Democracy is in trouble....

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Bob001

90% of votes in 2020 were cast on paper ballots that can be stored and recounted. I agree it should be 100%. That could be accomplished by conducting elections entirely by mail.

Mail-in ballots, particularly as they are currently run, are horribly insecure. Paper isn't magical in that regards. It's probably better than internet voting, but it's still bad.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Wow, that's a stupid argument. When a system benefits someone, their incentive is to not question it. Anyone who won their election benefited from the current system.

"In a fair system where the Republicans aren't allowed to cheat, they can't win! Therefore wanting a fair system where nobody cheats is an nothing more than an incentive for the Democrats that they don't want to question."

[Abooga]

Voting with paper ballots and counting them manually in front of observers is obviously very hard to tamper with. Mail voting doesn't seem quite as safe, but I ask from ignorance, how is it guaranteed? Do voters get a personal code that they can check with a published list of votes or something like that?

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Mail-in ballots, particularly as they are currently run, are horribly insecure.

No they aren't. Stop lying.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Mail-in ballots, particularly as they are currently run, are horribly insecure. Paper isn't magical in that regards. It's probably better than internet voting, but it's still bad.

Okay, on what basis do you claim they are horribly insecure? That's not the experience of the five states that conduct elections entirely by mail. Where's your evidence that any substantial number of mail ballots anywhere are fraudulent?

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by No Other

1. Arab Spring was mishandled. We backed the Syrian Rebels plus we had our *** handed to us in Libya.

Nah. This is fiction invented by the right wing media, and accepted by right wing nutbars without an appropriate level of skepticism.

Originally Posted by No Other

2. Taxes soared under Obama.

Again, more right wing fiction. In fact US tax revenue in Obama's last budget is nearly exactly where it would have been if you take the last pre-recession Bush budget and extrapolate it out based on population and economic growth. Of course that still resulted in budget deficits due to the unfunded spending programs implemented during the Bush Presidency.

Originally Posted by No Other

3. Highest rate of deportations... it is still the highest.

Deportations that were made based on Bush era rules that Obama reversed. Seems like a Bush problem that Obama fixed.

Originally Posted by No Other

4. Did not fill judicial nominations with any urgency and that allowed Trump to stack the courts.

I'm not sure how you can blame Obama for Congressional Republicans blocking every nomination that came up only purely political grounds. Again this is a case of Republicans putting politics over country, noting else.

Originally Posted by No Other

5. Recessions always occur but the recovery of the 2008 was the slowest since WWII.

The 2008 recession did not resemble any post WWII recession. Normal recessions are caused by overbuilding production capacity, and all you need to do is wait for demand to catch up. 2008 was a fiscal crisis and deflation spiral where the Fed was pushing on the sting with monetary policy. It's a rare case where fiscal policy was actual needed to address the downturn, but of course Congressional Republicans blocked any fiscal stimulus as a political play.

Originally Posted by No Other

7. The national debt went from $10T to $20T.

That's kind of inevitable when your predecessor leaves you a $1.5 trillion deficit. US Budget Deficits dropped though Obama's term only to skyrocket to new heights under Trump.

[johnny karate]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

November 28, 2016.

Thread title “Trump Claims Millions of Illegal Votes Cast” and the context is you defending Republican voter suppression tactics in response to a Trump conspiracy theory, not you making serious or good faith arguments about election security.

Quote:

I have always been consistent about this.

Yes, I will give you that. You have been consistent in your peddling of conspiracy theories about election fraud.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Abooga

Voting with paper ballots and counting them manually in front of observers is obviously very hard to tamper with. Mail voting doesn't seem quite as safe, but I ask from ignorance, how is it guaranteed? Do voters get a personal code that they can check with a published list of votes or something like that?

