Reply #18: This point is Critical!! Corruption or Election Fraud (for deliberate corruption) . .

[pat_k]

. . not "voter fraud" (and most definitely not "shenanigans" or other terms that hide the gravity).

"Voter fraud" is the non-problem fascists claim to be solving when they suppress votes by requiring IDs that countless voters don't have, don't need, and can't afford or by purging registration roles of eligible voters to as they seek to identify and eliminate invalid registrations (that aren't much of a problem in the first place).

The so-called "voter fraud problem" is a myth. Really. Despite their http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20061011/1a_lede11.art.htm">best efforts they just can't find the "problem" of voters showing up and trying to cast illegal ballots. (As with all myths, they always cite the same 5 or 6 unverified or debunked anecdotes as "proof.")

Corruption of our elections, whether intentional (election fraud) or not is another matter entirely.

Election fraud is an insider's game that is thwarted by easily understood processes at every phase that are open to scrutiny by the stakeholders (and that means us, the voters, not just the parties). And every phase means every phase, from registering and ensuring equal access to cast a countable ballot to securing, counting, and verifying.

Corruption is prevented by requiring checks to uncover errors and putting backup and parallel processes in place to ensure you can recover from errors.

Words are important. It is corruption, pure simple. We must reject euphemistic words like "glitches" or "shenanigans." This is not a game. A word like "shenanigans" cannot begin to capture the damage done by the intolerable problems that corrupt our elections and make it impossible for us to believe the results.

Believable elections. That's all we want. Is it really so much to ask?