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Senate Rejects New Money For Election Security (apnews.com)
The Republican-controlled Senate has defeated a push by Democrats to set aside an additional $250 million for states to upgrade their voting systems to protect against hacking and other cyberattacks. From a report: An amendment offered by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy received 50 yes votes, 10 short of the 60 needed for approval. Leahy said securing U.S. elections and "safeguarding our democracy" is not a partisan issue. He said the Senate "must send a clear message to Russia and other foreign adversaries that tampering in our elections will not be tolerated. The president will not act. This duty has fallen to us." A similar effort was also rejected in the House.
There is a much bigger threat to our elections that they refuse to do anything about. Gerrymandering. It's legal election fixing.
It's a "National Election" if just a few stated decide not to implement security it affects the integrity for everyone. So no this isn't something States should deal with.
... "outside influence", rather than election fraud, then fixing the voting machines is not addressing the problem.
According to many people who are fighting efforts to stop efforts like requiring picture ID to vote, there is no election fraud going on. So what is the $250M supposed to fix, other than contracts for people who sell insecure voting equipment?
Slips of paper and human counters are pretty damn hard to hack - Since we cant seem to get open source hardware and software platforms for voting, the only option is slips of paper and manual counting.
Fuck machines, throw that money at >=$15/hr jobs where people hand count paper ballots.
Temp work is work. Who cares if CNN/Fox Shit/etc don't have immediate counts to give audiences, go vote, watch the news about exit polls, but then go to sleep and wait a couple days for a legitimate count.
Fuckin instant satisfaction is the true illness here.
Ya ya ya "they're both the same!" but they're not so stop with that horseshit please. Republicans have REPEATEDLY blocked upgrading election security. The party that can't seem to throw enough money at corporations is now suddenly very much against giving new money away.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that they personally benefited from the Russian hacking and election interference.
Liberal here. Willing to agree to voter ID laws under 3 conditions:
1. Election days are national holidays.
2. Same day registration everywhere.
3. The ID is 100% free.
None of these compromise the security you are looking for. However, no conservative will agree because they do prevent actual voters from being disenfranchised, which is actually what they want.
Prove me wrong.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
False
Since hacking seems to be party dependent, it follows that those states in favor of the pro-foreign-intervention party will deliberately ignore hacking attacks, counting on a favorable result to justify minority rule.
It is a mistake to think that Russia is on their "side". They are interested in conflict, not one side winning over the other.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That's not how election security works.
Security begins and ends at the ballot box. The voting machine has to be shown untampered; it has to be observed untampered throughout the day; and the counts have to be demonstrated with no chance of tampering before being shipped off to SBE. SBE publishes ballots and you regenerate the counts to show that they all come up with the right tally, thus integrity is maintained.
You can also attack the ballots from other directions. Voting methods which allow manipulation--such as plurality--are wide-open to such attacks. Clones can turn a narrow race into a sure victory (have a friend run against you, mimicking the campaign of your opponent). The election generally revolves around tipping a small amount of the swing vote and exciting the party voting base, so propaganda at the right time can directly select any candidate.
Resistance to attack requires strong procedural election security and a voting rule that resists manipulation (such as certain Condorcet methods and STV). An election system monoculture benefits from greater scrutiny and adherence to procedure; the most important procedure is the minimization of attack surface and the strict maintenance of integrity. Varied systems create more opportunities to discover weaknesses--which doesn't matter if you've got no attack surface, but then you're relying on a property which (again) suggests varied systems aren't a defense but rather a liability.
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Do you have to believe the election was stolen to want to secure it? It seems both sides agree our elections are in jeopardy and nobody wants to do anything about it.
What is wrong with doubling down on securing our election tools? We have ample proof that outside parties want to manipulate our elections. If they have or have not does not matter, we need to take steps to ensure that our elections are secure and safe. They are literally the most important part of our country. If they are compromised the US is compromised.
I could give a fuck who is president, but I want to know for sure that idiot (be it democrat, republican, or reptilian) was elected properly and without interference from outside parties.
The true cost isn't the dollars, it's the time required to obtain an ID card. When the nearest office is 2 hours away, and your boss will fire you if you take an entire day off from work to go there, it becomes pretty much impossible. Statistically, minorities are more likely to be in that situation, but it's really just as much an attempt to discriminate against the poorer working population as it is racial discrimination.
Then they elected a majority republicans, and unlike Kansas, learned from the error.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The article summary would sound a little different if they also included this line from the article:
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.