States do it differently. But ballots are only mailed to registered voters, the individual ballots and envelopes are tracked with bar codes, signatures on the envelopes are matched with signatures on file, and there often is an on-line mechanism to check whether individual ballots have been received. It's not like somebody can copy a zillion ballots and drop them in a box.
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020...lection-fraud/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-wo...tion-necessary

[johnny karate]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Mail-in ballots, particularly as they are currently run, are horribly insecure. Paper isn't magical in that regards. It's probably better than internet voting, but it's still bad.

Cited needed.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

#7 (massively increase national debt) is exactly what Republicans claimed he would do.

And it's not like Democrats didn't claim Trump would do stuff he never did. I haven't forgotten claims that he would start a war with Iran, for example.

Predicting that debt will increase when there is a large structural deficit is hardly rocket science. Actual responsibility for this debt lays with the Republicans who created those structural deficits with unfunded spending programs and tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts.

Anyone who cares about budget deficits will should never consider voting Republican. They can't help but create deficits but now and in the future. Borrow and spend is in their nature.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Abooga

Voting with paper ballots and counting them manually in front of observers is obviously very hard to tamper with. Mail voting doesn't seem quite as safe, but I ask from ignorance, how is it guaranteed? Do voters get a personal code that they can check with a published list of votes or something like that?

Their name is on the return, and often there's supposed to be a signature match check. That's supposed to make sure they don't vote multiple times, and that they really sent in the ballot. But it's really not secure. The voter registration itself could be invalid (though in-person polling is vulnerable here as well), and signature validation isn't universal and doesn't work even where it is implemented. There have been other problems as well.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Their name is on the return, and often there's supposed to be a signature match check. That's supposed to make sure they don't vote multiple times, and that they really sent in the ballot. But it's really not secure. The voter registration itself could be invalid (though in-person polling is vulnerable here as well), and signature validation isn't universal and doesn't work even where it is implemented. There have been other problems as well.

Okay. But that doesn't happen.

Republicans stealing election, that keeps happening all the time. But you aren't concerned with that. Just like you clamed up until your god-kind left office to show your face in the political discussions again.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Their name is on the return, and often there's supposed to be a signature match check. That's supposed to make sure they don't vote multiple times, and that they really sent in the ballot. But it's really not secure. The voter registration itself could be invalid (though in-person polling is vulnerable here as well), and signature validation isn't universal and doesn't work even where it is implemented. There have been other problems as well.

And yet in the five states where elections are conducted entirely by mail, even the losers are not claiming any substantial fraud. Your speculations about what might be possible carry less weight than the facts about what actually happens.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Bob001

Where is there any evidence that any election fraud occurred in 2020?

There has been systematic fraud by Republicans in States like North Carolina the last few elections, I'd be surprised if there didn't turn out to be cheating by Republican Governors this time as well.

[Butter!]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

It's funny that you don't see how your own name applies here.

The system is insecure. People don't have faith in it. You can keep trying to blame whomever you want to for that, but blame won't fix it.

Oh please, the system was fine until the MAGA people seized onto this particular Facebook conspiracy as a way to keep sucking Trump's dick. Of course the process seems opaque to morons who never paid attention in Government class.

Come on, man, you're better than this.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by johnny karate

Cited needed.

For example:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3666259

Why do you think mail-in ballots are secure? What security features do you think they have that make them secure?

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by lomiller

There has been systematic fraud by Republicans in States like North Carolina the last few elections, I'd be surprised if there didn't turn out to be cheating by Republican Governors this time as well.

It's pretty clear that Repubs have engaged in extensive voter suppression, cancelling registrations, closing polling stations etc. But I haven't read about any allegations of fraud in actually counting the ballots. Links?

[bruto]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

The security of a system is not judged on what has happened, but what can happen.

The system isn't secure. There are too few mechanisms in place to actually detect and prevent fraud. That is true even if no fraud has occurred to date. Our elections are much more insecure than those of most other developed countries.



Again, you can keep blaming whoever you want to blame, but blame won't fix the problem.

