Just voted for John Bel Edwards - ridiculously

[Goodheart]

Why did I say ridiculously? Because this voting process of walking into a. booth and then having to TRUST the machine manufacturer that my vote will be counted for the candidate I prefer is FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. paper ballots, marked by humans, guarded by humans, counted by humans

Elections are too critical to treat like grocery checkout lines or video games.

[LiberalArkie]

3. Used to be that way. The opposing party doing the guarding and counting

[frazzled]

6. ... could be systematically discarded or destroyed

Or "stuffed." There is no perfect system, and there never was. Sowing doubt into our elections is not helpful to democracy. Be vigilant, yes, but not conspiratorial: it depresses voter participation and weakens democracy.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. that's a strawman

Electronic systems can be compromised. Paper systems can be compromised.

Electronic systems can not be verified.
Paper systems can be verified.

With electronics, you start with the impossibility of a verifiable system, and end with a system that is relatively easy to compromise.

With paper, you start with a system that is verifiable, and end with a system that is much harder to compromise than electronics.

[frazzled]

10. Your state is a real outlier

This page addresses existing state requirements, first with a summary and then a state-by-state chart below.


• Fourteen states require paper ballots.
Typically states with this requirement use optical scan voting machines for tabulation and also provide ballot marking devices for voters with disabilities (required by HAVA).

Included: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington.

• Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., require a voter-verifiable paper record for voting machines.
To meet this requirement, jurisdictions may use paper ballots and scanners, or an electronic voting machine (DRE) equipped with a device that produces a paper record that a voter can verify before the final act of casting a ballot. Note that some states in this group may have the requirement for a voter-verifiable paper record but have not had the funding to replace voting equipment in recent years, so in practice may have machines without a paper trail.

Included: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

• Six states require voting machines to have a permanent paper record.
The language in these requirements does not necessarily require the paper record to be voter verifiable and, in some states, this has been interpreted to permit DREs to be used that do not have a voter verified paper audit trail.

Included: Alabama, Illinois, Indiana (voter-verified paper trails will be required by 2029), Kansas, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.

• Thirteen states do not have a statutory requirement for voting machines to have a paper trail. Of these:
Nine states (Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming) use paper ballots or machines with a paper trail statewide even though there is no statutory requirement.
Three states (Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas) have some jurisdictions with a paper trail and others without.

• One state (Louisiana) uses the same equipment throughout the state, with no paper trail. Louisiana went through the process of selecting new equipment with a paper trail in 2018 but ran into funding problems.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voting-system-paper-trail-requirements.aspx

I suggest you organize an effort to lobby your state to find that money for paper-trail system in the state.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. which state is that?

No amount of stats will alter the facts:

Electronic systems cannot be verified.

Paper systems can be verified.

[frazzled]

12. The OP's state, I mean

Clearly, Louisiana
Please read posts

[Hermit-The-Prog]

13. you said "Your"

[Goodheart]

8. Say WHAT?

How can anybody be "vigilant" about votes that disappear into whatever a software programmer permits and are beyond human inspection?

Sure, there are no "perfect" voting systems, but paper ballots are much, much, much, much, much better than untraceable, unauditable, uncountable CRAP.

[frazzled]

20. It looks like your vote didn't disappear

Your candidate won by a healthy margin in a race that was said to be very close. Congratulations!

[evertonfc]

2. agree

Thanks for voting. Do you think Edwards can squeak this one out? A loss in LA combined with VA and KY would be devastating to Trump

[W_HAMILTON]

4. Speaking of electronic voting machines...

...we got these new machines this election where you vote on screen and then it prints out a long piece of white paper that shows who you voted for, which you take over to another machine and insert it and it apparently scans it in and records your vote. Does anyone know if this way of electronic voting is any more secure and reliable than the old "touchscreen only" method? The fact that there is a paper trail seems better, but it's just another step in the electronic process and I don't know if they even retain those paper records or what.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. can you see what the electrons in the scanner are doing?

It doesn't matter how many times the electronic device matches the count done by people, if it's a programmable device it cannot be verified.

[Ms. Toad]

15. Making verifiably incorrect statements does not help your case.

The paper ballot is fed into the machine. Therefore the paper record (which you saw, held in your hands, and had the opportunity to verify correctely reflected your voties) exists, and any vote tally reported by the electronic counting machine can be verified against the physical ballots that it counted.

You don't need to see the electrons in order to be able to verify that the count is accurate.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

16. and who will bother to ever touch the paper again?

[Ms. Toad]

19. You said that it was not verifiable. It obviously is.

So focusing your efforts on requriing verification would be much better received than making verifiably false statements that the equipment that the jurisdicitons already own must be trashed because verification is not possible with that equipment. Verificaiton obviously IS possible.

[Goodheart]

9. That's a really good way to do it, as long as the paper is counted as official and kept for audit.

[skip fox]

14. I just voted as well, Edwards on down,

but I seem to have more faith in the process/system. We'll see.

[Blue_true]

17. Thanks for voting, please push democratic leaning friends and family

to vote before the polls close. As far as republican leaners, tell them there is a Trump rally going on in Mississippi and Trump said that they can vote there.

[Blue_true]

18. Thanks for voting.

Please push all Dem leaning family and friends to vote today before the polls close.