Discussion
Election security is hard, and US elections have some unique problems and constraints (we have, overwhelming, the most complex ballots in the world, for example). There are non-intuitive tradeoffs everwhere.
An excellent resource for understanding US election security, especially as it relates to technology, is this 2018 National Academies consensus study, "Securing the Vote". It was published eight years ago, but is still current.
@mattblaze There should be no announcing of results until all the ballots are under lock and key. Knowing how many votes you need to fabricate makes cheating a lot easier.
This stuff is mostly about restoring TRUST in the vote. Nobody trusts an election where votes just keep coming in for two weeks and the outcome changes.
Yes we keep hearing about the 2020 election, but remember the other side kept questioning the 2016 election. Nobody trusts the current system. That's a problem.
@mike805 I'm not aware of any US jurisdiction that announces results before the polls are closed.
@mattblaze In California we get "day of" counts and then most of the time mail-in votes keep coming in for weeks and several races usually flip.
Not saying that's cheating but it creates a loss of confidence.
When Abraham Lincoln ran in 1860, he spent the day at the telegraph office, where the staff read him the returns as they came in. By the end of the day he was pretty sure he had won, and congratulations were coming in.
We ought to be able to at least equal that performance today.
@mike805 California law requires a postmark by election day for ballots received up to (I think) five days after election day. Are you suggesting that there is some scalable way to inject fraudulently postmarked ballots into the US mail? That would be very surprising. I've certainly never heard of that.
Again, in no US jurisdiction are results announced while it is still possible to cast a vote.
@mattblaze Mark sense voting does seem to be the best approach. They can be counted at electronic speed, and verified manually if required. Stuffing the ballot box is a large-scale physical problem.
Touch screen voting with no physical ballot was a bad idea and never should have existed.
State ID should be required for in person voting. There is no reason except cheating to not require it.
Mail in should be a small exception not the norm.
Purple fingers are also an option.
"we have, overwhelming, the most complex ballots in the world, for example"
@resuna I’m not sure what your point is. That looks like an Australian ballot , with a single contest. It’s large because there are a large number of ranked candidates.
US ballots typically have fewer candidates, but many, many contests, often with multiple voting methods represented.
I’m not really interested in having an argument over basic, well understood factual information.
In Australia you would have one form like that for each contest you're voting in, instead of a single form for all the contests, so that's equivalent to one single race.
@resuna Again, US ballots are far more complex. We can have 50-100 different contests, often with multiple different voting methods used, depending on the state.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. You appear to have a lot of opinions about how to improve US elections.
@mattblaze Many thanks for this thread, I've been keeping my eye open for an authoritative source on US election security for a gullible friend (it seems she got the wrong sort of autism... 😐 ), didn't want to pester you but hadn't got round to a proper search....
Greatly appreciated, thanks again
@mattblaze "the most complex ballots in the world, for example"
I'd like to know more about this.
Do you mean having votes fir lots of things at once?
Have you seen an Australian Senate ballot paper? They elect 6 or 12 members and have the option of numbering every box "below the line" which can be over 100 boxes, using multi-member single transferable vote.
@mattblaze > Full ballots dissociated from individual voters might be posted in the interest of ensuring transparency and/or to facilitate auditing, but it may be possible to tie particular ballots to individual voters.
Couldn't this be accomplished with a hash provided to the voter that would be semi-anonymous. It seems like having access to the full ledger of all the votes tallied in a public place where you can see your record would allow trust through transparency.
@mattblaze Excellent information! As an IL election judge, I have seen over the last 8-10 years quite a few improvements in electronic voting technology that makes voting easier to manage.
That give us more time to argue with voters who claim "the sharpies bleed through the paper, and that's how Biden got elected in 2020!" or explain to people why they must remove their "electioneering" hats, tshirts, and other paraphrenalia. 🤦♂️
@jimthewhyguy Thank you for your work! It's an important service.
@mattblaze It's actually what keeps me hopeful about the future of our democracy. There's nothing like registering a new voter to counteract feelings of futility against the state of our country's politics today!
@jimthewhyguy It's so great. I've been brought near tears multiple times doing this work myself.
@mattblaze
Do you have a list of all the things Americans vote on?
Here in Alberta, Canada, we have:
1) federal elections: candidates for Member of Parliament of Canada
2) provincial elections: candidates for Member of the Legislative Assembly or Parliament of a province
3) municipal elections: city councils (not sure what the rural equivalent is), mayors (usually the weak kind that are functionally counsellors at large), & school board trustees
4) occasional referenda
@virtuous_sloth @mattblaze for me, a Californian, I regularly vote for school boards at all levels of education, judges, local and state officials (usually legal or financial responsibilities), regional boards for water or transit, sheriff, prosecutors. On top of that, it's usually 10-20 direct ballot measures like approving bonds or changing the state constitution on every ballot.
@evan @mattblaze
I wonder if the sheer number of decisions ends up hiding what functionally ends up being less actually agency, mostly in terms of a lack of diversity in the choice options.
@virtuous_sloth @evan California is an extreme case, but the size and complexity of US ballots is driven by multiple layers of government (federal, state, county, local), each with its own elected offices, our propensity to have specialized representatives (school boards, etc), requirements for direct approval in some states for things like bond issues, and the ability in some states to put voter-initiated referendums on the ballot.
Everything is there for a "good reason", but It all adds up.
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