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Senators Introduce Bill That Would Require State and Local Governments To Use Paper Ballots in an Effort To Secure Elections (cnet.com)
From a report: On Tuesday, nine Senators introduced a bill that would require state and local governments to use paper ballots in an effort to secure elections from hackers. The bill would also require rigorous audits for all federal elections to ensure that results match the votes. "Leaving the fate of America's democracy up to hackable election machines is like leaving your front door open, unlocked and putting up a sign that says 'out of town,'" Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said in a release. "Any failure to secure our elections amounts to disenfranchising American voters." The Protecting American Votes and Elections Act of 2018 was drafted amid intense scrutiny of voting systems ahead of the mid-term elections in November. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has elevated concern over the security of the country's voting systems. The senators said rigorous audits will ensure votes are legitimate. Currently, 22 states don't require post-election audits, according to the release.
s/eliminated/eliminate/
Geeze.
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I am almost willing to bet at this stage that the bill will be blocked by Republicans, since they know the Russians prefer their particular brand of autocracy over a very angry Democrat party. Furthermore, don't be so confident that the Russians will not try to somehow 'hack' the paper ballot and/or audit trail.
It has become clear that neither the Russians nor the Republicans have a limit to how far they will go to damage the process of democracy in favour of power.
Next up, we must eliminated the electoral college, which is a remnant of the founders' deep-seated fear of democracy.
Agreed this is a good start. Disagree about electoral college (which does need to be fixed), the next more important step is ensuring the paper trail is audited, as part of the election process, not some vague "recount" territory.
Why is it that gambling machines have more audits and checks than voting machines? It's not like the process isn't clear. We just have to hold people and systems accountable.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"In addition to Wyden, the bill was sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), Sen. Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Sen. Jeff Merkley (Oregon), Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Sen. Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut). All are Democrats."
somehow, I knew it would not be the R's that wanted an audit trail.
funny, that...
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
"Any failure to secure our elections amounts to disenfranchising American voters."
OK. Got it. So, how do you feel about requiring voters provide government issued ID in order to vote? Because requiring voters to identify themselves and verify eligibility to vote is part of securing an election. If you oppose that, then you obviously want to disenfranchise voters.
I suspect that many of the people who are going to stand there and beat the drum on this one will also oppose requirements for voter ID. This despite the fact that every US state offers non-driver license state issued ID cards for a nominal fee or free in the case of financial hardship. At least, I am not aware of a state where that isn't the case.
Oh well. If not for double standards we would have no standards at all, it seems.
In 2008, when I touched the 'Obama' button on the touch screen, McCain's name was selected instead, until I tapped Obama a couple more times.
'Blue' state anyway, but the machines are just not reliable.
...of public obsession with all things digital, that software will cure all ills Zuckerberg style, and that schoolchildren need tablets to learn.
As a nerd, I say good riddance. Leave the nerd stuff to us.
Too much democracy is bad. Were it not, we would have referendums on every single thing. The reason we do not is we trust our elected representatives to decide on those things for us.
It's the same with the Electoral College. We elect representatives that pick the President for us. You may think that's too little democracy, but the point against that view is that the country has been quite successful with the Constitution as it is so it may well be at the sweet spot.
Next up, we must eliminated the electoral college, which is a remnant of the founders' deep-seated fear of democracy.
First of all, wrong. Tbe federal government was, among other things, a convocation of independent and sovereign states. The state governments wanted a finger in the control of the feds or they ain't buying into it. What's the past tense of ain't? They t'warn't buying into it.
And good luck convincing the myriad small flyover states that what's wrong with the country is the concrete canyons of the coast don't have enough power and control to do the things they hate.
Your idea there is something inherently great in your position is ahistoric and made up out of whole cloth. You have control over your state, who has control over their chunk of the federal government.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
the next more important step is ensuring the paper trail is audited, as part of the election process, not some vague "recount" territory.
That's already in the bill. From the article: "The bill would also require rigorous audits for all federal elections to ensure that results match the votes."
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There's no way in hell it will pass.
Supported by the paper mill lobby and logging companies?
We still use paper ballots in our elections here in Canada and I'm fine with that. For the most part they work very well, except when they don't have enough ballots. We encountered that in our city elections last year in Calgary, which caused an uproar. Hopefully that doesn't make them decided to go electronic.
Thankfully the Calgary Flames/Gary Bettman/NHL annointed candidate of choice lost, seemed like he was ready to cut them a nice big juicy new arena cheque had he won.
200 years is barely a grain of sand in the hourglass of human time
I refer you to Madison's Notes and the Federalist Papers, and also to the Anti-Federalist Papers.
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While I think using a paper ballot is a GOOD thing (especially when combined with optical readers and such), I am not sure the Federal Government (Congress) has the authority to impose such a law. My understanding is that the polling/election process is solely a State responsibility and domain. The Constitution assigns such powers to the States and then follows up with the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
So, short of a Constitutional Amendment, I don't see how such a law would be Constitutional. Although I know it is EXTREMELY popular and prevalent for the Fed to simply ignore the 10th Amendment whenever convenient.
For the love of god, there isn't even a reason to have a voting "machine". I'm just baffled. Note, I know you didn't create this issue, by why on earth is a "machine" needed.
You mark a piece of paper. That's IT. Why is a machine needed?
Here's how it works here:
- you're given a piece of paper with the candidates on it, in a nice, large readable font.
- you go behind a panel, so you can vote
- you come out, and place the vote into a simple, cardboard, but sealed box
That's *IT*.
Representatives from EACH party are there, and representitives from each party are there for the count... and we have 15 sometimes here -- whereas the US has what? 3 if something phenomenal happens?
What's the problem? Typically, 2-3 hours after the polls close, all the votes are counted! Everywhere!
Why the HELL is a machine needed?! WHY!
This is something that doesn't NEED to be fucked with, improved. What is needed is that even the least educated, least intelligent of votes can see how it works, and have confidence in.
Any 'machine' used for voting should be 100% illegal. Period.
If the people want machines with more bells and whistles, the demand will push the companies to invent more sophisticated machines. In the meantime, keep the government out of the marketplace! Laissez faire.
Next up, we must eliminated the electoral college, which is a remnant of the founders' deep-seated fear of democracy.
Actually it was more a fear of idiocracy, but unfortunately the result achieved was exactly the opposite of intentions. Another big thing that needs to be eliminated, the blatant gerrymanders and the gerrymander machine. And another one, unlimited campaign contributions including corporate contributions. Behold the fruit of labor of evil republican hands.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I've voted in, you fill out your votes on paper which is then scanned.
It seems to be an OK process, as long as nobody has messed with the scanning/collation software.
Touchscreens with no accountability or paper trails seem to be asking for "trouble."
Pfff
The electoral college is the only thing standing in the way of California and New York making all our choices for us.
Without it, we may as well be a one party system.
"how many slashdoters believe..." probably the same number that believe millions of people voted illegally.
Being an established computer consultant, I got to provide input when the US Virgin Islands' election system was upgraded, a good friend on the Board of Elections brought over a bunch of brochures for me to review one evening in the early 1980s. There were chad systems ("Punch cards? You must be joking!") and push-button machines ("Where's the paper trail? Do you know what a 'hacker' is?" "It's available but 'costs extra'. Are these people for real??"). And there were optical zoned page scanners.
My friend and I agreed -- his vote on the Board of Elections -- was to keep the paper ballot. People are used to it. If anything, beef up the security and oversight surrounding transport of ballots cast; use bleeding-edge technology cautiously and wisely: do the counting of paper ballots with optical readers. Because just like the money counter machines, you can do it again quickly to see if you get the same result. And if the machines break and the power goes out -- the election process is 'safe', breezes along as smoothly as ever -- only the results are delayed.
Just WHEN was it decided that election results needed to be tallied in hours or minutes? From where did the pressure arise such that hand counting of paper ballots (or in the least, optical scan of same) is too slow? That we instead impose few-vendor centralized no-paper systems that are inherently hackable?
Here's the test I impose. A paper ballot system may also have its problems -- BUT -- any given layman you bring in off the street to observe the tally process will have a clear view of a ballot box's chain of custody. Any layman observing the subsequent counting of those ballots (by hand or optical reader, with verification of random batches to test the reader) has a clear grasp of the process, and can tell whether the system is honest. No one can say if a wholly computerized system is honest. And even if you find someone who claims they are sure, no one can tell whether they are being honest.
If it's Democracy you want, use as simple a voting/tally system as possible; for the tally process use as many human beings as possible, local volunteers as participants and observers. If it's Oligarchy you want, go ahead and totally castrate the process of transparency by implementing insecurity through obscurity, touch screen BS with no hope of verification or recount.
The idea of all-electronic voting really should have been laughed out of the room, once upon a time. This is coming from a techie who favors modernization in other areas of society. xkcd agrees.
My friend on the Board was voted down: they decided to purchase push-button machines from Shouptronics... but at least each station had its own built-in battery backup and built in receipt-type printer that ran a paper tape. Unlike most today.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
We use paper ballots in Australia and usually the result is known within four hours of votes closing. I wasn't aware of some of the other protections that go into the process until I was early to vote one year. I was invited into the polling centre and asked to inspect the empty ballot boxes before they were sealed and signed to confirm that the serial numbers of the seals matched. This has to be done by a member of the public - it can't be done by an electoral official. I believe another member of the public must verify the seals again when the boxes are opened. I was also told that each polling centre has to account for all the ballot papers issued to them. Remaining blank ballot papers plus spoiled ballot papers (people made a mistake and exchanged for a fresh paper) plus votes cast must be very close to ballot papers issued or there is cause to dispute the result. At one election 1400 ballot papers went missing for the senate. The whole senate election was rerun. That's the sort of protection you want.
The other thing I really like is optional preferential voting. As a voter you can vote for as many candidates as you want in order - or not. All the first preference votes are counted and the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their ballot papers are distributed to the next preference on the ballot paper. This is repeated until only one candidate remains. You can vote for an independent or minor party but if they don't get elected your vote still counts toward which of the major parties gets elected.
Well, okay, depending upon which idiots we're talking about. In reading Madison's Notes it's important to keep in mind that the "minority" whom the founders spoke of protecting was their own class, the moneyed elite. Which made everyone else the idiots.
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With Mid-Terms just around the corner the timing of this is basically grandstanding. This is simply something they'll use to generate hate for the other team.
If they were serious about security, they would have introduced this bill years ago.
This from the team that basically rigged their primary to ensure the " right " candidate would get the nod.
The electoral college is a reminder that slavery existed. It was the fix for accounting for the persons who could not vote, by weighting up the votes of the people in the state who could. If your state has 3 million people, but only 2 million could vote, the one million who could not vote were supposed to be weighted into the other two million.
Why is it that gambling machines have more audits and checks than voting machines?
Because organized crime is more honest than US politicians.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Where I live and vote (Minnesota) we use a paper ballot, but we also use a machine. Here's how that works:
The great thing about the machine reader is that it detects if your ballot is invalid (accidentally voted for two candidates for something, when you're supposed to only vote for one - like President) and spits your ballot back out if it's invalid. There's a voting judge right there, so if your ballot is rejected by the machine, they destroy your invalid ballot in front of you, then issue you a new ballot so you can vote again.
One person, one ballot. And no invalid ballots. The machine tracks totals, but there's always a paper ballot that you can go back to for a recount. And we have (for example, when Sen. Franken was first elected).
