[POLITICS] Two Mass Shootings in 15 Hours, and O'Rourke on Trump

[tstorm823]

Granted, the DNC appear to have an issue with being self critical. But If you frame that particular negative behavior as being characteristic of Democrats in and of itself, aren't you just further polarizing people? Which is like, the thing you want them to stop doing.

There's a difference between my criticism of them and their criticism of Republicans: as much as they are jerks, I want them to do good things for the country. I would love to live in a world where Democratic politicians were better people. They don't want Republicans to be good people, they want Republicans to be as evil as possible because that gives Democrats more political power. That's my ultimate appeal to the less-savory right wingers: "every time you say something racist, you push America towards communism."

If you cant defend your claims, dont make them.

All of my claims are 100% correct!

There, I have now defended my claims.

 

[Kwak]

And then he goes on to list a bunch of things Mitch McConnell would probably agree with and calls them liberal positions.

Like democracy? Nope, he's definitely against that.

Hours after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified Wednesday that Russians are still meddling in the U.S. political system, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the advancement of legislation to secure the nation's election system. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith also blocked a set of bills on election security Wednesday.

In blocking the legislation pushed by Senate Democrats to provide more funding for election security, McConnell declared the effort partisan and insisted the Trump administration has already done much to secure the nation's elections.

One bill McConnell objected to would have both required the use of paper ballots and provided funding for the Election Assistance Commission. He also objected to legislation that would have required campaigns and candidates to report offers offers of election-related aid from foreign governments.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-blocks-election-security-bill/

The Democratic lawmakers all agreed that the threat of Russian interference needed to be taken seriously but at least two Republicans, including McConnell, pushed back. The Post reports:

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/12/mitch-mcconnell-prevented-stronger-action-against-russian-election-meddling.html

He's fucking cancerous scum.

 

[Saelune]

If you cant defend your claims, dont make them.

All of my claims are 100% correct!

There, I have now defended my claims.

Citation needed. If you cant (and wont) provide evidence, then your claim is invalid.

 

[tstorm823]

Citation needed. If you cant (and wont) provide evidence, then your claim is invalid.

Half of what I'm saying isn't fact but interpretation of facts that everyone already knows. There's no evidence to cite for an interpretation. And even if I had an authority expressing that interpretation of facts (not that an authority is evidence) you would disagree with them too.

The other half of what I'm saying can be sourced, but I'm answering a half dozen people, often in very large posts. If you want to call something specific into question, I'd be glad to dive into a specific thing, but if you just spam "citation needed" at my posts, it seems like you're just trying to make me do homework for you, and then you'd still disagree with me.

Edit: To summarize, why even ask for a source if the source can't possibly change your opinion?

Like democracy? Nope, he's definitely against that.

Hours after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified Wednesday that Russians are still meddling in the U.S. political system, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the advancement of legislation to secure the nation's election system. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith also blocked a set of bills on election security Wednesday.

In blocking the legislation pushed by Senate Democrats to provide more funding for election security, McConnell declared the effort partisan and insisted the Trump administration has already done much to secure the nation's elections.

One bill McConnell objected to would have both required the use of paper ballots and provided funding for the Election Assistance Commission. He also objected to legislation that would have required campaigns and candidates to report offers offers of election-related aid from foreign governments.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-blocks-election-security-bill/

The Democratic lawmakers all agreed that the threat of Russian interference needed to be taken seriously but at least two Republicans, including McConnell, pushed back. The Post reports:

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/12/mitch-mcconnell-prevented-stronger-action-against-russian-election-meddling.html

He's fucking cancerous scum.

