Of course we do. Georgia did a full hand recount this election, finding no evidence of anything like what you're alleging. And many states do random-sample hand recounts every election. We didn't check every single vote, but "absolutely no idea" is way off the mark.
Indeed. A recount provides absolutely no evidence in either direction on what I'm alleging. Fortunately, if you'd like evidence, you can look for the auditable source code for my local voting machines on github. Didn't find any? There's your evidence of a transparency issue.
What many of these posts did provide evidence for are reading comprehension issues on web forums. But we knew that already.
Georgia electronic votes were all backed by voter verifiable auditable paper ballots. That's independent of whether the software is competent at arithmetic. A hand recount does, in fact, protect against fake totals.
Unfortunately, there are a handful of states that don't mandate paper backups. The solution for machines of that sort isn't open source—it's adding auditable paper.
It's simply a flat out repudiation of democracy.
"These people" also couldn't allege fraud in Georgia if we had fraud-proof systems. It's not rocket science. I wish we could point them to proof. We can't. We can point "these people" to pretty good evidence, but we wouldn't have this particular problem if we could point to hard proof.
We'd probably have a different problem, but it is what it is.
What evidence do you have that they couldn't? Plenty of people would make claims of fraud, even in a "fraud-proof" election systems. What would that even look like, in theory, let alone in practice?
What specifically out our current system leaves it open to the widespread, multi-state fraud that is being claimed by the president and others?
I mean, seriously. Look under the hood for five minutes.
This stuff wasn't even controversial among most liberals pre-Trump.
You imply that liberals have changed their position on this post-Trump, but I don't think you'll find these suggested improvements controversial to most liberals. But what do you mean by we can't point the people of Georgia to hard proof? I fail to see how addressing even all of the points you raise would suddenly convince the president and his supporters. The existing measures don't appear to have swayed them at all. So I don't think it's productive to pretend like this wouldn't be a problem if only we had some mythical "fraud-proof" system.
https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/historic_first_statew...
> Today, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the results of the Risk Limiting Audit of Georgia’s presidential contest, which upheld and reaffirmed the original outcome produced by the machine tally of votes cast. Due to the tight margin of the race and the principles of risk-limiting audits, this audit was a full manual tally of all votes cast. The audit confirmed that the original machine count accurately portrayed the winner of the election.
> By law, Georgia was required to conduct a Risk Limiting Audit of a statewide race following the November elections.
> The differential of the audit results from the original machine counted results is well within the expected margin of human error that occurs when hand-counting ballots. A 2012 study by Rice University and Clemson University found that “hand counting of votes in postelection audit or recount procedures can result in error rates of up to 2 percent.” In Georgia’s recount, the highest error rate in any county recount was .73%. Most counties found no change in their finally tally. The majority of the remaining counties had changes of fewer than ten ballots.
We never have. The only way to know would be to personally verify the voter's driver's license, watch them vote and submit their ballot, count their ballot, and repeat for every single voter in the United States. Since this will never, ever happen, one could always make vague claims about authenticity. But without concrete evidence of fraud, it doesn't matter.
Let’s be real that’s basically a part of politics. That’s not an issue with elections per se.
Plus it’s clearly easier to just use social media and targeted propaganda to manipulate voters.
I’m all for secure elections and improving that security.
But my understanding is that to date when people have taken a serious look they’ve found no meaningful evidence of fraud.
The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college then the presidency wouldn’t come down to a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few states.
I reckon the US system needs to self-reform if it wants to survive. All democracies change their electoral laws from time to time. The current system appears unsustainable: roughly two thirds of the electorate now feel fundamentally disenfranchised (one third thinks it's racist; the other that it's corrupt).
I will mention that the split-down-the-middle thing isn't a property of electoral college. That's how you win in a democracy. If voters are distributed between 1 and 10 on some issue:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
I win by picking 5.5. Whatever you pick, you get a minority of voters. That's complicated by primaries. In the same system, if I want to be a ballot candidate, though, I can't do that. I want to pick 2.75 or 7.25 so the majority of my party votes for me.
Of course, things like charisma fit in a bit too, but for the most part, if one party runs a 2.74 candidate and the other a 7.24, the 7.24 has an advantage, and vice-versa for 2.76 and 7.76.
All that things like electoral college do is shift weights. Tight elections just means politicians have learned to play the game well.
A system where someone with 40% or 60% of the vote wins isn't fundamentally broken -- the underlying check-and-balance works. What is fundamentally broken are when incentive structures misalign.
What strikes me, and what I want to say, is why pick someone like HIM out of all people available, and why does everyone seem to ignore his condition? Seeing him talking, it seems like himself and everyone around him try really hard not to put something cognitively challenging in his head, that will have to translate to comprehensible speech.
Do those in charge think one's name and past deeds campaign on their own, as opposed to the actual candidate showcasing himself with his present words and image? Does the need to bring Donald down give a blank canvas to the other side to put in front someone unfit?
I am semi-sure the President can be a puppet - not by definition, but can happen sometimes I guess - since Bush Jr, that creature with the obviously sub-par IQ and cognition, was elected - and again, nobody in the US seemed to actually freak out 24/7 with having such a man as the president. Just remember on the reason he cited for deciding to attack Iraq - and I am not talking about the false WMD claims, but for "God told me", which he stated in complete seriousness. So, when I saw that guy governing, I said to myself - it can't be this thing having the actual power here, he does not have the mental capacity to achieve that on his own.
Same with Biden. He obviously does not have the mental capacity to rule, and Donald going away is not enough reason to be ok with that. I don't even see a consensus of the type "Yeah he is an old senile guy, we'll just use him to take down Trump and then we see how it goes" - everyone pretends he is normal, and that's what baffles me.
The main stream media has engaged in slightly less fabrication, but there was definitely some of the same "boy who cried wolf" dynamic in the other direction too.
It's like telling your grandma to install security updates, and her coming back saying no one has broken into her computer so it must be secure (while gramps insists someone has).
The simple fact of the matter is our elections are NOT secure, and making them secure would be cheap, and easy.
We have absolutely no idea whether the vote counts in the US are authentic. That doesn't mean anyone stole this election. That certainly doesn't mean Democrats stole this election. But it does mean we should secure them.
Of course, physical security is a cheap and easy step. The harder part is gaming our media. If attackers can help direct where voters vote with $$$, that's a cheap attack too.
As a footnote, if I were an attacker, of any type, I wouldn't even bother with the November election. The easiest place to attack is primaries. Both 2020 and 2016, we had among the weakest candidates among the crop win.
We're going from a con artist to a senile mildly corrupt lifetime politician of limited accomplishment. UPGRADE! I'll expect we'll move from major corruption to minor corruption, without an attempted coup.
What I think we deserve, though, is a politician with intelligence, vision, and integrity.
That requires fixing systems, rather than GOP pointing to DNC, and vice-versa.