Suspending the Election

[Schadrach]

There'd be no problems if you guys just held a digital election.

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, you were serious? It's a *terrible* idea. I actually got asked by someone once how I would prevent fraud in electronic voting machines, and the literal first sentence out of my mouth in response was "Nothing that handles votes should be connected to a network of any kind."

I then went on to concoct something involving hybrid DRE/EBM machines that produce a human readable ballot with a summary barcode that are then scanned by an optical scanning machine and checking the output of both machines against each other and triggering a hand recount in any polling place where it wasn't an exact match, a statewide recount if too many polling places triggered individual recounts, and also hand recounting 5% of all precincts selected at random as basic QC and if any of those fail doing a statewide hand recount.

That practice is illegal in some places and highly regulated in others, but it still happens, and it's not something Republicans can do as effectively because the Republican voter base is dispersed. There's not really anywhere you can go in a purple state and be confident you're getting more Republicans than Democrats other than places so rural it's logistically difficult to collect a significant number. So Republicans are inclined to ban the practice, but have no say in states run by Democrats.

Didn't Orange County, CA have a few races flip blue right after CA legalized ballot harvesting, with Republicans admitting that harvesting "feels" like cheating, but that they'd have to do better at it to counteract the Democrat efforts the next time?

Some ballot harvesters were pretty explicitly working on partisan lines though:

the gerrymanderers

So...both parties? Whenever it's time to redistrict, whoever has the power over it does so to their party's benefit. How powerful that benefit it is always oversold though. For the most illustrative example, the only federal body directly effected by gerrymandering is the House, and it's clear how the GOP holds an unshakeable majority there, despite having done a lot of gerrymandering after the previous census.

Plus that it's part of a whole host of shady practices, like dodgy voter purges,

The NVRA permits your name to be removed from voter rolls if provided evidence you have moved died, or if you have missed 2 federal elections, are sent a mailer, do not respond to that mailer, and do not vote in the following federal election - at which point they are allowed to assume you have moved or died. If you have been "purged" without one of those happening then it's time to get the courts involved.

demands for ID to combat fraud that no studies show even exists, and so on.

I love how it's treated like "have a way to prove your identity" is this horrible insurmountable obstacle or even better that it's racist. My state has a voter ID law, and I have no less than 5 things that count as valid ID for it on my person any time I leave home. Being poor is no excuse, as we permit SNAP and TANF cards to count. When you register to vote (and any time you update your information) you also get sent a vote registration card for free that lists your polling place and counts as valid voter ID here.

 

[Agema]

The NVRA permits your name to be removed from voter rolls if provided evidence you have moved died, or if you have missed 2 federal elections, are sent a mailer, do not respond to that mailer, and do not vote in the following federal election - at which point they are allowed to assume you have moved or died. If you have been "purged" without one of those happening then it's time to get the courts involved.

Unfortunately, various analyses have shown an alarmingly substantial number of legitimate voters get purged, and some purges have been found illegal. Which fundamentally means it's a shit system. Admittedly, the simplest answer is probably to improve what is evidently comically poor electoral roll maintenance in the first place, but sensible solutions seem to elude the USA when it comes to voting.

I love how it's treated like "have a way to prove your identity" is this horrible insurmountable obstacle or even better that it's racist. My state has a voter ID law, and I have no less than 5 things that count as valid ID for it on my person any time I leave home. Being poor is no excuse, as we permit SNAP and TANF cards to count. When you register to vote (and any time you update your information) you also get sent a vote registration card for free that lists your polling place and counts as valid voter ID here.

Sure, that's a pretty way of saying "I got mine. Fuck you."

No significant voter fraud that coud be prevented by voter ID has been found to exist, so it's really not an adequate justification for voter ID requirements. So there must be another motivation. What, oh what, could that be? Studies suggest significantly higher proportions of poor (often black and Latino) people have no or few forms of appropriate ID. Hmm, I think I'm beginning to see something here... Let's see what a Republican has to say about these sorts of rules:

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse “Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist “Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

Phew! Just as well it's not racist, eh?

Studies suggest effect on turnout of voter ID laws alone is probably low, around 1% (although more recent, stricter laws may depress it further). But even still, the intent matters. After that, knock a voter ID percent off here, a voter purge percent off there, a stupidly long voter queue half-a-percent there... summed up, that's quite a lot vote that can be suppressed.

