islander wrote:

Counting money is dead simple compared with counting ballots. Imagine if you had to count only dollar bills with serial numbers ending in a number between 0 – 5 and then count the ones 6–9 and then count them all again to make sure they add up but if they have a Letter between A & K they don't count or if they have two 9s in a row they don't count. Or you have more than two candidates running so it's serial numbers ending in 1,2,3 vs 4,5,6 vs 7,8,9 etc and you have to watch for overvotes, like is that a 1 or an I or an l? Maybe candidate #1 got a bunch of L votes. If it's vote for not more than 3 in a race with 7 candidates, good luck. Just thinking about it makes me question every election ever held. There's no way those counts were accurate, especially in huge cities. And by "accurate," I mean "within 50% on a good day."

 rgio wrote:

hear, hear

 islander wrote:
Have you been to a US bank recently?  The teller on duty (singular) made me sign into my account via my debit card and pin the other day to make change of a $20.

Maybe we should let people vote through Apple Pay.

FWIW...the local systems, the county officials, and the reporting processes were fine before Trump realized he won but for the hatred of Hillary.  The cost to "improve" the voting processes nationally is chasing private prisons as the best gig in America for grift (if you don't occupy the White House and accept crypto that is).

 black321 wrote:

Amy Acton's mother sounds like a piece of work. The last time Acton saw her mother up until this year was back in 1978.  Cledith Arthur (Acton's stepdad) and Acton's mom left Ohio shortly after his indictment. 

This excerpt from a Cleveland.com article offers some perspective.

https://www.cleveland.com/crim...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Amy Acton’s stepfather, who was indicted in 1978 on charges of sexually assaulting the then-12-year-old Acton, remained at large for more than two decades until he died in 2004. But in those days, many rape cases went without arrests, prosecutions and convictions.

The Department of Justice has sponsored research saying that. One such paper cites FBI statistics gathered in 1975, stating 58% “of all adults arrested for rape were prosecuted,” and 46% of those prosecutions “resulted in acquittal or dismissals.”

Another DOJ-funded paper in 1978 stated less than one in four people arrested for rape in Washington, D.C. was convicted and more than half went unprosecuted.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

There is someplace that uses bank tellers to count votes. I think it's an inherently good idea. I also think it falls apart dramatically on the scale of 150+ million votes. They want rapid results and hand counts. You can't do both.

 islander wrote:

THIS.
In the face of facts, they still talk about it like it’s real. Why? The psych aspect of telling it over and over - so that when trump tells his bumpkins that it’s the reason the Republicans lost, there’s a shadow of a doubt.

 steeler wrote:
A better question is "where WOULD the fraud happen?" 

A thousand possible places but my top 3
• interfering with voters so that they are prevented from casting a legitimate vote
• restricting polling places to disadvantage select voters
• failing to record legitimately cast votes/implementing petty rules to delegitimize certain votes, typically by setting a deadline that's both/either a moving target or capriciously ending vote counting because it's raining or Wednesday or some other bogus reason.
All of the nefarious stuff that Elon et al do can be mostly mitigated if people aren't forced to abandon paper ballots that are human-readable. Maintain chain-of-possession integrity with those and do some random cross-checking vs the computer tally and you have a pretty secure system. As I understand it. Around here, MAGA wants to eliminate the computer part altogether and go to a hand-counted paper ballot. That is of course insane for many reasons but people can't count to 10 when it's important like money, so there's no way they can count ballots with any accuracy. Everything here is already done in most of the country.

 black321 wrote:

I think democrats and generally republicans do this. I don't worry because I know there are several thousand county clerks working on this as their full time job, they also have teams of people and teams of volunteers (varying size teams).  These groups are from both parties and are largely good people doing thankless job. They are looking for fraud and considering new channels of risk all the time.

This American life (I know....NPR....nerds....liberals!... whatever, they provide sources you can cross check if inclined) has several episodes dedicated to the topic, here's a good one: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/630/things-i-mean-to-know/act-one-1

I'm all for discussing it, but I think it's pretty well handled. And unless there is new information, the discussion doesn't add much and serves mostly to undermine confidence (which is why I think trump and crew push it so hard).

Again, I think the risks worth discussing are the outsized influence of a few very wealthy individuals.  There are some incidents of impropriety that also deserve some scrutiny, but really just the ability for one individual to spend 250+ million dollars to influence things in a mid term election is really ugly and it needs a solution.

