It's pretty sad that is these sort of ticky-tacky lawsuits are really the only mechanism we seem have of holding these "news" networks responsible for brazen repeated lies that are hugely damaging to our society (like saying a election was stolen). And that wasn't even the problem, it's that their lies created damages for another corporation.
mandeepj · 5h ago
> holding these "news" networks responsible for brazen repeated lies that are hugely damaging to our society
But that moron in WH is still spreading lies about that election; he has no shame, no remorse, no nothing. On the contrary, he was successful in portraying himself a victim and win people’s sympathy. Even though he’s the one who called insurrection. There’s no accountability for him.
Look at South Korea, who indicted their politician who did same act. As well at Brazil, who’s rogue politician is in house arrest. But, fking only here, they are awarded with a 2nd term.
dimal · 4h ago
I had been worried about what would happen as the American republic goes down, whether other countries would follow suit. So those two examples are cause for hope.
As for the second term, we can’t forget that the Democrats basically threw the election. This election was a layup. An easy win. And they did absolutely everything wrong. I almost blame them as much as Trump for this mess.
dragonwriter · 2h ago
> As for the second term, we can’t forget that the Democrats basically threw the election. This election was a layup. An easy win.
Good case for that in 2016, sure. 2024, not at all.
platevoltage · 31m ago
When you’re marching one of the most hated republicans in the country around on stage pretending like it’s going to get you more votes, while kicking one of the most popular left-wing online voices out of your convention, I understand why people would get this impression. Dems would rather lose than cede any power at all to the left flank of the party.
senderista · 4h ago
When it comes to pleasing the base, or the voters, Democrats always choose the former. At least they can feel good about losing.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 3h ago
I see so much hate for James Carville but he was right. Grocery prices affect more people than abortions so why the hell did Dems run on abortions?!
mandeepj · 53m ago
The other candidate went on stage and said - he’d lower the grocery prices on day 1, and then declares off-stage: once prices go up, they never come down . He told Palestinian-Americans in Michigan - he’d bring peace in Palestine. People were so desperate to hear what they wanted to hear - whether lower prices or peace back home. He sold lies to everyone; I don’t see Democrats doing that. Ironically, prices are comparatively high now and going to get even higher. You know the statements coming from Israel.
I wish there was a way to challenge - these corrupt and lying politicians - in court. Unfortunately, currently, Supreme Court is compromised as well.
Gud · 15m ago
The democrats were rerunning Joe Biden as their candidate when he was obviously unfit mentally while they were claiming he was.
They were also lying.
platevoltage · 4h ago
You're not wrong. Biden, who is basically an unwrapped mummy at this point would have won easily if he handled Israel/Gaza with any sort of grace.
All Harris had to do was challenge Biden's position on the issue, and not parade Liz Cheney out on stage like the "disillusioned Republican vote" was a real thing.
AuthAuth · 3h ago
No he wouldnt have. The non voters didnt make enough of a difference and people who voted for trump over harris and said it was because of Gaza are not serious people and should not be catered to.
platevoltage · 41m ago
Yeah, it’s not like there was national movement of voters threatening to withhold their vote or anything.
Onawa · 3h ago
Harris would have had an uphill battle even if she had a full campaign cycle. After quizzing many conservatives, I unfortunately heard entirely too many responses of, "women leaders are unstable", "wouldn't be respected on the world stage", "she fakes her accent(s)", "I don't even know what she campaigned on", and other mind-boggling reasons they wouldn't vote for her.
At this point, I have lost all faith in the American electorate to rise above bigotry and see past social media propaganda.
platevoltage · 19m ago
I generally have a cynical view of the people in this country, but I’m not ready to believe that a mixed race woman would have an uphill battle against a felon who already did a bad job once. Obama had an uphill battle, but he said the right things. Harris couldn’t even do that because she was only interested in Republican votes, not Leftist votes.
RajT88 · 2h ago
I have one conservative friend who insists she is stupid and has none of her own opinions (just a mini-Biden). Mind boggling indeed.
mandeepj · 1h ago
> friend who insists she is stupid
I believe she did great during her nomination acceptance speech and during debate as well. But, you can’t make people understand something if they don’t want to.
platevoltage · 6m ago
I'm not her biggest fan, but yes, she did good in her debate and acceptance speech.
Nursie · 6m ago
> has none of her own opinions (just a mini-Biden)
She did mess up an opportunity to show that she wasn't just Biden v2 in an interview at some point, when asked what she might have done differently, there was nothing she could think of. Nothing at all.
That was an open goal to differentiate that she missed.