 

[Trunkage]

No significant voter fraud that coud be prevented by voter ID has been found to exist, so it's really not an adequate justification for voter ID requirements. So there must be another motivation. What, oh what, could that be? Studies suggest significantly higher proportions of poor (often black and Latino) people have no or few forms of appropriate ID. Hmm, I think I'm beginning to see something here... Let's see what a Republican has to say about these sorts of rules:

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse “Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist “Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.

Phew! Just as well it's not racist, eh?

Studies suggest effect on turnout of voter ID laws alone is probably low, around 1% (although more recent, stricter laws may depress it further). But even still, the intent matters. After that, knock a voter ID percent off here, a voter purge percent off there, a stupidly long voter queue half-a-percent there... summed up, that's quite a lot vote that can be suppressed.

Just a PSA. Racism is a spectrum. Not an on/off switch. You can unintentionally hurt a demographic with policies. You can be like this Republican and try to take out one group and unintentionally hurt a demographic with policies. You can also deliberately hurt a demographic with policies. The latter is the worst and has generally been excised from the US. The former two are very much real in some of today's policies.

 

[Schadrach]

and some purges have been found illegal.

So someone was removed from the rolls not in compliance with the NVRA, and got the courts involved? Huh, sounds like exactly what I said one should do. I've never had to really worry about being purged as I vote in every election and have kept my registered address up to date.

Admittedly, the simplest answer is probably to improve what is evidently comically poor electoral roll maintenance in the first place, but sensible solutions seem to elude the USA when it comes to voting.

The trick is that that involves a bunch of county and state agencies that don't necessarily share data, especially across state lines. Or to put it another way, if I were to move out of state right now, broadly speaking the state government wouldn't necessarily know that I had done so before the election.

Sure, that's a pretty way of saying "I got mine. Fuck you."

More like a pretty way of saying "this is so trivial to manage, that as a matter of practice I do it several times over every time I leave the house." One less than I used to now that I'm married.

Actually, I'll just make it easy - this is what the voter ID law in my state requires:

Who is reasonably prevented from voting by this?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, you were serious? It's a *terrible* idea. I actually got asked by someone once how I would prevent fraud in electronic voting machines, and the literal first sentence out of my mouth in response was "Nothing that handles votes should be connected to a network of any kind."

I then went on to concoct something involving hybrid DRE/EBM machines that produce a human readable ballot with a summary barcode that are then scanned by an optical scanning machine and checking the output of both machines against each other and triggering a hand recount in any polling place where it wasn't an exact match, a statewide recount if too many polling places triggered individual recounts, and also hand recounting 5% of all precincts selected at random as basic QC and if any of those fail doing a statewide hand recount.

Did you calculate how much that would all cost?

 

[Trunkage]

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, you were serious? It's a *terrible* idea. I actually got asked by someone once how I would prevent fraud in electronic voting machines, and the literal first sentence out of my mouth in response was "Nothing that handles votes should be connected to a network of any kind.".

Because putting a piece of paper into a box is so safe that you cannot see or track. Definitely cannot be tampered with

Very aware that digital voting has very serious problems. The current system is rife for abuse too

 

[Thaluikhain]

Because putting a piece of paper into a box is so safe that you cannot see or track. Definitely cannot be tampered with

We do it that way in Australia and don't have those problems. Now, people sticking up official looking posters in Chinese telling people how to vote...

 

[dreng3]

Because putting a piece of paper into a box is so safe that you cannot see or track. Definitely cannot be tampered with

Very aware that digital voting has very serious problems. The current system is rife for abuse too

The problem isn't one of the actual voting process it is about everything leading up to the actual voting. In Denmark we use paper ballots, every citizen is sent a letter when an election approaches and on the day we go to the polls, trade the document in the letter for a ballot, mark the ballot, and then we drop the ballot in the box. Easy peasy.

The thing is, in Denmark the government knows a fair bit about you. There are few to no cases of the government not knowing your address or the number of people in your household, the government knows about births and deaths, everything is accounted for and communicated clearly to the relevant institutions and counties.

In the U.S. it seems to be intentionally difficult, there is no effective centralized registers and the government regularly purge voter rolls of people who are still alive or living on the same address.

I'd say that the way to go is keeping voter data digital, sorted, and in a central database with clear rules on who manages what. And then doing the voting by paper ballot, whether by mail or in person.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

snip

You are relying on your electoral commission to take care of your vote once you put it in the box. That chain of custody is pretty long. You don't know if it ever gets counted, edited or removed. It takes a huge degree of trust just to do that.

If we can trust that, we can probably find a way to make mail in and digital voting possible.

