Ultimately, it comes down to county level election commissions and partisan, adversarial observers from all sides, watching eagerly to see that no undue or unfair influence is asserted by the other participants.
Secret counts via secret methods with authenticity is attested by anonymous experts ain't gonna work.
Exactly this. A lot of US political institutions can be defined by the mechanism of checks and balances that are built into them allowing for critical scrutiny for anyone who cares to look into them.
Hell, you can even go and sit in on Supreme Court sessions in DC if you like. So, even up to the top the processes by which decisions are made are accessible and under constant observation. (The phrase 'adversarial observer' is spot on)
If something is amiss, it's more likely to be spotted than in many other countries.
There's still plenty of corruption and obfuscation happening in US politics but the act of voting and having votes counted is fairly good.
Check Gerrymandering out if you want to see how votes can be unfairly counted.
At every level, there are machine checks and human checks that must agree, or an audit is triggered.
In the event of disputes, audits are transparent, conducted by non-partisans, and observed by partisans (from both sides).
There are exit polls and other independent surveys that would further indicate a large deviation that merited further study.
There isn't one single layer that prevents fraud. There are many layers, meaning it would take an astonishingly coordinated criminal organization (like many hundreds of thousands of people who are all able to keep things a secret) to change the results in even one single state or large county.
It's much cheaper and easier to just try to win the election fairly.
>Not intending to be provocative, but I’m curious what makes the US voting system so trustworthy? It seems to be a patchwork of various state and local systems with various machines and human checks. What makes this so unassailable?
How many elections has there been and how many instances have there been irregularities? Very few and far inbetween except until quite recently. Long history will establish trustworthiness.
Every election there will be 100% chance of fraud occurring. Too many people involved and there will be people making bad decisions. Luckily the impact of these are often too small to have any impact on the election. If you were told that there was no fraud, you were lied to and you should take such a claim that there was no fraud as confirmation that the fraud was wide enough to impact the election.
The mechanism or technique of the election is also rather irrelevant. I certainly believe you should require ID or something rather concrete in order to vote but many US states dont? That's their decision but that's immediately a question mark against transparency. The 'patchwork' and 'human checks' is not a huge problem. You can have legitimate elections with these weaknesses.
The importance around elections is transparency. The "challengers" and "observers" are more important than the counters. At the end of the election all parties must agree that the election went smoothly enough that we know who the winner is.
This clearly didn't happen last election in the USA. Republicans in 49 states believe there was election issues and submitted bills to fix these issues. What was the response? Democrats accused them of trying to restrict voting? That's a really bad idea.
People will be watching now during midterms. Is there problems? again?
Will the detroit TSC center eject republicans, use bike locks to secure the doors, board up windows, and then output a result that's basically impossible?
4 comments
[ 1184 ms ] story [ 1229 ms ] threadSecret counts via secret methods with authenticity is attested by anonymous experts ain't gonna work.
Hell, you can even go and sit in on Supreme Court sessions in DC if you like. So, even up to the top the processes by which decisions are made are accessible and under constant observation. (The phrase 'adversarial observer' is spot on)
If something is amiss, it's more likely to be spotted than in many other countries.
There's still plenty of corruption and obfuscation happening in US politics but the act of voting and having votes counted is fairly good.
Check Gerrymandering out if you want to see how votes can be unfairly counted.
At every level, there are machine checks and human checks that must agree, or an audit is triggered.
In the event of disputes, audits are transparent, conducted by non-partisans, and observed by partisans (from both sides).
There are exit polls and other independent surveys that would further indicate a large deviation that merited further study.
There isn't one single layer that prevents fraud. There are many layers, meaning it would take an astonishingly coordinated criminal organization (like many hundreds of thousands of people who are all able to keep things a secret) to change the results in even one single state or large county.
It's much cheaper and easier to just try to win the election fairly.
How many elections has there been and how many instances have there been irregularities? Very few and far inbetween except until quite recently. Long history will establish trustworthiness.
Every election there will be 100% chance of fraud occurring. Too many people involved and there will be people making bad decisions. Luckily the impact of these are often too small to have any impact on the election. If you were told that there was no fraud, you were lied to and you should take such a claim that there was no fraud as confirmation that the fraud was wide enough to impact the election.
The mechanism or technique of the election is also rather irrelevant. I certainly believe you should require ID or something rather concrete in order to vote but many US states dont? That's their decision but that's immediately a question mark against transparency. The 'patchwork' and 'human checks' is not a huge problem. You can have legitimate elections with these weaknesses.
The importance around elections is transparency. The "challengers" and "observers" are more important than the counters. At the end of the election all parties must agree that the election went smoothly enough that we know who the winner is.
This clearly didn't happen last election in the USA. Republicans in 49 states believe there was election issues and submitted bills to fix these issues. What was the response? Democrats accused them of trying to restrict voting? That's a really bad idea.
People will be watching now during midterms. Is there problems? again?
Will the detroit TSC center eject republicans, use bike locks to secure the doors, board up windows, and then output a result that's basically impossible?