Why do people here think a paper trail will prevent rigging elections? Surely you know that stuffing the ballot box is a tradition that predates electronic voting machines.
If my state - or rather my district- were to require an audit, there would be no paper trail. We step up to the booth, press a few buttons and that is it. I do not find the process especially confidence- inducing.
I’m more worried about ballots being sent by mail. Here you go, here’s my ballot, stranger who is not an election official. Take it away in your vehicle and to a location where you or others will have access to a large number of ballots, where I cannot verify my vote will be counted.
I’d rather have it than not, so people can vote. But how do we know the votes are being counted?
While I agree, this is a “what if” thread. So if what is never going happen did happen, of course a large segment of voters wouldn’t accept it. And rightly so. Even if widespread tampering was “proven,” there would be “experts” explaining how it was possible, and other “experts” insisting it was all a liberal plot to steal the election.
In other words, the fallout would be as damaging to our “democracy” as the actual election itself.
Perhaps Barry can ease himself in as Father Joseph to Trump’s Cardinal Richelieu.
Always at the end of a phone-line, or visiting the crafty statesman any time of the day or night as confessor and confidante; President Trump could even let his family continue to stay at the White House to facilitate this. Or most disturbingly perhaps that was Obama’s plan from the start, and he helped stymie Hillary, whom he never considered a good prospect, and who he has increasingly become more frank about since her loss.
Trump can transition into Obama’s policies and quietly and effectively as did Obama into Bush’s. Obama would be the real winner.
In my experience with elections recounts and audits, most do not end up overturning the results as of the day after the election. Uness it’s like a dozen votes or low hundredths of a percentage difference in bigger races.
However whenever there is automation of the vote counting IMO there should be always, just as a quality control measure, an audit of some sample of wards or precincts simply to crosscheck how well the machine reader matches what the live voter pencilled on the ballot. Because you do want those numbers to be as accurate as the technology allows it.
Mentioned elsewhere in another thread: in California, there is an online utility where you can see that your vote was received, opened, and counted. So if anyone is going to interfere with your voting it would have to be the election officials themselves.
Now that the recounts are happening, Clinton’s campaign team is participating in them. I’m sure it won’t change the results, but I’m sure everyone is interested in making sure the election was fair and the results are valid.
The stranger who took away my ballot in his vehicle is an employee of the United States Postal Service. In addition to losing his job for tampering with any ballots, he would be charged with a federal crime for tampering with mail. The ballot went directly from the post office to the county recorder’s office. I’m sure the ballots only changed hands at the post office when they were loaded into sorting machines and sacked for delivery to the county recorder.
I’m of several minds about any recount. On the one hand, I’d like to know if there was really any large-scale miscounting or corruption. On the other hand, if it turns out that American elections cannot be trusted, then we’re looking at massive civil unrest at best. So although I despise Trump as much as any white man can, I guess the best result is for the recount to proceed and show that they did it right the first time and award this jackhole his Electoral College only victory.
And I do say “jackhole” because apparently Trump is supporting the recount or at least accuses the process of widespread fraud - he asserts that he actually won the popular vote when all the fraudulent votes are taken out. So I’d like the recount to show that claim as being entirely BS as well.
You have to appreciate Trump’s uncanny ability to compartmentalize when he is simultaneously opposed to recounting votes and certain that the vote was fraudulent.
Wow…That one tweet by Trump actually makes all the angst being expressed by some Trump supporters in this thread completely moot. After all, the Clinton campaign…and even arguably the Stein campaign has been very careful not to oversell the idea that there is any serious problem with the vote but Trump is going in and making a completely wild claim with no basis in fact. I expect those on this board who are sympathetic to Trump and worried about the confidence in the election process being undermined will soon be along with a vociferious denunciation of Trump’s reckess claims.
***If ***recounts were to turn the results in three separates states resulting in a Clinton victory then Democrats would have to agree that widespread voter fraud actually happens. How then would they justify their opposition to the various issues that Republicans have raised over the years about insecurity of the ballot?
Public sentiment would then tend to favor voter id, cleaning up voter rolls, and election observers on a wide scale.
It really underscores that the popular vote issue has gotten under his skin. I’m sure if we spend the next four years calling him the second place president, it wouldn’t get to him at all.
Is someone at some point going to explain to Trump just how small arguing on Twitter makes one look?
Depends on the nature of the reasons why the first count was off by many tens of thousands in those states. If it was, say, due to Russian hacking, corrupt county officials, incompetent vote counters, or space aliens swapping out rectal probing for new investigation techniques involiving elections, then there’s no connection to voter ID laws at all.
But I have very great doubts that the results will significantly change.
Conservatives in favor of dramatically stricter voter ID laws would need to square their ideological circle that the only way of perfecting any voter integrity system is to issue mandatory voter identification cards to everyone registered to vote automatically and for free. That would solve any problem outside of deliberately forged documents or one voter trying to impersonate another, which would be problems regardless of how strict a voter ID system was. But that would create a system of nation-wide ID cards that, unlike driver’s licenses or passports, would be mandatory.
But, it appears that any “fraud” or issues being raised by the Jill Stein campaign are more along the lines of counting issues and voter intimidation, which also wouldn’t be affected at all by any voter ID scheme or law.
Like Ravenman, I don’t expect the recounts to change the result. Given Trump’s tweet, how can any of his supporters object to a recount?
And fuck Trump with rusty farm implements for claiming without basis that millions of people voted illegally. Not only is he blatantly trying to undermine the validity of our electoral process, but he’s got to be the all-time champion sore winner.
He just wants to whip up support for further limiting voter access.
I admit I donated to Jill Stein’s recount campaign. I think it’s worth it if for no other reason that pissing Trump off. His skin is so thin it’s practically transparent. He simply can’t let anything go. Now to donate to what’s-his-name in Louisiana; every Senate seat counts.
Recounts have nothing whatever to do with whether a voter is a valid voter or not. Recounts only check to make sure that votes are counted accurately, i.e. that they are counted as they were cast. That means checking against the paper ballots where they exist; I’m not sure how they re-count where there is no paper ballot to check against.
In any case, voter id, cleaning up voter rolls (which could take years if done accurately), and election observers have nothing to do AT ALL with a recount.
Trump’s response has actually been much more reasonable than Bush’s in 2000. Trump is mocking the whole endeavour. Bush saw it as a threat and lawyered up in a hurry.