"how many slashdoters believe..." probably the same number that believe millions of people voted illegally.
It wasn't millions of illegal votes but vote fraud does exist and is quite common, illegals vote and other forms of voter fraud happen regularly. Vote fraud has not changed the outcome of any election I know of, but it does verifiably exist.
What *doesn't* exist was the Russians hacking and changing vote or vote counts. That didn't happen.
That doesn't mean the Russians didn't try to meddle in the election though propaganda, but their efforts where designed to disrupt more than push one outcome over the other. They are after destabilizing our society and keeping up the divisions, and don't really care who's in power as long as they can disrupt the USA's effectiveness in some way.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's the same with the Electoral College. We elect representatives that pick the President for us.
Somebody does not know how the Electoral College works, the representatives aren't choosing anybody, they are chosen who to vote for, not to make a decision.
I notice that all the sponsors are democrats. So what clause in the bill preserves the right of the dead to vote.
Wait. I got it. Paper ballots make it harder to tabulate votes and catch voter fraud. Not to mention all those ballots that Democrats conveniently find in the trunk of cars a day after the election.
Electronic vote tallying could be much safer and cheaper. Keep the machines off the internet, except for write only reporting or highly secure connections. Start a commission, through some high level CIA technicians on it and design a system.
A deep seated fear of democracy that was totally justified. With democracy, you get things like Erdogan, the muslim brotherhood, or Trump.
Most people are nice people; they are friendly, good parents, love their children, want only to live in peace and harmony. But they're cluless morons.
If the anti-Russian paranoia gets US to dump electronic voting, at least it would have served a good cause.
Man, all the people here who forget there was a time not so long ago when both New York and California were competitive, for each party AND who think they are somehow not still sources of more votes than over a dozen states each.
Agreed this is a good start.
Is it? Should we really set a precedent for the feds micromanaging state and local elections? You may think it is okay because these particular senators are "good guys", but once the precedent is set, people that you don't like will have the same power.
Before you agree to give a new power to the government, imagine that new power being exercised by the politician you hate the most.
Personal opinion: This is a clear violation of the 10th Amendment, and the separation of powers. If it passes (unlikely) I hope the courts smack it down.
Seriously, this is a big mistake. Instead of stepping us backwards to paper ballots, the bill should require that any election machine has to kick out a paper ballet, that the voter than verifies quickly. At the end of the day, initial results can come from the machines, and if we have close elections, then we compare ballots to machines.
The good news is that the GOP controls CONgress at the moment and they will block this quickly (though I question their motives). Hopefully a decent bill will then be forthcoming.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Next up, we must eliminated the electoral college, which is a remnant of the founders' deep-seated fear of democracy.
Well, that's going to take a constitutional amendment. Good luck with that. You will need 2/3rds of the states to agree to this and I seriously doubt you will get the low population states to ratify that idea. While you are at it, you might want to revamp how Congress works, given it's the same model.
I believe the founders made it pretty clear they where not forming a democracy, but a representative republic. They had some pretty good reasons for this, which I wouldn't call fear, but wisdom. They saw how pure democracies didn't work well and came up with the current scheme, where the majority and the states shared electoral power. It was this that gave us the Senate and House in Congress and the electoral college.
BTW, I'm not supporting the idea myself. The electoral college, like Congress has proven to be a very good idea over the USA's history. It's not broke, so I say we don't mess things up by trying to fix it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
it is impossible to prove, but I would be amazed if Russia did NOT modify at least a couple of these machines. They worked hard at it, and it should be obvious that the GOP's backing of machines without a paper trail was for a reason (saving money; yeah. right).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
yes, i agree, what you say is factual!!! however i thought we were concerned with beliefs here. no one seems to be concerned with facts in this age of "fake news" and "horrible CNN"
I didn't think Slashdotters believed in anything except cheap video cards.
I vote by mail anyway. Going back to paper ballots for now is a good idea while we're waiting for someone to get off their ass and fix the security issues. Paper ballots may not be foolproof either, but it's more of a chore to fake them and you more or less have to do it in person.
OP doesn't talk about what the representatives decide, but about how we decide the representatives. How could that be unclear?
I refer you to Carlin's Notes.
...those same Senators agree to support legislation requiring proof of citizenship and residence for voting.
If the impetus is to truly secure our electoral process then let's not do half the job.
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Having been a "real time software" developer way back when that was what we were called, and called an "embedded developer" today, and having been a poll worker, I have a few observations:
* Voting is much like a real time data acquisition application: There is exactly one chance to record the transition from private vote to public count. It's deceptively easy to say and deceptively hard to get right.
* Voters MUST have the ability to see that the legal record of their votes is recorded as they intended, without "translation" or "electronic" conversion out of their sight or control.
* In close elections, it MUST be possible for recounts to be performed in full view of unaugmented interested observers.
* It is entirely reasonable for the paper ballot to be scanned to provide early but informal estimates of the aggregated vote through election evenings.
* It is entirely reasonable to use technological means, including touchscreen voting machines to help voters make their choices, to produce legible printed ballots that constitute the legal record of the voters' choices.
So: Machines are fine, as long as the true legal record is visible, recountable and auditable.
It takes more people in more places to conspire to fix an election recorded on individually recorded media, in contrast with voting systems where single programs/computers/subsystems that may be hacked are replicated throughout many precincts. The naturally distributed nature of paper ballots makes them surprisingly more robust against tampering.
Well, okay, depending upon which idiots we're talking about. In reading Madison's Notes it's important to keep in mind that the "minority" whom the founders spoke of protecting was their own class, the moneyed elite. Which made everyone else the idiots.
+1. So worth reading all of Madison's notes, I am in awe of this historical record, but sadly have looked at only a fraction of it so far. Personally, I don't feel in a position to make a judgment about where the balance between self interest and desire to carve out a position in history as having laid the foundation of thousand year republic lies. My sense is, in those days people cared a lot more about how history would judge them, thus the primary motivation was to establish a stable democratic system. And they did a damn good job obviously, but failed to prepare sufficiently for the demented cocktail of domestic kleptocracy, gullibility and foreign adventurism that put Trump in power. Of course the framers do not bear the entire blame for that, far from it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
We use simple paper ballots in Canada. Here's your ballot, mark an X, put it in the ballot box. Try hacking that!
...laura
200 years is barely a grain of sand in the hourglass of human time
But other forms of democracy have failed in less time. Our founders where genius with this idea. Our very form of government is based on the division of powers and keeping those powers in balance. Thus we get three branches of government, We get Two house of Congress, one based on population and one based on the states, and the electoral college. It is the division of power that makes this model work so well and we owe our founders much for their wisdom and efforts to design such a unique system based on sound principles and much thought.
Also 240 years is historically a LONG time for a government to exist without major revisions or revolution. Plus the USA's form of government has been taken and adapted may times since it was introduced into the world. I don't see how any of those adaptations have improved on the original, have you?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You may think it is okay because these particular senators are "good guys"
Actually I think it ok because I believe in what they are doing, not in what their mascot is. Hell, I don't even know what their mascot is, all I read was the title.
But hey, thanks for trying to claim this is just another mindless Democrats vs Republicans thing!
Personal opinion: This is a clear violation of the 10th Amendment, and the separation of powers.
Ok, that might actually be a fair point. Next time, try leading with that instead of the fictional "omg blind political party following!" rhetoric.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud-commission.html Jan. 3, 2018
Bobbied can't admit what everyone knows, HE'S A LYING CUNT
"Regardless, the political landscape is such that a candidate receiving millions of votes less than another, can win the election. "
Why is that a problem? The difference in popular vote was largely random which is why you can blame the outcome on any trivia you want. It was the russians. It was Corbyn. It was Bernie. It was Podesta's emails. It was Hillary's wardrobe. It was Trump's comb over. It was rural white males.
Regardless of that few million votes, the fundamental purpose of requiring broad popular support was served.
Eliminating the electoral college will actually make the real problems worse.
Trump won because he was a bigger, better media celebrity than Clinton or any of the Republicans. He was never asked what qualified him to be president, because it was obvious he was qualified by his ability to create and hold an audience. He was great click-bait. If you doubt it, just follow the financials of the news infotainment business. Things have never been better. Popular elections would ensure that criteria continues and grows with national click-bait drowning out all consideration of local nuance.
Moreover, can you imagine a nationwide recount with 51 different election systems and standards, most of them controlled by partisan elected officials where every vote counts in the national outcome? The incentive for nationwide vote suppression, fraud and manipulation would be enormous. Right now a close outcome is determined by votes in a handful of states. The outcomes in the rest are pretty much certain unless one candidate wins by a landslide. And most of those states have healthy two party systems that make vote fraud a lot harder.
Be careful what you with for. Its one thing for congress to set a minimum standard that there be a physical paper trail. Its quite another to have a single national voting system administered by whoever is in office at the moment. Do you really want Donald Trump to run the next election? That is where you end up.
How about UNLIMITED campaign contributions. I think we should have ZERO limits on contributions to campaigns by US citizens, give as much as you want anytime you want, but it's not tax deductible. Corporations which are based in the USA are also able to give unlimited amounts to campaigns, but they are not allowed to deduct them as expenses and they must be 100% sourced from USA portions of the business. Foreign nationals and companies are NOT allowed to participate, directly or indirectly.
BUT, every campaign or political organization is now required to disclose the source of EVERY penny they receive BEFORE they can spend it. This includes donations, loans or even barter items. The reporting must include the full name and contact information for every donation, no matter how small and must be made available for public and IRS inspection. ALSO every campaign must disclose where every penny of what they receive was spent within 1 week of the expense. So if they spent $200 on bunting for a rally, or $4,000 on catering at the phone bank, it needs to be reported within a week.
If we do this, At the end of the day and when the election is over, we can know who paid for the politician and make educated guesses as to how they would vote on things.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Pfff
The electoral college is the only thing standing in the way of California and New York making all our choices for us.
Without it, we may as well be a one party system.
which is why the electoral college is here to stay and those who complain about it needing to change just need to get used to it.
NONE of the fly over states would consider ceding their power to the coasts and it's going to take 2/3rds of the states to change the electoral college system in the constitution. This just isn't going to happen in my lifetime.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
and has been ruled as such multiple times. The scam isn't even that complex. Women tend to lean a bit left so it's beneficial to make it harder for them to vote (when they marry and their names change they need new Ids). It's easy to close the DMVs and other places where a voter could get Id. Finally fees can be attached to getting an id creating a defacto poll tax that seems small unless you're poor.
Multiple emails have leaked where Republican leaders didn't just talk about how these factors made voter Id a suppression technique but where they did the research to prove that it was before they put the effort into passing it. Those leaked emails have been what's caused voter Id to be thrown out where ever it's been tried. The Republicans have noticed this and are working to stack the courts with judges who will ignore the rule of law. So far they're succeeding.
If you're involved enough in politics to know about voter Id laws you are probably aware of all this. If not then I trust you no longer favor voter Id. If you are somehow still in favor of voter Id knowing all this then it's clear you oppose democracy. If that's the case then just come right out and say it. I'm tired of listening to dog whistles.
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There are many ways to do vote fraud. Showing up without an ID is but one avenue.
Where I don't want to dissuade folks from voting who cannot make it to the polls, I agree that we need to tighten up the absentee balloting process somehow. I'm at a loss for ideas how to do that though.