Blame won't fix that problem or many others, but in order to fix a problem you have to find it. Although it's true that there's a difference between what happens and what might happen, we might at least consider that when a thing consistently does not happen despite warnings that it might, the problem we first must face is not the diminishing possibility of what might happen, but the shameful lies and traitorous disaster that most certainly did.

I don't have faith in god but that does not mean I ought to be allowed to burn down churches.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Butter!

Oh please, the system was fine until the MAGA people seized onto this particular Facebook conspiracy as a way to keep sucking Trump's dick. Of course the process seems opaque to morons who never paid attention in Government class.

Come on, man, you're better than this.

Yes, everyone gets more upset when their own ox is gored. This is not news. Nor is it an actual argument that the system is fine. The system is not fine. It needs reform. And I have been saying this, consistently, for years, regardless of who won any particular election.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Why do you think mail-in ballots are secure?

That fact that Republicans only whine about them when losing.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

For example:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3666259

Why do you think mail-in ballots are secure? What security features do you think they have that make them secure?

If you don't know it's up to you to investigate.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by bruto

Blame won't fix that problem or many others, but in order to fix a problem you have to find it. Although it's true that there's a difference between what happens and what might happen, we might at least consider that when a thing consistently does not happen despite warnings that it might,

How would you know it didn't happen? Because few people were caught? When there are few mechanisms available to catch people who cheat, that isn't actually strong evidence that there was little cheating.

Quote:

I don't have faith in god but that does not mean I ought to be allowed to burn down churches.

Who's arguing for burning down churches? Making our elections more secure, in ways that many other developed nations already do, is hardly the equivalent of burning down a church.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Again, you can keep blaming whoever you want to blame, but blame won't fix the problem.

Knowing the who blame for the problem is an essential step in fixing it. In particular the most serious problems are consistently in elections run by Republican Governors. To fix the problem, step number one is not to vote Republican at the State level. Fix number two would be to jail politicians who's campaigns seek the assistance of foreign powers in US elections.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

Income inequality is growing at a staggering rate and more and more formerly secure people are sliding into poverty. The social safety net is being gutted and public infrastructure is allowed to rot. Meanwhile the wealthiest and most privileged among us are only becoming more powerful. The the wealthy few increasingly wield power over the powerless masses, it is becoming increasingly clear that these political systems are just not working.

I can tolerate income inequality if economic mobility doesn't suffer. Mobility has suffered in the US, particularly generation to generation mobility. Poor generation to generation economic mobility puts a country on course for a new permanent aristocracy and eventually a new feudal system.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

How would you know it didn't happen? Because few people were caught? When there are few mechanisms available to catch people who cheat, that isn't actually strong evidence that there was little cheating.



Who's arguing for burning down churches? Making our elections more secure, in ways that many other developed nations already do, is hardly the equivalent of burning down a church.

You keep saying the same things, but when you say there are few mechanisms to catch people who cheat, what mechanisms do you propose that do not exist, and in what way are the usual mechanisms falling short? If there's a practical thing that other nations are doing that we should be doing without compromising our democracy, let's hear some specifics.

Of course you're not advocating burning down churches, but you're apparently excusing the violent anger of those whose unsubstantiated doubts about election security led them to unprecedented attacks against the government and the election that occurred, based on a vague and unsubstantiated presumption that an election can be stolen through fraud.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by johnny karate

Thread title “Trump Claims Millions of Illegal Votes Cast” and the context is you defending Republican voter suppression tactics in response to a Trump conspiracy theory, not you making serious or good faith arguments about election security.

I provided exactly what you asked for, and now you're claiming it doesn't count because reasons.

You never asked in good faith. You only asked because you didn't think I would bother. You have proven your fundamental dishonesty, and you're trying to lecture me about good faith arguments? Yeah, no. We're done here.

[mgidm86]

Originally Posted by Mader Levap

Since you just changed, any advice about how to reach them?

It is easy to dismiss them as stupid or loony. I should know, I do that often, though it is more out of laziness than sincere thought they are literally mentally deficient. In all seriousness I am sure it is only very small minority of them that are truly basket cases.