 

[dreng3]

You are relying on your electoral commission to take care of your vote once you put it in the box. That chain of custody is pretty long. You don't know if it ever gets counted, edited or removed. It takes a huge degree of trust just to do that.

If we can trust that, we can probably find a way to make mail in and digital voting possible.

I trust physical things, harder to steal a box full of ballots than changing a 1 to a 0.
I trust paper ballots exactly because there is a chain of custody and because any interference requires direct contact with the ballots. Digital allows for far more breaches and can be far harder to track.
In Denmark we register that people vote and those registrations are counted against the total ballots cast. If ballots go missing we'll know.

 

[Agema]

So someone was removed from the rolls not in compliance with the NVRA, and got the courts involved?

It's more like that 15-20% of some voter purges appear to be valid voters. There's also evidence of states doing the process very poorly - these have been caught in process and challenged. But purges also go through and voters arrive at polling stations to find they can't vote.

The trick is that that involves a bunch of county and state agencies that don't necessarily share data, especially across state lines. Or to put it another way, if I were to move out of state right now, broadly speaking the state government wouldn't necessarily know that I had done so before the election.

Sure. Why not design an implement a better system? The only end reason is a lack of political will to do something like improve the integrity of democratic process (in a country that bills itself "leader of the free world", no less). Similar lack of attention and dangerous political meddling lead to the other humiliating scandals like the Florida 2000 presidential election.

More like a pretty way of saying "this is so trivial to manage, that as a matter of practice I do it several times over every time I leave the house." One less than I used to now that I'm married.
...
Who is reasonably prevented from voting by this?

Firstly, requirements vary by state.

Secondly, I think you're imaging this from the perspective of people like yourself and your social circle, who are almost certainly organised, stable, and highly integrated into various societal activities. However, a substantial proportion of people aren't like that. They have very basic and/or chaotic lives; studies suggest up to 10% of various demographics either don't have voting-suitable ID, or just one or two types, which they might have misplaced. People along this spectrum will similarly take a look at an envelope telling them they're going to be purged, and drop it in the bin as junk mail, or leave it somewhere and think "deal with it later", and then forget. One could say "if they're too disorganised, that's their own fault", but that seems to me little dissimilar from saying "they're too stupid and uneducated, it's their own fault" after installing a voter competency test.

These people still have a right to vote, and a healthy democracy should facilitate voting where possible rather than impede it unncessarily.

Contextually, as I said, after that it's not that this exists in isolation. If we call various measures "restrictive" or "permissive" to ability to vote, states that tend to carry out restrictive policies carry most or all of them out, often on bogus rationales, always with the same sorts of voter that suffer most. We just make idiots of ourselves to ignore that pattern.

 

[Thaluikhain]

You are relying on your electoral commission to take care of your vote once you put it in the box. That chain of custody is pretty long. You don't know if it ever gets counted, edited or removed. It takes a huge degree of trust just to do that.

In Australia, the parties (including some minor ones that don't have any actual power) send their own scrutineers to stand over ballot officials at poling places, and watch as they do a preliminary count on site before the ballots are sent off anywhere at the end of the day.

It doesn't take that much trust to make it work, you just need people to want the system to work.

 

[Tireseas]

The problem isn't one of the actual voting process it is about everything leading up to the actual voting. In Denmark we use paper ballots, every citizen is sent a letter when an election approaches and on the day we go to the polls, trade the document in the letter for a ballot, mark the ballot, and then we drop the ballot in the box. Easy peasy.

The thing is, in Denmark the government knows a fair bit about you. There are few to no cases of the government not knowing your address or the number of people in your household, the government knows about births and deaths, everything is accounted for and communicated clearly to the relevant institutions and counties.

In the U.S. it seems to be intentionally difficult, there is no effective centralized registers and the government regularly purge voter rolls of people who are still alive or living on the same address.

I'd say that the way to go is keeping voter data digital, sorted, and in a central database with clear rules on who manages what. And then doing the voting by paper ballot, whether by mail or in person.

That's how it's done in Washington (as well as Oregon). Ballots are stored for I believe 10 years for potential audits for accuracy and everything is tracked so people can't vote twice (already extremely rare).

Honestly, the biggest controversy came about when the caucuses were converted into primaries and a bunch of assholes threw a stink about having to identify with a party in order to vote in the presidential primary, at least on the "above the fold" issues. More often the controversies are over where the auditors put the ballot collection boxes. for those who want to drop them off directly.