What do you think we can reasonably do?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
because:
a. It's been shown to be unnecessary. Voter fraud is not the problem. The problem is the election officials cheating. Go google the actual research on voter fraud and you'll find this out.
b. It's also been clearly shown to be a suppression tactic. Republican official have been caught several times doing research to prove that it targets their opposition (minorities and women mostly), that the fees associated with the Ids are defacto poll taxes and that the laws exist only to prevent legitimate voters. This is why the laws have been struct down over and over again.
Anyone who suggests voter Id is a solution to fraud is lying to you and opposes democracy. You should be highly suspicious of them and their motives. Again, spend a few hours on google and you can corroborate all this yourself. If you want voter Id to stop the "wrong" persons from voting then I can't really argue with that. But if you actually believe in democracy then you should oppose it.
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...of free and fair elections.
... this is how a narrative is constructed.
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has elevated concern over the security of the country's voting systems.
Russians did not "hack" voting machines; they did not "hack" the election, no matter how convenient a narrative that would be for those who lost.
But there's a smooth attempt here to conflate concerns about small Russian linked ad buys on Facebook with notions of voting machines being "hacked".
(obDisclaimer: I like paper ballots, etc. I'm referring to the narrative here, not the concept of paper voting itself. Again, the attempt is to slip a false narrative in there - "we didn't really lose; it was stolen!" - with a packet of sensible ideas that sensible people won't disagree with.)
>Too much democracy is bad. Were it not, we would have referendums on every single thing.
Outside of the time and expense of doing it, what would be bad about it?
The electoral college is designed to keep the masses of morons from voting in some ass clown.
Electors elect the President. They may vote as they wish. The people have no legal weight in electing the President as far as the federal government is concerned.
Each State is allotted a number of votes. Electors represent the States and exercise those votes. They can vote in line with the election or not. They can award them all to the winner in that State based on popular vote, they can portion them out based on percentages, or they can pull shit out of a hat. The various States have their own rules regarding how this should be done, but the federal government doesn't care about each State's rules. The Elector is the one with the power. The worst that can happen is the State tries to imprison a "faithless" Elector that didn't vote in line with the State's election. Their faithless votes would still be valid.
Further, the allotment of votes to each States is based both on the State's population, meaning that the people are represented, and the fact that the State is a State, meaning that the State is represented. (Or, as in the case of DC, the voting district is represented.) The bicameral legislature is designed the way it is because it is JUST AS IMPORTANT for the STATES to be represented as it is for the PEOPLE to be represented. There's no opportunity to disagree here. That's the law. That's the design of the system. If you don't like it, leave or get to work on the Amendment or Constitutional Convention required to change it.
The most common complaints come from people in populous States. They claim it is unfair that their vote is worth less than the vote of someone in a less populous State. They are wrong. Their vote is worth the same. It is worth nothing. Assuming faithful Electors, however, their vote is worth about as much as anyone else's. Unless their State is stupid enough to tell Electors to vote in a winner-take-all scheme. Then the winner of the plurality in a contentious State gets everything, and a huge chunk of the population gets no representative weight in the election, while a very slightly larger chunk gets far more representative weight. So tell your State to get rid of the winner-takes-all system. Then go ahead and subtract Electoral College votes from each State before you try to figure out people per Electoral College vote. Remember - those 2 votes are representing the State (or voting district, as with DC) itself.
Then, if you're still pissed off about the apportionment, then go argue for the Wyoming rule (or something similar) to smooth out the rounding error. Remember to enjoy the ridiculous expansion of the House it would cause.
Aside from all that, your mention of slavery is entirely misplaced. You're likely referring to how the population of each State is counted when determining the number of Representatives to apportion to a State. The slave-owning Southern States argued slaves were people and deserved to be counted as a person. The free Northern States argued that a slave in the South was not a legal person and should therefore not be counted as a person. The bicameral legislature and the Electoral College are entirely separate things from this issue.
My sense is, in those days people cared a lot more about how history would judge them, thus the primary motivation was to establish a stable democratic system.
That mattered to them, but the primary motivation was to salvage the nation. There was widespread discontent at the time, in no small part due to the Continental (currency) having become worthless. In essence, the founders had financed the revolution with money they printed willy-nilly, and with IOU's. The wealthy merchant class (who had financed the war), particularly, was hard hit by this -- if your wealth was in agricultural land and slaves you were in pretty okay shape, but those who held their wealth in currency got brutally hosed. That's a dangerous thing to do to folks who have already shown their willingness to devote their own resources to armed rebellion.
Madison himself cared a lot about his image, and edited his notes after the fact to paint himself in a more favorable light. Reading his Notes with this in mind alters the view pretty considerably. If it's something you're really interested in, the Anti-Federalist Papers point out many perceived flaws in the Constitution and the concerns raised in public debate at the time, e.g. the establishment of a permanent aristocracy, which one might argue has been in evidence since the mid-nineteenth century.
Never mind how damned much reading that is. :-)
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It's the same with the Electoral College. We elect representatives that pick the President for us.
Somebody does not know how the Electoral College works, the representatives aren't choosing anybody, they are chosen who to vote for, not to make a decision.
The Electors have full autonomy and can place votes however they wish. Doing so in a way that doesn't match the State's laws and the outcome of the State's election is perfectly valid as far as the federal election is concerned.
If Candidate A won State X, and its Electors all voted for Candidate B, State X might try to imprison those Electors. But their votes for Candidate B stay.
Regardless, the political landscape is such that a candidate receiving millions of votes less than another, can win the election.
Working as designed. We are a nation of States.
I refer you to Sorry, You're Wrong. Impy the Impiuos Imp is correct. You may not like it, but there's no legal room to disagree or argue against it. It's part of the bedrock of the nation.
To change this shit you must first get an Amendment passed or call a Constitutional Convention. There's no other legal avenue.
We live in the longest contiguously running democratic nation in history. We have had only one civil war, never gone without a government, and have never had to reform our government.
The way the US runs now is objectively, scientifically the best form of democratic government yet attempted. Why ruin it with a selfish change that will only lead to disenfranchisement of every non-coastal state?
Around here, we have early voting where polls are opened up for a couple of weekends before the election. I believe they also have them in hospitals and such as well as embassies. Not perfect as it means the ballots are stored until after the election though in most elections they're never counted as the margin of victory is larger then the absentee ballots. Last Provincial election, they did matter and instead of taking a couple of hours to decide the winner, it took a month as the house was close to tied and a couple of ridings were very close.
Seemed honest as the government ended up being replaced with no election results being changed by the absentee ballots.
We also have an independent elections commission to look after the elections, no gerrymandering, no only putting polling locations in the good side of town and such.
We also split our elections so the Federal election is only about voting in a Federal government and Provinces have their elections on various different days. This allows different parties on the Federal and Provincial levels along with more parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Not satisfied that Muellers investigation has found no evidence whatsoever that "the Russians" influenced even a single vote in the election they are now trying to introduce this pointless bill. This is an obvious attempt to make it appear as if there is some sort of widespread fraud in the election process. Completely unfounded accusations and this bill is nothing more than political grandstanding.
Rosenstein said. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.". You would think that would close the book on this witch hunt yet it continues.
Look - I'm not a big Trump fan but the more the Democrats pursue this the more desperate and unhinged some of them appear. My advice to the Democrats would be to suck it up, admit they lost, and focus on winning the next election.
> . So, how do you feel about requiring voters provide government issued ID in order to vote? Because requiring voters to identify themselves and verify eligibility to vote is part of securing an election.
I don't know of any country which allows you to vote without an ID.
My country does not.
> The right to vote is a constitutional right.
> Nowhere in the constitution does it say that presenting a government issued ID
You've got that precisely backwards. Please go spend a few minutes reading the Constitution. It isn't very long. Here's the relevant portion:
--
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors
--
The only people who have a vote under the Constitution are those APPOINTED by the state, not just issued an ID.
States have used different methods for choosing electors. Currently, there are two different systems in use for the "first choice" method, with other methods in place in case the first method doesn't work out.
In 11 states plus DC, the first-choice method is to choose electors who promise to vote for the candidate who received the highest number of votes NATIONWIDE. That method is to be used if and when a few more states pass the same law.
Two states, Nebraska and Maine, choose electors proportionately to the results of an election by the citizens.
In the other 37 states, at the moment the first-choice method is to hold an election in which citizens can vote for electors who intend to vote for a certain candidate, and the state sends electors who are expected to probably support which ever candidate received the most citizen votes in the state. That's a STATE LAW saying they'll have an election, and specifying how that election will be conducted. The US Constitution makes no mention of average people voting.
Individual rights that ARE specified in the Constitution include:
Freedom of the press
Freedom of religion
Freedom of assembly
Right of petition
Right to bear arms
Right to remain silent
Right to a fair trial
That list isn't exhaustive. The states and the people also have a Constitutional right to be free of any interference by the federal government outside of the items that the feds are authorized to do in Article 1, section 8. Article 1 says, and the tenth amendment repeats, the the federal government may not do any other things. All other rights and powers are reserved to the states ans the people.
It's about time that we got serious about security our voting systems. Too many elections have been decided by "discovered" boxes of ballots, or where 200% of the registered voters in a precinct all voted the same way. Or precincts where the election monitors were kicked out by gang members, and 100% of the votes were for the gang's preferred candidate.
We need paper ballots, ink on fingers, and 100% voter ID.
Completely agree. I'd mod you up if I had mod points today.
Those with the best advertising win. That's not great. Pure democracy ends up being a regurgitation of who owns the media.
Electors elect the President. They may vote as they wish. The people have no legal weight in electing the President as far as the federal government is concerned.
Not entirely accurate.
There are states who proclaim that electors must vote for the person that won the election--it's a law. So if the majority of people in the state voted for some ass-hat, the elector must cast his or her vote for said ass-hat, even though they know he or she is an ass-hat.
The second part is correct, though if nobody gets the required electoral votes, it goes to the House of Representatives, though each state coalition only gets one vote.
But you're right--the "popular vote" is of no interest to the federal government.
PS - if you do decide to refresh your memory by reading the Constitution, it may help to make things clear if you remember it's the Constitution of the United States, not the United People. It's a document describimg how the states can work together, uniting for such things as military defense. That's why the STATES get a vote on who the president is.
Individuals are mentioned mostly in the context of what the federal government isn't allowed to do. The federal government can't make any laws choosing a particular religion, the federal government can't make any laws disarming citizens, the federal government may not prosecute someone without a fair trial, etc. It's phrased as "Congress shall make no law ..."
Ain't it great that there's a mechanism in place to prevent California and New York from having more electoral votes than the less populous states?
Oh, uh... never mind.
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No, the 3/5ths compromise was the slavery bit. The electoral college is there so that a few major population centers can't fuck over everyone else. The biggest problem with the Electoral college doesn't even originate within the college itself, but instead in the House of Representatives. Namely, they need to triple or quadruple the number of people in the House.
*sighs* This again? Look, you can't change the rules just because you didn't like the outcome of the election. You lost, get over it. It's done and the electoral college isn't going anywhere.
so go get some therapy and deal with it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Mind reading: You're not good at it.
My complaint with the current system is not about the embarrassment I feel resulting from a shrieking clown being in the White House. I wish for democracy, which was not written into the Constitution. Eliminating the electoral college is just the first step toward acquiring it.
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There are 538 electoral college votes. California is the most populous state and has 55 electroral votes while New York, tied with Florida for 3rd most electoral votes, has 29. 84 is not enough to control the outcome of the election.
