8 ms·

The problem, as I understand it, is that if you can prove to yourself that your vote was counted right, you can also prove it to the guy with the sledgehammer n

• badestrand 9mo ago
  By that logic we have to get rid of mail-in voting as well because there could always be a sledgehammer guy standing next to someone in their own home.
  • zamadatix 9mo ago
    Some do think so, but there is also a material difference in needing to be intimidated at the time of the vote being cast vs any point in the future as well.
    • godelski 9mo ago
      I think the bigger concern is that mail in ballots lead to fake ballots being submitted. Though I've seen no convincing evidence of this happening at any meaningful scale and the arguments seem unconvincing since you don't get a ballot unless verified with a state ID and your ballot has a unique ID associated with your name, preventing a double spend. Personally, my concern is that with mail in ballots some nutjob that believes there's ballot stuffing can set fire to the ballotbox and even though they're caught it's a major inconvenience to get a replacement ballot and the websites that show your ballot is received take days to update. But I still love mail in voting. My state sends a candidate brochure with it and I can take my time to actually look up all those random candidates' policies. It takes me hours to actually fill out my ballot but that's a feature, not a bug (there's nothing preventing you from along party lines but frankly I'd be happier without parties)
      • usefulcat 9mo ago
        > I can take my time to actually look up all those random candidates' policies But you can already do that, regardless of mail in voting or not?
        • godelski 9mo ago
          In the booth I've never had a voter guide and you're definitely discouraged from pulling out your phone. Not to mention the peer pressure. What asshole is going to stand in the booth for hours voting? I got to get to work! Sure, you can do all this at home but there's a clear convenience when having both in hand
      • somenameforme 9mo ago
        In 2020 a number of states were sending out mail-in ballots to every single registered voter, even if they didn't request it. Those states were CA, CO, DC, HI, NJ, NV, OR, UT, VT, and WA. [1] [1] - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-during-covid-19 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
        • habinero 9mo ago
          And that's completely fine, because each mail-in ballot is associated with one voter, and the system is designed to make fraud very obvious and difficult to scale. If thousands of people were told "you already voted" when they showed up, then that would be very very obvious. They also really do look at signatures and contact voters to cure ballots if they're unsure.
          • godelski 9mo ago
            Not to mention that you can catch double voting across state lines. It's not common that people do this but it does happen and people are really looking for it. Hell, the fact that so many people have been looking for massive voter fraud for about a decade now and haven't is pretty telling. People aren't good at keeping secrets and if it's being done at scale it would be uncovered or leaked. Accidents and stupid people happen, but that works both ways
    • Detrytus 9mo ago
      For me the problem with mail-in votes is that they are (in many jurisdictions) allowed to come in long after the in-person voting is closed, and the preliminary results are annouced. So it creates the space for manipulations, where you count the in-person votes first, and, if the score is close, then a week after the election day half a million of mail-in votes mysteriously comes in and swings the vote one way or another.
      • ab5tract 9mo ago
        The postmark must be on or before voting day. I cannot fathom how people have bought into this idea that they can be sent after the preliminary voting has happened.
  • somenameforme 9mo ago
    In reality sledgehammer guy is never the threat, it's somebody fabricating votes. This can be done in a completely illegal fashion as in complete identity fraud, legally grey areas like ballot harvesting, or more socially palatable forms of identity fraud like somebody voting on behalf of family members who would not otherwise be voting. And the biggest problem of this all is that it's basically impossible to prove because there's no meaningful identifier at any given point in the process. The only real evidence you'd have is a bad signature, yet in 2020 some states ceased comparing signatures and signature comparison was, in general, bizarrely under attack by certain interest groups.
    • habinero 9mo ago
      This is 100%, completely absolutely untrue. Stop repeating this propaganda. The system is actually really well designed and safe, I was a poll observer. You cannot "fabricate" votes, because all mail-in ballots are associated with a voter. Or rather, you put your ballot in an envelope and the envelope is associated with you. When your ballot is received, you are marked as voted and other ballots are invalid. The envelope is stored as proof of who voted and the ballot is kept separately to be tallied. Ballot counting is done in public (you can go watch!) and there are a lot of safeguards and crosschecks. It's intended to make any fraud very obvious and incredibly difficult to scale.
      • yonaguska 9mo ago
        Claims of voter fraud have shifted to mass voter registration occuring for people that are not eligible to vote, then ballots being sent out without being requested. How is this concern addressed?
        • habinero 9mo ago
          Yeah, and those claims are made up to scare people who don't know how it works. The government knows who is a citizen and who isn't lol, they literally have the records. Voter rolls are very closely scrutinized. Dead people are, in fact, taken off the rolls. There is essentially ~no voter fraud and ~no instance of non-citizens voting in this country. Yes, it's audited and studied. Yes, they keep the data and you can audit it. You're literally complaining about it being easier for people to participate in democracy, and you should stop. Everything's a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works.
  • endgame 9mo ago
    Yes. Here's a 2014 BBC article about that: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26487418 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26487418 The article quotes one Mr Richard Mawrey QC: > "Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud… on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability." > "Now I know that there is a very strong political desire to keep the present system. What I'm saying is that if you keep the present system, then however many safeguards you create, fraud and serious fraud is inevitably going to continue because that is built into the system."
  • dietr1ch 9mo ago
    Yeah, and you should get rid of that
  • WWLink 9mo ago
    By that logic we should require DNA testing because, you never know, someone might go to a polling place and lie about their name and have a fake ID too. You never can be too careful! Also, maybe someone inside will take their ballot from them. IMHO this voting thing is too risky. We should just go back to having a ruling family /s
  • matsemann 9mo ago
    If you however can go to a polling place afterwards and cast a new vote, that solves that issue, right? And then your mail-in just doesn't count.
