No. People won’t vote will just be another long weekend.
I agree with yhe comments made and say that there needs to be an implementation of serialized, photo or biometric voter ID. All votes need to be tracked im real-time with full transparency. No complicated algos, no third party implementation, with full auditng ability by each and every US citizen.
These are OUR elections. Not the US government’s, not the UN’s, it’s OURS. The only reason for any complicated software or algorithms is for fraud. Plain and simple.
I agree a three day weekend will not I give voting. It will just let people go on a vacation. 1 day everyone votes. Paper ballots hand count. First responders can have 3 weeks prior to vote walk in to any board of election off ice sho your ID and hand in your ballot. Or if you vote by mail the ID number whether it is your license number or professional ID number must be on or in-ballot. Keep it simple one way for state and federal. We have just as much cheating state lol as we do federal. It’s got to be a national holiday
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I would be more inclined to see this as voter list cleaning to be done before the election, rather than putting this on election day. Voter lists should have standards that are met (i.e. no dead people), and a state should be able to prove they have taken steps to have clean rolls.
I agree state rolls should be cleaned before the election and meet some standard of accountability that is outside the state without violating states’ rights. Perhaps a lawful list of what has been done with certification by State officials and severe penalties for lying about it. Not sure how that would look, but certainly the cheating at the state level is widespread.
I agree there needs to be an ID, but SS#s are badly compromised. If you run your own credit check with any of the agencies you are likely to see 3 or 4 other people across the nation that have used your SS#, either thru error or deliberate fraud. Try it. Depending on how old you are your record may be clean. Without electronics (back to machines) you will not be able to check a SS# anonymously on election day - just too much work. Voter verification/vetting needs to happen at the voter roll level well prior to the election, and the State should follow rigid guidelines as to what they do to “clean” the voter rolls.
That too. They should make it mandatory every year say by july
I would add to this list a bit.
I would limit mail in ballots considerably as it is a chief fraud vehicle. Identity (for mail in voters) must be verified as part of the voter roll cleaning well before election so that when the ballot arrives it is accepted readily. Also, first responders and others that can’t be there on election day voting will be taken care of with this approach. Bar code on the ballot with voter ID and physical name check on the roll should verify that ballot received is from the person it was sent to.
Third party verification of mail-in ballots would be to verify that the number of mail-ins sent out equal the number brought in, but if pre-validated votes coming in from this source can be processed immediately with a voter ID. If numbers don’t add up, an audit is triggered.
Outside verification of state efforts should be by witnesses that are freely allowed to view, not restricted, licensed or otherwise controlled by state government. They could be NGOs. Rolls verification must leave confidence that verification has been done, not just a denial by some official that the rolls are perfect.
If a voter has verified voter ID then their vote is traceable. A voter should be able to verify thru a process how their vote was counted. Anyone ever wonder if their vote was counted correctly? Establish a process to answer the question. “yes your vote was counted” is not a sufficient answer when the question is asked.
In general, Voter rolls must be verified to a standard that is not optional and has penalties for violation that are more than 1 day in jail. I see no reason state elections cannot be run the same as federal. One set of rules, one process, one day.
You have mentioned the central, the most important point: hand-counted paper ballots, everywhere, all the time. This is the only vote-counting method that is observable and verifiable by all sides. Many countries have adopted this principle, with great success.
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This might be a simplistic view of the apparent problem; yet, when one must dedicate repeat ‘special efforts’ (ie: cleaning up voter rolls) before a repeat process is initiated (ie: voting), it is a pretty good indication that we are focusing on the solution instead of the problem. For instance, you wouldn’t expect to normalize having to bang on your car battery terminals everytime you start up your car – you would eventually disconnect and clean the terminal connectors to solve the problem once and for all.
Although cleaning up voter rolls is probably very much needed (given the corruption and fraud over many years), this should be a temporary fix that should also include constructing a fool-proof system that cannot be hacked (with dead voter additions, etc). Although I am never in favor of being tracked via social identification systems, we need to find some way of determining who can and cannot vote and where and for whom. That would seem to be a step in the right direction to eliminating the ability to commit rampant vote fraud. Blockchain, GPS, and high-bit encryption incorporation over a secure and closed AI voter-traffic/fraud-monitored ‘intranet’ network? Probably. Just my two cents on it. 