You're falling for Democratic propaganda efforts. They poison pill their bills, and then the media neglects to inform you that the poison pills exist. If it's just a question of funding election security, that bill can pass, they did that in 2018 [https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/election-security-states-slow-to-spend/index.html]. These bills are getting blocked because they:

Example A: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1540/text#toc-HA69178DC9FA44AC681187C4C5B8008DB] require paper ballots, a solution that gets a lot of votes thrown out, is difficult to audit, exacerbates long voting lines, and would require a complete overhaul of every voting district not using paper ballots within 1 calendar year. Note, this particular bill also gives the executive branch undefined power and responsibility to remove fake news from social media.

Example B: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text#toc-H5AD53F4DB4D140C183648E0CD2DA03F9] provide for security while also federally mandating every state have automatic voter registration, online registration, same day registration, registration of minors, it bans voter id laws, it bans removing people's registration if they've registered to vote in a 2nd state without additional verification that they've moved, it gives the federal government control of state redistricting, bans campaigning persons from being involved in election procedures, requires that all colleges and universities inform their students of voting registration and voting locations twice every year, undoes Citizens United... holy crap what a mess. It just goes on and on and on.

And then there are a bunch of little things designed to make specifically events of 2016 illegal. Like this rule [https://www.dailypress.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/S.1562.pdf] that would make campaigns report meetings with foreign agents that involve an offer of campaign contributions or solicitations, spreads the scope of contributions just far enough to include the Trump Tower meetings, exempts basically anyone who already works for the government, and then makes these reports go to the FBI as though they're going to investigate every single time a prominent politician talks to someone from another government (they aren't going to do that). It's so specific that it includes the Trump Tower meetings as a punishable event, but doesn't include the DNC paying a former British spy to create an entire portfolio of opposition research. Basically this bill says "if anyone has specifically and exactly that Trump Tower meeting again, we'll throw them in jail!" That's why these are being dismissed as partisan grandstanding.

And like, the news is so useless. That last one is part of what Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked on "Wednesday". You read it, and go "oh, that Republican Senator must hate election security". In order to find what CBS was talking about, I had to check the date of the article, figure out what date "Wednesday" was, google floor notes from the Senate from that date, dig out the number of the resolution, and then go find the text of that resolution separately. That's just a lie of omission.

 

[Saelune]

Citation needed. If you cant (and wont) provide evidence, then your claim is invalid.

Half of what I'm saying isn't fact but interpretation of facts that everyone already knows. There's no evidence to cite for an interpretation. And even if I had an authority expressing that interpretation of facts (not that an authority is evidence) you would disagree with them too.

The other half of what I'm saying can be sourced, but I'm answering a half dozen people, often in very large posts. If you want to call something specific into question, I'd be glad to dive into a specific thing, but if you just spam "citation needed" at my posts, it seems like you're just trying to make me do homework for you, and then you'd still disagree with me.

Edit: To summarize, why even ask for a source if the source can't possibly change your opinion?

Because if you cant defend your point, everyone else will see it is invalid. Your continued refusal to provide any evidence whatsoever has only justified and validated me.

I am not asking for you to do my homework, I am demanding you do yours.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...These bills are getting blocked because they...

Yeah the only thing wrong I see with any of that is...

Congress should implement national voter ID pegged to the RealID system, have automatic voter registration based upon issuance or renewal of government-issued ID, and shift the financial burden of ID issuance to the government as opposed to the citizen. And establish as part of the FEC's mission reviewing bias in hours reduction and closures of offices responsible for identification issuance, capable of blocking office closure in instances where bias is discovered.

Increase strict regulation and oversight of voting machine custody and calibration, and registration and qualification of officials who maintain, deploy, and store them, with extension and increase of criminal liability for techs and officials who maliciously tamper with them.

 

[tstorm823]

Yeah the only thing wrong I see with any of that is...

Congress should implement national voter ID pegged to the RealID system, have automatic voter registration based upon issuance or renewal of government-issued ID, and shift the financial burden of ID issuance to the government as opposed to the citizen. And establish as part of the FEC's mission reviewing bias in hours reduction and closures of offices responsible for identification issuance, capable of blocking office closure in instances where bias is discovered.

Increase strict regulation and oversight of voting machine custody and calibration, and registration and qualification of officials who maintain, deploy, and store them, with extension and increase of criminal liability for techs and officials who maliciously tamper with them.

I mean, they've got a huge list of things, some of them are going to be worthwhile. The thing that gets me is the paper ballot bit. Paper ballots are notoriously problematic, people have proven themselves incapable of filling in bubbles successfully. Verifying things after the fact takes a thousand times as long if its all on paper. I get that you can't hack a piece of paper the same way you can hack a computer, but you can also just disconnect a computer from the internet. There's a lot of room between carving our votes into bronze tablets and hooking the presidential election up to unsecured wifi. We don't need everyone to hand in a piece of paper to keep hackers from vote tampering.

 

[tstorm823]

Because if you cant defend your point, everyone else will see it is invalid. Your continued refusal to provide any evidence whatsoever has only justified and validated me.

I am not asking for you to do my homework, I am demanding you do yours.

Here's a question for you: my reply to Kwak in the same post you quoted here had lots of sourcing. Does it convince you even a little that Mitch McConnell isn't blocking election security bills out of indifference to Russia's election interference?

And if so, is there anything I've said in this thread, anything at all, that you'd like me to give the same level of attention? If there is any theoretically factual statement that I've made that you feel like it requires evidence for you to consider it, say so. Just be specific please.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I mean, they've got a huge list of things, some of them are going to be worthwhile. The thing that gets me is the paper ballot bit. Paper ballots are notoriously problematic, people have proven themselves incapable of filling in bubbles successfully. Verifying things after the fact takes a thousand times as long if its all on paper.

Oh dear Christ that is not what is being mandated. What is being mandated is electronic voting machines, bare minimum, print out the ballot for the voter to review and manually correct before submission to an optical tabulating machine, and for those paper receipts be held with their own chain of custody for purposes of recounts and auditing. In other words, DRE machines are not allowed to submit ballots electronically for tabulation. My state (Indiana) has the same system, and it generally works fine with little voter inconvenience.

We don't need everyone to hand in a piece of paper to keep hackers from vote tampering.

Yeah, we do. The problem is most "irregularities" stem from two things: electronic voting machines misrepresenting ballots cast on the summary and submission page, and touchscreen calibration errors. In other words, I push the touchscreen button for Giant Douche, and the machine records it as a ballot cast for Turd Sandwich, and unless I'm paying very close attention to visual feedback I'm unlikely to catch it. Or, the summary page shows my vote for Giant Douche, but when submitted and tabulated it's recorded as a vote for Turd Sandwich. That can't happen with a printed ballot, because I as a voter can review that printed ballot and see that my ballot is cast the way I intended for it to be cast, before submitting it for tabulation.

The "muh Russia" crap is utter bullshit, when it comes to this. The problem doesn't stem from l337 h4xx0rz cracking the interwebnets and gaining remote access to voting machines. Push that right the fuck out of your mind. The problem is election officials installing malicious code, and/or miscalibrating touchscreens to commit electoral fraud.

 

[tstorm823]

Oh dear Christ that is not what is being mandated. What is being mandated is electronic voting machines, bare minimum, print out the ballot for the voter to review and manually correct before submission to an optical tabulating machine, and for those paper receipts be held with their own chain of custody for purposes of recounts and auditing. In other words, DRE machines are not allowed to submit ballots electronically for tabulation. My state (Indiana) has the same system, and it generally works fine with little voter inconvenience.

We don't need everyone to hand in a piece of paper to keep hackers from vote tampering.

Yeah, we do. The problem is most "irregularities" stem from two things: electronic voting machines misrepresenting ballots cast on the summary and submission page, and touchscreen calibration errors. In other words, I push the touchscreen button for Giant Douche, and the machine records it as a ballot cast for Turd Sandwich, and unless I'm paying very close attention to visual feedback I'm unlikely to catch it. Or, the summary page shows my vote for Giant Douche, but when submitted and tabulated it's recorded as a vote for Turd Sandwich. That can't happen with a printed ballot, because I as a voter can review that printed ballot and see that my ballot is cast the way I intended for it to be cast, before submitting it for tabulation.