• zug_zug 9mo ago
  Such a weird argument. I've never met anybody with a sledgehammer threatening votes. Feels like a willfully absurd excuse to avoid having an audit trail in elections.
  • pdpi 9mo ago
    Then you haven’t lived under a dictatorship. It might not be a sledgehammer, but breaking voter secrecy and pressuring people to vote the “right” way is very much a thing.
    • EGreg 9mo ago
      Can you actually back this up? I have seen this argument before thrown around like dogma, even though I have NEVER seen it in the modern world. The closest I can think of is rare cases like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case
      • shushpanchik 9mo ago
        There are lots of reported cases in Russia, when your manager requires you to take photo of your paper ballot and show it to them, otherwise you have problems. You can try to google-translate [this, for example](https://holod.media/2024/03/08/soprotivlenie-putinu/#h-3-%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8F-%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BB%D1%8F%D1%8E%D1%82-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8E-%D1%81-%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-%D1%83%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D1%81-%D0%B1%D1%8E%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BC-%D0%B8-%D0%BD%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9 https://holod.media/2024/03/08/soprotivlenie-putinu/#h-3-%D0...)
        • EGreg 9mo ago
          Reported as in an advice article that claims it’s happening? This same article gives advice for what to do if it happens with paper ballots in real life! So clearly, paper ballots aren’t a panacea. And there is a far larger problem with paper ballots: you cannot check whether your vote was even counted correctly. With properly designed crypto electronic voting systems using eg Merkle trees that doesn’t happen. There are ways to make sure your vote was correctly counted while at the same time not being to prove to anyone how you voted.
• godelski 9mo ago
  Proving that you voted is different than proving you voted for a specific candidate. In fact, the one isn't nearly as big of a privacy concern (if any at all). I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me the former could be done with some XOR scheme, but proving that both you voted and your vote counted for a specific candidate while keeping that a secret is a much more difficult task
  • KPGv2 9mo ago
    > proving that both you voted and your vote counted for a specific candidate while keeping that a secret is a much more difficult task Just have a code show the truth (for you to verify) and a second code to show a lie (in case of threats).
    • godelski 9mo ago
      Sure. But if you talk about anything from a high enough level it's trivial. The hard part is actually implementing that.
  • lategloriousgnu 9mo ago
    In Australia, which has mandatory voting, they literally just check your name off the voter roll when you arrive at the polling station. Each polling station has a list (digital or paper) of people registered to vote in that electorate. After your name is checked off, you then proceed to a booth where you mark a piece of paper before folding and placing that paper into a plastic collection box on the way out. It's very analog and the electoral commission have no way to know if you actually voted or who you voted for. They only know that you turned up to the polling station and gave them your name. I assume the number of people who turn up at the polling station, only to walk away without voting is so small that it's not seen as a problem to solve.
    • yazantapuz 9mo ago
      Years ago in Argentina, a corrupt politician forced a small community to vote for them using a clever trick. They instructed the voters to fold their ballots into a specific shape or figure. Since the paper wasn't torn or damaged, the votes remained legally valid. This allowed the politician to ensure the exact number of promised votes were in the ballot box during the count
• testing22321 9mo ago
  Australia has very strict laws about who can be near a polling place, and certainly nobody can be inside other than the few certified officials running the show. Guy with sledgehammer is at least a block waylay, and everyone knows that everyone votes, by law.
  • axus 9mo ago
    Obviously the person with the sledgehammer is a law enforcement officer working for the populist politician.
• endgame 9mo ago
  There are some really clever systems that let you prove that you voted without leaking how you voted. Unfortunately, explaining them to Joe Q. Public in such a way that he's going to trust your election is a very tough sell, whereas counting paper is a much easier process to explain. And that's before you begin worrying that the developer of your whizz-bang mathematically-provable voting system is a) going to win the bid to build it for the government, b) implements it correctly, and c) isn't subverted while doing so.
  • croon 9mo ago
    I have had this discussion many times before, with people smarter than me, and I have not yet reached a counter argument to the idea that if you can only prove that you voted (and not couple each vote to a voter), how can you prove that innumerable votes were added to the record, or that your vote is correct? You can either couple every vote to a voter and risk oppressive monitoring of votes at scale or coercion at micro level, OR you can have decoupled voting proving that your vote was counted, but not have convincing proof that your vote or anyone else's are accurate. Please prove me wrong because I would love it if it was possible. Edit: Booth/paper-voting solves this by: * linearly scaling cost of multi-party verification of identity at time of voting * your vote being anonymous and being decoupled from you at time of deposit * you trust the system at scale since each step in the chain-of-custody has many-eyes-verification * vote amount is grouped by location so vote insertion can't happen at scale without coordinating with each involved polling place to fudge each of their numbers * you can't insert into one area without having a random 100k population increase in a polling place overnight
    • rstuart4133 9mo ago
      You could try reading the Wikipedia article on the end to end voter veritable system called Prêt à Voter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt_%C3%A0_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt_%C3%A0_Voter It's not that hard to grok how it works because there is no complicated math involved. It allows any voter to verify their vote was accurately recorded in the reported total. The usual argument against is you need a lot of people to verify, and most won't. That's probably true when everyone is confident in the outcome, but I'm not so sure it works be true if there was a wiff of fraud in the air. > how can you prove that innumerable votes were added to the record, or that your vote is correct? In Australia it's easy to prove no votes to the record because everyone on the rolls must vote, or they get fined. Ergo total votes must equal the number of people on the roll minus the number fined. As for "your vote was counted" - read the Wikipedia article. These systems do prove that, while keeping your ballot secret.
• KurSix 9mo ago
  As soon as a system gives you a receipt, a cryptographic proof, or even a reliable way to re-verify later, you've created something that can usually be repurposed as evidence for a third party