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> We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step. People

> We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step. People didn't lose confidence in the integrity of elections because our elections lack integrity, they lost confidence because they were told in a way that resonates with them that our elections lack integrity. Voter ID would just be security theater in that it's an onerous rule that does nothing to help any actual problem aside from making things look better to some people.

MyFedora 2y ago
I'm having a hard time understanding your comment. I'm not American, but can someone explain why it wouldn't make sense to lose confidence in elections when gerrymandering and the electoral college skew the results so much? Sure, votes are technically counted, but if the system is set up so that those votes don't really impact the outcome the way you'd expect, isn't that a pretty valid reason to feel disillusioned?
- hellotomyrars 2y ago
  The GP isn't making a statement about how voters feel disillusioned in the electoral process in general. They are making a statement about how one of the two political parties has spent 4 years telling their supporters that the 2020 election was stolen because of rampant voter fraud. It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process. Maybe people shouldn't have faith in the electoral process, and the way to rebuild confidence in the integrity of the electoral process is to rebuild the integrity of the electoral process first and tell people about it second.
    - parasubvert 2y ago
      That would make sense if there was an actual argument for the process being compromised. But there isn’t. You can rebuild it and be accused of inserting back doors. There’s no win - the whole argument is that the process is sound if a certain party wins, if that party loses, then the process is corrupt. Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won.
      - lmm 2y ago
        > That would make sense if there was an actual argument for the process being compromised. But there isn’t. There are pretty strong arguments that many states illegally (according to their own rules) expanded the scope of postal ballots in 2020, added people to the voter rolls without adequate checks that resulted in people getting added who shouldn't have, etc., which could very plausibly have added up to enough to tip the knife-edge election. > Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won. I don't think anyone seriously disputes that the civil service has a partisan imbalance. If (and it's a big if) the "deep state" were to cheat, it's pretty clear which side they would cheat for. Well before the results came out this time, it was widely reported that the Republicans had filed hundreds of lawsuits questioning various election irregularities and the Democrats... hadn't. So yeah, only one party doubts the integrity of the election (or, if you want to be more cynical, only one party cares whether it's being rigged, since both parties know which way any rigging is going). That's exactly what we'd expect, whether it's being rigged or not?
        nerdponx 2y ago
        The assertion that the deep state skews Democrat is so preposterous it sounds like an SNL sketch. Imagine a bunch of G-men sitting around in a conference room with oat milk lattes while the Cigarette Smoking Man lays out plans for the next year Pride parade. Also consider that maybe only Republicans filed suits because their presidential candidate lost. But more direct to your point: No consequential voting irregularities were found, and this time around the Democrats arguably had an even stronger incentive to commit widespread voter fraud than before, while the current President is a Democrat, and yet somehow all the fraud from 2020 is now just gone. That stretches credibility, to say the least.
- a_cool_username 2y ago
  Those are definitely reasonable reasons to lose confidence in elections and feel disillusioned, but voter ID laws won't help you there (which was GP's point).
- troyvit 2y ago
  You have an excellent point that I didn't take into account when I left my comment. Personally I don't mind the electoral college too much but the gerrymandering that goes on in the U.S. is epic. Against that we have people saying we need Voter ID? Is there any more better time to use the "arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" analogy, except for perhaps on an actual sinking ship?
the_optimist 2y ago
There is no magic here. Ballots have no identifiers attached to them. Fraudulent ballots are indistinguishable from real ballots. Envelopes do have identifiers attached to them but are separated from ballots. It is not always necessary to submit envelopes with ballots, and batch integrity is not necessarily maintained or useful based on batch size. False registration and/or false voting can produce fake ballots. Ballot-level fraud resolution diminishes to zero, by design, in the existing system in order to preserve a degree of voter anonymity. Without registration or voting resolution, there is a very limited check on fraud, including high likelihood of surplus of in-circulation empty ballots. please explain your position in this context.
- troyvit 2y ago
  I wish people would've responded to you instead of down-voting you. I've heard those arguments, but the thing is there are several cases around the country right now where ballot-level fraud _was_ caught[1]. Without doing any research I'll say that while it's easier to generate a bogus ballot than it is to generate a bogus hundred dollar bill, it just doesn't scale to the point where it's useful. It's a pain in the ass to get your hands on enough ballots, fill them out, and deliver them to a drop box or whatever. You can't just pull up with a wagon full of ballots and drop them off. How much is it worth to somebody to flip a county? Which county do you flip? How many ballots will you need to flip it? What's the risk/reward ratio like? [1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-fraudulently-filled-by-usps-employee-friend/ https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-frau...
- lmm 2y ago
  So what's the scenario where a voter ID check makes a difference - specifically, where an ID check eliminates more fake votes than it disenfranchises genuine voters? The ID check is presumably still attached to the envelope rather than the ballot, right? (Otherwise you have massive deanonymity problems). If there is fake voter registration happening, presumably obtaining fake IDs by the same methods is just as easy. I'm sure a certain amount of e.g. individuals submitting their dead relatives' ballots happens - but anyone doing that can probably grab their relative's ID too, and go to two polling stations. I doubt any large-scale partisan fraud via in-person submission at polling stations is going on, because it's impractical to make that happen while keeping it secret - the only way it could happen would be with widespread official collusion, and again in that case an ID check wouldn't move the needle.

