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Paper ballots have very boring failure modes and need no explanation or technical support. When you see a system more complex than paper ballots, know that the
by rsync 2y ago
Paper ballots have very boring failure modes and need no explanation or technical support.
When you see a system more complex than paper ballots, know that the additions are not there on your behalf.
- Sparkle-san 2y agoColorado uses paper ballots. It's an all-mail voting state so every voter is mailed a paper ballot which is then dropped off or mailed back.
- pessimizer 2y agoMail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate. There are currently many heads of household voting for their entire families, and even aside from mail-in ballots, there are people watching and photographing other family members voting within polling places, and uploading the photographs to social media with parental pride. In many places, this is not even criminal anymore. Paper ballots, with voters having no method to prove who they voted for (no-receipt), in a private booth.
- batch12 2y ago[flagged]
- nkrisc 2y agoBecause places of worship in Christianity are usually called churches and Christianity is the most common religion in the United States. So if I was going to pick a single word used to represent places of worship when describing such in the United States, “churches” would be a good choice.
- batch12 2y ago[flagged]
- nkrisc 2y agoThat seems like a pretty uncharitable interpretation. Based on the entirety of the comment that doesn’t seem to be the intent.
- batch12 2y ago[flagged]
- gruez 2y ago>If it's no big deal, just post the same comment with the word mosque or synagogue. Why only "mosque or synagogue"? Are you singling out Abrahamic religions? What about shrines and temples? Words have meanings. If it's no big deal, just post the same comment with the word "places of worship" to be inclusive. :^)
- batch12 2y agoI mentioned temples above. Feel free to choose any alternative you'd prefer. :^)
- Sparkle-san 2y agoIt's been the method of voting in Oregon for 25 years and Colorado for 10 years, when does the regret start? The current states that have all mail voting are also some of the least religious states in the country, you'd think the religious states would be pushing for it given the scenario you laid out. Colorado also had the second highest voter turn out nationwide in 2020 which supports the claim that all mail voting is good for increasing access to voting.
- wannacboatmovie 2y agoOregon should never be the gold standard for how to do anything, ever. Can they even pump their own gas yet?
- jeffmcjunkin 2y agoRecently, yes :) https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/06/us/oregon-drivers-pump-own-fuel-law/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/06/us/oregon-drivers-pump-own-fu...
- throw_that_away 2y agoBefore that changed I LOVED turning the attendants away as I grabbed my Diesel hose and started pumping. I loved telling them when they didn't know.
- mulmen 2y agoRon Wyden seems cool.
- oceanplexian 2y agoOf course mailing ballots increases turnout. That wasn’t the question. The question was how do we determine if the votes are fraudulent, for example someone filling out a ballot for their elderly parents against their will.
- Sparkle-san 2y ago
- dantillberg 2y ago> ... when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together ... Are you able to cite any evidence for this sort of conspiracy, or is this mainly conjecture? My search came up short. While one can certainly imagine it taking place, particularly in smaller groups, I expect there are both federal and likely also state laws that would make such activities illegal. At the very least, it would seem hard to hide at scale.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoThat doesn't seem like the kind of thing that ends up in news. Are members of the congregation going to snitch on their "family"? If it happens it is something you would only know from experience.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago> [...] when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don't participate. That's a felony isn't it?
- sixothree 2y agoAnd tax fraud too?
- IncreasePosts 2y agoCouldn't a church just require congregants to send a picture of their ballot from inside a voting booth? Is there any basis in reality for this?
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Couldn’t a church just require congregants to send a picture of their ballot from inside a voting booth? They could, though there are some problems with that: (1) It is generally illegal to ask people to do that, (2) Voters could “comply” with such a demand and simply mark a ballot the way the church wanted, take a picture, tell poll workers they had made an error marking their ballot and needed a replacement, have the ballot they photographed discarded, mark the replacement with their honest preferences, and cast that ballot. Of course, (1) applies to the proposed scenario with mail-in ballots, and why large groups that aren’t already tightly-knit cults where they wouldn’t need to worry about defectors with secret ballots anyway would do it – it only takes on defector to get the whole group busted.
- ForHackernews 2y agoIt's already illegal to do voter fraud!
- ndiddy 2y agoI'm not sure how the laws are in all states, but where I am it's illegal to use a camera or cell phone within 100 feet of a voting booth so if you tried to take a picture of your ballot, you'd likely get asked to put the camera away by a poll worker. This was done with the specific intent of protecting the privacy of people's votes.