The six most populous states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania) have 191 electoral college votes, also not enough to control the Electoral College--that'd take 269. Those same six states have a population of just over 126 million (2010 census stats), or 41% of the 2010 USA population, yet they have just 12 out of 100 Senators. Our current malrepresentative system values a fucking rock in Wyoming as superior to a person in our most populous states. The Electoral College must be abolished. Even more so the Senate must be abolished unless it be distributed STRICTLY on the basis of population. And if the state of Bumblefuck has too small a population to warrant a senator then so be it. I'm tired of my fellow Bumblefuckians dictating terms to the overwhemling majority of the USA's supposedly-but-not-actually equal citizens.
In WA state, candidates with strange names like "GoodSpaceGuy", "Loony Larry", "Billy Bob", "Genghis Kahn" etc. are printed on the ballots I receive in the mail. I round-file them. The system is a joke. No WA state citizen should waste their time voting.
If these Democrat senators are so concerned about election purity then why are none of them supporting having to show proof of citizenship at the polls in order to cast votes?
1. Touchscreen for voters to input their selections. This information is stored digitally in this system.
2. Based on this input, a paper ballot is printed out in human readable form with clear printed marks next to selections for voter to verify.
3. This paper printout is then optically scanned by a 2nd system (independent of the 1st system). This information is also stored digitally.
4. The two computer systems cross check the data and verify that they match.
5. As a bonus, you now have a paper printout to go back to if there are any irregularities.
6. You are welcome. Enjoy your democracy...
If you wish for a democracy then you are a fool.
Democracy has been tried in the passed and every time it has failed. The Founding Fathers knew this and they choose to go with a Representative Republic. Another name for "democracy" is mob rule.
I'm sorry that you feel that way about our president*. Next time field a better candidate.
* Yes, he is our President, yours and mine. I'm sure you are thinking or even screeching "He is not my President!" I most assure you he is, and your denial of reality will not change that.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
But hey, thanks for trying to claim this is just another mindless Democrats vs Republicans thing!
I don't see how this is a "D vs R" thing at all, and I certainly didn't say that it was.
Next time, try leading with that instead
Nope. Naming a specific law is a much weaker argument than the principles it is based on.
The 10th Amendment matters because the principles of local autonomy and decentralization are important, not the other way around.
Whenever I listen in on a bunch of Americans talking about their political system, it seems to me that they all miss one of the oddest things about their whole corrupt, 18th century setup.
You have two political parties. Really? A country of 300 million people and you can only get two parties.
It turns out they're so baked into the structures you wound up with that they're not so very different from the old Eastern European Communist bloc, where "The Party" was the only one allowed, except you've got two, so that must be better.
Even my tiny little country has 5 parties in Parliament.
Please don't tell me it's because of first past the post voting, because it's not. The UK has FPP voting, and 8 parties in the current Parliament.
I'm sorry that you feel that way about our president*. Next time field a better candidate.
* Yes, he is our President, yours and mine. I'm sure you are thinking or even screeching "He is not my President!" I most assure you he is, and your denial of reality will not change that.
Mind reading: You're not good at it.
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I only caught one fraud (you Windy) but I catch him over and over again, does that count?
The federal government doesn't really have authority over state voting procedures. The court systems do, in that they have to ensure that people's constitutional rights aren't stomped on. But when it comes to the nuts and bolds of voting, the Feds don't really have a say.
You have two political parties. Really? A country of 300 million people and you can only get two parties.
It turns out they're so baked into the structures you wound up with that they're not so very different from the old Eastern European Communist bloc, where "The Party" was the only one allowed, except you've got two, so that must be better.
Two are all that are required to maintain the charade.
We actually do have several other political parties, but so few of us know how to think critically that those others may as well not exist.
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What it says is that a militia can have firearms you twat.
Why is it that gambling machines have more audits and checks than voting machines?
Because organized crime is more honest than US politicians.
Meyer Lansky was praised highly by everyone for his honest casinos. And that is when the real problems began with US elections. Now the electoral system is like spinning a wheel at his friend Bugsy's Flamingo, which many up and coming us politicians did. Next move after the fall elections is the move to make America great again by pissing on Canada even more that what is going on this very moment. Just wonder if cheap log cants are in the cards coming out of Russia to make the American lumber industry great again? With Canada's softwood lumber exports causing the the fires in southern California there has to be a reason for that seemingly insane bit Trumpian pre election comedy. A huge trade deal with Russia for logs to temporarily stimulate the antiquated American saw mill, wood fiber and paper industry might just be the reward for putting that short sighted clown in office.
"Because requiring voters to identify themselves and verify eligibility to vote is part of securing an election." - They do that. There were fewer than 300 instances of in-person voter fraud per the last election. The system works.
What doesn't work is allowing Republicans to close polling places, reduce hours, redistrict/jerrymander intentionally, and send misleading illegal robocalls on election night to try to confuse people and reduce turnout. That's treason.
No, getting an ID is not a Constitutional requirement to vote, nor the only way to affirmatively establish identity for the purpose of casting a provisional ballot. You're a moron trying to force a false dichotomy, shove it up your ass traitor.
Proper statistical analysis should easily be able to tell if there were anomalous results from modified machines. Russians aren't exactlly subtle, if they were the results would be too small to make any difference.
Any sensible country would just have a papertrail, and just recount suspicious polling stations.
>To change this shit you must first get an Amendment passed or call a Constitutional Convention. There's no other legal avenue.
Or a few more states pass the popular vote compact
Ballot counting is something that is extremely available. In Canada, we count the paper ballots by had (in triplicate) and have our federal election results back within 4 hours of the polls closing. The same could easily be achieved in the US. Yes, the US has 10x the population, but that just means you use 10x the number of people to count the ballots, 10x the number of people from the parties to scrutinize the count process, and Bob's your uncle.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Two are all that are required to maintain the charade.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at with "The Party" jab.
Look at those terrible Commies, with their state run Party. We have two parties, that's so much better!
These guys at Princeton agree.
:) I've been forwarding that link since 2014 every time some nimrod tries to claim that voting in federal elections matters. I was just taking the opportunity to jab at my fellow country-persons.
FWIW, a little-known secret hidden in the US Constitution is the fact that "representative" is used therein as a matter of census rather than consensus, so the reality detailed in that report is not at all surprising. I've got so many pejorative labels stuck to my forehead as a result of pointing that out that I no longer need to wear a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. :D
Wull ahm proud to be anna Merkin wur at least ah know ahm free... to do as the rich man tells me if I wish to live in a house and have food that no one else has thrown away first.
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... let's also elect presidents by the popular vote.
The Electoral College shit sucks tater toes.
That idea worked well back before the Pony Express days, but in this technologically connected country, we don't need a middleman hacking the election process.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It's largely because of FPTP. Only 2 UK parties can actually win and have won every single election for a century.
And the smaller parties need about 100x more votes to win a seat than the two incumbents.
Neither the US not the UK system have anything more than a passing resemblance to democracy.
You realize that the House of Representatives has proportional representation, right? Your crusade against the Senate is entirely misplaced. It exists to represent the states. The House represents the people.
If you have any gripes about the system, it should be that the House is capped at 435 Representatives, resulting rounding errors that drastically skew the number of people represented by each Representative. The issue is only so many people can fit in the physical House chamber, and managing that many man-children at once is like herding cats anyway.
I guess you didn't know the Dutch secret service hacked the Russians' security cameras...
So yes we do know they hacked the DNC and other evidence showed they worked for the GRU.
What do you think the 3/5ths compromise existed for?
So that states with a lot of slaves could have congressional representation based upon their population and 3/5ths their population of slaves?
Now, where do you think the amount of electors a state has in the electoral college comes from?
Let's just ask the guy who invented it.
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
James Madison, 7/19/1787, US Constitutional Convention
when they marry and their names change they need new Ids)
in Italy and other countries they simply don't change name. They are treated as what they are, adult humans, not as an appendix of their husband
Most of those "adaptations" failed quickly (often violently, "President" turns into dictator fast - see Turkey, and Russia). In fact the presidential system has been called "America's most dangerous export". It's a terrible system, and it's sheer crazy luck that it survived in the United States.
The U.S. system is actually just a really dumb adaptation of the Westminster System. The biggest problem in 1776 was poor allocation of seats in Parliament. Various areas had little or no representation, while other areas were overrepresented (rotten boroughs). Fixing that is of course very difficult, as reform threatens the entrenched powers. The UK passed the Great Reform Act in 1832.
Ironically, the UK ended up with a better system. There's too many reasons to list here, but it's enough to say this was recognized even by the U.S. When we went to write the Japanese constitution, we modeled it on the British system. Parliamentary systems have proven far more resilient and democratic than presidential systems. Even if someone as nutty as Trump had somehow managed to get enough votes in Parliament to become PM in the first place, his government would have lost a confidence vote and been replaced long ago.
(Oh, and separation of powers isn't really the greatest invention either, the British system is based on fusion of powers and it works fine)
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Australia. Register to vote with ID but actual voting no ID required. They ask for your name and it gets checked off. Each region has their own book of registered voters. You can still vote in another area but it's a pain in the butt.
US political parties are umbrella parties. A California Democrat and a Texas Democrat are in the "same party" but will frequently disagree on issues. Same with an Iowa Republican and a Florida Republican.
Basically, there are two major coalitions of parties that share similar but not identical views... plus a few independents that are their own parties.
People who tell me the US has only two parties make me laugh, because it just proves how incredibly ignorant they are about the size and diversity of the US.
in POF, here in COlorado, we caught so many voter fraud, that the head of the group that was investigating it was caught submitting as hit wife. He got the ballot through with a signature that passed as hers. It was shear luck that they busted him.
"So many" being a small handful. Two or three that I recall hearing of. The putz you're referring to was a former chairman of the Colorado GOP, claimed that he didn't know it was illegal, doesn't remember doing it, and also that it was done during some kind of diabetic episode which rendered him incompetent.
If there are more than a few, please cite references. As a fellow Coloradan I'd like to know of them.
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as hit wife
Freudian Slip?
The electoral college is designed to keep the masses of morons from voting in some ass clown.
You can claim that as a theoretical use of the elector system, for sure. You however cannot claim that is what it was designed for. It's well documented what it was designed for. It neatly implements the 3/5ths compromise in presidential elections, as well as handles the issue that suffrage in the south was limited to land owners, making their popular vote tally quite small.
To quote Mr. Madison, the pragmatist who was the force behind having it implemented:
The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
James Madison, 7/19/1787, US Constitutional Convention
We accept your apology for spreading falsehoods.
Assuming faithful Electors, however, their vote is worth about as much as anyone else's.
Sigh. Another lie.
Someone from Wyoming for example: Their vote is worth the vote of 3.18 Americans *not* from Wyoming. Far worse if from say, California.
You're really letting me down, sexy.
Unless their State is stupid enough to tell Electors to vote in a winner-take-all scheme.
Which is literally every state in the Union, minus two. Friendly tip, when you're arguing that reality is a certain way, don't suffix it with "Unless this condition that is actually the status quo is true"
to smooth out the rounding error.
You seem to be confused about what a rounding error is.
Aside from all that, your mention of slavery is entirely misplaced.
No, it's not, as the was clearly discussed during the Constitutional Convention that led to the fucking rules.
You're likely referring to how the population of each State is counted when determining the number of Representatives to apportion to a State.