But I'm not sure it would have made a difference.
ilovecurl · 6h ago
During Dominion's case against Fox News around this same issue Fox News' own lawyers stated that they were not stating actual facts about the topics under discussion and instead were engaged in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. It's not news, it's infotainment.
lesuorac · 5h ago
Lawyers would tell you that water isn't wet it's just slick if it'd help them win their case.
I don't see any fix for the news cycle besides slowing it down. Even if enough happens to fill 24h in a day there isn't enough time to actually analyze it at all.
cj · 5h ago
> Lawyers would tell you that water isn't wet
Sure, but do you really think the Fox News anchors honestly believed what they were saying?
I’d venture a guess: no. They said what they said because that’s what they had to do to get their paycheck at the end of the day.
Yes, lawyers will say whatever to win a case. But I highly doubt those news anchors really thought the election was stolen. It’s all for ratings. Let’s be honest.
mapt · 5h ago
To willingly lie about something you need to be able to differentiate truth from fiction. Defamation hinges on either this willing lie ("malice") or on negligence (and the expected due diligence for a self-professed news organization is high). There is a little performative middle ground here, but WHATEVER is argued in court does not moot the things argued at every commercial break about trusting their news institution to report the facts. Fox news is not, and never has been, intended as satire.
cj · 4h ago
> Fox news is not, and never has been, intended as satire
Their homepage right now is featuring a pull up and push up contest between Hegseth and RFK jr.
It hardly appears as though they’re trying to be a legitimate news network. (Same goes for CNN - both are incredibly and undeniably outrageous in their reporting)
But I agree, their audiences take their reporting seriously, even if they themselves are just saying what they say for the ratings.
mapt · 4h ago
A light comedy piece or a plucky human interest story do not erase the statements of fact made or the repeated insistence on being taken seriously which pervade the rest of this institution. It isn't even reliant on their audience taking them seriously, it's reliant on the intended tone and how a reasonable person would perceive that intent.
You can argue that Fox News is intended to be basically the Colbert Report satirizing a certain mindset, but it's an obviously bad-faith argument. The Colbert Report was literally created to satirize the seriousness and mendacity of Fox News and its attempts to persuade people into a set of not just interpretations of the world, but factual beliefs about that world.
There is a line, and Fox runs way over the line into defamatory content multiple times an hour.
I can't immunize myself from currency counterfeiting charges by claiming that I never thought the copies were real, that it was all just in fun, that I was pranking the businesses I spent them at, and that my Youtube channel includes other fun bits of me deceiving people and telling jokes. The one does not exculpate the other.
TheOtherHobbes · 4h ago
It's the narcissist's "Ha ha ha only joking" defence.
RajT88 · 2h ago
Jeanine Pirro likes to talk about Treason for example.
When Trump is accused of it, her background as a lawyer kicks in and she can correctly articulate the reasons why Trump has not committed Treason.
However, in any other case she will accuse all manner of folks of committing treason and request they face harsh consequences.
Fox News is lies and rage bait.
mapt · 5h ago
This is a general defense to try and moot the existence of defamation law, and a judge who isn't on the right-wing payroll is likely to take offense.
Fox settled with Dominion for $800M.
tyre · 6h ago
Related:
“I find all of this so weird because of how it _elevates_ finance. [Various cases] imply that we are not entitled to be protected from pollution as _citizens_, or as _humans_. [Another] implies that we are not entitled to be told the truth _as citizens_. (Which: is true!) Rather, in each case, we are only entitled to be protected from lies _as shareholders_. The great harm of pollution, or of political dishonesty, is that it might lower the share prices of the companies we own.”
— Matt Levine
Here he is talking about shareholder lawsuits (securities fraud) being the primary mechanism of holding social responsibility.
throw0101a · 5h ago
> Matt Levine
I was curios for the exact source, and the link is:
I was thinking this opens them up to a shareholder suit for mismanagement, breach of duty, or possibly even fraud?
nickff · 5h ago
Matt Levine often repeats the phrase ‘everything is securities fraud’. Any statement which turns out (with hindsight) to be false is grounds for a shareholder class-action lawsuit. Even many correct statements are grounds for shareholder class actions. The problem is that the only people who actually profit from shareholder class actions are the lawyers.
mapt · 6h ago
Hogan (Thiel) vs Gawker and Sandy Hook vs Alex Jones provided a blueprint to weaponize defamation law for political change in an environment where right-wing journalism has turned into a defamation pipeline and then a defamation -> moral-panic -> stochastic-terror cannon that would impress Gerald Bull. These are supposed journalistic institutions, and that used to mean something, legally and culturally speaking. Making them terrified of losing the public trust once again, using some type of fast-moving wrecking ball, is a necessary component of a future where we make it out of this.