The "muh Russia" crap is utter bullshit, when it comes to this. The problem doesn't stem from l337 h4xx0rz cracking the interwebnets and gaining remote access to voting machines. Push that right the fuck out of your mind. The problem is election officials installing malicious code, and/or miscalibrating touchscreens to commit electoral fraud.

Of course that's what's being mandated. "For purposes of this subclause, the term ?individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballot? means a paper ballot marked by the voter by hand or a paper ballot marked through the use of a nontabulating ballot marking device or system." "The voter shall have the option to mark his or her ballot by hand." "Each paper ballot used pursuant to clause (i) shall be suitable for a manual audit, and shall be counted by hand in any recount or audit conducted." That first bill I linked mandates that every voter be allowed to mark a paper manually and every vote needs to be preserved and capable of being counted manually.

And if you don't support this, people don't complain that it'll lead to election officials tampering with results. No, they call you #MoscowMitch. And they justify their complaints by pointing to election officials failures to keep hackers out at Def Con in Las Vegas. Your concerns are reasonable, though I would suggest to you that people could just as easily put their malicious code in the tabulating machines after the vote's been verified. But your concerns are not what's inspiring these bills.

Unlike the second example that wants absolute control over every aspect of elections, Example A was pretty on focus. And once it got past paper ballot requirements and grants to fund them, it went on to address cybersecurity. That's what they think they're doing, combating literal computer hacking. You can think that's delusional, but it's not me, it's them.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...or a paper ballot marked through the use of a nontabulating ballot marking device or system...

What the hell do you think this means?

That first bill I linked mandates that every voter be allowed to mark a paper manually and every vote needs to be preserved and capable of being counted manually.

You have two concerns here.

First, small precincts for which use of electronic voting machines is outright impractical, which geographically is most of the damn country. The need for electronic voting machines is born of high population density, namely precincts with large numbers of voters.

Second, the preservation of a voter's ability to correct a ballot by hand without having to use a machine a second time, or insist on bypassing machines to fill out ballots by hand.

This does not mean voters cast two ballots, one electronically and a second by paper. What this means is results cannot be tabulated electronically without a paper trail.

Your concerns are reasonable, though I would suggest to you that people could just as easily put their malicious code in the tabulating machines after the vote's been verified.

No, no they most certainly cannot. Optical scanning machines are orders of magnitude harder to compromise than DRE's simply on the fact doing it requires access to the machine's physical memory, wheres with DRE's any idiot with a USB memory stick can compromise it. The easiest way to defraud an optical scanning machine, is good old fashioned ballot stuffing.

Unlike the second example that wants absolute control over every aspect of elections...

God forbid we have that. It's just an election, geez.

 

[tstorm823]

What the hell do you think this means?

I know what that means, you're ignoring the rest of it. The option to use machines does not change the meaning "The voter shall have the option to mark his or her ballot by hand." They can use machines until anyone asks to fill it out by hand, and then they have to let them.

You have two concerns here.

I'm not telling you my concerns, I'm telling you their concerns. You're getting really caught in the weeds here. The reason this specific subject came up is because someone suggested that Mitch McConnell is against democracy and is willing to let Russia steal US elections based on blocking specific election legislation. If you read those pieces of legislation being blocked, they all talk about foreign threats and cybersecurity. If you think it's stupid for election security bills to worry about foreign threats and cybersecurity, then you think these bills are stupid. You're not criticizing me, you're criticizing Democratic politicians.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Is that not the most obvious thing in the world? Like, nobody thinks the ACA is perfect. People have higher opinions of it than I do, but the Democratic primary debates have thrown it under the bus already. If the Democrats had said "yeah, sure, there are some changes we'd like too" and started negotiations, we'd have Trumpcare by now. Why would you think otherwise?

