Tom Clancy’s US Politics Thread

I think they're an ok idea, but you'd need to have safeguards around them.

Like if you put your choice into the machine, it prints out a ballot paper with your choice on it, you check it and put it in the box. That way you have an electronic record that can be checked quickly, and a backup paper record to fall back on if there are any irregularities.

And on the other side you have Georgia passing laws requiring ballots to be hand-counted instead...

To be honest I'm on the machine side on this one, especially when it comes to counting. Machines remove human error from the equation (which, when we're talking about hundreds of thousands of ballots, will happen almost assuredly at points), and their impartiality (or lack thereof, in the Montana case) can be more easily checked and corrected, usually. Not to mention humans are more susceptible to blackmail, fearmongering or bribes, and corrupt election officials can just handpick the ones that will help with ratfuckery...

Then there's the time issue. Machines are just way faster, it's undeniable, and the more time the results take the more time for the MAGAts to cry foul and for shenanigans to happen either behind the scenes or openly. Oh, and also...


That'll happen no matter what. Transparency is an issue regardless of which method you use (who's going to ensure that human workers are all that transparent anyway?), and the MAGAts have no result that they'll just accept, or election system that they'll "understand", because they do not care to do so.

If Harris wins in a landslide, it'll be "Well there's no way she could have won by so much, they cheated!". If it's close (on either side) it'll be "Well they cheated to get a narrow win/Well we should have won by a lot more, so they cheated", and if it's a Trump landslide (God please no) they'll still say "Well we should have won by even more!".

Appeasement simply doesn't work with the MAGA crowd, it hasn't worked for years. The only Republicans open to that sort of thing by now are either trying to distance themselves from Trump or seeing an opportunity to use said appeasement to their benefit later (see SCROTUS appointments and McConnell fucking them over). Trying to compromise with them is like extending olive branches to an active flamethrower: the flamethrower doesn't stop and you end up burnt. Best to use the better method (which IMO is electronic for multiple reasons, as I said above) and tell the Toddler-in-Chief and his handlers to pound sand.

The US used to be able to count over night by hand so it's not a speed thing. It's mostly a cost saving.

US counting has 2 complicating factors which is just to do with the US. Firstly a lot of counting happens at the county level. US counties (I think there's 2 or 3 thousand) can be anywhere between a whole city of millions or tiny, remote and there's a few hundred. Most European countries sub divide their country into roughly equal bits. Eg most constituencies for a UK general are around 60k.
Second they do lots of votes in one day. President, House, often senate, governor, state senate, state house, state DA, state judges, head of local police, local referendums etc etc. the way of doing that isn't standard so some states do 1 massive A4 voting sheet with all of them on. So you can't on paper do the counts in parallel. But it's all non standardised. Each state also has its own voting regulations. So it's the sheer complexity they try to get machines to do it for.

You know what if they had hand counted votes already in place I would guarantee the opposition would be screaming for machine voting. It's not the method of voting that bothers them it's that they know they can't win legitimately so have to resort to all this bullshit and gerrymandering.

Something something small government.

The article I read a few days ago said that hand-counting was less accurate than machine counting, which was one of the main reasons it is used. 
Without doing a lot of deep research into counting methods, I have no idea how accurate that is, but it seems to be a generally accepted thing. 

Not where I originally read it, but they mention som research:  

www.npr.org/2022/10/11/1128197774/research-finds-hand-counting-ballots-to-be-less-accurate-and-more-expensive

Missed that, unbelievable. Except it's not really

Putting aside that the video was not only made 4 years ago but even back then was already being critiqued by many saying that most of the problems illustrated with electronic voting/counting could just as easily be applied to the human side, (including hundreds of Brazilians where electronic voting has been used for decades without nearly as many issues), you seem to have missed my point (which, I will admit, I only specifically mentioned once in my wall of text, mostly letting the context do the work instead, so my bad there).

Yes, in your typical, fair and free election, the human element is abundantly important regardless of how much machines are involved in the process. The problem is that the US is not about to have that. They're one of the largest countries in the world by land area (just about tied with China for third place), relying on antiquated political and electoral systems that have been subject to a constant assault by one of the two parties contesting the election (the Trump years were only the big ramp-up of that). Trust in the process is at an all-time low (and with who the MAGAts are that doesn't change with the swap to human-only counting), intimidation of both officials and the public, voter suppression and ratfuckery run rampant, never mind that with how things work electronic voting is the only way for a large part of the electorate to vote at all... It should not be this way, but it is, and the Georgia change in particular was brought about by a pro-Trump election board and so close to the election that it's an incredibly transparent bad-faith decision, rife with logistical problems that will be almost impossible to rectify.

Bottom line, an overhaul of the US system is most definitely sorely needed and ordinarily I'd not advocate for fully machine-based voting (ideally it'd be a combination of the approaches' positives, with the machines mostly relegated to automating and speeding up the process, and multiple proper checks to ensure transparency and safety for all involved)... But with the system and political climate in the US being what it is, in this specific election I have to side with the electronic voting system in place (and in particular I cannot agree that the Georgia decision was correct, especially not being implemented in this way and with this timetable).

Yeah. Also apologies for not fully replying to the other thing I've been out drinking.

If you have a fucking simple human process humans can count it easily with very low error. FPTP is shit but you can organise counting for it with illiterate people. Pile up the ones for A Vs B, literally put them in piles with a chalkboard tally and you will get very close to accurate no matter what. As it's just which pile is bigger. Europe (also non general elections in the UK) have more complex systems but you're still basically piling forms into boxes. A recount is going through the box mark A finding the ones not marked A.

It's genuinely idiot proof and like Skapalda says you have people watch. It works fine.

It's nice that guy got released, but the Japanese criminal justice system is fuuuuucked. In some ways more fucked than the American one.

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Clearly mentally fit