So all we need now is an angry left-wing billionaire who can launch a thousand defamation lawsuits, or the most sympathetic group of parents of dead children in history.
The last great nightly news anchor was Dan Rather, who was fired symbolically because their organization merely neutrally reported the existence of a sketchy story about possible documents that turned out to be fabricated about George W Bush's military service.
jibal · 5h ago
The story wasn't sketchy. Rather's claims about GWB's service were correct and well documented ... it was only the Killian memo that was apparently inauthentic ... but it may well have been transcribed using later technology.
triceratops · 5h ago
> Hogan (Thiel) vs Gawker and Sandy Hook vs Alex Jones provided a blueprint to weaponize defamation law for political change
Sandy Hook v Jones was not "political". It was deeply, profoundly personal.
The Gawker lawsuit was also about settling personal scores. Obviously Hogan wasn't as sympathetic of a plaintiff as the Sandy Hook parents. But it was more odious because Thiel wanted to punish Gawker simply for hurting his feelings, not lying about him.
> So all we need now is an angry left-wing billionaire
Is there such a thing?
mapt · 3h ago
Perhaps if there was, we wouldn't need to have this conversation.
The closest we've got is the zombie husk of liberal George Soros, who is a center-left finance bro from a Holocaust survivor family who isn't fond of authoritarianism. While a constantly mentioned specter of the right (the fact that he's Jewish and talks with a foreign accent factors, for paleoconservatives), and probably the largest single donor to Democratic causes...
He isn't actually particularly left-wing, and his work isn't remotely comparable in scope or in aggression to the ideological warfare waged by the Koch Brothers, or the dozens of other billionaires who have joined hand in hand to establish the durable top-down political infrastructure of the GOP. If a politician or pundit just plays along with these people, if you stay loyal to the cause even in the most tortured argument, you will be a made man. There are thousands of positions held open at endowed economics departments, think tanks, lobbying firms, and captive media to reward people who fight the good fight for the right. Lose an election? There is always the possibility of another campaign in another district. Conversely there is a constant threat of well-funded primary campaigns against anyone who doesn't toe the line and kiss the ring.
The Democrats have no such leverage. Their operational interests conflict with the interests of their political base. They mostly seem to come into politics poisoned by Mr Smith Goes to Washington, or The West Wing, and then the people who survive are the ones with more ambition than ideology who do whatever they need to do to ensure incumbency. Their institutional infrastructure seems to be ~five lobbying firms whose only apparent purpose is punching left when their base comes into conflict with corporate donors, and skimming off the top. The only time you will see money weaponized in a meaningful way is to fight against a primary challenge from the left, to include running independents against the primary winner in eg NYC's 2025 mayoral. So goes the "big tent" party.
But if by chance an angry left-wing billionaire spontaneously occurred (let's say the Trump vs Musk relationship went down a little differently)... There are tortious weapons sitting on the table unused, which could be put into effect dismantling this flavor of "journalism". As long as red America is being fed cradle-to-grave, violently ethnonationalist propaganda we're going to have a tough time persuading them out of their worldview.
pstuart · 5h ago
I remain convinced that Rather was set up by Karl Rove -- it fits in with his other dirty tricks.
jibal · 5h ago
The story wasn't sketchy. Rather's claims about GWB's service were correct and well documented ... it was only the Killian memo that was apparently inauthentic ... but it may well have been transcribed using later technology.
pstuart · 4h ago
That was the beauty of it -- it changed the story from the known facts about Bush into Rather using forged documents. It was a very clever trick, I'll give him that.
jibal · 4h ago
Yes, very Rovian. Of course Rather and CBS can be faulted for not doing due diligence, but this is how the right uses incidental mistakes to obscure the facts.
FridayoLeary · 5h ago
Wouldn't that damage the right to free speech? Regulating what the media is and isn't allowed to say is a very slippery slope and it is open to abuse. If the government was responsible for this task what would prevent Trump and the republicans from hijacking it? It might be frustrating but free speech is one of the cornerstones of democracy and we are much better off with it then without it.
> And that wasn't even the problem, it's that their lies created damages for another corporation
That's the first time i've ever seen anyone on HN sympathize with a billion dollar company:)
But that is exactly what the article was about! Dominion was libelled by Newsmax, so they was able to claim damages from them in a court of law. The law didn't allow them to get away with it. The First Amendment is working as inteneded. Some damage to society is tolerated to protect a much bigger and longer term benefit.
ceejayoz · 5h ago
> Wouldn't that damage the right to free speech?
