systems like Name + SSN + Address. I can imagine so many horrible problems with implementing such a system in any US state (let alone federally), but it would be pretty damn cool.

cobbzilla 4y ago
(dons mad scientist hat) Create a system like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 for voting. Voters remain anonymous yet can still verify their particular vote was counted correctly (and in fact that all votes are counted correctly) You’d still want a paper trail.
- greyhair 4y ago
  "You'd still want a paper trail" <<<<<<<<<<< this Our new voting machines in our county are awesome, I hope they are used across the state (NJ). You get a blank piece of paper that you insert into the machine. You vote electronically, and it prints your vote out in plain readable text on the paper, and presents it to you protected under a piece of glass (maybe pexiglass?) to validate your choices. If there is something wrong, you can reject it at this point. If you accept it, it records your vote electronically, and swallows the paper ballot as a record. Nice clear printed text. No chads.