I don't know how you can want to improve democracy, and be in favour of universal mail-in voting, the most open to abuse form of voting there is.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/trump-mail-in-vo...
If you want to put elections beyond doubt and make everyone accept the result you should have voter ID and paper ballots. The public holiday idea is probably not a bad one.
I have doubts. First, as someone else pointed out, there already has been lots of investigation in Republican-run states, and they turned up very little. Second, Trump seems to have the ego-driven need to deny that he lost. He seems to have the tendency to hire people who tell him what he wants to hear, and to fire those that don't. That's not likely to drive an impartial investigation.
Why not apply a little bit of technology to the problem so we can verify our vote was counted, and that only legitimate votes were counted?
If your tech friend says everything sucks in tech, then why should their judgement even be taken at face value? They’re part of the problem!
"There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired."
Agreed on your second paragraph.
It is also my understanding that most voter fraud challenges in 2016 were dismissed due to lack of standing, before the facts were considered.
Some were dismissed for failure to state a legally tryable claim, or for lack of evidence. ("I think there's something going on there" is not a legally valid ground for a lawsuit. You have to have something that at least looks like evidence in order to get in the door.)
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
Also, could you please explain, in detail, how voting by mail is “the most open to abuse”?
Having to show an ID to a poll worker to get a ballot is a higher bar than signing something.
I mean, look, I get the arguments about mobility. My mother was not going to drive to a polling place. But it is also true that mail-in voting is more open to abuse and fraud by those who are inclined to do so.
I agree, but it's also true that 1) strict ID requirements inconvenience poor and other disadvantaged people the most, and 2) there have been multiple studies on the effectiveness of voter ID laws which have found them to have little impact on voter fraud.
Additionally, if my data is correct, only 11 US states have strict voter ID requirements. This means that for a majority of Americans, an apples to apples comparison would be "signing a ballot" vs. "giving a poll worker your name/address." Of those two options, I would argue that signing something is actually a higher bar than giving your name to a poll worker, because it could later be more reliably verified to be fraud, if necessary.
So, I don't accept that mail-in ballots are "the most open to abuse."
Minuscule number of potentially fraudulent ballots in states with universal mail voting undercuts Trump claims about election risks
analysis of data collected by three vote-by-mail states with help from the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) found that officials identified just 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025 percent.
Everyone should use telnet and there is no evidence that anyone is looking at your packets.
As a divided country, we keep squabbling over the metaphorical telnet when we could be making ssh more accessible. Or building the next generation with key rotation.