Republicans and many Democrats are owned by the health insurance lobby.

 

[Agema]

They do it deliberately, they try to make any registered Republican as divisive as possible because they think it pushes people left. George W. Bush was Hitler, John McCain was Hitler, Mitt Romney was Hitler, now Trump is Hitler. Republicans are all Hitler.

There will always be people using extreme language. But let's face it, Romney and McCain were getting far less flak, and of course they were because they were patently a lot more reasonable, moderate and didn't go around crassly demonising large sections of the populace.

But a lot of this talk is little use for partisan accusations - the degradation of political discourse in the USA is societal, not party-specific. It's not like senior Republican politicians haven't been slinging insults around for years and years either, never mind the rank and file. I mean Christ, just 5-10 years ago the Republicans were busy assaulting each other (e.g. "RINO") for ideological impurity.

Like, undermining the ACA is fine. The ACA is one of the dumbest pieces of legislation in history. Not evil, just really dumb. But stop yourself for a moment. Wipe you brain clean of the bias and lies that have been fed to us. What did Trump want to do to the ACA? Repeal and replace. And we have the benefit of hindsight now that when Trump wants to replace something, it really could just be a couple minor adjustments and his name on the paper.

Imagine this. You walk up to the Democrats and say: "Hey, fancy changing that plan you sweated blood to pass a few years ago? You'll need to pass the changes non-partisan with the Republicans, who are going to gimp it to a form less appealing to you than it is now, and furthermore the Republicans are also now to claiming the credit."

That's what you're suggesting, put bluntly. It's a ludicrous thing to try to sell - a total non-starter.

It's even more absurd, because Trump has put zero effort into suggesting what these reforms might be. Normally, a competent and diligent president would put forward a plan to discuss and kick it off. Thus Trump is not only offering the Democrats less than nothing, he's asking them to spitball the very ideas to disadvantage themselves.

 

[Saelune]

Because if you cant defend your point, everyone else will see it is invalid. Your continued refusal to provide any evidence whatsoever has only justified and validated me.

I am not asking for you to do my homework, I am demanding you do yours.

Here's a question for you: my reply to Kwak in the same post you quoted here had lots of sourcing. Does it convince you even a little that Mitch McConnell isn't blocking election security bills out of indifference to Russia's election interference?

And if so, is there anything I've said in this thread, anything at all, that you'd like me to give the same level of attention? If there is any theoretically factual statement that I've made that you feel like it requires evidence for you to consider it, say so. Just be specific please.

It does not convince me of that. Honestly, I am not sure what it says, cause I read the bills and am confused why they seem so bad to you? That first one sounds almost exactly how New York does it, or atleast the place I vote at does it. I go in, to a church of all places, tell the person who I am, get a folder with a paper ballot in it, fill in circles like I am taking a school test, stick it in a machine, go home.

You keep making claims that are usually not true, like at all. If you expect me to believe them, you need to provide evidence. If you say 'Trump is a Democrat' when he is literally the leader of the Republican Party, well, that is beyond questionable. If you say a place where children are in squalid conditions, separated from family, and are dying is NOT a problem, well, that's a problem.

Pretty much every time you defend Trump, it has been on bad information and outright lies.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Like, undermining the ACA is fine. The ACA is one of the dumbest pieces of legislation in history. Not evil, just really dumb. But stop yourself for a moment. Wipe you brain clean of the bias and lies that have been fed to us. What did Trump want to do to the ACA? Repeal and replace. And we have the benefit of hindsight now that when Trump wants to replace something, it really could just be a couple minor adjustments and his name on the paper. If Democrats had gone "sure, let us in on this", the ACA might actually have been repealed and replaced with something that lacked the ACA's shortcomings. It could have been better, all they had to do was not be partisans. I know the bias and lies they feed us tell you that Trump is Hitler and wanted to repeal the ACA and let poor people all die, but trust your eyes and see what Trump replacement looks like.