We already ban defamation, fraud, the f-bomb and boobs on publicly available television channels, etc.
> Dominion was libelled by Newsmax, so they was able to claim damages from them in a court of law. The law didn't allow them to get away with it.
Long, long after the damage was done, and it'll take equally long the next time they do the same thing. As the saying goes, if there's just a fine, the fine is just the cost of doing business.
platevoltage · 4h ago
We've watched media companies settle cases that they would have won on the merits in order to avoid the wrath of a vengeful authoritarian. We've already slipped down that slope.
alistairSH · 6h ago
~1/3 of their annual revenue. Not nothing, but likely small enough that it’s just a cost of doing business and not a real deterrent. IMO.
benjiro · 5h ago
Annual revenue is not profit. This is the money earned without all the costs of running the business.
For instance, the total revenue was 171m in 2024. But the cost of revenue was 86m. Then you need to remove the operation expenses, that are 153m. So in 2024, the before taxes net income was a loss of 69 million.
In 2025 they are currently at -30m because it seems they cut in their Operating Expense. Explains some of the anchors leaving in 2024 (the impact of big cuts are often only felt the next year)
Here is a very important titbit:
> Newsmax and Newsmax Broadcasting LLC agreed to pay Dominion and its affiliates over three installments, starting with $27 million that was paid on Friday. Newsmax will pay $20 million on January 15 and another $20 million on January 15, 2027.
In other words, they are not able to pay out the 67m in 2025, and are paying it off over 3 years. Given the negative income it has, combined with the now extra payments for then next 3 years...
They are going to be cutting even more staff, what will affect their ability to generate revenue. It may look like a good deal, only 1/3 of their revenue, a 3 year payment plan. But its more of a survival plan.
Why did Dominion accept this? Because its guaranteed money. Dominion is not out to destroy newsmax, no, Dominion wants cheese and a dead newsmax means no cheese. But the effect will be hard on the newsmax, do not underestimate this. Let alone internally...
Some people will see this as a newsmax win, because most people do not know the difference between revenue. And why payment plans are not good indicator. But in reality, the company was already on a bankruptcy route, and its not going to get better. So unless somebody Musk steps in with major $$$ to buyout and finance them for a long time, ...
phonon · 3h ago
Well, Newsmax raised about $400 million this year in stock sales, so they can easily afford it.
bradleybuda · 6h ago
This kind of comment comes up a lot On The Internet and it tells me that the commenter has never worked at a company that has lost a massive lawsuit. As someone who has worked at one of those companies, I can tell you that losing a suit like this will absolutely lead to huge operational changes to avoid it happening again.
Whether or not those changes actually change the "character" of the company is a different question (IMHO Newsmax is morally defunct and cannot be saved) but no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".
notatoad · 5h ago
i think it's unclear whether newsmax is a "real" company or not. is there any indication that they're trying to make money, or are they trying to push their agenda? because they pretty clearly do have an agenda to push.
if they're a real company designed to make a profit, then sure, 1/3 of their annual revenue is plenty of incentive to make a real change, and could even be a company-ending event. If they're just a rich person's tool to influence public opinion, then whether or not $67m is a big enough number to make a dent depends on the pockets of their funders, not on the company's finances.
bradleybuda · 5h ago
It's a publicly-traded company (and was private for 16 years prior to going public) so it seems likely that actually making money is at least somewhere on their list of priorities...
unrealhoang · 4h ago
> no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".
Fox News did, they lost 10 times as much money and is more successful than ever BECAUSE they did it, so for them it's just "the cost of doing business" or even an "investment".
alistairSH · 6h ago
Yeah, that’s fair. Settlements like this should include a complete change out of executive teams and BoD. Or something to try and fix the moral bankruptcy.
yibg · 5h ago
Taken in isolation this might be true, but these types of relatively small monetary damage don't seem to provide a good deterrent in general. Newsmax (as well as fox etc) is still airing provably false or at best misleading information and classifying it as "opinion". e.g. the other country pays the tariffs.
On a more society scale, if the damage from outright lies about an election costs on the order of 67m, what's to deter any of the billionaires from funding orgs like Newsmax to help win elections by spreading lies? It's a fraction of what Musk spent for 2024.
