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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.
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.
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.
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.
Government issued IDs when voting are not necessary as anybody who as studied this issue knows.
Voter fraud is not an issue. First, I need to define this term. Voter fraud is when a person votes or attempts to vote as somebody different than who they are. It is hard to imitate a different voter and not very efficient. Republicans have been trying to prove massive voter fraud for many years, at least since George W. Bush has been in office. I don't have exact statistics handy, but there has been less that two people per state per year. It is not a problem.
However there have been documented cases of legitimate people being denied the right to vote because they could not get an ID. IDs cost money, and some people could not afford the fees and/or could not afford the transportation costs to get the ID. Even if they could afford the ID, they could not afford to take off time from work to get IDs.
In some states, officials reduce the hours of offices where you could get IDs or closed offices. Most of these offices where minority areas or heavily Democratic areas. In Texas, they allowed hunting licenses to be used, but not student IDs issues by state schools because they thought that hunters were more likely to be Republicans than students
So no, it is not a double standard to opposed government issued IDs because the requirement was and is used to deny the people their right to vote.
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.
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