Tstorm, what do you do for a living?

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I do remember Obama being called a Muslim. Everyone Republican of prominence disavowed it. John McCain shamed one of his supporters on stage publicly for suggesting it.

And guess what the right wing talking heads called McCain; A RINO.

Somehow, the Micheal Savages, Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, and Jessie Lee Petersons are still in business. How is that?

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...someone suggested that Mitch McConnell is against democracy...

You're right, it's not about Russia. It's about McConnell being on the take from the corporations that manufacture and act as vendors for voting machines [https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-robert-mueller-election-security-russia-1451361], and Democratic/liberal neo-McCarthyist fantasy is a distraction and obfuscation from that. No, McConnell doesn't care about "democracy", and Russian interference in our elecctoral process isn't on his mind; enabling private corporations to interfere in our electoral process, on the other hand, very much is.

Which is exactly why I support as strict as possible election and campaign finance reform. We're right back in the days of the Gilded Age, machine politics and all, and in today's media landscape that is existentially undemocratic. 2020 is already gearing up to be another 1876 (as if 2016 weren't already), and the greatest resistance to that possibility that can be cultivated in the next year, the better.

This is a position that you, as a conservative, damn well ought to consider the single most key policy issue moving into 2020. Miles above anything and everything else, given what's now known to be going on inside Google, Facebook, Twitter, and platform providers -- all private corporations -- like them.

 

[tstorm823]

There will always be people using extreme language. But let's face it, Romney and McCain were getting far less flak, and of course they were because they were patently a lot more reasonable, moderate and didn't go around crassly demonising large sections of the populace.

I wouldn't say they were more moderate, if moderate is meant to mean between left and right. Trump is further left than the Republican base on basically everything except the wall, and that probably has something to do with people really loving the wall. But generally I agree, Trump isn't the same as Romney or McCain. He does use less diplomatic language, he does act less reasonable, he does demonize segments of the population. But ultimately, that's my point.That's what Democrats sound like.

Look at it from the opposite perspective. My brother is a Democrat (along with a lot of my family, but that's beside the point). My brother is a fan of Mayor Pete Buttigieg. When describing his support of Mayor Pete, my brother said "he says progressive things, but he talks like a Republican." What is talking like a Republican and why is that appealing? It's reasonable, it's not extreme, and it doesn't go around crassly demonizing large sections of the populace. That's talking like a Republican. Trump talks like a Democrat.

But a lot of this talk is little use for partisan accusations - the degradation of political discourse in the USA is societal, not party-specific. It's not like senior Republican politicians haven't been slinging insults around for years and years either, never mind the rank and file. I mean Christ, just 5-10 years ago the Republicans were busy assaulting each other (e.g. "RINO") for ideological impurity.

Republicans calling each other RINOs is not comparable to Democrats calling Republicans Hitler.

Imagine this. You walk up to the Democrats and say: "Hey, fancy changing that plan you sweated blood to pass a few years ago? You'll need to pass the changes non-partisan with the Republicans, who are going to gimp it to a form less appealing to you than it is now, and furthermore the Republicans are also now to claiming the credit."

That's what you're suggesting, put bluntly. It's a ludicrous thing to try to sell - a total non-starter.

Yes, that is what I'm suggesting. I'm also suggesting they could have made things better. They have no interest in making things better, their interest is in making people think Republicans want everyone to get sick and die.

It's even more absurd, because Trump has put zero effort into suggesting what these reforms might be. Normally, a competent and diligent president would put forward a plan to discuss and kick it off. Thus Trump is not only offering the Democrats less than nothing, he's asking them to spitball the very ideas to disadvantage themselves.