I don't have a good answer though that doesn't also have abuse potential the other way.
felixgallo · 6h ago
This would be true if the source of funding were the standard kind of corporate funding. But there’s reason to believe that the backing money behind this corporation does not care in the slightest and regards this sort of poultry fine as merely the cost of doing its particular business, which is also not a standard type of corporate business.
loeg · 5h ago
It's "paltry."
litoE · 5h ago
"What's $1,000? Mere chicken-feed. A poultry matter."
(Groucho Marx)
ac29 · 5h ago
They've never turned a profit though, so this only adds to their financial problems.
gkoberger · 5h ago
I imagine they likely have insurance for things like this. Or at least I would, if my business model was largely based on libel.
evan_ · 4h ago
Who would underwrite that?
kristjansson · 6h ago
Agree that it should be more, but what sort of margins do you realize that 1/3 of _revenue_ seems small?
alistairSH · 5h ago
“Small enough” not “small”. Likely not enough to force a major change in the “morals” of the company.
nemomarx · 5h ago
Well it is only one year of revenue for an action they did across multiple years.
whoiskevin · 5h ago
I'd like to see something that takes 50% of their revenue for 5 to 10 years.
Cadwhisker · 5h ago
That fine needs an extra zero on the end. They'll shrug it off as the cost of doing business.
whatsupdog · 6h ago
Unpopular opinion: Paper ballots with in person voting (with an ID) is the only 100% fool proof and verifiable voting system. Everything else could be manipulated or hacked. And when there's trillions of dollars and world power on the line, it's just a matter of time when the "could be" turns to "would be".
yibg · 4h ago
Is there evidence that in person voting is meaningfully more secure than other forms (like mail in voting) let alone 100% fool proof?
Even assuming it is, how do we solve the other issues it causes if it's the only way to vote? e.g.:
- How do US citizens that don't live or are not at the time of voting physically in the US vote? e.g. overseas military personnel.
- People that live in remote areas of the country without easy access to in person voting stations?
- Those with limited mobility and have a hard time physically getting to a voting station?
- Those with limited transportation options? e.g. don't have reliable access to a car.
- Those that do shift work and can't or can't afford to take the time off?
- The estimated millions of Americans that don't have a valid form of ID?
End of the day, even if in person voting with a valid ID is the only reliable way to vote, we also need to evaluate the marginal reduction in voting fraud against disenfranchising voters.
marstall · 6h ago
The arguments pro and con are purely motivated by partisan concerns. its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id, therefore voter id laws supposedly favors republicans. that supposed fact is at the heart of the entire debate and as far as i know there is nothing more to it.
sugarpimpdorsey · 6h ago
> its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id
This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID - when massive developing countries like India that are still struggling with basic things like sanitation have long ago solved this problem - is nothing short of embarrassing.
There are people in rural India that live in straw huts that have EPIC cards.
The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind but it would never see the light of day in the US, because maintaining a "disenfranchised" voting bloc is more valuable as a bargaining chip than the positive social contributions of such a program.
atmavatar · 5h ago
Getting an ID is not as simple as you make it out to be.
For many people, getting an ID requires taking a day off work, which for many can mean their family is going to miss one or more meals, or even worse, that they miss a car or rent payment.
Consequently, this is also a strong reason why Republicans have repeatedly blocked attempts to make voting day a national holiday, while at the same time strategically closing down polling locations -- so working poor (predominantly registered Democrats) have a harder time voting.
But it gets even worse than that. During segregation era, it wasn't uncommon for black women to be turned away from hospitals and be forced to give birth via midwives, then be unable to obtain birth certificates for their children. Because they have no official birth certificates, states deny them IDs.
Voter ID laws are explicitly designed to disenfranchise these people, because they're virtually always proposed by individuals representing the very states that denied black people birth certificates, and in many cases, those same individuals proposing the laws lived through the very era when those birth certificates were still actively being denied.
That said: I'm mostly in agreement - the solution is to get these people proper IDs (and by extension, birth certificates). However, I think you'll find the very people proposing these ID laws are going to be the same ones stonewalling any attempts to address the problems I laid out.
somebehemoth · 2h ago
To support the idea of unexpected difficulties in getting ID, I suggest reading about the North Carolina DMV. More direct evidence: try to schedule an appointment with the NC DMV via their online appointment system from any metropolitan area of the state and probably most others. Most people would not expect this to be a problem since the state requires online booking to do all kinds of identification related services.
CharlesW · 5h ago
The actual argument by anyone who cares about voting rights concerns structural barriers to obtaining ID (hint: doesn't include stupidity). India's Aadhaar ID system, which still struggles with duplicate and missing voter records, doesn't magically solve any of the problems you mention.
> Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word".
That's not how it works here. Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. Thanks in part to multiple levels of safeguards, impersonation fraud has been effectively non-existent. Of course, Rockland County and similar cases may prove the existence of other attacks on our democracy that don't depend on impersonation fraud.
jeltz · 5h ago
> Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification.
And how is that less of a barrier than requiring an ID? Just fix so that it is easy to get an ID like most other countries have.
dragonwriter · 1h ago
> And how is that less of a barrier than requiring an ID? Just fix so that it is easy to get an ID like most other countries have.
Great, do that, first, and once that is in place in a manner that is secure for the future, we can talk about whether it makes sense to condition the franchise on it.
Of course, the people that are most for Voter ID are also opposed to that (in fact, in some cases, they have simultaneously adopted voter ID rules and made it harder to get IDs, specifically targeting minor areas for the latter effect.)
CharlesW · 5h ago
It's less of a barrier because there are many good options already. The specifics vary by state, but in addition to many kinds of government IDs (drivers licenses, military IDs, recognized tribe IDs, birth certificates in some states, etc.), it can include things like utilities bills, bank statements, paychecks, etc.
jeffbee · 5h ago
You are welcomed to fix this. There is not a single Democrat anywhere in America who will be mad if you fix this. Everyone will congratulate you. The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards, and have systematically structured the system such that even born citizens cannot get one due to having never had a birth certificate (because they were born in Jim Crow jurisdictions that refused to record the births of Black people).
sugarpimpdorsey · 5h ago
> The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards
Source?
The fact is you need ID for SNAP and Medicaid benefits.
So who are all these people with no ID, no money, no food, no identity, no anything but somehow all eligible voters?
jakelazaroff · 5h ago
Why do you assume the people targeted must have no money, or use SNAP or Medicaid?
There are dozens of examples of Republican states attempting to disenfranchise minority voters.
Not sure why you’re bringing up money, food, or identity here. But as a simple example: picture an average middle class New Yorker. They do not drive. They don’t travel internationally. Why would they need to go get an ID? (I lived in NY for about 11 years, and went a long chunk of that without bothering to get an ID. Only did eventually so that I could rent a car)
I wish you’d recognize that the “problem” you’re suggesting needs solving was invented by political actors with the sole intent of increasing their odds of winning elections. There’s no other real problem they’re trying to solve.
sugarpimpdorsey · 5h ago
> Thanks in part to multiple levels of safeguards, impersonation fraud has been effectively non-existent.
Unsuccessful fraud is effectively non-existent.
There is no public data about successful fraud.
So why not make the system bulletproof?
Why do we constantly improve encryption algorithms? Why do modern web browsers not work with cipher suites on 5 year old hardware making them effectively useless e-waste? According to information security folks I can't even be trusted with the hardware in my own house. But we trust that all the mail in ballots were filled out only once by the person whose name is on the ballot. Okay.
CharlesW · 5h ago
> There is no public data about successful fraud.
The notoriously liberal (/s) Heritage Foundation maintains a public database of all known election fraud cases in the U.S., finding less than two-dozen cases since 1979. Many independent studies come to the same conclusion. Physical voting fraud is statistically negligible, if not perfectly non-existent.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be cautious about fraud, but impersonation fraud will not be how it happens unless we centralize and digitize voting. With that will come the inevitable centralization and digitization of new systemic risks at scale.
tshaddox · 5h ago
India's voter ID cards are federal IDs issued by the Election Commission of India. There is no such widespread federal ID in the United States and likely no feasible candidates for quickly ramping up ID card issuance to all U.S. voters. And my guess is that most political support for voter ID laws is paired with explicit opposition to any competently-run federal ID program.
jakelazaroff · 5h ago
> The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID.
That's not the solution because lack of ID isn't really the problem.
These problem is that the Republican party's goal is to disenfranchise people who demographically tend to vote Democratic. The difficulty in getting an ID is not an accidental feature of the system — it is an intentional policy choice made to prevent people from exercising their right to vote.
Until this root problem is fixed, any bureaucratic solutions are simply a game of whack-a-mole. If you make IDs easy to obtain, legislatures will enact rules preventing people from using them [1]. If you amend the state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them [2].
> state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them
"Funnily", Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was allowed to vote in Florida, who typically bars convicted felons from voting, because "he had not yet been sentenced, therefore the conviction was not yet complete".
I guarantee any other Floridian in the same position will be laughed at if they try to vote using this (non) precedent.
jeltz · 5h ago
This goes to show neither party is interested in a working society. I find republicans a lot worse but as you say of the democrats actually cared they would have done like most of the rest of the world and made sure IDs are easy to get.
favorited · 4h ago
How exactly are the Democrats supposed to do that? Somehow require everyone to get a passport card? Introduce some new kind of federal identification card? That would go over great.
