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In a serious voting system the paper ballots are saved and can be recounted by hand. I've worked in elections in Sweden, and all elections are recounted at lea

In a serious voting system the paper ballots are saved and can be recounted by hand. I've worked in elections in Sweden, and all elections are recounted at least twice, by different people.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago
The issue in the US is compounded further as running elections is left up to not only the states, but the individual municipalities in those states and typically run at the county level. Each with their own rules, whether or not ID verification is mandatory or literally illegal, style of voting (mail vs in-person), ballot design/UX, what languages the ballots are in (are ballots in Sweden in anything but Swedish?) and mutually incompatible equipment. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ballot designs in use for the current election. When viewing this at a macro level for electing the office of the President, it seems absolutely insane.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  On the flip side; it makes it incredibly difficult to pull off wide scale fraud. Instead of having to compromise a single system, you are forced to compromise dozens or hundreds of systems run by people with opposing ideologies
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    On the flip side: it makes it incredibly difficult to notice you were a subject of a wide scale fraud. You need to know an every single system and you can't look for discrepancies what would be obvious in the environment with a standardised system.
  - pstrateman 2y ago
    Wide scale fraud isn't necessary when elections are decided by 10k votes.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 2y ago
      The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. As such getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases like gerrymandering or voter suppression. The vote may be rigged before people started casting ballots, but that doesn’t make voting useless. It’s the strongest signals that are most important and that’s still preserved.
      - w4 2y ago
        > The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. This is also a good argument in favor of decentralized voting management, as much of a shitshow as it may be. Centralizing the management of voting under the authority of the people voting intends to kick out of power is potentially self-defeating.
      - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
        > getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases History lesson: The 2004 Washington state governor's election was decided by a mere 129 votes, and only after multiple recounts and repeatedly "finding" boxes upon boxes of supposedly uncounted ballots in the weeks following election day kept altering the totals and overturned the original result. The election was extremely controversial and not decided until two days before Christmas. Due to these irregularities, many people did not accept the results for years afterward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_... Even more bizarre, the election closely shadowed the plot of the movie Black Sheep, which was released 8 years before.
        gruez 2y ago
        >and only after multiple recounts and repeatedly "finding" boxes upon boxes of supposedly uncounted ballots in the weeks following election day kept altering the totals and overturned the original result. The explanations given in the wikipedia article seem pretty plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election#Discovered_ballots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_... I don't see how it's any different what happened in the 2020 election, where Trump appeared to win at first, but a bunch of mail-in ballots (which were counted later) turned it around. While I can see why it might seem superficially suspicious, such phenomena is inevitable if the pool of mail-in (or other forms of voting liable to get delayed/incorrectly rejected) ballots lean one side.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Aside from national referendums every few decades, Swedish ballots only contain party and candidate names, no actual language.
alistairSH 2y ago
This is true here in the US. The paper ballot scans and then goes into a lock-box for possible manual recount.
- Arubis 2y ago
  Depends on the state. Colorado does do this, for what it’s worth.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    I thought federal law required paper backups as of 2016-ish? No pure electronic voting today, IIRC.
    - Arubis 2y ago
      It appears you're correct, albeit somewhat more recently (2021): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/u-s-election-commission-adopts-nationwide-paper-ballot-guidelines-n1257315 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/u-s-election-commissio...
samatman 2y ago
*ahem* > and are finally deposited into a box for safe keeping/future recounts

In a serious voting system the paper ballots are saved and can be recounted by hand. I've worked in elections in Sweden, and all elections are recounted at least twice, by different people.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago

The issue in the US is compounded further as running elections is left up to not only the states, but the individual municipalities in those states and typically run at the county level. Each with their own rules, whether or not ID verification is mandatory or literally illegal, style of voting (mail vs in-person), ballot design/UX, what languages the ballots are in (are ballots in Sweden in anything but Swedish?) and mutually incompatible equipment. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ballot designs in use for the current election. When viewing this at a macro level for electing the office of the President, it seems absolutely insane.

dghlsakjg 2y ago
On the flip side; it makes it incredibly difficult to pull off wide scale fraud. Instead of having to compromise a single system, you are forced to compromise dozens or hundreds of systems run by people with opposing ideologies
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  On the flip side: it makes it incredibly difficult to notice you were a subject of a wide scale fraud. You need to know an every single system and you can't look for discrepancies what would be obvious in the environment with a standardised system.
- pstrateman 2y ago
  Wide scale fraud isn't necessary when elections are decided by 10k votes.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 2y ago
    The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. As such getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases like gerrymandering or voter suppression. The vote may be rigged before people started casting ballots, but that doesn’t make voting useless. It’s the strongest signals that are most important and that’s still preserved.
    - w4 2y ago
      > The point of voting is to kick people out of power when they piss off a clear majority thus keeping the system honest. This is also a good argument in favor of decentralized voting management, as much of a shitshow as it may be. Centralizing the management of voting under the authority of the people voting intends to kick out of power is potentially self-defeating.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      > getting the count absolutely correct isn’t necessarily as important vs more systemic biases History lesson: The 2004 Washington state governor's election was decided by a mere 129 votes, and only after multiple recounts and repeatedly "finding" boxes upon boxes of supposedly uncounted ballots in the weeks following election day kept altering the totals and overturned the original result. The election was extremely controversial and not decided until two days before Christmas. Due to these irregularities, many people did not accept the results for years afterward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_... Even more bizarre, the election closely shadowed the plot of the movie Black Sheep, which was released 8 years before.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >and only after multiple recounts and repeatedly "finding" boxes upon boxes of supposedly uncounted ballots in the weeks following election day kept altering the totals and overturned the original result. The explanations given in the wikipedia article seem pretty plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election#Discovered_ballots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_... I don't see how it's any different what happened in the 2020 election, where Trump appeared to win at first, but a bunch of mail-in ballots (which were counted later) turned it around. While I can see why it might seem superficially suspicious, such phenomena is inevitable if the pool of mail-in (or other forms of voting liable to get delayed/incorrectly rejected) ballots lean one side.
BurningFrog 2y ago
Aside from national referendums every few decades, Swedish ballots only contain party and candidate names, no actual language.

alistairSH 2y ago

This is true here in the US. The paper ballot scans and then goes into a lock-box for possible manual recount.

Arubis 2y ago
Depends on the state. Colorado does do this, for what it’s worth.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  I thought federal law required paper backups as of 2016-ish? No pure electronic voting today, IIRC.
  - Arubis 2y ago
    It appears you're correct, albeit somewhat more recently (2021): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/u-s-election-commission-adopts-nationwide-paper-ballot-guidelines-n1257315 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/u-s-election-commissio...

samatman 2y ago

*ahem* > and are finally deposited into a box for safe keeping/future recounts