Trump isn't a competent diligent president. Nobody's suggesting that here. But that's exactly why they could take advantage of him. Trump would basically hand them a blank slate and say "do what you want, and if you put my name at the bottom, I'll get it to pass so I can take the credit."

You keep making claims that are usually not true, like at all. If you expect me to believe them, you need to provide evidence. If you say 'Trump is a Democrat' when he is literally the leader of the Republican Party, well, that is beyond questionable. If you say a place where children are in squalid conditions, separated from family, and are dying is NOT a problem, well, that's a problem.

I say Trump is a Democrat because it's a lot more attention grabbing than "Donald Trump has a lot more in common with prominent Democratic politicians than he does with other registered Republicans, in both his rhetoric and his personal life, holds nearly all the same positions Democrats did 20 years ago (which in fairness is what totally ignorant people think Republicans are), and as recently as 2008 was a supporter of Hillary Clinton herself." But yes, he's registered as a Republican, but I'd rather you actually consider where his politics and behavior align with other American discourse rather than say "Trump = Republican = Evil!" and work backwards from there.

But like "this is an article about every child who died related to CBP custody [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/why-are-migrant-children-dying-u-s-custody-n1010316]. We've discussed this article before. 1) Unaccompanied minor dies of the flu. 2) Girl dies of rapidly progressing virus while with her father before they even reach the CBP facility. 3) Illness likely contracted in CBP custody with mother, dies months later. 4) Almost exactly the same situation as 3. 5) Unaccompanied minor dies of flu despite treatment and hourly check-ins. 6) Dies with his father after being released to hospital, treated, and returned by the hospital. 7) Unaccompanied minor sent immediately to hospital because of congenital heart failure where they try for months to save her.

You'll notice something about these things: none of them were separated from family. The purpose of separating the kids was to get them out of squalid conditions. CBP stations are like police stations, they aren't meant to hold children, they're supposed to get the kids into acceptable child care within 72 hours. A child crosses the border and border patrol picks them up and holds them only until the can release them to an unincarcerated relative or the department of Housing and Human Services places them in appropriate care. They weren't taking kids from parents to stick them in rooms with concrete floors. They were taking kids from parents to get them out of the rooms with concrete floors.

 

[Schadrach]

I mean, they've got a huge list of things, some of them are going to be worthwhile. The thing that gets me is the paper ballot bit. Paper ballots are notoriously problematic, people have proven themselves incapable of filling in bubbles successfully. Verifying things after the fact takes a thousand times as long if its all on paper. I get that you can't hack a piece of paper the same way you can hack a computer, but you can also just disconnect a computer from the internet. There's a lot of room between carving our votes into bronze tablets and hooking the presidential election up to unsecured wifi. We don't need everyone to hand in a piece of paper to keep hackers from vote tampering.

You could do something like the following, though:

Voters go to a voting machine, fill out the ballot on screen, confirm their choices. The voting machine then records the votes on a local removable storage device (think something like an SD card stored accessed behind a locked panel) and also prints out a human readable ballot. Those ballots are then passed to a second machine that tallies the paper ballots (results stored locally on the machine) and deposits them in a lockbox.

Neither of these machines is connected to the internet. Period. They don't need to be networked *at all*.

When the polls close, the storage is pulled and placed in a secure lockbox , transported to the state elections office and tabulated. If there is any discrepancy *at all* between the totals for the machines that print the ballots and the machines that tally them within a polling place then all digital results are discarded and the paper ballots serve as the official record. Also pick a random set of polling places (say 5%), and do a manual count and rescan and verify the results match, and match the previous totals. If they don't, time for a manual recount of the paper ballots, all of them.

If having to wait a few extra hours is so problematic, also allow the machines to print out a report after polling closes stating the totals that can be reported by phone or email to give quick (but ultimately unofficial) results.

Tada! You have the advantages of paper ballots, with dramatically better security than purely electronic ballots but don't need to rely on people being able to fill in bubbles and also have some comparatively low effort fraud checks in place.