[defrost]

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such.

That's a whole other kettle of fish.

[pexabit]

Well secure and rather indisputably valid elections are a solved problem, and many countries manage it. Identified electors cast ballots on paper counted under recorded and public observation. (I think a scantron would be fine, too).

It is just that we choose not to do this. A provably convincing election isn’t actually some hard, unsolved problem. (And yes- if you mention zero knowledge proofs in your story of why the election is safe, people will look askance because an observably valid election is a solved problem, and many countries manage it)

[CodeSgt]

Can you name a country where an actually observably valid election takes place?

And by this I mean an election where, somehow, an individual would be able to see their individual ballot make it from wherever they cast it, to the counter, and could see how their specific ballot impacted/didn't impact the broader vote, and where (again, somehow) there was proof that no artificial or false votes were cast in the name of citizens who either don't exist or didn't participate.

Even if there was a livestrem of the vote counting, that would mean nothing if we didn't see every step of transportation for every single vote from the ballot box to the counters office.

A truly observably fair election is practically impossible if you mean to have any significant number of voters.

[shakow]

Maybe I missed something in your question, but what we have in France seems pretty close.

Our ballots go into a transparent urn, you need to be registered in a voting office and show an ID paper to vote, and people counting the votes are typically a mix of local state employees and volunteers citizens (and given that most people don't want to spend their Sunday evening counting ballots, it's quite easy to get a place).

Now I guess it moves the trust onto the ID system and the aggregation of local counts into national results.

[qsort]

Same exact process in Italy, except we also use ballot tagging to fight organized crime. For all the problems we have, trusting the results of an election isn't one...

[pexabit]

Taiwan and France. Probably most countries: since it is how you would design an election in the obvious way.

> A truly observably fair election is practically impossible if you mean to have any significant number of voters.

Just broadcast the counting live.

[HWR_14]

> Identified electors cast ballots on paper counted under recorded and public observation.

You mean that the vote is tied to the voter, so everyone can tell X voted for Y? That sounds horrible.

If you mean that paper votes are simply counted under recorded observation (and observation by representatives of all parties) I would point out that didn't help in the US.

[pexabit]

Paper ballots weren’t cast and counted under general public observation in the US.

And I mean a ballot stub that is separated at the time it is cast is tied to a voter.

[HWR_14]

I have no idea what you mean by ballot stub, and no idea if that means that you are eliminating the secret ballot. It sounds like you want everyone to have a receipt tied to their vote, which doesn't even sound helpful.

And I have no idea in what way your system differs from the status quo in the US. Most states use paper receipts and those were recounted. All that stuff about "bamboo fibers" was because of the paper ballots.

[avmich]

> Well secure and rather indisputably valid elections are a solved problem

In some countries people would like to have undisputably valid elections, but can't, so I wouldn't call this a solved problem.

[pc86]

They're saying the mechanism by which you have a provably valid election is solved, not that every country that has a populace that wants that has it.

But I have a feeling you knew that already.

[avmich]

Mechanism - a good one - should solve various problems to have the issue resolved. They're saying they have "technical" mechanism, but if everybody would always follow the law it could be much simpler.

[paganel]

> Identified electors

How do you reliably identify them without an ID card (which, as I understand it, the US doesn't have), or without an election-related "ID card" (which is pretty much the same thing)?

Trying to use SSNs will of course result in economically disadvantaged people having no right to vote, the same goes, more or less, if trying to rely on driver's licenses.

[pexabit]

The second paragraph is an assertion. And urban registration drives are heavily funded. Most people who do not vote do not vote because they do not want to vote.

[pc86]

"Central north america" is a really weird way of saying "the US."

[defrost]

"United States" is a weird description of the current situation within central north america.

[googlryas]

They're extremely united. In fact, I can cross over a dozen state borders per day and not even really realize I did so.

[wharfjumper]

Tell that to the Dukes of Hazzard.

[hackerlight]

That's why we should remove all voting machines. Not because they're unsafe, but because they're an attack vector for cynical actors to sow distrust.

There's no way the small efficiency gain from automation is worth that cost.

[titzer]

I'm not sure that's the solution. The 2020 election cycle saw political figures casting doubt on paper mail-in ballots.

[HideousKojima]

It's the mail-in part that caused doubt moreso than the paper part.

[pexabit]

I don’t think a scantron machine not connected to the Internet would sow distrust. We have seen them in our high schools. And Adversarial observers can validate the results on test samples quite easily.

Which raises the question- why do we use the really awkward, blackbox and sometimes networked machines that we do, manufactured by weird companies rather than whoever makes scantron machines or whatever?

And this isn’t just about “dumb Republicans” or what have you. Here’s Scott Aaronson [1] in 2016:

> For that matter, if Russia or some other power hacked the trivially-hackable electronic voting machines that lack paper trails—machines that something like a third of American voters still used this election—there’s an excellent chance we’d never find out.

“Antivirus on voting machines? You’re doing it wrong.” [2]

The thing that really gets me is, even if you wanted to use machines, you wouldn’t use the weird machines made by shady companies that we do. Different counties would buy standard scantron machines used to grade high school finals off the shelf, and verify it in ways that are obvious to all of us.

[1] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2957

[2] https://xkcd.com/463/

[jimbob45]

Why do we use the really awkward, blackbox and sometimes networked machines that we do, manufactured by weird companies rather than whoever makes scantron machines or whatever?

Because they’re cheap, states have to fund their own elections, and no governor will ever fund an election over schools or infrastructure.