If only the number of representatives apportioned to a state had something to do with a state's electoral power in a Presidential election... oh wait.
Come on, dude. Come the fuck on.
The bicameral legislature and the Electoral College are entirely separate things from this issue.
Except for the fact that both were apportioned according to that "issue", and that the founders preferred a popular vote for the Presidency, ideologically speaking, were it not for fears of the very limited suffrage in the south. As such, the electoral system was in fact the 3/5ths compromise, applied to the election of the executive, and was never dressed up as anything else until assholes such as yourself in the modern era tried to rewrite history to gaslight the truth behind the odd quirks of our electoral system, birthed in slavery, that favor today's "conservative" (see: antebellum) voters.
Despicable, dude.
This works for me. But also, just give me a paper receipt from the electronic voting machine that I can verify my votes with, from a third party. Use blockchain for verifiability. Just use the word blockchain and govts will buy it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You just need to have distributed counting like many other countries do. The one I was born to, slice the voting places by about a few thousand electors. Then during election days they ask for volunteer. Usually they get around 20 from many political affiliation. I was one for many election. Then each is separated in a small group, then we get each a part of the ballot to count, then we note the number, then the ballots get shifted to another table then it get recounted, and finally the results which only officials can see until recount are finished, are compared (to avoid bias and people simply telling the same number). At that point maybe 1 hour has passed after the election, number are put on a board then summed, and result toldf loudly. Then the results are sent/cascaded/tabulated by region so everybody in the voting county can check the number they found is correct. Within 1 or 2 hours the results are in for 95% of all places, with recount already going on if there are problems. Then the paper ballot are kept under key for some times, with the name of the county. And yes the number of potential elector while not being 200 million , is around 1/5 of that so it ain't a micro island where that happens. You get the results without expansive optical readers, AND you get transparency to the voters.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Neither YOU nor your FOREBEARS.... EVER... repeat EVER had ANY say or EXPLICIT consent WHATSOEVER in your so called "Government".
The "USA" was free after revolution.
*YOU* WERE FREE.
Then a bunch of rich slave owning fucks decided to vote themselves into POWER OVER YOU.
And YOU did NOTHING.
Now you are a SLAVE.
And just as much today as back then...
VOTING DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
It's all a game, and you're dumb enough to play it.
The grass doesnâ(TM)t look that green over here, I have to say. We have massive failures of governance.
Most recently in a state election, a paper slip with my details was mailed to me shortly before voting day.
At the (federal) election prior (and every election prior to that), I think it was just a verbal ID of my name and address, which was then crossed off a hardcopy printout of all voters in that jurisdiction.
We'll have another federal election in the next 6 months I think, so it will be interesting to see if there's been more requirements to prove identity.
And good luck convincing the myriad small flyover states that what's wrong with the country is the concrete canyons of the coast don't have enough power and control to do the things they hate.
I sometimes forget: people on the coasts are worth less than wholesome middle Americans because (a) they live on the coast and (b) live closer together. So, their votes should count for less too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The electoral college is the only thing standing in the way of California and New York making all our choices for us.
So instead we should have sparsley populated states making all the choices for us. You know because liberals are basically worth half a person so their votes should count for less anyway.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You are flat wrong. Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) do not require voter ID. Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden only require ID if voter identity is in doubt. India accepts non-photo IDs. Etc
Also, if you want to stop people voting more than once, just mark their fingers with a dye that takes a couple of days to wear off.
%s/eliminated/eliminate/g if you are a Vimmer.
In any case - the electoral college votes should be proportional to the votes cast in a state, never "winner takes all".
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The electoral college is designed to keep the masses of morons from voting in some ass clown.
Obviously it didn't work.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
use of "allegedly" is a must, since no evidence of any russian connection is available for verification.
There is no allegedly, tRump SAID he used Russian hack data to attack the DNC. Case PROVED from his own mouth
... vote fraud does exist and is quite common, illegals vote and other forms of voter fraud happen regularly. .....
That is a lie as proved by Trey Gowdy and the utterly failed "Voter Integrity Project"
So 4 countries out of 200 don't require ID to vote?
"to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character."
I suppose it depends how you define "distinguished".
machines print paper ballots have been proven they can also be easily hacked. If you over printed ballots, this means the machine need to be able to cancel a vote and create a new vote with the correct information supplied by the user.
Thus the machine could by itself cancel vote and create a new vote after the user has left.
Oh it worked as designed, he's just full of shit about what it was designed to do.
It was designed to give states with slaves and large disenfranchised populations that are counted in the census the voting power of those they disenfranchise.
It worked.
You could scale it by a factor to account for population density. Set your highest miles/person as 1. This is inverted here to make the numbers simpler, so it's represented as land per person. [Oh doesn't this sound good? ;)] Then you weight a given person's vote by their scaling factor, which would be their local land per person divided by the highest land per person. This results in a vote value of 1 for those with the most land, and proportionally less for all the yokels.
Oh, wait we already do that.
And if you really want to screw the lowest and highest ends of the class spectrum, weight a vote instead by sin(population density scaling factor*pi).
I had no idea women were so incompetent.
Buy Beer-> ID Required
Enter Courthouse -> ID Required
Drive -> ID Required
Collect EBT -> ID Required
Attend DNC Convention -> ID Required
Enter Federal Buildings -> ID Required
Vote -> no ID because its racist
WOW look at how much of the US is racist. You are an idiot.
Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday’s final day of recounting in Ramsey County. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office immediately asked county officials to explain what had happened, and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign said it sent its own experts to Ramsey County to review the situation and said it was “skeptical about [the ballots’] sudden appearance.”
----------
Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by “winning” the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be “lost.” LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were supposed to put an end to such election-night chicanery, but Earl Long, the colorful governor of Louisiana, where fraud is the national sport, boasted that “I can make a voting machine play ‘Home on the Range’ all night long.”
------------
Logan announced on December 13 that 561 absentee ballots in the county had been wrongly rejected due to an administrative error.[14] The next day, workers retrieving voting machines from precinct storage found an additional 12 ballots, bringing the total to 572 newly discovered ballots. Logan admitted the lost ballots were an oversight on the part of his department, and insisted that the found ballots be counted. On December 15, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2-1 in favor of counting the discovered ballots.
Upon examination of the discovered ballots, it was further discovered that, with the exception of two ballots, none of the ballots had been cast by voters whose surnames began with the letters A, B, or C.[15] There was a further search for more ballots, and on December 17, county workers discovered a tray in a warehouse with an additional 162 previously uncounted ballots.[15] All together, 723 uncounted or improperly rejected ballots were discovered in King County during the manual hand recount.
After all other counties submitted their recount votes, it was revealed on December 20 that at least five other counties besides King County had included ballots that had been discovered after the initial count. For example, Snohomish County included 224 missed ballots that had been discovered underneath mail trays. The outcome of the State Supreme Court hearing regarding King County's votes could have potentially affected those counties' counts as well.
------------------
When election officials brought two master personal electronic ballots – or PEBs, small devices inserted into voting machines – back to the Franklin County Board of Elections from a Worthington polling location, one was uploaded into the final, unofficial total of a super-tight congressional race.
The other was not.
The next day, as bipartisan members of the board of elections were reviewing the race, they realized the PEB's results were missing.
That PEB and its 588 votes were found. The breakdown was 198 votes for Republican Troy Balderson, 388 votes for Democrat Danny O'Connor and two for Green Party candidate Joe Manchik.
The mistake is embarrassing for Franklin County election officials, but they caught it quickly and the PEB was always in a secure location. Those 588 votes will be included – along with additional absentee and provisional ballots across the district – in the final tally, which must be tabulated by Aug. 24.
Donâ(TM)t fuck with mail in ballots. Like being able to vote in peace and drop it off.
You mean the info that came from Wikileaks? The info that was almost certainly leaked by Seth Rich, who was later killed?
Nothing to do with Russians. But don't look behind the curtain, you might find the DNC crew there.
Is voter fraud a problem in any of those countries?
Anyone who would vote in policies designed to steal from the productive don't deserve the right to vote.
This has nothing to do with you guys constantly "finding" extra ballots, right? As for tapes, we have your guys on tape talking about decades of voter fraud.
Every other country in the world can manage an ID to vote. You use an ID for almost everything in life but voting.
If you're really concerned about it being hard to get ID, then fix that, instead of trying to keep your fraud active. But you won't, you'll just invent some new reason why ID is racist or whatever every time. Have you ever noticed that you get completely different reasons about this every time someone explains it? It's almost like the reasons are constantly fabricated...
There are plenty of idiots that think school ID are worth something. I carry around a fake one for use at places that require picture identification or that want you to leave identification. I previously used my actual one,long after I graduated, then I out grew that picture.
Hunting licenses have anti-forgery protection, are checked against the person, and unless you are old expire.
Those leaked emails have been what's caused voter Id to be thrown out where ever it's been tried.
Unfortunately, that's not quite true (or your wording is confusing me). According to Wikipedia, Voter ID is not only the law in some states, at least one version of it has survived a Supreme Court challenge, and 8 state currently require a photo ID to vote.
Everything else you said is accurate.
The Electors have full autonomy and can place votes however they wish. Doing so in a way that doesn't match the State's laws and the outcome of the State's election is perfectly valid as far as the federal election is concerned.
If Candidate A won State X, and its Electors all voted for Candidate B, State X might try to imprison those Electors. But their votes for Candidate B stay.
As evidence, see the record number of defector electors in the 2016 election.
One Hawaii elector, pledged Hillary Clinton, voted for Bernie Sanders.
One Texas elector, pledged Donald Trump, voted for Ron Paul.
One Texas elector, pledged Donald Trump, voted for John Kasich.
Three Washington electors, pledged Hillary Clinton, voted for Colin Powell.
One Washington elector, pledged Hillary Clinton, voted for Faith Spotted Eagle.
Three additional electors from Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota all initially declined voting for Hillary Clinton. Two of those were replaced while the third voted for Hillary Clinton.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Best way to fix the Electoral College is the following:
1) Remove the artificial cap on the number of seats in the House of Representatives. With modern technology there is no reason to cap the number at 435. Get the size of districts down from an average of 700,000 and closer to 30,000 (the Constitutional limit). Shoot for 35K say and so there are ~20X the number of representatives.
Now the number of representatives from each state follows the state population much more closely than it did before. The electors assigned from Senators are not much more than a rounding error.
2) Convince the states to allow for proportional allotment of electors like Maine. Now the Electoral College representation will much more closely follow the popular vote.
The astute reader will complain that I haven't actually fixed the Electoral College, only minimized its effects. Yes, but this solution is good enough, doesn't require a Constitutional amendment and has the added bonus of increasing the ability of citizens to have a voice in the federal government since representatives will have far fewer constituents.
Enter Federal Buildings -> ID Required
This is also racist, and abusive to the poor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Around here, we have early voting where polls are opened up for a couple of weekends before the election.
I understand it is convenient for people, however it is quite insecure. The voting seems to be done with great trust that nobody would cheat - easiness and convenience always wins against security. I understand that it's to attract more citizens to participate, just hope that some proper verification is implemented, after all voting is the backbone of democracy.
Those leaked emails have been what's caused voter Id to be thrown out where ever it's been tried.
