I'm so very tired of proprietary software made by tiny little outfits being critical to elections.
Then I think about what might look like a nice halfway point. Voting machine software is still written by companies, but we require that all software running on a voting machine be published and hermetically reproducible. They don't have to take pull requests, they still own it, but we should be able to open one up and be 100% sure that the software running on it is exactly what they've documented.
It turns out that the discrepancies are almost always in districts without paper trails, and always favor one party.
Unsurprisingly, the discrepancies favor the party that keeps blocking federal voting machine standards.
It's closed source and they've fought FOI requests to get access.
All we have been able to find out is that it's written in visual basic 6.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/04/aec-threatens-...
https://konnech.com.au - it appears to not be responding now
That alone should already tell you everything you need to know...
Yup, this exact talking point has been made so many times in so many ways on so many forums that somebody made a site just to rebut it.
In this case, the index appears to be a mash of conspiracy Twitter accounts, fringe blogs, and links to itself. Ho hum.
Domain not found.
YC23 anyone?
In this case, every source that has told you there was no fraud in the 2020 election appears to be a mash of conspiracy Twitter accounts, fringe blogs, or links to itself. Ho hum.
(For what it’s worth, I don’t get my news from them.)
Another poster in this discussion posted some links including this one https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/here-is-the-evidence but I didn't find it very satisfying because while it does mention a lot of problems with that site, it doesn't really address the specific evidence itself. I was hoping to see somebody break down the evidence found on hereistheevidence and explain what was so wrong with it. I mean, even heavily biased sources that have been caught spreading lies in the past can still post some truths right? A biased source is a reason for caution, not a reason to outright dismiss something!
So, not having that readily available, I thought I'd check some of the evidence myself. I started with "143,835 votes in Georgia were in violation to state laws". That sure sounds pretty serious! That claim consists of nothing more than a link to https://thepostmillennial.com/trump-lawyer-lists-exhaustive-.... No evidence, but I guess they linked to it so I ignored the nagging voice saying "WTF is thepostmillennial.com?" and clicked that link so that I could take in all the glorious evidence I was promised! I'll save you a click though. There is no evidence there. It's just a blog post about how somebody else made a bunch of claims and a video of those claims being made. Not once in the text of that site does the number "143,835" even come up and nowhere is there any evidence available to review.
Okay, so there's zero evidence at that link, maybe it was just a bad example...
I next checked the entry for "300,000 Fake People Voted In Arizona Election" - Wow! So many fake people! How did I not hear about this?! The entry for that claim is also nothing more than another link. Okay, so no evidence of fake people, but surely that link must take me straight to it! The link goes to https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/12/01/data_expe... and once again, I'll save you the click, it's still just a post about someone else's claims. There's zero evidence there.
Links to stories about people making claims without evidence is not evidence. If there's any evidence at all to be found on hereistheevidence.com, I didn't find it. I guess we need someone to create "hereistheevidenceonhereistheevidence.com"
I can't blame people for not taking the time to go over all of the evidence at hereistheevidence.com and verify it, because there is no evidence, which I guess we all should have known by now.
I am so frustrated that the discussion space is so often forced around this topic.
The claim is not that there was “widespread systemic” wrongdoing, the claim is that it would only take a very tiny amount of weight to push an election in direction that benefits the one doing the pushing.
This obsession with the phrase “widespread systemic” is a distraction that prevents people from actually talking to one another.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/here-is-the-evidence/ https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/B... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/technology/a-website-fund... https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guid...
All that stuff is just junk, you realize. And you can tell because none of it makes sense! It's got a bunch of numbers and a long list of links to click on that makes you feel like there must be evience (which is the whole point), but when you actually drill down... there's nothing there. It's all argumentation of the form "Why would X be true if we know Y?", leading you to suspect that the "real" reason must be "Z" without saying it. That's not argument, it's a gish gallop. And it's fooled you.
I mean, just to make a point using the same logic[1]: if elections were this easy to cheat, then why aren't the cheaters winning all the time? Why do both sides share power at all? How does it not devolve into a single party illuminati running everything? I submit that it doesn't because elections aren't being stolen.
[1] But in favor of bland conservatism about "stuff works normally" and not a particular criminal conspiracy.
there's at least one feature about elections in the US that makes detecting cheating pretty difficult. there's no good way for me to verify that my vote was recorded a specific way subsequent to casting it.
The point about cryptography was me being glib, but the math does exist. The relevant subfield is "homomorphic encryption" and I remember seeing a paper over the last few years (probably linked here on HN if I had to guess) claiming to have an election-relevant algorithm that was supposed to be workable in practice. I can't find it right now though.
What people believe is that, in spite of numerous flaws in voting software, the integrity of the vote is not seriously in question. And there are good reasons for believing this: physical backups, consistency with exit polling and, well, the fact that no party in this godforsaken country has been able to hold onto the presidency for more than 2 terms in nearly 30 years.
No one serious argues that election management systems are bug free or that their operators can't possibly make mistakes. We're just saying that nothing has broken yet.
A good example of this is when the state tells you that you can vote, and then arrests you and charges you with voter fraud, because you actually can't. [1]
Or, alternatively, when the state bars you from voting until you pay all outstanding court fees and fines, but also refuses to tell you whether or not you actually owe any outstanding court fees or fines.
You can't have a free and fair election when you secretly disqualify people from voting, but refuse to tell them that until after they vote.
[1] https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/08/27/2-people-...
I'm confused. How is this voter suppression? You agree the person in question had no right to vote, right? So no one's vote is being suppressed.
The only way the election is unfair in this case is if the vote was counted.
Moreover, I see no difference in this practice than how we prosecute people for tax fraud. Several times I call the IRS and they tell me one rule and then it turns out they adjust my tax later. Luckily mine is so simple they can do that but I imagine if it were more complicated they wouldn't and I would be liable.
Arguably, it could be said that if people who have every reason to think that they are allowed to vote can later be arrested and charged with voter fraud, then every voter unwilling to risk being arrested would be better off not voting to avoid finding out the hard way that despite assurances that they can vote they were guilty of fraud.
It's still a bit of a reach though because the article highlights two cases which seem pretty specific. I don't doubt Washington believed he was eligible to vote, but that belief was based on an assumption about the law and an election worker telling him his voter card was legitimate. I don't think that situation is going to apply to very many people including people with a criminal record.
The second case, where Stribling claims she was just randomly checking boxes on her voter registration form since she can't read or write is even less likely to be a problem for others. I think these cases are unfortunate, but very unlikely to have a chilling effect on other voters.
The article however does give a quote from a Florida senator which says “Some of the individuals did check with (supervisors of elections) and believed they could register,” and that's a bit more disturbing. I think anyone who contacts election officials to make sure they can vote would have every reason to expect that they can if that's what they are told, but it's hard to say what impact that might have without more information.
For sure... this reeks of incompetence by these bureaucrats and they too ought to be reprimanded.
But sure, I agree that it's stupid to have every municipality and polity, down to the five mud farmers living in unincorporated East Mudsville, Nowhere figuring out how to do their elections in their own special way. Perhaps it would be good to look into how Elections Canada[1] does things?
[1] It has the unfortunate side effect of providing federal oversight over elections, which is not something that republicans seem to be interested in this year.
This opens up the election to unnecessary allegations of fraud.
Unnecessary because of how simple this is to manage.
This kind of scheduling is not critical, because it happens early enough that you can actually correct mistakes with it without compromising the election.
That's the whole point of defense in depth. Compromising this layer does not actually break the system. Because any failures from it are both visible and redressable.