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Comment by DisjointedHunt | Hacker News Reader

This past election cycle politicized what should have otherwise been treated as a national security threat in unauthorized access to voting systems.

Notice i use the word "systems" to include the human element as well as all the other components that go into making what we have today far from an acceptable system of voting in the most powerful individual on the planet.

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Given the audits and investigations of past elections, and that up until the summer of 2020 most democratic leadership were saying the election would be fraudulent, why aren’t we allowing republicans to audit to their heart’s content? What could it possibly hurt to make it completely open and accountable, for whatever they feel was sketchy? Surely national harmony is worth a Stacy Abrams style audit?

This is an open ended request. Specifically which elections were not open and accountable and now require an official audit?

I don't care which ones they claim. If they want to dig into an election, then let them dig. If they find something, then they've done us all a favor. If they find nothing, then they've also done us a favor.

But it is shady AF for democrat leadership to claim the election was going to be stolen in summer 2020, then today we have republicans claiming all their investigations into election irregularities are being blocked at every level, and every tiny step being fought in court.

No way Trump won, but it would be nice for Republicans to be able to know that for a fact.

There's no number of audits they'll accept. Where they're currently "auditing" there have already been multiple audits already completed. The whole thing is a joke, it's endless by design for fundraising and that's it.

To be fair to the Democrats, though they rarely deserve it, Trump did attempt to overturn the election and has actively worked to create doubt about the results. Sure they made claims, but their claims have been proven correct as time has passed.

> But it is shady AF for democrat leadership to claim the election was going to be stolen in summer 2020

I think it was Trump who claimed the election was going to be stolen in the summer of 2020, not the Democrats. Here is what I found on "Democrat" claims:

> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/20/trump-repu...

That Republicans were defrauding the election by disenfranchising voters. A claim the Democrats still make (even more so) today.

Trump, on the other hand, spent the entire summer of 2020 claiming the election would be stolen; e.g. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/881598655/fact-check-trump-sp...

And a bunch of other articles like that. Basically, Democrats argue that voting is too hard, while Republicans argue that voting is too easy. These positions were pretty consistent during the 2020 election.

It looks like the safer way to vote is avoiding technology, which I find a bit counterintuitive even though many countries rely on paper and people counting, I've even done it once (forced by law). I don't know how wrong I might be in this, but it looks to me like it systems are vulnerable by nature and hence the only secure voting system seems to be a system that avoids relying entirely on IT systems.

The technical problem is solvable, but the security and transparency (to the public) are harder to get, specially the security aspect since blockchain technology could potentially help dealing with transparency.

> It looks like the safer way to vote is avoiding technology

correct.

obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/

>This past election cycle politicized

The past election cycle? You mean 2020? IIRC even back in 2016 there were significant concerns that russians were hacking election machines.

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