But for the rest... there are questions, why they believe what they believe and how to convince them they are mistaken.

This is only chance to end it all more or less peacefully.

I guess first is understanding why they believe what they do. By the way I pretty much scrolled through the last two pages of voter fraud arguing here. If Trump and all his faithfuls had any evidence we would have already seen it. I've had enough of that.

I don't know how to reach them. With my Mom and my Stepdad they know I try and think things through. I also kind of have an audience with them already. They do listen to me.

However, as I said they still aren't sure about Biden. At least that's what they say. I told them a lot of people don't think Biden is the best choice in the world. He just isn't all the horrible things Trump is, and I'd rather not repeat a list of these things because I can only type so much.

For my parents - well they are Christians, my Mom even worked at the church until Covid. Stepdad is originally from Kansas. But they're not uptight at all. He's a simple guy, educated but not real bright. A good man.

A lot of this with them is just about voting for conservatives. My Stepdad said several years ago "I'd never do business with Trump, he doesn't pay up", yet he voted for him twice.

Fear of the other side.

I want to think that anyone still unsure is a stupid evil idiot. But I look at my parents and I'm pretty sure they aren't evil. And they may not be ISF forum members, but they aren't morons.

It seems to be a deep embedded loyalty to the ideas of what they believe the Republican party is, or should be. Family values, standing up to evil Dems who kill babies (my Mom is not pro-Life), Gawd.

I really think a lot of it is FOX and other conservative media hammering it into their brains every day. People see something on TV and they believe it. Why would Hannity lie? He sounds so reasonable!

And he does, at least to someone who gets all their news (facts) from that source. They don't see the same news we do. They see distortions of events, and they are lied to by omission (and outright), and those are the facts that guys like Hannity can play around with.

They lie straight to their faces.

It's a big fluffy comfortable cloud of bullcrap that has been built just for them. Why leave that cloud when everything on it makes sense? When you control the facts you can say whatever you want and people must believe you.

These guys are good at what they do. I used to listen to talk radio a lot, and the guys I disagreed with could still make convincing arguments, and if you listened long enough, who knows, maybe you'd start believing it.

It's one thing to hear different sides of a subject and draw conclusions based on that. But when you are constantly only hearing one side you can't make an informed decision.

And when the other side is lied about and demonized by your side you have no reason to listen to them or believe anything they say.

In short, these people are systematically lied to. They really do think Biden has mispronounced more words than Trump. They really believe that Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Trump. They really believe that riots and violence will follow a Biden win.

My Dad is a very smart man, and even he answered, "Yes" when I asked him if he thought Trump was intelligent. That freaked the hell out of me. Even my Dad?

So maybe the one-word answer is "brainwashing"?

How to reach them? Oh ya that was the question!

I don't know. Trump supporters do know Trump says stupid things, but they push away that little voice inside their heads that says "this is bad". I did the same thing, to a point.

Finally that voice became loud enough. But why did I hear it and they don't? It is because I practice skepticism? And is that the only difference? I think maybe it is.

Politics is so polarized right now - how can someone swing all the way across the chasm between left and right? That's a long way across, and I think that's part of it too. It IS too far to cross!

"I can't be a liberal! But this Trump guy is pretty bad...who do I turn to?"

I still don't consider myself liberal. I'm not conservative either. I hate Trump and the Repubs who enabled him, which is most of them in my view. My views have changed on many things but not on others.

I tell them, "It's okay to be conservative and hate Trump. In fact a good conservative would!"

But again, they have nowhere else to turn, at least in their minds.

Fear. Plus what would their friends think? Again, that is fear.

How to help them with that fear? Hard to say. If the evils of Trump aren't enough for them then what is?

FOX could only control the nnarrative for so long with all Trumps "Steal the vote" crap, yet these people STILL believe in him. They STILL think the Dems could be worse. Maybe that's something the Dems need to work out.

It's an important question (how to reach these people).

I'd say now is the best time to try, as they literally have nobody to believe in.....until the next a-hole comes along. That person WILL reach them.

