The main complaint in 2006 was that there was no auditable paper trail. The 2020 machines all had an auditable paper trail.

Is it surprising that people switch their viewpoint after their major concern was satisfied?

This. I remember when they were completely automated, you just tapped the crappy 00s era touch-pad, and hoped it managed to submit the results the way you wanted. Then they added that stupid little receipt printer that told you what was submitted, so at least if there was a fuckup, you were informed of it.

Now, they are scantrons. You fill out a big paper ballot, and the machine counts it. It's exactly the system I want in place.

Some areas are moving back to the crappy 00’s touchscreens. They don’t connect to the internet and I’ve heard election officials claim they’re “unhackable”.

It seems unlikely they’ll replace mail in ballot scantrons any time soon, but with mail-in ballots you have increased vectors for fraud and stuff like the recent political interference with the US Postal Service.

One step forward, two steps back, I guess.

Disclaimers:

Since I mentioned mail-in ballot fraud, and the 2020 election just happened: I have heard of no credible evidence of widespread fraud during the 2020 election or Georgia runoff.

Electronic machines might be able to serve a useful purpose: I think the best option involves most people voting in person on paper ballots, despite universal access to mail-in ballots, and universal access to machines that print filled-out ballots for people with accessibility issues. Machines that print scantrons for everyone might be a net win if they reduce adjudication, and if people actually double check that the printout matches their intended vote. Alternatively, people could scan their own ballot at the polling place, and confirm it scans correctly. Either way, the paper ballot must be the authoritative record.

Once you’ve lived the reality of how convenient, accessible, and secure mail-in ballots are, there’s no reason to bother with polling stations

Did all machines in all states have an auditable paper trail, and were all subject to a software/binaries/distribution/internet connectivity audit, including administrator backend access to data?

Is this documented anywhere on some authoritative site?

> Is it surprising that people switch their viewpoint after their major concern was satisfied?

No, however, an (un)observed change in viewpoint does not necessarily represent satisfaction, or prove that all shortcomings have in fact been remedied.

Why does this comment (the one to which I am replying) have a score of "0" instead of "-1"?

Is this a glitch in the matrix? A bug in the code?

John Oliver was only hired on the daily show in July 2006. 2006 was a year full of evidence and disclosures of voting machine security issues. Do you have a bias?

> I think it's really interesting how you can completely flip people's reaction to a scenario by flipping one variable, and the people perceive themselves to be perfectly logical. The human mind is such a mystery.

> John Oliver was only hired on the daily show in July 2006. 2006 was a year full of evidence and disclosures of voting machine security issues.

Is his date of hire relevant to this conversation?

> Do you have a bias?

Not only do I have bias, but I suspect I also suffer from shortcomings in knowledge as well as precision in my thinking.

Do you suffer at all from these three things, or anything else that I may have overlooked? If no, how did you obtain that knowledge?