4 ms·

We need paper ballots because people can understand them. Election conspiracy theories are becoming a problem. Having a counting process that people can underst

We need paper ballots because people can understand them. Election conspiracy theories are becoming a problem. Having a counting process that people can understand and trust is a feature.

mullingitover 7mo ago
We already use paper ballots[1]. You can't use reason to get people out of a mindset they didn't use reason to get into. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/some-good-news-donald-trump-we-already-use-paper-ballots https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/some...
- apothegm 7mo ago
  Paper ballots that we almost never bother manually checking against the insecure digital tallies unless there’s a very close race or explicit challenge to the count.
  - estearum 7mo ago
    This is just literally not true. Nearly every state routinely does statistical audits of voting machines compared with paper records. People hate to hear this but: statistics work. You can randomly sample a portion (say, 2% to 5%) of ballots and have effective certainty about how much fraud or error there is in your voting system.
estearum 7mo ago
Conspiratorial thinking can't be fixed with additional facts. There is no set of facts that conclusively establish any claim to someone who is already committed not to believing the claim.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  Additional facts can slow the rate at which conspiracy theorists can convert others. It helps if the additional facts are visibly obvious.
  - UncleMeat 7mo ago
    A common property of conspiracies is that any evidence is evidence of the conspiracy. Not enough data produces "what are they hiding" stuff. More data produces deliberate misunderstandings of the data to justify the conspiracy. We saw this very clearly with covid. When public health agencies were less transparant it was evidence of an evil coverup. When public agencies were more transparant about limitations or things they didn't fully understand it was evidence that public health efforts didn't work.

We need paper ballots because people can understand them. Election conspiracy theories are becoming a problem. Having a counting process that people can understand and trust is a feature.

mullingitover 7mo ago

We already use paper ballots[1]. You can't use reason to get people out of a mindset they didn't use reason to get into. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/some-good-news-donald-trump-we-already-use-paper-ballots https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/some...

apothegm 7mo ago
Paper ballots that we almost never bother manually checking against the insecure digital tallies unless there’s a very close race or explicit challenge to the count.
- estearum 7mo ago
  This is just literally not true. Nearly every state routinely does statistical audits of voting machines compared with paper records. People hate to hear this but: statistics work. You can randomly sample a portion (say, 2% to 5%) of ballots and have effective certainty about how much fraud or error there is in your voting system.

estearum 7mo ago

Conspiratorial thinking can't be fixed with additional facts. There is no set of facts that conclusively establish any claim to someone who is already committed not to believing the claim.

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
Additional facts can slow the rate at which conspiracy theorists can convert others. It helps if the additional facts are visibly obvious.
- UncleMeat 7mo ago
  A common property of conspiracies is that any evidence is evidence of the conspiracy. Not enough data produces "what are they hiding" stuff. More data produces deliberate misunderstandings of the data to justify the conspiracy. We saw this very clearly with covid. When public health agencies were less transparant it was evidence of an evil coverup. When public agencies were more transparant about limitations or things they didn't fully understand it was evidence that public health efforts didn't work.