For conversation a, we would disagree in principle - regardless of whether we’re talking about the integrity of the corporate books, the management of systems access, or the integrity of the voting process, to the degree the control structure weakens it is introducing increasing amounts of risk not only in the reliability of the reporting but into the faith held by the stakeholders.
Now you ask, how much risk is appropriate and sustainable, to which I (quick on the repartee) would say storming the federal capital is a benchmark of failure, a growing (not ebbing) concern over election integrity over decades is a bad trend getting worse not better.
Even via the most cynical outlook about one side imagining problems that aren’t there, what happens in sports when one team believes fouls against them aren’t being called? Or in a company when rumors are commonplace that the books are being cooked? It doesn’t make things better, is my point - things get worse. And that’s where turning a blind eye to the very real concerns of others only continues the destabilization.
> extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received,
Yea maybe it was because there was a global pandemic and the president deliberately weakened the postal service to help himself. I don't see how legal ballots sent in being counted is a weakening of integrity.
None of this is evidence. These are things that happened - but you have not provided any evidence that this weakened the integrity of the election.
Imagine it like a problem in GAAP or in NIST 800. It’s not about whether _you_ can or cannot see fraud, it’s about whether the community at large (let’s just use Pareto’s 80%) has faith that there are sufficient controls to make fraud unlikely.
Here’s an easy example: your company doesn’t require dual signatures on wire transfers over $250k. One person can make a decision on moving material amounts of cash out the door. You say, we’ve not seen any evidence of large scale wire fraud so we don’t need stronger controls to prevent it. To your auditors and investment community this is a ticking time bomb for several reasons, the least of which may be questionable confidence in your specific ability to detect instances of fraud thus far.
This type of problem is encountered frequently in the regulatory world and I’m not sure why the voting process is so special that we can’t apply similar solution sets. That is, look to sensible, auditable control structures that can be demonstrated to be effective.
The control structure around voting is getting looser, not tighter, and this has been a trend predating the prior four presidential election cycles at least. Looking at the anecdata, many operations are a clown show where if not being abused are clearly ripe for abuse.
I’m not sure how to put it more simply: the debate about the degree and type of fraud that _you_ are aware of is immaterial. The question before the country is how to react when some 40% of the country is losing confidence in the system. Not just in a joking way but shifting to where the fringes are just done with it and parts of the non-fringe are increasingly finding sympathy for them.
My OP was about how the US needs to be prioritizing a fix for the confidence problem. Solutions such as more censorship are a poison pill.
Your comment reflects your self interest in the outcome of the last election, rather than the national interest for the next election. You can tell people to go pound sand, but I don’t think that solution has longevity. This is the first time in my lifetime I can remember the Capitol being stormed, and I’m aware that the confidence issue has been percolating for many years. Ballot harvesting, loose validation checks, willfully bad voter roles, etc., have been making the problem worse not better, again from a confidence level. This year in California the Republicans got in on the ballot harvesting.
Again, what happens in sports when one team thinks the fouls aren’t being called? Does it matter whether you, on the other team, hold a different opinion about the state of refereeing? The whole thing turns into a clown show.
I don’t think an endorsement of continuing down this same path is a good prescription for this country. In terms of the Four Boxes of Liberty, I worry that two of them are increasingly perceived as being locked out for one of our large political factions. Not good.
If the goal was to truly add trust they would not have stormed the capitol at the behest of Trump and his allies. This immediately proves the goal is not trust - it is power.
Now you must prove to me why I should trust these challenges - as they are filled with lies and conspiracy theories. The trust problem is with the insurrectionists. You have not dealt with this or have proven the system has no integrity. You are using ambiguity, like a flat-earther. It won't work here, sorry.
Sadly, that decision may have led to this state of affairs. When people think they have no voice, violence comes soon after.
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Texas should have no right to tell our legislature and government how to run its elections. The Supreme Court rightfully agreed:
> "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections," the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.
But again, you aren't arguing in good faith. I can't wait til Jan 20.
( If you act in bad faith in court, you can lose your license. I should look up the detail again)
The system will never be perfect but nobody is. Holding it to a 100% standard and saying it isn't a good system if it fails in a few points is not acting in good faith.
I have yet to see any real evidence of election fraud. The Trump lawyers have been shutdown by bipartisan courts across the country. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, lifelong republicans, agreed.
It's time to move on.