Just as has happened with Team Hillary’s reaction to the Trump win, in fact.
They were after the e-poll books containing voter registrations and voter lists which they then cross referenced with the data in Project Alamo. Being able to specifically target a former voter’s Facebook feed with a flood of negative ads in the run-up to the election could have been enough to tip the balance.
I noticed that too. It rather amazed me.
'Cause that worked really well in Florida during the 2000 Bush/Gore election, amirite? Hanging chads, fat chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, people with magnifying glasses trying to determine the intent of a voter they know nothing about - a real solid system. The thing is, paper is like that everywhere, it just doesn’t show up until the election is really close.
There is no tamper-proof election system, period.
It would have if SCOTUS hadn’t intervened.
The “hanging chads”, magnifying glass, etc., were a few incidents exaggerated by the media.
So then we should just accept any crappy system since all possible systems are equally bad?
You’re posing a false dilemma. We’re not forced to choose between hanging chads and unauditable black boxes. There are other solutions, and it’s simply not true that all of them are equally bad.
Why not find a system that’s better than either of those? Other countries use paper and seem to do just fine. Are we somehow less competent than them?
Amazingly low or amazingly high?
The report was about voter registration systems which doesn’t have much to do with whether you are voting on paper ballots or not. Almost all precincts do use paper ballots now or the voting machines generate voter verifiable ballot receipts.
In my precinct we push a bunch of buttons and hope that it recorded correctly. No paper. No receipts.
But yeah, that’s not what the report was about. What it was about is just as troubling. You can also change an election outcome by screwing with the registration records.
Yeah, PA is almost uniquely awful in that respect.
I vote in South Carolina, and it doesn’t have paper tallies either when you use the voting machines. And that’s a lot more common in the US than I think you’re thinking.
I have no idea what this is. We have a piece/s of paper on which we put crosses, an elderly lady counts them and stacks them in piles, under supervision and in the sight of the candidates
Well, the above will do for me.
NJ either (just voted yesterday!). You select choices on a paper-covered machine (the paper allows the same machine to be used for different elections, it’s where the candidate names are printed). Then, you press a red button, and that’s it. No paper trail that I know of.
Also, my daughter voted for the first time yesterday and she didn’t have to show ID :eek:. The vote volunteer showed her where to sign (right next to her signature on file, in case she wasn’t sure what it should look like), and that’s it.
We mark ballots which are tallied by computer in Arkansas. There is a paper record to fall back on if there are doubts about the election.
My language was a little optimistic it appears. According to this, there are 5 states with systems that still have no paper trail, although the cite used isn’t great.
These issues came up because the vote was incredibly close and Gore requested manual recounts, as was his right. SCOTUS got involved because no one could agree on how to manually tally the paper. Any system works great in a landslide, it’s only when every vote matters that inefficiencies are exposed.
Really? According to Wikipedia ballots that were not fully punched may well have swung the election Bush’s way:
Except I never said all were equally bad, and you didn’t propose any option except paper. I merely pointed out issues with all paper systems and that there is no system that is foolproof. It’s a case of “pick your poison”.
Again, see the super close election scenario. There are flaws, the only question is whether they have been exposed.
Unless the little old lady is a Russian agent proficient in sleight of hand…
Seriously, though, election result deadlines would have to be extended in order to implement a fully manual system like that over the entire country. We should not ignore technology, but we must be very careful in implementing it.
Sure they would. But you have from Nov to January to count the paper 
tbh, todays election in the Uk will be a paper count and we will know by this time tomorrow. Fwiw, the rule in the UK is no more than 2,500 registered voters per polling station. The counts tend to be more centralised.
p.s. so far, there’s no sign of Vlad Putin or his cyber troops …
Yeah, Hillary was that close to selecting Bernie as Veep, but was suddenly deterred by the evil machinations of Vladimir — and the fact one had to have a billion dollars to enter the selection process.
Triangulating Dems: The Voice for the Common Millionaire.
If there’s one thing Russians are known for, it’s steely Germanic efficiency.
And, maybe, on Tech v. Paper, Americans have too many damn results to process simultaneously.
Sure pick the president and the congresspeople at the same time: leave the other offices till the week after.
Must have been so much easier when the population was only 250 million
Updating this thread: