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Trust is a social challenge, not a technological one. It is effectively impossible to stuff ballot boxes at scale in the US, but a large number of people still

Trust is a social challenge, not a technological one. It is effectively impossible to stuff ballot boxes at scale in the US, but a large number of people still believe the last presidential election was stolen.

declan_roberts 2y ago
Who needs scale? Doesn't the election ultimately come down to a couple of counties in 2 or 3 swing states?
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  Even sneaking a single box of ballots into an American polling station would get caught in a key district. Please see my response to baggy_trough.
baggy_trough 2y ago
Why do you believe so?
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  Representatives from both parties are present for voting and ballot counting. They have observation areas. Plus they keep electronic and paper records. The few people who attempt voting fraud are easily caught. Parties abandoned ballot box stuffing in favor of gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics long ago.
  - baggy_trough 2y ago
    Where I am located, there are ballot boxes literally on the side of the road, and we have universal absentee balloting. Anyone who can acquire ballots, perhaps from non interested voters, or those who can be pressured, can submit ballots and there would be no feasible way to know. Election day, in person secret voting, with voter ID is the way.
    - evantbyrne 2y ago
      The absentee voting process is still audited at every step. They even have observer areas in the ballot printing facilities now. How would a party ever subvert the process that exists to stuff ballots at any scale?
      - baggy_trough 2y ago
        Control and visibility of absentee ballots (in my state, all of them) is completely missing between mailing and drop-off. That is how.
        evantbyrne 2y ago
        Sure, but how much can/should the state do about people in the same household hypothetically stealing each other's ballots? The registration process requires ID, so I'm not convinced additional authentication is needed.
        baggy_trough 2y ago
        Don't limit your imagination to households, although that's also a problem. What about apartments that receive all their ballots at the same time, or congregate living shelters, etc. etc.? It's not that hard to conceive of collecting tens or even hundreds of ballots if you have the right access to mail. The state should eliminate this problem by requiring everyone to vote in person on election day with voter ID using a secret ballot.
        evantbyrne 2y ago
        People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at any scale, and having so many controls in place, we can safely assume it is not happening. But sure, perhaps mailed ballots could be improved to further combat the possibility of mail theft.
shrubble 2y ago
You literally have video evidence from 2020 of people driving up with their cars and shoving 100+ ballots into absentee boxes; and you wrote the above with a straight face?
- paavope 2y ago
  No, I haven’t seen evidence of that, and a quick googling for “2020 us ballot stuffing” doesn’t show me such
  - kleton 2y ago
    Did you try very hard? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXAp8My7Js https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXAp8My7Js
    - paavope 2y ago
      So there is a clip of someone dropping multiple ballots in a drop box. Apparently [1] that is not necessarily fraudulent, you can drop multiple ballots from family members. There were international observers in the 2020 election and they found no evidence of fraud [2], and many mainstream media sources that I hold reliable, (e.g. [3]) fact-check multiple claims of election fraud and nothing has showed up that would suggest that the election was "stolen". I don't think it is at all preposterous to assume that the 2020 US election was fair, unless you subscribe to a view that the global mainstream media apparatus is in on some grand conspiracy. [1] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-election-ohio-ballots-voter-fraud-786464035733 https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-election-ohio-ballots-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#OSCE_election_monitoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55016029 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55016029
      - kleton 2y ago
        Different people could look at the same clip and assign different probabilities to P(ballot stuffer) vs P(Family ballot courier). It would depend on your Bayesians priors. If a person from a high trust society like Sweden or Finland were to see this video, they might have a prior expectation of someone being helpful. Whereas there are much lower trust societies in the world where that would not be the case. We've gone from "haven't seen evidence" to "seen evidence at probability P-prime". Trust in an electoral system is an important enough issue that this should be investigated to the same thorough degree as a capital crime.

declan_roberts 2y ago

Who needs scale? Doesn't the election ultimately come down to a couple of counties in 2 or 3 swing states?

evantbyrne 2y ago
Even sneaking a single box of ballots into an American polling station would get caught in a key district. Please see my response to baggy_trough.

baggy_trough 2y ago

Why do you believe so?

evantbyrne 2y ago
Representatives from both parties are present for voting and ballot counting. They have observation areas. Plus they keep electronic and paper records. The few people who attempt voting fraud are easily caught. Parties abandoned ballot box stuffing in favor of gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics long ago.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Where I am located, there are ballot boxes literally on the side of the road, and we have universal absentee balloting. Anyone who can acquire ballots, perhaps from non interested voters, or those who can be pressured, can submit ballots and there would be no feasible way to know. Election day, in person secret voting, with voter ID is the way.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    The absentee voting process is still audited at every step. They even have observer areas in the ballot printing facilities now. How would a party ever subvert the process that exists to stuff ballots at any scale?
    - baggy_trough 2y ago
      Control and visibility of absentee ballots (in my state, all of them) is completely missing between mailing and drop-off. That is how.
      - evantbyrne 2y ago
        Sure, but how much can/should the state do about people in the same household hypothetically stealing each other's ballots? The registration process requires ID, so I'm not convinced additional authentication is needed.
        baggy_trough 2y ago
        Don't limit your imagination to households, although that's also a problem. What about apartments that receive all their ballots at the same time, or congregate living shelters, etc. etc.? It's not that hard to conceive of collecting tens or even hundreds of ballots if you have the right access to mail. The state should eliminate this problem by requiring everyone to vote in person on election day with voter ID using a secret ballot.
        evantbyrne 2y ago
        People who order absentee ballots are presumably expecting them to arrive. It would be pretty obvious if someone started taking ballots from such a highly engaged voting demographic. If not from people looking for their missing ballots, then it would show up as double voting eventually. Every apartment I've ever lived at also had locking mail boxes. In the absence of evidence that any ballot box stuffing happening at any scale, and having so many controls in place, we can safely assume it is not happening. But sure, perhaps mailed ballots could be improved to further combat the possibility of mail theft.

shrubble 2y ago

You literally have video evidence from 2020 of people driving up with their cars and shoving 100+ ballots into absentee boxes; and you wrote the above with a straight face?

paavope 2y ago
No, I haven’t seen evidence of that, and a quick googling for “2020 us ballot stuffing” doesn’t show me such
- kleton 2y ago
  Did you try very hard? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXAp8My7Js https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXAp8My7Js
  - paavope 2y ago
    So there is a clip of someone dropping multiple ballots in a drop box. Apparently [1] that is not necessarily fraudulent, you can drop multiple ballots from family members. There were international observers in the 2020 election and they found no evidence of fraud [2], and many mainstream media sources that I hold reliable, (e.g. [3]) fact-check multiple claims of election fraud and nothing has showed up that would suggest that the election was "stolen". I don't think it is at all preposterous to assume that the 2020 US election was fair, unless you subscribe to a view that the global mainstream media apparatus is in on some grand conspiracy. [1] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-election-ohio-ballots-voter-fraud-786464035733 https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-election-ohio-ballots-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#OSCE_election_monitoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55016029 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55016029
    - kleton 2y ago
      Different people could look at the same clip and assign different probabilities to P(ballot stuffer) vs P(Family ballot courier). It would depend on your Bayesians priors. If a person from a high trust society like Sweden or Finland were to see this video, they might have a prior expectation of someone being helpful. Whereas there are much lower trust societies in the world where that would not be the case. We've gone from "haven't seen evidence" to "seen evidence at probability P-prime". Trust in an electoral system is an important enough issue that this should be investigated to the same thorough degree as a capital crime.