I'm not sure if you genuinely believe that statement, are intentionally lying, or are misrepresenting the truth. A majority of states have laws that require either photo or non-photo ID to vote. The main difference between those states is where the voter will have to take any steps after casting their provisional ballot after presenting ID. Ten states require the voter to present a valid ID after casting the ballot for it to be counted. The remainder will do additional cross checks or have other means to avoid requiring the ID.
Voter ID Laws
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
TIL buying beer is a constitutionally protected right.
Dipshit.
clearly shows me who is the real enemy of the United States of America.
>ridiculous expansion of the house
You mean the proportional representation that our founders envisioned? Yeah, ridiculous.
Remember, this is a confederation of states.
You are a citizen of your state first, and then a citizen of the United States second.
The electoral college is set up so as to be more representative of the states wishes for president.
This keeps from only 1-2 massively populous states running complete roughshod over the less populous states.
It is also a good thing to be on a state level basis, as that with the massive geography of the US, many states have very different needs and wants based on that alone, amongst other issues.
If we didn't have the electoral college, well, the country as a whole would be subservient to CA, NY and maybe 1 or two other states.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
10 seconds after voter ID is used, all problems evaporate.
You've got that precisely backwards. Please go spend a few minutes reading the Constitution. It isn't very long.
So should you, since the right to vote is found in the 15th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments.
Two states, Nebraska and Maine, choose electors proportionately to the results of an election by the citizens.
Nope. What they do, is use their existing Congressional Districts to allot individual votes per their House apportionment, while keeping the two Senate votes statewide.
The US Constitution makes no mention of average people voting.
Except in the places it does. I already mentioned them.
The states and the people also have a Constitutional right to be free of any interference by the federal government outside of the items that the feds are authorized to do in Article 1, section 8. Article 1 says, and the tenth amendment repeats, the the federal government may not do any other things. All other rights and powers are reserved to the states ans the people.
Dear RayMorris, you need to read the Constitution again, it has Amendments that have given Congress authority to pass laws.
It isn't that hard. You should be able to do it.
Except you know, you have a documented history of not reading the Constitution accurately. Or a lot of things. Your reading skills are subpar.
Seems to me these laws would be stretching to use interstate commerce to tell the states how to run their own business.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
in my state a utility bill is enough. If Voter Id laws already existed we wouldn't be talking about passing them. Voter Id laws mean a state issued Id. It's been shown repeatably that State Issued Ids are intentionally difficult to get and maintain for poor people. Again, spend some time on google and you can confirm this. You don't have to take my word for it.
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What evidence do you have of vote fraud being quite common ? Perhaps you should share it with the federal government as they seemed unable to find it.
Nullius in verba
But this only matters at the state level, because at the Federal level the representatives tend to vote very nearly by party lines at this point.
Hi there, Briton here. I have voted in every election since 2003 and not once have I been asked to show ID.
Like he said, it takes an idiot to defend it.
And why don't you tell us which party has won by the electoral college the last two times?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The Electors have full autonomy and can place votes however they wish. >
And yet in reality, the Electors don't exercise any genuine autonomy, and almost always vote as they are pledged, with little changes, and none of them even close to meaningful since the early 1800s. That was back when Aaron Burr was trying something, and it backfired on him. Since then? Just a few token messages, nothing else.
Do they perform any kind of learned debate? Nope, they don't. Sorry. Just rubber-stamping.
Right, it would take an amendment, etc to change this.
But just like a lot of things, just because its legal doesn't mean its right.
In todays reality, the EC is an unparalleled anachronism, and anyone who defends it either knows that, or is willfully ignorant.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The reason two parties stay in power is because of the "values" issues like abortion, immigration, lgbtq rights, the environment, etc;
Those "values" are how the real powerbrokers keep Americans at each others throats.
It works great.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
First, no requirement to be a citizen exists to get an ID or DL. Permanent residency **is** required, which makes sense.
It was the FEDs who have required more stringent ID card requirements. Many states didn't want it, but were forced into it.
At least 1 state had 50 yr drivers licenses, which have all been reduced to 5 yrs, thanks to the RealID act.
I've had a 10 yr DL and haven't had to get a new DL since 2009. I haven't been physically to a DMV since 1996. All renewals have been performed by mail.
I get to bring all the proof with me next year when I get a new DL. Fortunately in my state, I don't have to visit the closes DMV, so I'll go to a small town office that doesn't have any lines. Why? Because I'm not stupid.
Paper ballots are only 1/3rd of the problem. Clear, reasonable voter registration requirements and voter ID requirements are also mandatory. The bill needs to include those for federal elections, which will probably be used for state elections too.
In my state, there is a rural county with 9 polling places. Their election board is voting this week on whether to close 7 of those locations because they don't meet the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). It is a very poor part of the state, so their tax revenue doesn't support widening doors, putting in ramps, etc. for locations that are used 2 days a year, at most for govt stuff. Here, most of the polls are at churches and schools. The schools meet ADA, but those are 2 locations. If the election board doesn't close the 7 non-compliant locations, they are in violation of US law. If they do, then lots of elderly people will have problems getting to a poll. Political parties are going crazy complaining, but haven't offered money to make these locations ADA compliant.
I say, be part of the solution or STFU.
It might be better if the representation followed the number of ballots cast - have states turn out the vote if they want more power.
Nullius in verba
I would be careful about waving that flag around until you get some idea of who could vote over all those years. Disenfranchisement is indeed the name of the game.
Nullius in verba
The machine that prints the ballot doesn't need to be the same machine that counts the ballot. If you wanted touch-screen systems for improved accessibility, you could have them print out the same type of paper ballot that gets fed into an existing optical scanning machine.
How about a finger print scan before you vote. One fingerprint one vote. If your fingerprint doesn't show you as being a citizen you GTFO.
No, the house does not have proportional representation. It has district based representation, and that representation is only very roughly equal on a state-by-state basis. For example, Delaware's 900,000 people are represented by the same number of reps as Wyoming's 570,000 people. Oregon has 770,000 people per representative, whereas Nebraska has 610,000 people per representative.
And that's without going into gerrymandering and plain old geographic division. The idea that the House of Representatives actually represents the will of the people is antiquated. It's an ideal worth pursuing, but it will take significant reforms to achieve.
As for tapes, we have your guys on tape talking about decades of voter fraud.
Citation needed.
Every effort to find evidence of voter fraud has come up with bupkis. Even the recent one appointed by Trump, and helmed by Mr. Voter-Suppression himself, Kris Kobach. All they ever find is a handful of isolated cases, mostly mistakes or misunderstandings (eg: voting in the wrong precinct).
If these "tapes" you refer to actually exist, I think we'd have all heard them by now. Meanwhile, on the other side of the debate, here's a video of Paul Weyrich, one of the "godfathers" of modern conservatism, clearly expressing his preference for reducing the number of people who are eligible to vote.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Remember, this is a confederation of states.
No, it is not. The founders tried that, and it failed.
That's why they put together a constitution with a much stronger federal government.
This keeps from only 1-2 massively populous states running complete roughshod over the less populous states.
And instead allows a coalition of sparsely populated states to run completely roughshod over the states with the majority of the population. I don't see how that's any better.
As evidence, see the record number of defector electors in the 2016 election.
As counter-evidence, see the complete ineffectiveness of those elector's actions.
For all the pretensions about the electoral college, they really don't do anything but repeat what was already decided.
I still have problems with this, but do admit that it's better than a system which relies on hardware without a paper trail.
However, two things.
1) It makes NO SENSE that people need a machine to mark the ballot for them, or to help them mark the ballot. Absurd.
2) I don't mind machines counting, but as far as I'm concerned a manual count should be primary. A machine count can 'back that up', fine. But in ALL cases, at all times, a manual count should be done.
Democracy is too vital, too important, to introduce needless change.
see here. 538 is a well respected political blog. They've got plenty of research to back up how voter Ids laws disproportionately impact minorities and in turn disproportionately benefit Republicans.
If you're OK with voter suppression then by all means, support voter Id. Just understand that you're opposing democracy. You may have your reasons. You may earnestly believe those people shouldn't be allowed to vote. But you should at least be aware of what your support for Voter Id laws is actually doing and not delude yourself into thinking you're protecting democracy.
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You are a citizen of your state first, and then a citizen of the United States second.
There is no such thing as state-based citizenship. Only residency.
The electoral college is set up so as to be more representative of the states wishes for president.
Nope. Right now, the Electoral College could allow 11 states to decide the Presidency. In fact, the lack of representativeness is why the Civil War happened.
This keeps from only 1-2 massively populous states running complete roughshod over the less populous states.
It doesn't, actually. There's nothing in the Electoral College that prevents that from happening.
If we didn't have the electoral college, well, the country as a whole would be subservient to CA, NY and maybe 1 or two other states.
Still bitching over California and New York? Your bias is showing.
If we didn't have an electoral college, then maybe you'd have to have a system for choosing the Presidency that showed confidence, not a hodgepodge that you think works.
Most of the time mail-in ballots are not even counted. If the difference in vote tallies is less than the number of mail-in ballots most states don't even tally the mail-in ballots.
However with close elections mail-in ballots matter, and you are correct. A better way of verifying mail in ballot validity is required. This is particularly true with some states now allowing anyone to vote mail-in. It use to be that only military people, expatriates and Washington staffers voted by mail-in ballot. Now in some states everyone can do so.
It's a problem that must be solved.
The purpose of the electoral collage is to prevent the high population urban areas from dominating elections. It fulfilled it's purpose admirably in the last election.
The founders spoke of why they instituted the electoral college, Hamilton speaks of it in the Federalist Papers and Jefferson and Madison wrote on the subject. It is one of the Constitutional limitations designed as part of the balance of power between the states and the federal government which Progressives have been trying to dismantle since the early 20th century.
Attributing it to slavery is a purely modern innovation, mostly pushed by Liberals.
Read the Federalist papers, where the framers provided insight on why the constitution representstionwas formulated. It was in the last century when Senate seat were voted for. Previously state governments. Generally the governor appointed senators. This was to assure the protection and sovereignty of the states. Interesting an insightful reading.
The common western fallacy of thinking that just because a foreign leader is disliked abroad, he must be at home, too. Putin keeps getting elected because he remains popular in Russia, while the best the opposition can put forward are convicted felons. Those convictions could be legit or purely political, but your party is weak-assed-weak if that's the best you can put forward. It would be like 2020 rolling around and the best person Democrats could find to run against Trump is William Jefferson, given a 13 year sentence after dirty money was found in his freezer.
And how many of us remember the Florida Fuck-Up with paper ballots in the 2000 Presidential Election?
The Senator are just muddling the wayers. Dumb & Dumder Fuchtards!
Almost all idiotic decisions in government in human history were made by elites, not "the mob". The "founders" weren't afraid of idiots, they were afraid of the common man (or woman) having as much of a say in his own governance as landed gentry. Which is why the elitist pricks limited voting rights to property owning white men, and kept as many insulating layers between voters and real power as possible. That's why we have the EC, and that's why senators were originally selected by state governments, not voters.
agreed that we need a paper trail. In particular, we need individual paper ballots when the voter is done. Voter should check the ballot, put in envelope and drop into lock box. While stats analysis can show that results agree with earlier polling, what it really can not show, is if there was cheating that happened. That is why the need for the paper ballot trail.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
well, I continue to catch you lying, where as mine are not. That is just you making up BS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We have had more than several. It occurs each election. In particular, most of the ones caught are those with homes in both Colorado and say Wyoming or Utah. They will register in both. We actually catch at least several EVERY election. Now, when I say many, yeah, it is a handful. We are not talking 1000s, but 5-10 that get caught EACH election. That does not mean that it is not happening more often. In POF, I think that with the mail-ins and not having an ID, that it IS happening a lot more than we realize.