What to do? Outlaw FOX? How can you peel people away from that? Or their astrologer for that matter! Sigh.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by bruto

You keep saying the same things, but when you say there are few mechanisms to catch people who cheat, what mechanisms do you propose that do not exist, and in what way are the usual mechanisms falling short?

For an example of mechanisms falling short, voter rolls are not kept up. When people move away or die, they are frequently not taken off the list. Voter registration requirements in the first place are wholly inadequate, and ineligible voters can and do often register to vote.

Quote:

If there's a practical thing that other nations are doing that we should be doing without compromising our democracy, let's hear some specifics.

Voter ID is a pretty damn common requirement. Every serious objection to them is actually pretty easy to remedy, if one is interested in doing so.

Quote:

Of course you're not advocating burning down churches, but you're apparently excusing the violent anger of those whose unsubstantiated doubts about election security led them to unprecedented attacks against the government and the election that occurred, based on a vague and unsubstantiated presumption that an election can be stolen through fraud.

No, I'm not. I've never once excused violence. That is entirely a figment of your own imagination, nothing in what I've actually written contains anything of the sort.

But if you think that violence is the full extent of the problem with a lack of faith in elections, then I don't think you're grasping the full picture. That was a pretty small minority. There is a far larger group of people who would not be willing to engage in violence, but have lost faith in the system. That's not a good situation. And telling them they're wrong isn't a fix.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Abooga

I remember years ago in this forum there were some threads about e-voting and it was mostly agreed that it wasn't secure enough. The more knowledge the posters had about computers, the less they trusted these systems. The fact that it is not allowed in the great majority of countries should mean that its lack of sufficient security is incontrovertible. I know it may not be the best moment to talk about it because it gets mixed with Trump's CT about having won by a landslide (yeah, right...)but it is nevertheless a real issue.

Yup,
And voter suppression and gerrymandering.

[mgidm86]

What I'm hearing about election fraud:

Bigfoot will be caught because he's obviously there, we just haven't figured out the right kind of trap to use yet.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

For an example of mechanisms falling short, voter rolls are not kept up. When people move away or die, they are frequently not taken off the list. Voter registration requirements in the first place are wholly inadequate, and ineligible voters can and do often register to vote.

Support your claim. Where is there any evidence that any substantial numbers of people are voting in districts where they don't live, or that others are voting in the names of the deceased, or that people are registering to vote who aren't eligible to do so?

Quote:

Voter ID is a pretty damn common requirement. Every serious objection to them is actually pretty easy to remedy, if one is interested in doing so.

Voter ID might be administered fairly, IF a larger variety of IDs were accepted and IF they were cheap and easy to obtain. But when examined closely, you will find that states that imposed new requirements that voters present current state-issued IDs to vote also took steps like closing DMV offices to make them harder to get.

The fact is that voting is a core right of citizenship. The state should have to justify denying it; the citizen shouldn't have to justify exercising it.

I repeat, five states conduct elections entirely by mail. Where is there any evidence of fraud, even from losing candidates?

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by mgidm86

What I'm hearing about election fraud:

Bigfoot will be caught because he's obviously there, we just haven't figured out the right kind of trap to use yet.

We just have to wait for him to show up to vote without ID.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Bob001

Support your claim. Where is there any evidence that any substantial numbers of people are voting in districts where they don't live, or that others are voting in the names of the deceased, or that people are registering to vote who aren't eligible to do so?

You are trying to move the goalpost for me. I'm not talking about how many people have done this. I'm saying there are inadequate protections against it. But we know all that stuff happens on some level, because sometimes people get caught doing it. Maybe not that many people do it right now. But that isn't good enough.

Quote:

Voter ID might be administered fairly, IF a larger variety of IDs were accepted and IF they were cheap and easy to obtain.

Those are tractable problems. In fact, states with voter ID requirements have to provide those ID's for free. If Democrats got on board with voter ID requirements, they would be able to do a lot to set the agenda of how those requirements are rolled out.

