Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

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I look for the perspective here and Sweden, and if its an established fact that the mail-in ballot system used by California can not be abused, why does Sweden then have a significant more restrictive and expensive rules around mail-in ballots?

To be specific, here you can only use mail-in ballots as an exception if you live outside the border of Sweden, and you can only make a request to use the mail-in ballot if you visit an embassy first or use the digital identity system through one of the Swedish banks, which then operate similar to the embassy in its role in identification processing.

Naturally using less security does not mean fraud has happened in the past, but it should be relevant to the question if fraud may happen in the future. If we have factually evidence it won't happen then Sweden should change it rules to make it easier for people to vote and reduce costs to embassies. If we are uncertain, well, then the question is a fair game to ask what is good enough security and what isn't.

As I commented in another thread, this is an argument for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. (The person I was commenting to there utterly missed my point.)

We don't know that the mail-in ballot system here in California is absolutely, with 100% certainty, immune to abuse. We do have reasonably good circumstantial evidence at this point that it does not appear to increase the chance for voter fraud, and furthermore, we have reasonably good evidence, based on multiple studies conducted over many years that anyone can easily find if they care to, that there are very, very few fraudulent ballots cast in American elections. There is, however, also reasonably good evidence that American elections have a history of efforts to prevent eligible voters from casting votes at all, and that this is far and away the kind of "voter fraud" that we need to be concerned about.

As a general axiom, therefore, in American elections, campaigns that have as their goal making it more difficult for eligible voters to vote in the name of "reducing fraud" should be viewed with, well, a high degree of suspicion.

I have never heard anyone describe the Swedish system as perfect. Voting participation is close to 90% so there is very good evidence that we do not need mail-in ballot for people living in Sweden in order to make it easy for eligible voters to cast their votes.

If we are going by evidence then finding the cause of the lower voting participation in the US should be the goal, for which there exist plenty of research studies conducted over many decades. A lot of people have wondered why there is such a large difference between EU and US. The general conclusions is not the lack of more easy to use internet based solutions, but rather to concepts like minimum wages, trust in government, belief in the efficacy of voting, combining the system of taxation to voter registration, access to voting centers, and voter fatigue when people have to vote in multiple elections in close proximity.

The resistance and general suspicion to internet based solutions with weak security should not be taken as a campaign to make it more difficult for eligible voters to vote. A government website where an anonymous user can put in a a registered person postal address in order to trigger part of the voting process should be viewed with legit suspicion.

Yes, which is why Mr Trump should address those issues:

- minimum wages - trust in government - belief in the efficacy of voting - combining the system of taxation to voter registration - access to voting centers - and voter fatigue when people have to vote in multiple elections in close proximity

(Let me add disenfranchisement after a prison sentence etc, too.)

And he should not make a stink about mail votes and any number of random accussations. Look at the big picture. He has us debating the finer nuances about one tiny individual bomb in his ground covering barrage of crap. Mission accomplished. How's the Corona effort going, by the way?

> How's the Corona effort going, by the way?

Pretty good if you don't live in Stockholm. The worst hit areas is the retirement homes around the Stockholm region, which account for most deaths. The other areas of Sweden are operating mostly like normal except for industries that been effected by closed borders. Economically we are currently a bit ahead compared to our neighbors because of difference in tactics in handling the pandemic, but it is expected to go down as the Swedish economy is comparable more depended on exports. Most news focus on the economic depression as a result of the pandemic rather than on the health sector. Latest news is that a few airports are closing down, and that the partially state owned airline is having economical problems.

The election infrastructure is vulnerable in multiple ways.

The fact that there's a new conservative talking point about the dangers of voting by mail (and no other aspects of voting security) shows that this message is bullshit.

The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.

> The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.

Well, that's the tactical reason.

Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.

This feels a weird position to be in as a liberal, but:

You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time. Yes, the current Republican party does intend to limit franchise by minorities, and this has literally been stated ala Hofeller.

That is not a conservative position and many things the Republican party does are not actually conservative.

Just as Democrats at their worse can be about finding equality by restricting rights and treating people like zoo animals, the Republicans at their worse are about winning the power grab ethics be damned. And at those extremes, neither party represents the values of liberalism or conservativism.

> You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time

No, I'm ascribing to conservativism what has defined it since the classic liberal/conservative divide emerged in the Enlightenment (well, except that at the very beginning the conservative position was merely to retain the existing narrow distribution of access to the levers of power, resting on appeals to religious and other traditional bases; it's only after the liberal side had some success in broadening access that the conservative position became actively reversing that progress, but it has remained so since.)

This book mostly agrees with you, but would claim even at the beginning it was a counter-reaction:

The Reactionary Mind - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Look, I grew up as a prototypical SF Bay Area liberal. But I'm not a kid anymore and I can recognize the value of many elements of true conservatism.

I've had little love for every Republican administration, but this is the first time I'm actually afraid of them. What is happening now is not conservatism, it's fascism with a dash of Christian Dominionism.

> Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.

Are you in marketing? Because you sound like it, and I'm not buying what your selling.

Let's try Wikipedia for grins:

"Traditionalist conservatism, also referred to as classical conservatism, traditional conservatism or traditionalism, is a political and social philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of a transcendent moral order, manifested through certain natural laws to which society ought to conform in a prudent manner."

Now that's a bit better. Using that definition tell me how that applies to Trump's GOP.

Disclaimer: I have no love for the DNC either, but at least with them it's a more genteel corruption and their ostensible goals are not entirely unpalatable.

p.s. @dang, I'm in dangerous territory here being political on HN, but it was meant to be germane to the OP.

So your argument is, if Sweden isn't doing it, it must be a bad idea? :)

Pretty much.

So...we should do all the other things Sweden is doing for their citizens ASAP

Trap succeeded. I don't expect you will hear back from him/her though.

Such as destroying minarets? The Swedish haven’t exactly shown a good record of making positive decisions.

> we should do all the other things Sweden is doing for their citizens ASAP

I hope not. Their treatment and forced castration of autistic people carried on for most of the last century was horrid.

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