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• Yet the Georgia election process was a disaster Yet the Georgia election process was a disaster (Score: -1, Troll) by canopic jug on Saturday November 21 2020, @07:47AM (2 children)

  by canopic jug (3949) on Saturday November 21 2020, @07:47AM (#1080125) Journal

  And yet, if you note what the observers had to say about the "recount", Georgia is having to deal with voting and auditing processes which are FUBAR and need to be replaced with actual paper ballots. The "recount" was completely unscientific [thenation.com] and, for the literate, a shocking incident. Whether people are happy with the results or not does not affect the importance of ensuring a reliable and sound process. That'st just not happening. Instead the states have methods which don't actually work and, depending on which "side" won, take turns alternately attacking or defending the undeniable need to fix the process itself.

  This week, thousands of Georgians sat at tables in rooms large and small across the state’s 159 counties and counted nearly 5 million paper ballots by hand, in what officials called a statewide audit of the general election outcome. Though the process ended by confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s lead, certified by the state on Friday, expert observers across the nation familiar with the state and its history with election technology looked on, feeling what one described as “horrified.”

  These observers included computer scientists, cybersecurity analysts, an adviser to Congress on election integrity, and the statistician who invented the method of auditing elections that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the state was carrying out.

  Their reactions to the noble efforts of exhausted election workers were not, they underlined, due to evidence of wrongdoing, or fraud, or challenges to the election’s legitimacy. Their concerns owed to the process being used, what state officials were calling it, and what this could mean for future attempts to build public trust in election results—including on January 5, when voters in Georgia will once again be in the national spotlight, as a special election decides the balance of power in the US Senate.

  That whole article is worth a read, there just too many mistakes being made, mostly on purpose, to summarize in a short quote. Remember, there are still two US Senate seats to fill in January there.

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  Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.

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• The Frankencount (Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday November 21 2020, @04:27PM

  by canopic jug (3949) on Saturday November 21 2020, @04:27PM (#1080187) Journal

  The state of Georgia has already certified the counts, the results are not going to be changed. That is not the issue I am pointing out, even if both branches of the Republicrat party are annoyed. Again, whether people are happy with the results or not does not affect the importance of ensuring a reliable and sound process. From the article from The Nation linked to above,

  As Miller wrote in his essay, “Audits must be sufficiently well-organized and rigorous that they do not potentially risk becoming yet another ‘political football’ for partisans to argue over; the whole point of a post-election audit is to produce clear evidence that reduces uncertainty—not to give politicians a fresh set of new ‘irregularities’ to argue about.”
    ^{from Why Georgia’s Unscientific Recount ‘Horrified’ Experts:Observers, including the inventor of the auditing process used by the state, were skeptical of a measure seemingly aimed at placating the GOP [thenation.com]}

  Methods need to be rolled out to ensure veracity, accuracy, and transparency. What is in place now does not allow for any of that and is instead used as a political football for tribalists to argue for or against, depending on whether their tribe appeared to have won or lost the most recent elections. It's a difficult situtation to fix in part because of the tribalism.

  In the long term, failure to address these issues only further undermines faith in the elections making it harder to convince the losers when they have lost.

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  Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.

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• Re:Yet the Georgia election process was a disaster (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2020, @05:05PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2020, @05:05PM (#1082862)

  That quote, yikes! Holy run-on sentences Batman!
  They take four or five sentences and just stick commas in there until they get to the point. No wonder it's hard to summarize in a short quote.

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