Quote:

I repeat, five states conduct elections entirely by mail. Where is there any evidence of fraud, even by losing candidates?

If you haven't heard about duplicate ballots, ballots sent to the wrong address, failed signature checks (see my link above for an example of that), etc., then you haven't been paying attention. Again, it doesn't suffice to say that it made no difference this time (but even there, how would you know when the system isn't secure?). The system must be SEEN to be secure. And there's just a crap ton of problems with it right now.

[johnny karate]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

For example:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3666259

A Trump administration official claiming mail-in ballots aren’t secure in the lead-up to the 2020 election when Republicans were openly campaigning against mail-in ballots. Yes, that’s very compelling.

Quote:

Why do you think mail-in ballots are secure? What security features do you think they have that make them secure?

Because we just had a national election using a significant amount of mail-in ballots that was very secure.

[johnny karate]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

I provided exactly what you asked for, and now you're claiming it doesn't count because reasons.

These are the terms of my request: “Provide a link to a post from shortly after Trump won in which you expressed concern for election integrity as you’re doing now, and I’ll retract my statement.

I’ve highlighted the relevant part. In the example you provided, you weren’t questioning the results of the election, as you’re doing now. You were pushing bogus conservative talking points based on conspiracy theories, also as you’re doing now.

Quote:

You never asked in good faith. You only asked because you didn't think I would bother. You have proven your fundamental dishonesty, and you're trying to lecture me about good faith arguments? Yeah, no. We're done here.

I’m devastated.

But it should be noted that you are on record pushing election fraud conspiracy theories, and continue to do so in manner that’s a lot more transparent than you probably realize. I’m not particularly concerned about purveyors of conspiracy theories questioning my honesty.

[johnny karate]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

You are trying to move the goalpost for me. I'm not talking about how many people have done this. I'm saying there are inadequate protections against it. But we know all that stuff happens on some level, because sometimes people get caught doing it. Maybe not that many people do it right now. But that isn't good enough.

Those are tractable problems. In fact, states with voter ID requirements have to provide those ID's for free. If Democrats got on board with voter ID requirements, they would be able to do a lot to set the agenda of how those requirements are rolled out.

If you haven't heard about duplicate ballots, ballots sent to the wrong address, failed signature checks (see my link above for an example of that), etc., then you haven't been paying attention. Again, it doesn't suffice to say that it made no difference this time (but even there, how would you know when the system isn't secure?). The system must be SEEN to be secure. And there's just a crap ton of problems with it right now.

Cite needed.

[turingtest]

Originally Posted by johnny karate

A Trump administration official claiming mail-in ballots aren’t secure in the lead-up to the 2020 election when Republicans were openly campaigning against mail-in ballots. Yes, that’s very compelling.



Because we just had a national election using a significant amount of mail-in ballots that was very secure.

Well, you know- People here seem to think that being worried about something is evidence in and of itself that they should have been worried. It's quite strange. (ISF)

[The Great Zaganza]

Republicans must be unbelievably incompetent not to find the obvious fraud going on...
I wouldn't vote for anyone like that...

[Abooga]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Yup,
And voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Yes indeed. I find gerrymanderintg particularly obscene, how can that be a thing? Such a blatant cheat... as for voter suppresion, I don´t know much about the issue. Of course voting should be facilitated, but I find it hard to wrap my mind around how requiring ID for voting can be an issue when here in Europe it´s just a given.

But perhaps we need a new thread if we are going to keep arguing about the security of the voting system, this is getting a bit derailed. (it´s just that in my case I´ve thought for a long time that e-voting means the end of democracy, so when I read the thread title, that´s what came into my mind).

[Dave Rogers]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

But only one of those two things is actually the responsibility of government to address. Care to guess which one?

But only one of those two things, after extensive investigation and legal scrutiny, has been shown to actually exist rather than having been fabricated in a political disinformation strategy. Care to guess which one?

Dave