MyFedora 2y ago

I'm having a hard time understanding your comment. I'm not American, but can someone explain why it wouldn't make sense to lose confidence in elections when gerrymandering and the electoral college skew the results so much? Sure, votes are technically counted, but if the system is set up so that those votes don't really impact the outcome the way you'd expect, isn't that a pretty valid reason to feel disillusioned?

hellotomyrars 2y ago
The GP isn't making a statement about how voters feel disillusioned in the electoral process in general. They are making a statement about how one of the two political parties has spent 4 years telling their supporters that the 2020 election was stolen because of rampant voter fraud. It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process.
- lmm 2y ago
  > It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process. Maybe people shouldn't have faith in the electoral process, and the way to rebuild confidence in the integrity of the electoral process is to rebuild the integrity of the electoral process first and tell people about it second.
  - parasubvert 2y ago
    That would make sense if there was an actual argument for the process being compromised. But there isn’t. You can rebuild it and be accused of inserting back doors. There’s no win - the whole argument is that the process is sound if a certain party wins, if that party loses, then the process is corrupt. Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won.
    - lmm 2y ago
      > That would make sense if there was an actual argument for the process being compromised. But there isn’t. There are pretty strong arguments that many states illegally (according to their own rules) expanded the scope of postal ballots in 2020, added people to the voter rolls without adequate checks that resulted in people getting added who shouldn't have, etc., which could very plausibly have added up to enough to tip the knife-edge election. > Notice how there’s no cries of election integrity problems for this election? Because the “right” party won. I don't think anyone seriously disputes that the civil service has a partisan imbalance. If (and it's a big if) the "deep state" were to cheat, it's pretty clear which side they would cheat for. Well before the results came out this time, it was widely reported that the Republicans had filed hundreds of lawsuits questioning various election irregularities and the Democrats... hadn't. So yeah, only one party doubts the integrity of the election (or, if you want to be more cynical, only one party cares whether it's being rigged, since both parties know which way any rigging is going). That's exactly what we'd expect, whether it's being rigged or not?
      - nerdponx 2y ago
        The assertion that the deep state skews Democrat is so preposterous it sounds like an SNL sketch. Imagine a bunch of G-men sitting around in a conference room with oat milk lattes while the Cigarette Smoking Man lays out plans for the next year Pride parade. Also consider that maybe only Republicans filed suits because their presidential candidate lost. But more direct to your point: No consequential voting irregularities were found, and this time around the Democrats arguably had an even stronger incentive to commit widespread voter fraud than before, while the current President is a Democrat, and yet somehow all the fraud from 2020 is now just gone. That stretches credibility, to say the least.
a_cool_username 2y ago
Those are definitely reasonable reasons to lose confidence in elections and feel disillusioned, but voter ID laws won't help you there (which was GP's point).
troyvit 2y ago
You have an excellent point that I didn't take into account when I left my comment. Personally I don't mind the electoral college too much but the gerrymandering that goes on in the U.S. is epic. Against that we have people saying we need Voter ID? Is there any more better time to use the "arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" analogy, except for perhaps on an actual sinking ship?

the_optimist 2y ago

There is no magic here. Ballots have no identifiers attached to them. Fraudulent ballots are indistinguishable from real ballots. Envelopes do have identifiers attached to them but are separated from ballots. It is not always necessary to submit envelopes with ballots, and batch integrity is not necessarily maintained or useful based on batch size. False registration and/or false voting can produce fake ballots. Ballot-level fraud resolution diminishes to zero, by design, in the existing system in order to preserve a degree of voter anonymity. Without registration or voting resolution, there is a very limited check on fraud, including high likelihood of surplus of in-circulation empty ballots. please explain your position in this context.

troyvit 2y ago
I wish people would've responded to you instead of down-voting you. I've heard those arguments, but the thing is there are several cases around the country right now where ballot-level fraud _was_ caught[1]. Without doing any research I'll say that while it's easier to generate a bogus ballot than it is to generate a bogus hundred dollar bill, it just doesn't scale to the point where it's useful. It's a pain in the ass to get your hands on enough ballots, fill them out, and deliver them to a drop box or whatever. You can't just pull up with a wagon full of ballots and drop them off. How much is it worth to somebody to flip a county? Which county do you flip? How many ballots will you need to flip it? What's the risk/reward ratio like? [1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-fraudulently-filled-by-usps-employee-friend/ https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-frau...
lmm 2y ago
So what's the scenario where a voter ID check makes a difference - specifically, where an ID check eliminates more fake votes than it disenfranchises genuine voters? The ID check is presumably still attached to the envelope rather than the ballot, right? (Otherwise you have massive deanonymity problems). If there is fake voter registration happening, presumably obtaining fake IDs by the same methods is just as easy. I'm sure a certain amount of e.g. individuals submitting their dead relatives' ballots happens - but anyone doing that can probably grab their relative's ID too, and go to two polling stations. I doubt any large-scale partisan fraud via in-person submission at polling stations is going on, because it's impractical to make that happen while keeping it secret - the only way it could happen would be with widespread official collusion, and again in that case an ID check wouldn't move the needle.