The real question is why elections are not federally funded. The answer is that states are afraid election funds will be withheld over speciously related issues, just as highway funds are withheld over drinking ages. IMHO the correct change is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing federal funding for all state elections that can’t be withheld for any reason.

[eru]

Why should elections be federally funded?

At most you could make an argument that federal elections should be federally funded. But I don't even know whether the US actually has any federal elections that the wider public participates in?

Eg the election for president is officially an election for some state officials that then go off and participate in the real federal election for president. (Of course, this is oversimplified.)

[pexabit]

How much does a scantron machine cost?

[ehnto]

The technobabble would probably erode confidence more than help the situation in the US, no matter how demonstrably true it is.

[avmich]

US can probably run two parallel simultaneous systems of record - the technobabble one and regular one, with regular one being the authoritative. After some practice is accumulated working with the other one, they can decide what to do next.

[mc32]

IIRC, Hillary was among a group claiming "stolen elections" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUqxX0YAafg and that her opponent was an illegitimate president... so, you know, it's not a unique claim. Also miss Abrams seems to make similar claims. These claims happen a bit in local elections.

[ch4s3]

There’s a much longer and “prouder” tradition of Americans claiming elections were rigged stretching all the way back to when it was true. Bush v Gore is another recent example but older folks will probably remember claims about Kennedy’s election and Nixon’s in ‘60. Andrew Jackson is somewhat credibility accused. And that’s just presidential elections off the top of my head.

[dataflow]

No, you're just conflating things horribly.

What Clinton (and I would bet most other folks that you're alluding to from the years prior) had meant by "stolen" elections or "illegitimate" president was emphatically not the same as Trump's wild allegations. She was not claiming "people cast fraudulent ballots" or "the votes were counted incorrectly" or the like. She was not denying what actually happened. Rather, she was using "stolen" to refer to things like "you can get the most votes but still lose the electoral vote, and thus the presidency", or "they make it difficult for your supporters to vote", or things like that. It's unfortunate she used the word "stealing" to refer to that, given that that apparently gave some people a very convenient opportunity to paint a false equivalency between both sides, when in reality she was using that word to make a factual statement about how votes are cast and counted in the system, whereas her opponent was using that word to to hurl unsupported (and "unsupported" is incredibly generous here) allegations of fraud.

Imagine if you were about to get a heart transplant. Someone grabs the donated heart sitting in the operating room and runs. "She stole my heart!", you panic. "Oh don't worry honey, my wife stole my heart too. It's pretty common! It happens to all of us." Imagine the sheer exasperation when you're on life support and now have to spend the remainder of your energy replying to that as a serious comment.

[pyuser583]

I understand the big difference between Trumps delusions, and Clinton’s opinions.

But you’re giving Clinton too much credit.

For one thing, neither Clinton nor Trump received over 50% if the popular vote. It’s tempting to think the Green and Libertarian voters wanted Clinton more than Trump - but third party voters have weird ideas.

Winning the presidency by getting the majority of the electoral college isn’t a steal.

If there were concerns about disenfranchised voters, maybe she would have a something.

But it was low turn out, plain and simple.

The election wasn’t stolen in any way shape or form. Nothing fishy happened. It wasn’t insanely close like in 2000.

She simply lost.

Not as bad as Trumps insanity. But not innocent either.

[dataflow]

I'm not giving Clinton any credit for anything (if anything, I'm denying her credit—for things she didn't do), and nobody is saying Clinton was innocent. You just distorted what had happened and are now twisting what I said.

If you "understand [as you admit; emphasis mine] the big difference" between what Trump and Clinton were referring to and merely intended to argue "Clinton is not innocent", then by all means, go ahead and say that directly, instead of casually leaving an incredibly misleading comment claiming Trump's allegations were "not a unique claim" because Clinton and others have been making "similar" claims. "Big difference" and "similar" are not only dissimilar, they're about as diametrically opposite as you can go.

[Nursie]

On the one hand we have the Mueller report which finds that there was Russian interference in the 2016 election in the form of coordinated social media and other 'attacks' on the Clinton campaign. This seems to form some reasonable basis for making claims that the election was ‘stolen’ (informally, and clearly not a legal basis to overturn a result).

On the other you have a narcissist who actually tried to overthrow democracy to stay in power and throws around utterly baseless claims of an organised conspiracy of direct vote subversion and interference in the election mechanism itself, who was also caught trying to coerce others to do that for him over the phone.

These situations are not really comparable.

[pyuser583]

I’m pretty sure the multiple reports on electoral interference said the outcome of the election wasn’t affected.

[Nursie]

And? Again we have one person who thinks that the (proven) Russian interference might have taken the election away from her. She's probably wrong, so?

We have a second who has actually tried to have a democratic result overturned and tries his best to undermine it at every turn, through 'soft' pressure by cajoling officials, through many failed court cases, through inflammatory rhetoric and eventually through raising a mob. A person who continues to attack the election result and throw accusations of vast, entirely unevidenced illegal conspiracies.

These are not the same. It's a ridiculous false equivalence. I'm not American, I have no particular love for Hilary Clinton, but I saw the footage of January 6th and I know how out of the ordinary that is. Trump's conduct is far more than someone mithering about a loss they perceived as unfair, and to attempt to put these on a level is disingenuous at best.

[pyuser583]

I’m glad we agree!

[pstuart]

Yawn. First and foremost that's a Fox clip and framing.

More context: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/oct/05/glenn-youn...

She was talking about voter suppression and other tactics rather than the election results being tampered with.

This is important to point out, because the GOP is hellbent on messing with future elections and want an air of whataboutism regarding election integrity.