- BurningFrog 2y agoThis is addressed in serious voting systems. In Sweden you can vote by mail, but it has to be done in a private booth on a post office. You have to show ID, of course. That means everybody votes secretly, even when voting by mail.
- mulmen 2y agoSweden doesn’t have the same racist history as the United States. In the US there’s a long history of making it very hard to get adequate photo ID or moving or closing polling locations in minority districts.
- SubiculumCode 2y agoI agree. All those Kamala ads about wives in the polling place defying their misogynistic husbands miss the fact that those controlling husbands would demand that their wives receive mail-in ballots, and then use intimidation and pressure to ensure the vote. The fact that this is rarely discussed probably means that it rarely actually happens. Political beliefs between husbands and wives are usually quite correlated, I'd imagine. The issue of maliciously voting for you elderly grandparent may happen, but is probably very very rare.
- candiddevmike 2y agoIt's nice to hear how effective that ad was at getting under people's skin.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Mail-in ballots are worst of all, and the people who advocate for their expansion will regret it when they see entire church memberships filling out their ballots together, checking each other to make sure they voted correctly, and shunning, expelling, or firing people who don’t participate. Firing people for not cooperating with something that is a crime under both federal and state law is a strategy that…doesn’t work very long for the criminals. (Giving a large group of people who you don’t trust to vote your way that kind of criminal leverage over you in general is a pretty self-defeating strategy even without the intense incentives produced when you pile termination of employment on top of it.) Also, near-universal mail-in voting isn’t some novel untested practice. Oregon has been doing it for more than two decades, Washington and Colorado for a decade, and even more states have adopted it between 2019 and 2022.
- gotoeleven 2y agoAnd what a diversity of election results those states have had since then!
- mulmen 2y agoWhy would mail in voting create more diverse results? States that don’t mail ballots also haven’t had diverse results. These concepts are orthogonal. Mail in voting is intended to improve turnout, not diversify results.
- Spivak 2y agoYou can vote by mail in all 50 states, and both red and swing states have no-excuse absentee. Your point doesn't stand up to the reality of these systems.
- sethammons 2y agoAnd now the abuser can just say "show me a picture of your ballot" since we all take our phones into the booth. And the abuser might stand in line and watch to see if you get a second ballot. And you could quickly use photo editing software to fake it, but the abuser might run analysis... Where is the line of accepted risk?
- Robin_Message 2y agoPhotos of ballots are a criminal offence in the UK, which obviously is imperfect in an abusive relationship, but does help set a general norm that the vote is secret.
- Sparkle-san 2y agoAbusive relationships are typically criminal in of themselves so not sure laws will help here.
- CaliforniaKarl 2y agoI disagree. I believe there are people who want results sooner rather than later. The greater the delay, the more annoyed folks become. Recording votes in _both_ paper and electronic form allows for the auditability of paper and the speed of electronic calculations. (Side note: I also believe that hand-counting of ballots can be tedious, and humans performing tedious, repetitive tasks are prone to error. See [1].) [1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand-counting-ballots https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoWhy should you compromise on security because you're impatient? Have the voter vote on paper; since it's only two candidates, this can be postcard-sized. Scan the postcards for the fast results, check and double check by hand (or visual if there's a picture taken by the scanner).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sgerenser 2y agoThere were 22 different races to vote on in my ballot yesterday. Are you suggesting only hand count the presidential election then tally all the rest digitally?
- goodlinks 2y agoThis is so strange to me.. not complaining or criticising, just thanking you for the insight. I would expect one ballot paper per vote (based on rare occasion of doing two at once) to ensure the count is simple and accurate. They make the ballots different colours to ensure you put them in the correct boxes iirc
- chrisco255 2y agoIt wouldn't be a bad idea to break up federal, state and local elections into different ballots.
- mateus1 2y agoIt does not make sense to paint paper ballots as something that is inherently better.. Paper ballots have many potential vector attacks many of which are stupidly easy or even unintentional (e.g. hanging chads)
- Kwpolska 2y agoHanging chads were caused by a dumb idea to make ballots automatically countable. The solution is to make ballots easier to hand-count, by having separate ballot papers for each position (or at least the most important ones) and counting them by hand.
- tsimionescu 2y agoHanging chads, which are anyway still a problem introduced by machine-counting, not hand counting, are much less problematic than hacking a voting machine. There is no tie between your vote choice and the probability of a hanging chad, so this doesn't bias the election against any particular candidate. A hacked voting machine does have intentional bias.
- mulmen 2y agoStrongly disagree. As would any voter who had their vote suppressed in Florida in 2000 due to confusing analog voting machines, dangling chads, or “partially” filled bubbles.