Are US elections corrupt?

[Will Wiley]

Dear Liberals: Trump is Right

Of course, Obama would prefer to lecture Trump and millions of Americans about the “basic traditions” of America while calling for a “peaceful transition of power,” rather than acknowledge what countless investigative journalists, well respected institutions, filmmakers, and observers have noted for years: the US has one of the least transparent, most corrupt and unreliable electoral systems in the developed world.

Got that? There is NO WAY to verify any of the vote counts, nor to evaluate the actual operation of the software, including auditing its mistakes. Stanford University’s David Dill, a computer scientist and founder of Verified Voting Foundation, explained in 2012, “If you have a machine collecting and recording votes with an electronic ballot box, there’s no way to go back after the fact and see if the machine made a mistake, whether through malice or simple software error.”

 

[Will Wiley]

Seems like officials in Texas are vigilant about problems.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, the electronic ballot thing is just fucking weird. If the results of your voting can't be validated by a recount then the results aren't necessarily worth shit.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dear Liberals: Trump is Right

Got that? There is NO WAY to verify any of the vote counts, nor to evaluate the actual operation of the software, including auditing its mistakes. Stanford University’s David Dill, a computer scientist and founder of Verified Voting Foundation, explained in 2012, “If you have a machine collecting and recording votes with an electronic ballot box, there’s no way to go back after the fact and see if the machine made a mistake, whether through malice or simple software error.”

Trump is saying they are rigged by the Democrat Party. Your quote doesn't say that.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

You do know that a “peaceful transition of power" means one without violence or the treat of violence. Liberals are not the only ones that want that.

 

[cycomiko]

Trump is saying they are rigged by the Democrat Party. Your quote doesn't say that.

I just wasted my time reading the article (I'm bored). NOTHING in there addresses the actual argument that Trump makes about it being rigged. It really just talks about old voting machines. Trump states that there's "large scale voter fraud" and that's been repeatedly proven to be false.

 

[Bronzeage]

It is technically impossible to alter the results of a Federal election, without it being immediately obvious.

The US election system is controlled and conducted at the state and local level. Election fraud would require a conspiracy and cooperation of thousands of people in any state, most of whom would have nothing to gain from the fraud.

It's much easier to influence an election by gerrymandering voting districts and making it difficult for particular people to register or vote.

When fraud has occurred, in previous elections, it happens after the polls are closed, in the counting process.

 

[funinspace]

Correct twice a day...

 

[RVonse]

It is technically impossible to alter the results of a Federal election, without it being immediately obvious.

The US election system is controlled and conducted at the state and local level. Election fraud would require a conspiracy and cooperation of thousands of people in any state, most of whom would have nothing to gain from the fraud.

It's much easier to influence an election by gerrymandering voting districts and making it difficult for particular people to register or vote.

When fraud has occurred, in previous elections, it happens after the polls are closed, in the counting process.

Using electronic voting machines, how do you know what the machine counted is the true data if you have no means to confirm the results with paper or other documents? It will not make any difference how many honest people are looking on the outside of the machine if the software workings do not reflect a true and actual count.

 

[skepticalbip]

Are US elections corrupt?

Absolutely.
There is too much evidence of corruption to believe otherwise - such as when dead people are still voting and some precincts return more ballots than registered voters. The real question is whether there is serious enough vote corruption to determine the outcome. And then maybe there is enough corruption on both sides to cancel each other out.

Personal experience:
In the 2012 election, I was still living in the Atlanta area. When I showed up at my local polling station after work I was told that I had already voted. I soon discovered that there were a couple hundred of us that had been told we had already voted. So there was either an organized campaign to pare out those who got to the poll after 5:00 or there were a lot of people who had claimed to be us so they could cast the vote.

 

[zorq]

Using electronic voting machines, how do you know what the machine counted is the true data if you have no means to confirm the results with paper or other documents? It will not make any difference how many honest people are looking on the outside of the machine if the software workings do not reflect a true and actual count.

I voted electronically in a booth in Nevada in 8 years ago and all the voting machines had little rolls of paper like you see in a cash register that would print out the contents of the vote you just registered in addition to saving the data. There was a little window into the machine and you could see your vote getting printed. Presumably in a contested election these vote receipts could be manually counted. I'm sure there are dozens of other brands and types of electronic voting machines out there but the only one I've experienced printed a receipt.

 

[Bronzeage]

It is technically impossible to alter the results of a Federal election, without it being immediately obvious.

The US election system is controlled and conducted at the state and local level. Election fraud would require a conspiracy and cooperation of thousands of people in any state, most of whom would have nothing to gain from the fraud.

It's much easier to influence an election by gerrymandering voting districts and making it difficult for particular people to register or vote.

When fraud has occurred, in previous elections, it happens after the polls are closed, in the counting process.

Using electronic voting machines, how do you know what the machine counted is the true data if you have no means to confirm the results with paper or other documents? It will not make any difference how many honest people are looking on the outside of the machine if the software workings do not reflect a true and actual count.

It's certainly possible, just as it's possible to have 100 people vote under the names of someone else. The question remains, can you get away with it. Once a machine is tampered with, so it records the votes incorrectly, how do you keep that machine from being examined and discovered? How many machines and how many people would be involved?

A lot of things are possible, but if it were easy, any state lottery would be a better target. The risk is great and since only one person really benefits, how do you manage a conspiracy on such a scale?

 

[Valjean]

We need hand marked, paper ballots, not dozens of different, easily altered, electronic machines.
What's the advantage of these machines?

Rigged? Yes, the elections are rigged, not by a few fraudulent voters, but by massive voter suppression by the Republicans.