It's impossible enough to get things done these days, why should they waste political capital solving a problem that doesn't exist?
jedimastert · 4h ago
> This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID
Citation needed
scarface_74 · 4h ago
The red states consistently make it harder for Democratic leaning populations to get ID. Everything from closing places where ID is available to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs.
In some places native Americans can’t get IDs because of their address.
> to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs.
A student ID does not require the holder to get both a state and FBI background check. Besides the background checks, obtaining a license to carry (Texas gun permit) also requires an ID that could be used for voting itself. Student IDs, not so much. Also, I think people really underestimate the number of Democrat leaning gun owners in Texas.
There are far more relevant examples to use, including cost and difficultly navigating bureaucracy for obtaining documents. Throwing that Texas example in there weakens the argument and I really wish people would stop so the real arguments can be taken seriously.
scarface_74 · 4h ago
To get a student ID, you have to have a government ID from your home state or a passport. You don’t think schools just take your word for it as they allow you to use their services that cost tens of thousands a year?
1659447091 · 4h ago
Community colleges also issue student IDs
Forgery is far more simple for those than a LTC
scarface_74 · 3h ago
Absolutely no one is forging an ID to vote.
This is the percentage of voter fraud found in the US by the conservative Heritsge foundation.
The largest voter fraud ever attempted in the US was actually 2020 with the Republican fake electors.
1659447091 · 3h ago
I meant forgery to obtain a student id vs a LTC.
I think you are misunderstanding my intent here.
The student ID thing is a weak argument. If they need a government issue ID/passport to get a student ID -- then so what if a student ID is not allowed? They already have a valid ID to vote with.
It's a distraction. Texas has been doing trumpism since before trump was a thing. Allowing LTC but not student ID does 2 things only and neither has to do with voting; it pisses off people not in their camp and being a valid Texas state ID keeps in line with using a valid Texas ID in places where that is used (not only voting).
A student ID is not a valid Texas state ID (voting or otherwise). Stating that LTC is okay and not a student ID specifically for voting is them trolling and you are falling right into it. It's getting people caught up on something that seems like it's done to disadvantage one side, but really a student ID is simply not a valid Texas ID, nor is it good for anything other than as a supporting identity document to go along with primary or secondary ID documents in obtaining a valid Texas ID. Note: you can't get a LTC without a valid ID.
My vote for largest voter fraud was 2000, of course no one would call it that.
scarface_74 · 3h ago
No, a student ID requires a valid identification which can be from their home state.
But a student is allowed to vote in the state where they are attending college or their home state. But not both.
Of course Texas did everything possible to make it harder for college students to vote
It doesn't matter if a student ID required a DNA test. It is simply not a valid ID as accepted by the state of Texas.
States have a constitution right to establish its voting rules. If students want to vote in Texas and Texas requires a valid Texas ID then the student needs a Texas approved valid ID to vote. There is a list of IDs the state of Texas considers valid, including a passport, however a student ID is not a valid ID as recognized by Texas for any state business.
If that is simply beyond your being able to look at without grasping for straws and moving the goal post [we are talking about LTC vs student ID specifically, if you wanted to talk about voting locations then you should of went with that and left the ID thing out of it, which was exactly my point in the first post]. Anyway the only valid conclusion I can come away with from this discussion is that you only want to indulge in faux outrage and win kudos or something.(unfortunate but what a weird way to waste time) You have fun with that and I hope you get bunches of kudos, take care.
scarface_74 · 2h ago
And allowing student IDs for voting isn’t some crazy liberal idea. Plenty of conservative states allow it.
You really think it’s an apolitical policy in Texas?
And states don’t have a carte blanche ability to have whatever laws they want to about voting, there were a bunch of lawsuits and laws passed in the sixties about that….
mindslight · 4h ago
> Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind
I for one am not behind this until we have actual privacy laws with teeth, and those laws have put a stop to the ongoing widespread abuses of the identification system we already have. As it stands, people's nebulous fear of handing out their DL/SSN numbers is the main thing holding back a deluge of every other business (including websites) demanding your ID for one purported reason or another, but really to augment their surveillance databases.
otterley · 5h ago
We've been trusting our voters' word for centuries and it hasn't been a problem yet. Why all the distrust all of a sudden? What changed?
sugarpimpdorsey · 5h ago
You can't enter Costco anymore without scanning your ID card and them checking your face because people were cheating. I asked one of the cashiers when they first rolled out more stringent ID checks and she said they were catching 5-10 people a day where the photo didn't match.