 Steely_D wrote:

facts.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Well, he’s an immigrant, born in Kenya, with no birth certificate from the States. 

 Steely_D wrote:

Or Obama's.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

And it only happened when he was in charge, so it’s a little damning. Except that everything that has ever gone wrong since Eve’s choosing to bite the apple has been Biden’s fault. (Or the fault of immigrants)

A new low

Ohio Governor’s Race Roiled by Ad With Democrat’s Estranged Mother Attacking Her

• An attack ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her a liar has roiled the Ohio governor’s race. Arthur accused her daughter of fabricating details about her past, including periods of homelessness. Acton has repeatedly said she endured abuse and neglect as a child.
  
• Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took responsibility for the video, calling it an ad from his campaign.
• Acton’s brother denounced the video and reiterated that Acton was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child.
• Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was indicted by an Ohio grand jury in 1978 on a rape charge in connection with the alleged abuse of Acton. He pleaded not guilty. He and Acton’s mother then left the state and he never stood trial. He died more than two decades ago.
• Within a day, the video had been viewed millions of times. Prominent Republicans and Ramaswamy allies posted it on X.
  “Yikes!” posted Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday morning. “Ohio watch this and think about what it means.” The president’s son has campaigned for Ramaswamy and urged Ohio Republicans to endorse his campaign.
  
  

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Yep.

 black321 wrote:

My friend has worked elections for almost 10 years as a volunteer. She also trains new volunteers. The checks and balances are comprehensive and, frankly, eye-opening to those of us not familiar with the details. A humorous, but telling anecdote: My friend attended a training session for volunteers in preparation for the 2024 general election cycle that was run by the jurisdiction’s chief election officer. There, of course, were heightened tensions because of Trump and many of his followers giving repeated and dire warnings of the election being “rigged.” After a lengthy and detailed explanation of all the protocols presented by the chief election officer, a somewhat bewildered woman asked: “I don’t understand. Where does the fraud happen?” The reply: “It doesn’t. That’s the point.”

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

unintended consequences.
i see that in many areas of political posturing. 

 black321 wrote:

The problem is people who don't understand how good the fraud prevention is right now. They're all trying to implement "improvements" that would seriously compromise vote integrity **and that's their point** 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Yes, yep, yup. 
Wouldnt be an issue if the cheaters werent trying to cheat. 
But some folks believe the cheaters arent cheating, and that the others are cheating...so unfortunately here we are and perhaps the best is to find a reasonable message or answer to the (currently) unnecessary issue. 

 black321 wrote:
As uhhh no as this logic is, there's a kernel of truth in that a lot of poorly-informed democrats do base their arguments on just opposing whatever MAGA says. If MAGA says there's voter fraud, a lot of people will say the voting systems are infallible just on that logic. But honestly it's just one more case of "If they accuse others of voter fraud, it means they're committing voter fraud." 

You remember hanging chads, right? That was a high-tech system that sped up tabulation but introduced a huge error rate that most of us were not aware of until Gore lost by a dozen hanging chads. Even then, the Republican stooge in charge of Florida's elections did everything in her power to prevent valid ballots from being counted because she could see that the (what was it, 80,000? or 8,000) overseas military ballots that were still at sea were likely to push Gore over the line. Anyway. Punch card ballots were removed from counties almost completely by the time the next presidential election happened. They were replaced by all sorts of paperless touch-screen abominations that had huge potential for hacking and malfeasance and the second Bush election saw a lot of YouTubes showing how easy it is to switch votes and evade detection... 

Anyway, the Republicans were cheating then, are cheating now, and this current push by republicans to indict everything in the system is 100% a way to undermine any election that doesn't go their way. SO absolutely no one should be comfortable with the security of our elections. 

The only thing wrong in the MAGA solution is ...the MAGA solution. Fewer voters, eliminating a few individually-cast fraudulent ballots (what this post is about), hand counted ballots, no mail-in voting yadda yadda none of that addresses the giant elephant turd in the room named Elon Musk and all the others who are definitely using software to commit mass fraud. 

 Red_Dragon wrote:

sure, but not my point.

to Islander, I'm not really worried about election fraud. Many people right or wrong, seem to be so i guess it is an issue to disucss. 
Perhaps it might be more political prudent for democrats - while reinforcing there is no evidence that fraud is a problem - to consider how we might tighten potential fraud risk. We are living in fast changing environment, ai and all, so where might new risks emerge? 
Or....do a better job with the messaging and inform voters these issues are handled at the local level, whether they be repub or dem.

Thanks.