Yes. Specifically, pro-Democrat media and organisations have spent the last several years arguing that measures to make fraud like this harder, such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging. There are endless headlines counting every single entry removed from the electoral roll or even just marked for extra checking as a vote suppressed. Again, this includes people who won't vote because they're not living in that state anymore! They've been campaigning against checking if votes are being cast under the same person's identity in more than one state too, so using their identities is basically an easy and safe way to add fraudulent votes in much of the US. There was even a theory in widespread circulation on social media that the 2016 election was rigged in favour of Trump, based on counting every person whose voter registration was flagged as inactive and requiring further confirmation as a stolen vote for Clinton.

> such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging

Unregistering has had some serious problems of hitting active voters in the past, though I'm not an expert there.

But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable.

> But I can easily say that checking ID, without first making sure valid voters can easily get the needed ID, is unacceptable.

Agreed. The issue is the Democratic solution is to never ID, instead of coming up with a way to easily get people IDs. That makes me rather suspicious of their motives.

I think they do that because nuance gets lost so easily. And some of those laws going through are anti-voter in so many ways that getting lost in the weeds of hypothetical situations weakens the pushback.

ID is required to register to vote in the first place though? It's literally a crime to not present ID when demanded by police. I'm all for removing the (negligible) fees associated, but it's not exactly a huge barrier to voting.

> It's literally a crime to not present ID when demanded by police.

No, it isn't, anywhere in the US. A bare majority (26) states have stop-and-identify laws which allow stops to determine identity based on reasonable suspicion of crime, but many don't, and those that do don't (and cannot Constitutionally) require presenting identification.

IANAL, but it’s not this simple.

Everywhere in the US, the law around Terry stops[1] applies. In fact every time the police “pull you over” on the road is a Terry stop.

In such a stop, mere “reasonable suspicion” is required for police to require you to identify yourself. You’re not required to present ID but you must tell them your name (you could lie, but that’s another crime). You can be arrested for refusing to identify yourself.

In order to determine if your are experiencing a Terry stop, ask the officer “Am I free to go?”, if the answer is no, ask “Why am I being detained?” and the officer should state his cause. If it’s not valid you won’t be able to fight it until after the encounter, possibly after you’ve already been arrested.

Egregious example: The infamous NYC “stop and frisk” policy[2] was essentially a massive Terry-stop program.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

> IANAL, but it’s not this simple.

IANAL, either, but I passed Con Law in law school, and it is.

> Everywhere in the US, the law around Terry stops[1] applies.

Yes, that’s what we are talking about.

> In such a stop, mere “reasonable suspicion” is required for police to require you to identify yourself.

Wrong. In such a stop, it is not federally unconstitutional for such a demand to be made, but it still requires that there is actual state law authorizing it. In 26 states there is, and in the rest there is not.

> You’re not required to present ID

Yes, that’s what I said, that even in the 26 states with stop-and-identify laws, permitted by the Supreme Court, you are still not, as the upthread commenter, required to present ID.

You’ve literally repeated what I said (except for confusing the federal limits of state authority with what police can do without supporting state law), after saying “It’s not that simple”.

> I passed Con Law in law school, and it is.

Maybe after I take that course I’ll agree with you. I don’t think that’s a great option for most.

The funny thing about politics is that good ideas presented by the wrong source can be rejected because the source is simply untrusted. The concept of rejection of ad hominem attack is great if you are a Greek rhetorical student in the lyceum, and has never been how actual decisions are made.

Regarding this topic, there are historical and recent reasons for suggestions of cleaning, trimming, purging etc. the vote roster to be met with extreme scrutiny and skepticism. The United States simply has a bad history of using tools like that for shaping the electorate to meet a desired outcome.

I despise the inefficient media screeching just as much as anyone with a few brain cells, but the cause of why it happens is pretty clear, because there is a lot of partisan fuckery around voting in many states.

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/b9fb2868c7c1a0e1f4f7e8f7c0f...

Wow so we need some explicit record of abstaining that the voter can submit and check the status on.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's realistic for the system to depend on non-voters checking their vote's status - what would be the procedure if someone claimed they were wrongly shown as having voted?

After all, it's easy to imagine a situation where certain groups might want to manufacture evidence of voter fraud.

In Pennsylvania at least, that is handled by the filing of a provisional ballot followed by a court system. One challenge to that solution is that there are hard limits on how long it can take for the election to resolve, so it is possible for that window to close before an investigation on an allegation of voter fraud to complete, and if it cannot be proven that that provisional ballot should be counted, the ballot is discarded.

The recourse should a person's vote be stolen that way is proof that the vote was stolen followed by punishment for the thief, and that punishment can be fairly severe because vote tampering cannot be taken lightly given the impact it can have on the process itself.

What elections you vote in is, in many cases in the US, pretty much public information.

Is there an officially recognised category of spoiled ballot paper in the US like in the UK?

Yes. I’m a poll inspector.

Spoiled ballots go into a separate lockbox. At the end of the night everything is tabulated (winners, losers, provisional ballots, spoiled ballots) and posted at the voting precinct. The spoiled ballots box is sealed and taken to the election office to be inspected. This is for 1 state. Every state manages elections differently.

BTW, if you can sign up to be a poll worker. It’s a thankless job that takes 1 day a year. Most poll workers are retirees and I was one of the youngest there.

Isn't this exactly what (in theory) systems like PKI or even PGP are supposed to fix?

I know this is probably techno-utopianism, but it'd be pretty cool if every resident were issued a certificate (for free) with their state or federal government as the certificate authority, which would be used for voting, paying taxes, etc. instead of ad-hoc verification systems like Name + SSN + Address.

I can imagine so many horrible problems with implementing such a system in any US state (let alone federally), but it would be pretty damn cool.

(dons mad scientist hat)

Create a system like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 for voting.

Voters remain anonymous yet can still verify their particular vote was counted correctly (and in fact that all votes are counted correctly)

You’d still want a paper trail.

"You'd still want a paper trail" <<<<<<<<<<< this

Our new voting machines in our county are awesome, I hope they are used across the state (NJ).

You get a blank piece of paper that you insert into the machine. You vote electronically, and it prints your vote out in plain readable text on the paper, and presents it to you protected under a piece of glass (maybe pexiglass?) to validate your choices. If there is something wrong, you can reject it at this point. If you accept it, it records your vote electronically, and swallows the paper ballot as a record.

Nice clear printed text. No chads.