We seem to have forgotten the fact of BLACK BOX voting.

[Goodheart]

Voting here in Louisiana is pretty fucking comical, actually.

You go into a booth, punch buttons on a Votetronic touch screen, and then we're supposed to accept ON FAITH that our vote is going to be tabulated correctly to our chosen candidate. No receipt, no way to check online later.

"The vote is correct. We can't manipulate the votes because the totals have to match the number of signatures before entering."

To which I say THAT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT.

Who wrote the Votetronic software? Republican or Democrat? Why am I not allowed to inspect your program code, MR. REPLUBLICAN VOTETRONIC MANUFACTURER.

[lagomorph777]

1. Banning those machines needs to be a very high priority.

[Wounded Bear]

4. We need a massive update/rewrite of Voting law, including that...

[lagomorph777]

12. +1 So much ratfuckery at every level needs to be stopped.

No reform will succeed, though, until we unpack SCROTUS. Need to ad 4 justices before doing anything else. SCROTUS will stop everything President Biden and Congress do, until they are stopped. No COVID relief, no election reform, no justice for Trump and his cronies, nor for George Floyd. We will accomplish NOTHING without unpacking SCROTUS first.

[Claustrum]

2. While I understand your point, I am against releasing vote machine coding to the public.

I don't want the public or any foreign countries to be able to get the code. They could potentially find some bugs and exploit it. So I think it's within our national security to keep it private.

Though, I believe they should let each campaign to send a team of engineers to check the code to make sure they are on the up and up.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Valid point, but it needs oversight by gov't engineers...

leaving it company proprietary is just too dicey for voting.

Better yet, all electronic should be banned by law. Without a paper ballot, no valid audit is possible.

[Claustrum]

8. I would have believe government engineers before Trump era.

But I no longer believe them, at least under Trump.

[Goodheart]

6. I believe that voting machine software in Australia is publicly inspectable.

Aside from that, if the major function of the voting machine was to accept input from the voter then print out an actual ballot to be collected then counted, as the official vote, any hack that would have caused the machine totals to deviate from the paper totals would be quickly discovered and remedied.

[Claustrum]

16. I am not just worrying about changing actual votes.

What if they find a way to shut down the machine and target a few states? That could be disastrous too. It might work in Australia because it's a government control system. We have a state/district control voting system and everyone has their own rules. It could be disastrous.

[lagomorph777]

13. No need. Just ban the damned things. They were created for only one purpose. To steal elections.

[PJMcK]

27. Get rid of the electronic machines!

Paper ballots are perfectly sound and they create a... wait for it... a paper trail that can be verified in the event of a contested election.

There's no need for receipts or online verifications.

There are some things that do not need to be converted into electrons.

[hunter]

29. There is no need for electronic voting machines...

...and no way to fix them.

Any competent software engineer will tell you so.

https://xkcd.com/2030/

I don't quite know how to put this, but our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us you will die...

There is no compelling reason not to use hand marked paper ballots.

[brooklynite]

5. Jon Bel Edwards (D) was elected Governor on the same voting machines...

They're not being hacked.

[Goodheart]

7. Until now, you mean.

[Goodheart]

9. And, by the way, if the machine code, itself, is programmed to switch every 10th vote from

one candidate to another then nothing needs to be hacked. The harm has already been done.

[duhneece]

10. The whole nation needs voter-verified paper ballots

These are auditable, able to ascertain the voters’ intent. I helped fight for this in New Mexico after Kerry ‘lost’

[greenjar_01]

11. Oh for God's sake

[Goodheart]

14. What's your problem?

[lagomorph777]

15. ? You are opposed to election security?

Very odd position for a Democrat.

[Turin_C3PO]

17. There's been no proof

that votes have been hacked and switched. If they were, the blue wave of 2018 wouldn’t have happened. Obama wouldn’t have won two terms. Plus, no prominent Democratic lawmakers have ever claimed fraud. If they thought it was a problem, you can bet they’d be on the news yelling about it.

I‘m not saying that hacking is not theoretically possible but it hasn’t happened so far.

[Goodheart]

18. Your post is a classic non sequitur.

And, by the way, you're making deceit in the future all the easier.

[Turin_C3PO]

19. "I"

am not doing anything. I have no power. Of course the people who run the machines should always strive to protect against hacking. But there’s no point in getting worked up about something that hasn’t happened yet.

[Goodheart]

20. You have no way of knowing whether it's happened or not.

And by merely accepting on faith that everything's always been OK so it means everything will be OK going forward means you've made it easier to be deceived.

A classic con game: earn the trust of your victim then when the stakes are really big pull the scam.

Want to know how easy it would be to manipulate a vote within the machine I described? Here you go:

- Accept input from Voter number N.
- If N is evenly divisible by 5 switch vote from column A to Column B.


It's as easy as that. And you wouldn't know it happened to you because the software is not made public.

[Turin_C3PO]

21. I said I'm for

election security. But until there’s evidence that vote switching has occurred, I’m not going to lose sleep over a theoretical situation.

[Goodheart]

22. It's not accurate to describe vote switching as "theoretically possible".

It's ACTUALLY possible.

And given the dishonesty of many people, and the ease with which it could be done, it borders on the probable.

[Turin_C3PO]

24. I think

the main problem we face is voter suppression. That’s what’s costing us votes in many states.

[Goodheart]

26. I certainly agree with that. But if somebody's devious enough to suppress votes

it's only a small step for him to manipulate them.

[The Magistrate]

28. That Is Awfully Cute, Sir

It is amusing when people treat the names of logical fallacies as if they were words of power which, if chanted, dispel opposition.

You were not replied to with a non sequiter. You were replied to with a citation of evidence against your proposition.

Replies like 'but destruction of paper ballots is more common', or 'but honest people do the work' might pass for a non sequiter, though the first only barely.

However, your initial comment is certainly 'begging the question'. You start by stating as axiomatic fact what you need to prove, and then proceed to use that statement to interpret evidence you claim proves what you've already stated as fact. That is not how it works. You have to draw the conclusion from the evidence, and accept going in that the evidence might not support the view you began with.

[Goodheart]

30. It's "non sequitur", and, yes, he/she committed one.

It does not follow that there were no voting improprieties because Obama won.

He, of course, is entitled to his/her OPINION.

And, no, I didn't "beg the question." I have not once asserted that votes have been hacked or manipulated, only that the machines easily allow for it.

Go back to school because your entire post is fallacious.

[The Magistrate]

31. Oooh --- 'fallacious'

Try a 'ph' spelling for added heft, if you want any effect at all.

[carpetbagger]

23. I was pleased on my return to Texas

When I left after 2006 we had the traceless computer. Now we have a computer that generates a ticket that is the countable item.

[Goodheart]

25. That should be the practice EVERYWHERE.