Comment by seo-speedwagon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seo-speedwagon | Hacker News Reader

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Oh HELL yeah dude, now you’re talking my language. If we’re talking about how much faith we should have in our electoral process, “extremely skeptical at best” is a charitable position. But penny-ante voter fraud is a distraction; incidents are very low and it’s almost always some right wing nut casting a ballot as their dead mom or whatever.

The real disenfranchisement happens before a vote is even cast. Parties gerrymandering their districts to hell and back, big purges of “inactive” voters from rolls, candidates colluding to box out opposition from outsiders, massive dark money PACs essentially bribing politicians in broad daylight or serving as effectively personal slush funds, the first-past-the-post system ensuring effective duopoly of political parties, the entire structure being profoundly anti-democratic (why is there an electoral college and not just popular vote? why should someone from Wyoming’s vote count for 10+x my vote thanks to how senators are apportioned? Etc).

This shit is just red meat for both sides. BUT, that said, it is overall a good thing to not let local municipalities set up their own bullshit rules on top of all this.

Sure, we can build a bridge here. I'm not convinced voter fraud is such a "distraction" or insignificant because 1) there is a ton of concern about this with multiple court cases etc., and 2) precisely because there isn't as much transparency in the process of verifying election results.

That said, I'm all for fixing most, if not all, of the things you mentioned. I'm just adding one more to that list. Additionally, considering the context of this thread, it's not so much about advocating for voter ID, as much as questioning why it was banned completely from the state.

> I'm not convinced voter fraud is such a "distraction" or insignificant because 1) there is a ton of concern about this with multiple court cases etc.

I'm not in the US, I don't care for US politics, however ..

Wasn't it the case that one side (Trump's Republicans) bought more than a hundred voter fraud allegations before the courts?

Wasn't it the case that not a single one of these cases found in favour of the plaintiffs? That many, if not most, were rejected for lack of any evidence of any real substance?

Was it not the case that a number of high profile not-Trump Repuublicans were on record stating this was large a giant waste of time and total BS?

Is there any actual solid evidence of actual significant voter fraud that actually took place (aside from a handful of Republicans making single additinal votes in names of their relatives to "prove" it possible) that was accepted by a Court? (ie. none of that 2000 Mules batshit conspiracy fiction)

Your questions are proving one of my points. There is a lot of concern over voter fraud, regardless of whether they were dismissed or not, there is diminishing trust in election results.

Dismissing that concern is equivalent to dismissing the concerns of many voters, and that further creates political turmoil around elections.

Why hate on the other side for asking for transparency, when instead both sides could work together to make sure there is absolutely zero doubt on election day? "wasting resources" on this is proof the system is inefficient, which is also a problem. Verifying election results should be instant and transparent, such that literally anyone can look up any record at any time.

The concern is manufactured by right wing media. No steps can be taken that will satisfy the right, barring mass disenfranchisement (e.g. throwing out mail-in ballots or forcing a hand-count to gum the works).

It's extremely hard to certify chain of custody and validate mail-in ballots. It would require forensic analysis of the ballot, looking at the signature for example, and that is not feasible or realistic to do, even after elections. In other words, mail-in ballots are already making elections a lot less trustworthy, and I'm sure if it benefited Republicans, it would be Democrats who would be opening those court cases and fighting it as much as possible.

Saying this concern is manufactured by the media is itself a kind of conspiracy theory, because I remember clearly that mail-in ballots were a huge concern even before 2020 elections. Granted, there were a lot of cases thrown out, and it's hard to find evidence, but that doesn't invalidate the concerns. My point is that we need elections that do not allow for these kinds of doubts in the first place.

As I understand it: They asked for transparency, they alleged voter fraud, they were heard, and no evidence of any fraud was found.

Is that correct or not?

> There is a lot of concern over voter fraud

It appeared from outside to be "concern" that only came from poor losers who were unable to provide any evidence for their concern. Was that true or not? Was there any evidence of the fraud claimed by Trump, Giuliani, Sidney Powell that passed muster?

Were they engaged in anything more than maliciuous "concern trolling" to cast shade over results? Did they not get their many days in Court?

> Verifying election results should be instant and transparent

Transparent, yes - instant no; rechecking physical ballots takes time and there's as yet no robust digital voting methods that can trusted.

> As I understand it: They asked for transparency, they alleged voter fraud, they were heard, and no evidence of any fraud was found.

My understanding is that it's more complicated and in a lot of cases the evidence wasn't even allowed to be presented. The cases were thrown out without being heard, and the media called this line of questioning anti-democratic from the start.

> Were they engaged in anything more than maliciuous "concern trolling" to cast shade over results? Did they not get their many days in Court?

I believe this was never taken seriously to begin with, and was also flagged as undemocratic and fascistic to even question the results. That doesn't help instill confidence from the opposition. Regardless, talking about this is extremely complicated with tons of details to go over on why there might or might not have been any kind of fraud. Honestly it's beyond my understanding and time to research, which is part of my point. Elections should have a process that is simple enough to verify with relatively less effort such that it raises the confidence of ALL the voters.

> Dismissing that concern is equivalent to dismissing the concerns of many voters, and that further creates political turmoil around elections.

Yeah, but that all ignores the fact that those "concerns of many voters" are whipped up by one side of US politics who is, for all anyone can tell, doing that precisely in order to create political turmoil around elections.

Puts it in a bit of a different light, doesn't it...? So why did you ignore that bit?

>"Oh dude you're talking my language"

>Immediately handwaves the point away and changes topics

You are the anti-discussion.

proc0’s concern was “trusting the results” an election and how this law would impact that. I addressed it in multiple ways:

1. I pointed out that the original concern r.e. provisional ballots is unrelated to this law.

2. I also pointed out that the law codifies existing practice and prevents local municipalities from setting arbitrary rules. This does not loosen any existing practices.

3. And finally I commented on how much larger structural issues than individuals committing voter fraud contribute more towards legitimate mistrust of electoral processes.

Feel free to actually comment on any of that if you get bored of scolding and snipping at me.

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