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A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation[pdf] that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments.
The legislation comes on the heels of the contentious 2016 election. Post-election investigation hasn't turned up any evidence that foreign governments actually altered any votes. However, we do know that Russians were probing American voting systems ahead of the 2016 election, laying groundwork for what could have become a direct attack on American democracy.
[...] The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots.
The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome).
The bill reads like a computer security expert's wish list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:36PM (8 children)
Is it racist that we made it really hard for poor people (still mostly minorities) to get a beer?
Oh wait, they all have ID. The objection to voter ID is that people want to make it impossible to detect fraud.
You say "election fraud is such a false problem" while there is no way to detect if it is in fact a problem, and you oppose any way to do that. That smells like a coverup.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:55PM (7 children)
It's a lot easier to look over 21 (or find a place where they either know you or don't care), than to get an ID in poor rural areas.
For all the crying about voter fraud, there's a singular lack of examples ... A few here and there, and some clear holes in the absentee ballots or people having moved registrations, but can you name one case ?
Every other widespread crime regularly has people caught, yet "massive voter fraud for my opponent" escapes that rule.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:06PM (6 children)
We do catch it, but we can't catch it that well because we aren't looking all that well.
The situation with ID is really twisted:
https://imgur.com/6yLP2uY [imgur.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:16PM (5 children)
You're not wrong, yet you don't address my point: With all the clamoring about massive rampant systematic institutionalized voter fraud, where are the actual cases ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:04PM (4 children)
From Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch:
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:17PM (3 children)
So, the voters rolls are "dirty", therefore non-partisan research groups have been able to use the election data to positively verify that people have voted who were not eligible, or people have voted in multiple places, right?
Right?
Definitely can, probably does occasionally, logically. There should be evidence everywhere !
*crickets*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:27PM (2 children)
Fundamental to the issue is the fact that it is hidden. We can statistically show that something is amiss. (for example, California counties with more votes than voters) If we reliably collected the data to prove specifics, then the fraud would be deterred.
In any case, the mere suspicion of fraud is a huge problem, and that won't go away without being able to prove that the votes are legit. You're asking for proof in the other direction, that there were fraudulent votes. That is the direction needed for a criminal case. To eliminate suspicion and get people trusting the vote again, we need proof that the votes were not fraudulent.
The fact that widespread large-scale fraud might not be proven is insufficient to erase doubt. We need to prove that it didn't happen. Better yet, we need to prove that no fraud happened at all.
Also, as we saw in Virginia just recently, an election can come down to a single vote and then determine control of a legislative body. It isn't just massive fraud that matters. One single vote can matter.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday January 05 2018, @12:21AM (1 child)
I'm guessing you're not the kind to run underinflated Firestones on your Pinto.
Everything can fail. Voter rolls should be up to date. But people (especially at the top) shouldn't go around spreading FUD over any process if they can't show evidence that it's actually broken.
Extremists and losers have been claiming that electoral systems are biased against them for decades. We can keep ignoring the shrill calls that were never substantiated, while addressing potential problem in a non-discriminatory way.
I have to show an ID to vote in foreign elections. It makes sense, if it's not intentionally used to disenfranchise some categories of voters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @01:08AM
Losers are more prone to spreading FUD. They aren't wrong. We do have a problem.
It's really funny how the FUD spreaders changed suddenly on November 9th, 2016. The previous day, and for many months before, it was Trump. His haters would say "It's not rigged. You're just losing." The morning after the election, oh how the tune had changed. The other side got busy spreading FUD. Suddenly there were recount efforts in 3 or 4 states and all sorts of nonsense being pushed about Russian hacking.
The expected loser, and the actual loser, both had an opportunity to claim something was wrong. There are enough holes in the system that a fraud claim is reasonable. That isn't OK. It isn't the claim that is improper, but the fact that making such a claim is reasonable.
Mexico and India use voter ID to disenfranchise some categories of voters. It's OK, because those voters are not legally allowed to vote. For example, illegal aliens are not permitted to vote in Mexico and India. This isn't improper at all. Those countries have a poverty situation that is far worse than what we have here in the USA, so the USA has no excuse for not securing the vote.