I totally get what you are saying, but I return to the famous quote (I believe Stalin) who said “I care not who votes, only who counts the votes.” The major defect in our system is/was that violation of “the law” is/was rampant without repercussions. Yes, lets tighten up on regulations and laws, but unless there are clear penalties to immediately (without taking it to the Supreme Court) deal with violations you are stuck with corrupt humans running the show who will stop at nothing to get their way. And who controls the enforcers? Who controls the Secretary of State (responsible for election enforcement) who is beholden to the governor who is in power (and is doing the violations)? Impossible to say there is any impartiality there. The corruption you are trying to regulate is in the human heart. For example, how can you possibly justify ejecting the opposing party from observing the counting during an “open” election. It makes a mockery of the word “open”. Citizen ID: Make it happen but Congress will have to agree on an objective standard of who that is. Right now we have OBiden handing out citizenship like free sales brochures on a street corner. Do they count? Some will have to be excluded somewhere. Who are they?
Lynden, although I understand your position, you seem to make a defeatist argument with regards to controlling fraud in our election process. You mention things that are known problems – like humans behaving like humans, that evil cannot be removed from the system because humans are part of the system, that past fraud has occurred and will continue to occur unless we focus on stiffer punishments for committing the fraud, that the system is now being inundated with non-citizen impacts, making the fraud fix all the more difficult.
None of what you mentioned contains even a remote proposal to ‘undo’ exactly the problems that you mentioned; and I am left scratching my head on why you mentioned what everyone already knows are problems with the current system.
As I stated before, I think we need to start looking at fixing the problems that exist by upgrading the system with technology that reduces or removes the ability of “evil humans” to commit fraud in the first place. Saying that “evil humans can corrupt any system, no matter how beneficial to the end goal of eliminating fraud” is simply Defeatism. As as systems engineer and a programmer, had I taken this attitude in my profession, the areas that I impacted would still be in the Dark Ages, still quoting Stalin on the evils of Humanity, and leaving little else accomplished in the way of progress. Technology is definitely required at this point, given the complexity of the voting fraud and the inventiveness of fraudsters. A very tight system needs to be designed to knock out the highest percentage of possible fraud – we can revisit your concerns about ‘the evil human heart’ when we have 90%+ of potential fraudsters blocked from committing further voter fraud. Anything less would be akin to using an abacus to balance a constantly fluctuating checking account. That is my take on it.
*PS - I personaly built massive automated fraud-busting systems for a major telecom firm, so this discussion is not new to me. In their initial constructions, I first learned how my fraud target audience committed the fraud, then I request the company to provide me with the tools needed - software development tools, database admin tools, communications software and dedicated hardware. When I was finished, the company had 15 independent systems running 24/7 scanning the entire network for fraud, identifying incidents, and taking concrete actions in real time, saving tens of millions a year. It all came about because I set out to remove the fraud…I invented the means out of my own mind. My point is this – I looked at the problem, devised a solution, and lowered the network fraud by over 90% across the infrastructure. I didn’t contimplate the evils of these fraudsters or their will to defeat or undo what I was doing – I simply analyzed their patterns, created automated monitors for them, and finally took systematic action against those patterned events. These systems were capable of accepting arguments for NEW patterns, so new fraud could be hunted down according to new criteria – the systems could “evolve” with the evolving fraudsters. This is called progress; and this is what is now required for our voting systems. Defeatism is not needed here - abject and unwavering determination is required. And we can worry about “who is watching the evil programmers who built said system”, after the system is in place and we have redrawn the fraud line at the 90% reduction rate.
UPDATE: Looks like someone was trying to go in this direction back in October. Link supplied…
This is great! In addition, early voting really works in Florida. The polls are open for voting for at least a week before Election Day and you can vote at any voting spot- so the one nearest your work would be okay. This system gives people the chance to vote even when they have a tight work schedule. All the suggestions for this policy were great.