It is for this reason that I support the Photo ID, but I want it on EVERY ballot, not just the booth. In fact, I would guess that the booth has the least likely chance of cheating. How many will go up and try to vote under spouse name? OTOH, trivial to vote like grandpa who is in the hospital.
As to the GOP idiot, he had more excuses than Aurora Theater or Watts. Thankfully, his wife caught him. But, I found it interesting that the GOP backed him and fought to keep him out of prison.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And for the last decade, I have been saying that we need to support photo ID, BUT also need to make it possible for ppl to obtain these. Right now, most states make it easy for the rich to get their Drivers license/IDs. WHy? Because they will have an office located remotely that supports say 1000-3000 ppl and you walk up to the counter. OTOH, in the inner city, a driver license office might be supporting 10-20K and it will take HOURS in a queue.
My suggestion is that USPO be allowed to issue state IDs since these go back to Real ID anyways? They already handle passports, so why not?
As to dropping off ballots, I say let the USPO do that as well, BUT you have to buy a stamp to do it OR the state gov covers the costs. With said stamp, it says that USPO checked the name against the photo against the person. IOW, it was properly vetted.
What I find interesting is that it is the same GOP that wants the photo IDs that fight against allowing USPO to issues IDs, and esp oppose requiring IDs on mail-ins. Yet, these are the ones that are being cheated on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here is porky/red tide with his usual lie of China is not a communist nation.
And then so many others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Remember, this is a confederation of states.
No, it is not.
It was for a brief time, but that ended up being a failing model and was replaced by a federation of states.
You are a citizen of your state first, and then a citizen of the United States second.
No. This was a viewpoint taken by many people who joined the confederates during the war. They lost that argument, however.
By virtue of their complete defeat, they became citizens of the United States first, and citizens of their defeated states second.
The electoral college is set up so as to be more representative of the states wishes for president.
Yes. There's an interesting reason for this though, and it's not what you think.
The 3/5ths compromise, and census-based congressional representative allotment dealt with the fact that the southern states were full of slaves and disenfranchised freemen, but there was no way to give them a voice in the election of the executive. The ideal choice (according to the people present at the Constitutional Convention of 1887) for election of the executive was 'choice from the people at large' (A popular vote).
This wouldn't do for the South, as due to their suffrage laws, had a very small popular vote (only land owners could vote).
The US system of electors was the compromise to keep the Southern States in the Union.
This keeps from only 1-2 massively populous states running complete roughshod over the less populous states.
You have to be pretty goddamn bad at math to think such a thing.
You need the 9 most populous states in order to have an electoral majority, population wise.
This includes several reliably Republican states.
It is also a good thing to be on a state level basis, as that with the massive geography of the US, many states have very different needs and wants based on that alone, amongst other issues.
This makes sense from the perspective of the legislature. It never made sense from the perspective of the executive.
If we didn't have the electoral college, well, the country as a whole would be subservient to CA, NY and maybe 1 or two other states.
Yes, I suppose if CA, NY, and maybe 1 or two other states annexed another 5 or 6 states against their will, and then dissolved the legislature.
Your argument is shit, dude. I hope you don't actually think that way.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
It happens often. Check out the list of actually proven and prosecuted cases which is a fraction of the total. Then there are the cases which haven't been found and prosecuted that likely amounts to quite a few more.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The link you posted clearly shows that (a) this does not happen often and (b) many of the frauds are not perpetrated by ineligible voters. Your own reference data show you to be spouting BS.
Nullius in verba
Ah, back in the day, when the Demo's almost lost the Governor's Race, they "found" bags of ballots that weren't counted. Wonder how you audit that?
Reading comprehension is lacking on your end or you are purposely misrepresenting what I claim and what the link shows.
My claim: I said that fraud happens and some of it is illegals voting, not all of it. I also claimed that vote fraud has not yet effected any election that I know of. So you are not reading what I wrote. I said it's common, and it is.. Ineligible voters are also caught on a regular basis.
The Link: You asked for proof of that, I've provided you evidence that shows vote fraud *HAS* happened and is being prosecuted on a regular basis, and does include ineligible voters. I picked Texas, filtered the results for ineligible voting and found 12 prosecuted cases since 2009. Nation wide there where 225 cases prosecuted in the same time frame.
Now you may wish to debate the meaning of what "quite common" means or "what a fraction of the total" means, but such are not arguably false or make my statements so. You may not agree on the definition of "common" but that hardly makes my claims BS. Voter fraud has been prosecuted more than 1,000 times in the last 10 years, and it happens more often than it is prosecuted. That's unacceptably common place to me.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Voter fraud is but a drop in the bucket. I'm more concerned with election fraud, which would be akin to taking away the bucket.
Those problems were not simply the result of the ballots being made of paper. The "Butterfly Ballot" layout was not clear and such a confusing layout can be recreated with non-paper voting schemes. The arguments over "hanging chads" were mostly driven by politics. A partially punched ballot near Gore would be called into question by the Bush lawyers and vice versa.
There are states who proclaim that electors must vote for the person that won the election--it's a law. So if the majority of people in the state voted for some ass-hat, the elector must cast his or her vote for said ass-hat, even though they know he or she is an ass-hat.
That doesn't matter. The Electors can cast their faithless vote and it will still be valid. The State can throw them in jail later, or they can cry. They can't pull that vote back and change it.
You're a god damned retard and you haven't factually argued against anything I've said. The closest thing to an argument you had was pulling out an unrelated quote from Madison. Fucking wow.
No, that's not what I mean.
I mean if you wanted to get rid of the bitching and moaning about Wyoming vs. California and how much each person's vote is worth, you need to set it up so that Wyoming gets a bunch of reps, say 10, for their population, then every other State gets 10 * Population / Wyoming Population reps.
This gets rid of the rounding errors we have under the current apportionment scheme where every state gets at least 1, then gets a number based on their population, with things fuzzed a bit. (You can't just set Wyoming to 1 and then scale from there, because what happens when a state is worth 1.5, 2.5, etc. Wyomings?)
How many reps total would fill the house? We've got a few hundred now and it's already circus. I believe DC would still be limited to 3 total EC votes because they've got a special rule in place.
An unrelated quote from Madison, made during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 where the US Federal Government's system of electors for the office of President was proposed by him and adopted... got it.
And actually, if you could read, you'd see I literally factually argued almost every point you attempted to make with your blatant falsehoods.
But ya- why should anyone here be surprised that you respond to losing an argument with "You didn't prove me wrong!!!!!". More gas lighting. Pathetic, dude.
Requiring audits without providing funding for those audits will get thrown out of court as an unfunded mandate (and I checked, there is no funding provision in the bill)
So it is an empty requirement.
The popular vote compact is a bad solution to the problem. Under that system, how your state's electors will vote is now being controlled by votes that you cannot verify and have no right to have audited or recounted.
Washington DC isn't actually a person.
The 23rd amendment says
-- ... A number of electors (3)
The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint
--
The three people appointed vote. Those three voters could be appointed by the DC mayor, or by lottery, or any other method. The 23rd doesn't require that DC hold a popular election.
The other amendments you mentioned say that IF a state chooses to have an election, they can't select voters on the basis of:
Race
Unpaid taxes
Age (over 18)
They can have the state legistlature or governor choose the electoral college electors, without ever having an election, and they are fine by all of those amendments. In fact states DO have laws saying the legistlature will appoint electors in certain situations.
The exception is the US Senate. Originally, the Constitution said senators were appointed by state legistlatures. A later amendment made senators elected by the people.
Also note in the most recent presidential election, even though Trump wonthe popular vote in Texas, multiple electoral college electors from Texas chose not to vote for Trump. Even though there was a popular election, it was merely advisory and the 38 electors from Texas could vote for whichever candidate they chose.
Voter fraud is but a drop in the bucket. I'm more concerned with election fraud, which would be akin to taking away the bucket.
Then rest your weary head and fear not. Vote fraud IS happening, but Election fraud (where the vote counts are changed) is not happening in the USA and the chances of it happening are extremely low. Obama himself was right, because our election infrastructure is so spread out and varied there is little chance even the Russians could have any noticeable effect even if they actually tried. The vote count totals reported are very close to if not exactly the votes actually cast. (allowing for some unintended errors that might creep into such a complex system.)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I think making people show ID before they vote is only reasonable. You know, most other countries do this.... (I'm Canadian and in Canada you can't vote without some kind of ID and proof of residency - like a utility bill in your name.) Stop drinking the conspiracy theory koolaid.
Election fraud comes in many flavors, from gerrymandering districts, to voter suppression laws, to throwing people off the voter rolls, to not supplying enough election locations in heavily populated areas. There is also the troubling fact that if there was actual machine vote total manipulation, many states don't have a mechanism to check the integrity of the vote tally, which would provide evidence of election fraud. Was it North Carolina where the voting computer prints out a bar code, with no other information printed, for the voter to hand over and have scanned? Some may call that a paper trail, but I'd be hard pressed to agree. Don't get me started on digital-only voting, with no paper trail.
Electors elect the President. They may vote as they wish. The people have no legal weight in electing the President as far as the federal government is concerned.
Not entirely accurate.
There are states who proclaim that electors must vote for the person that won the election--it's a law. So if the majority of people in the state voted for some ass-hat, the elector must cast his or her vote for said ass-hat, even though they know he or she is an ass-hat.
ehhh... no.
The state says that the electors must vote as directed. The state can punish those who violate that direction (probably - it would have to be settled in court), but the elector can vote as they choose and that vote cannot be undone or invalidated.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Repeat after me... The US is not a Democracy, it's a Republic.
How did the UK end up with a better system? Because in Canada, which follows the parliamentary system, the Prime Minister has more power in Canada than the President does in the US. If you don't know that's true, you have no experience outside the US.
Again.... repeat after me.... The US is not a Democracy, it's a Republic. Don't confuse the two.
Agreed about the EC...the people calling to get rid of it have a stunning lack of understanding of the purpose / intent of the nation (a combination "free trade zone" and mutual-defense pact between otherwise-sovereign entities), and a short-sighted misunderstanding of what's wrong with the system, and so instead ground their argument entirely in "This game is stupid because the metric that decided the winner isn't the metric I was leading, change the rules so my metric is the winning metric!"...often while ruthlessly mocking Republicans for trying the same thing.
The problem as I see it is threefold:
- One, the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the size of the house regardless of population, and enabled the wild skewing of population-based electors thanks to an absurdly high floor.
- Two, the 'All or nothing' distribution of EVs, which is responsible for the three-tier 'Stronghold', 'Battleground', and 'Flyover' system.
- Three, the rampant corruption and cronyism that goes into the selection of electors, leading to the EC neglecting its essential function in the name of 'party over country'.
And the solutions, just as neat:
- One, either repeal the act (advances in technology mean that one person should be able to adequately communicate with 75,000 constituents) or unpeg 'population based electors' from 'seats in the House of Representatives' in order to get the 'people per population elector' threshold to a more reasonable number, rather than a floor so absurdly high a full 15% of the states don't even qualify for a second.
- Two, proportional distribution of each state's electors according to single-state popular vote. I personally like "2 to the plurality winner, the rest proportional" because it keeps the 'senator / representative' assignment divide intact, and provides an incentive to win many states rather than play high risk / high reward on just the largest ones.
- Three, eliminating living, breathing Electors in favor of making them an abstract. 250 years ago long-distance communication was a nightmare, so having living, breathing proxies made sense. Today it's little more than an old boys' network of political insiders eager to not do their jobs as electors as long as the demagogue is from their party. There remains merit to respecting the nation's intent of being a federation of sovereign entities, and as such I do oppose eliminating the system entirely.
that's poor information. The reason they're not coming anymore is they fixed their Databases and they're not wasting their time trying to get out the vote to the wrong people.
I don't "say voter suppression". You make it sound like a difference of opinion. It's not. I'm sorry, but it's like we're arguing if the sky is blue. There is overwhelming. You living in a state that is intentionally suppressing the vote. They're doing this to support a right wing, pro-corporate agenda. You might agree with that agenda and be willing to ignore the suppression. But it doesn't make the suppression any less real or the sky any less blue...
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Ah, I see.. You are inventing stuff to be worried about. OK.
We DO have courts to take your legal concerns to, they do have a history of dealing with the legal issues you raise. I suggest you take those concerns to them when and where you find them. So don't worry, deal with it.
Your fears about electronic voting machines are flat wrong are wholly unfounded. We have zero examples of actual vote fraud happening by tampering with electronic voting machines to date (that I know of). Not to mention that such a effort, to be effective, would have to physically access a large number of individual systems in many varying locations (My precinct uses about a dozen systems, and there are over a hundred of precincts in my county, that's a lot of stuff you have to touch, just for one county in one state). You might throw a local election by doing this, but national elections would be extremely difficult to pull off. Plus, may of these systems DO have hard copy backups that can be and are used to validate the electronic tally process to be accurate.
Again, you are worried about stupid stuff that is either already dealt with effectively, has never happened or wouldn't be easy with given systems.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm not sure what I was inventing. Rather than being a naysayer, perhaps you could elucidate.
Here's a breakdown of voting systems by state. https://ballotpedia.org/Voting...
South Carolina has no paper trail and votes are inputted directly into a computer. One doesn't have to mess with each individual machine either, but can go straight to tabulating machines that count not each citizen's vote, but each county's vote totals from the individual voting machines. I will say again, that one cannot say we have no evidence in situations where an election cannot be audited (no paper trail).
Of course the courts are dealing with it. But that doesn't mean it isn't election fraud and that such actions don't sway elections, unlike the voter fraud you mentioned, which as you said, has not swayed any elections. Ask Kathleen Harris if her actions in Florida didn't effect the Presidential election in 2000. Courts deal with election fraud after the fact. After the fraud has had its effect on the election, so it is not dealt with effectively, but rather posthumously. Though, it would be folly to rely on the courts alone, as a political party can stack the courts in their favor. Legislative action is another effective method.
In my opinion, that's actually one of the best features of the Parliamentary system. The PM is in fact powerful, and the Government is in a much better position to carry out its manifesto. On the other hand, if the Government loses support in the lower house, it can be removed (and the PM along with it).
In the U.S. it's way too easy for even a single senator to block legislation. Add to that, usually at least one house is controlled by the other party, and you can see why the U.S. government ends up being slow to the point of simply being unresponsive.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Uhh.Women don't become stupid after they become married, what fucking crack are you smoking? You re-register when the get a new license. Its not rocket science.
I just showed you 4 from the last week or so. Nowhere do provide any evidence or links, I showed you were lying as I always do.
You continue to lie even about me lying.
You truly are one dishonorable little boy.
That's the best you could do?
What so many others? You are just lying again.
like you always do
I don't know of any country which allows you to vote without an ID.
I have never had to show an ID in the US to vote. Certainly not now, because there isn't even anyone who I could show it to.
People who tell me the US has only two parties make me laugh, because it just proves how incredibly ignorant they are about the size and diversity of the US.
People who tell me the US has umbrella parties (or "big-tent parties") then pretend that means anything at all make me laugh.
Yea, "leaked". Bullshit. Some one made that memo to "leak" it. Just like manufactured bullshit 1960s era memos about McCain, remember that? How about Harry Reid and his claim about Romney not paying taxes and he says - well it worked, didn't it? I hear this all the time. Such as their mother doesn't have an ID. Then I found out his mother has been dead since the 1990s. In fact, almost 30 years ago. Everyone has an id. You need it to do anything any more. Banking, driving, even my 85 year old mother in law had to get one or she couldn't do squat. No social security, no medical care, banking, nothing. No kidding. So to say people don't have an ID is pure bullshit. It's nothing more than a way for the lefties to steal elections. Sometimes you even see them on NBC being real smug about how they voted over 70 times in Chicago.
Get over it, it's not racist. We need to demand that anyone voting must show an ID and must be a US Citizen that owns land. Just as the Constitution says. I don't think we need to the restriction they had, any land will do. As long as they are on a deed, not time share.
You don't compare with polling, that is insanely stupid. Compare with previous history of the polling place, and with similare places.
Several you say, that sounds like a big problem. Better get straight on it...
There are states who proclaim that electors must vote for the person that won the election--it's a law.
But it is a STATE law, not a federal law. When the electors meet the process is bound by federal law. If the electors vote in a way that violates state law, the state can punish them -- after the act. The state cannot come back after the Electoral College votes and demand that the state elector's votes be changed, because the federal government specifies that the electors get to decide how they vote.
What is even stupider are the states who now mandate that their electors vote in agreement with the unofficial "popular vote". They are, in effect, disenfranchising their entire voter base if the "popular vote" goes against how the people of the state voted. This is stupid on their part. Fortunately, nobody feels strongly enough about doing this that they are doing it all by themselves. As far as I can tell. The ones who want to do that are waiting until everyone jumps into the moron boat with them, admitting that they don't feel any need to respect the "popular vote".
But you're right--the "popular vote" is of no interest to the federal government.
That's because the"popular vote" is a fiction created by the media to create tension and sucker viewers into watching.
Like being able to vote in peace and drop it off.
Yes, your convenience is much more important that securing the vote to make sure it is correct and honest.
The "Butterfly Ballot" layout was not clear and such a confusing layout can be recreated with non-paper voting schemes
It is important to keep in mind that the objections to the butterfly ballot did not arise until after the first count was done and some reason why the Democrat lost had to be uncovered. Prior to the election BOTH parties had the chance to study and object to the ballot and neither did. I.e., that ballot was acceptable to everyone involved, until after-the-fact it wasn't.
5-10 people get caught, so you want to disenfranchise 100's or 1000's of people to stop those handfull?
Which is going to have a greater effect?
office located remotely
Are you sure you're a native speaker? That sounds like the opposite of what you probably intended.
He's making a list, and checking it twice. Gunna find out who's naughty who's nice...
Then demand paper ballots, not bitch about the popular vote.
To provide yet another onion ring between the populace and power, just as the "founders" intended. That's why voting was originally limited to property owners and why electors were under no obligation to follow how their state voted when selecting a president. Which kinda shoots the whole 'the EC is supposed to represent the states" canard right in the face, doesn't it?
Which of your 200 countries have had a voter fraud problem that would have been prevented by ID?
They mustn't be very good at it with so many billionaires .
I'm not sure what I was inventing. Rather than being a naysayer, perhaps you could elucidate.
Bobbied doesn't believe those things are real, that they are proven and documented to have existed.
He's emotionally committed to the entire ID process, but any other concerns are completely beyond his conscious acceptance.
Don't agree with chinese paid trolls windy
Putin keeps getting elected because he remains popular in Russia, while the best the opposition can put forward are convicted felons. Those convictions could be legit or purely political, but your party is weak-assed-weak if that's the best you can put forward.
Opponents to Putin in Russia are 'weak-assed weak', in purely physical terms. No reasonable candidate will run against him because they know with absolute certainty that they're likely to turn up dead. Only a convicted felon harbors the belief that he's just as good at violence as Putin's thugs.
The office of the President of Russia was created in 1991 with a constitutional amendment. It began with a four year term. Boris Yeltsin was the first, serving two terms through the end of 1999. Putin took office in 2000 and served two full 4 year terms. Being term limited to 2 consecutive terms, Putin let Dmitry Medvedev be president from 2008 to 2012. During his term, the constitution was amended to change the term of the president to 6 years. Putin took back the presidency in 2012. His second term began this year and expires in 2024, at which point Putin will be 72 years old.
At that point, the real fun begins. Will Putin allow someone else to become president as scheduled or will he change the rules again in the next 6 years? Personally I think he will leave office as scheduled, allow another puppet to be elected, then have that puppet resign in 2 years, have the Chairman call a special election, and retake the office for two more terms or until his death. The 2 year break will satisfy the constitutional requirement for non-consecutive terms, while not allowing Putin's control to really lapse much.
Vladimir Putin is essentially Russian President for life, regardless of what Russians really think of him. Given the serious decline in free oil money, it's likely that they don't like him as well as they once did, but it doesn't matter.
The US is vastly larger than the UK and so it needs a different form of organization to be efficient. To a degree that is comparing apples and oranges.
The US electoral system has historically been working well for the US. There may be another system that could work "better" by some criteria, but at this point that is pure speculation.
which is why it's called "Voter Suppression". Some states do charge a fee. Some don't. It's a question of how much they think they can get away with before the courts notice.
We could make it easy to get an Id, but that would defeat the purpose. Remember, in person voter fraud is astonishingly rare. The people pushing voter id laws know this. So do you now.
Are you doing this on purpose? If you're just a troll that's fine. Shine on you crazy diamond. But otherwise you're doing actual harm to this country's voting system by supporting what you know are suppression techniques. Stop it. I don't know what you think you're doing, but whatever it is it will bite you in the ass eventually.
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That's just doubling down on the aforementioned propaganda of claiming a foreign leader has no legitimacy at home, because his constituents must dislike him as much as other countries, because reasons. You don't need to assassinate people or engage in other juvenile 80's action movie plots when you are overwhelmingly popular with the electorate.
Or just go back to his old office of prime minister, he's done it before. You can tell Chuck Norris he can cancel his plane tickets.
Another big thing that needs to be eliminated, the blatant gerrymanders and the gerrymander machine. ... Behold the fruit of labor of evil republican hands.
That's a little disingenuous. Democrats have also gerrymandered districts. They're just not as good at it, and haven't done it as recently since Republicans worked very very hard to be certain they were in power in state legislatures when the last two censuses happened and it was redistricting time. Even when their handiwork is struck down by the courts (rare, given the preponderance of Republican judges, but it happens), they still benefit from it for at least an election cycle, since such cases take years in the courts.
I want to go much much further. I want to abolish Federal Congressional districts. Instead, all House representatives should be elected at large in a state, using one of the preference voting systems. This would result in more actual representation, since gerrymandering is impossible, and it's appropriate because at the Federal level, where I live is relatively unimportant. Having a Representative tied to a district results in quite a lot of harm, and a disproportionate amount of power for special interests. The general welfare gets swamped when the local special interest can unseat their pet Representative.
Won't happen, because the people with the job would have to put their job in jeopardy.
"Info ...almost certainly leaked by Seth Rich...",
Not just a liar, but a double damned liar, beginning with an assumption, adding another assumption, then making an unsupported claim
Meanwhile, we have NSA, CIA and FBI all proving it came from Russia.