Likewise you can't enter a bar, buy booze or cigarettes, rent a car or hotel room without ID because no one can be trusted.
> it hasn't been a problem yet
This is a bit naive. The hackers of yore (think RMS) would refuse to set passwords on their accounts. Those days are over. Would you be open to having a blank password on your HN account? If not, why? It hasn't been a problem yet.
otterley · 4h ago
First, your response doesn't answer the question I asked.
Second, these two things are not the same. People routinely try to defraud businesses because they get tangible value out of it. They don't routinely try to defraud elections: Not only is the punishment more severe for the latter; the would-be fraudster gets practically nothing of value for his efforts.
And to say it's not a problem is not naive. Investigations are routinely carried out in response to allegations of voter fraud, and practically none result in any serious accusations let alone convictions, and certainly none at the scale that could affect an elections outcome.
lesuorac · 5h ago
It has been a problem! Even paper ballots have been a problem!
Jimmy Carter has documented his own first hand account with it.
> We asked John Pope, a friend of ours, to go to the courthouse to represent me. When he arrived he was dismayed to see the local political boss, Joe Hurst, ostentatiously helping my opponent. He was requiring all voters to mark their ballots on a table in front of him and telling them to vote for Homer Moore. The ballots were then dropped through a large hole in a pasteboard box, and John watched Hurst reach into the box several times, remove some ballots, and discard them.
Let me rephrase: it hasn't been a problem of such magnitude or importance that has motivated the populace clamoring for changing it (compare with, say, the temperance movement). Also, the plural of anecdote is not data.
tasty_freeze · 4h ago
You are confusing election fraud with voter fraud. Voter fraud is a non-issue, but election fraud is something that absolutely needs to be worried about.
One thing I have asked a handful of R friends and family is this: after 2016 Trump claimed 3M+ illegal votes were cast. Not only did he have a personal interest in rooting out such illegal voting, but he was duty-bound to do something about it. He formed a committee, headed by Kris Kobach (which is its own significant story) to investigate ... and nothing came of it. So, which is it: was Trump negligent in not stopping this massive amount of illegal voting, were they incompetent in that they didn't find any, or were they just lying?
Another recurring news item every two years is about how some eagle-eyed county registrar has found hundreds of dead people enrolled to vote. Huzzah, voter fraud proved once again! The fact is that people die all the time (and move away) and one of the routine duties of the registrar is to use official records to scrub the voter rolls. When my folks died I didn't go to the registrar and ask them to remove their names. In the half a dozen times I've moved I've never notified the registrar that I've moved. Such reports are a non-story. The next time someone brings it up I'd love to ask: hey, what is the breakdown on that list? How many of them are not citizens? How many are affiliated with each party. I'm sure it would show that there is no conspiracy going on, just people moving and dying.
platevoltage · 5h ago
One of the most prolific liars in history didn't have an election go his way. That's what changed.
dehrmann · 4h ago
That's the standard narrative, but it could work out in unexpected ways because of who has time to vote and the ability to get to polling places.
platevoltage · 5h ago
Should ID's be free and easy to get, because if not, this would amount to a poll tax, which has been deemed unconstitutional.
We are also not required to have or carry ID to carry out any of our constitutionally protected rights.
We would need to set up a service where a representative from the government would come to your house on demand, verify your identity, and issue you a free ID whether you live in downtown DC, rural New Mexico, or somewhere in Puerto Rico. Otherwise this is a non-starter.
preinheimer · 5h ago
I don't think that in person voting with ID is a fool proof way to guarantee that only the people who "should be voting" get to vote.
I also think you disenfranchise too many people when you do that.
- People who work on oil rigs won't get to vote
- People who do shift work covering the hours the polls are open wont get to vote
- People who are of sound mind, but too unwell to travel to a polling location wont get to vote
- November is Red/blue king crab season in Alaska, guess those people don't get to vote
- Flight attendants & pilots might be away from home that day.
- People in the military might be on exercise that day, we're cutting them off (though I'll assume deployed service members will get to vote wherever they are)
- Long haul truckers are out of luck
- Anyone on vacation is missing their chance
- College students are always a wildcard, do they cast a ballot where they are (ID could be from a different state) or go home for the weekend?
platevoltage · 5h ago
--- College students are always a wildcard, do they cast a ballot where they are (ID could be from a different state) or go home for the weekend?
I personally couldn't care less as long as they only vote once.
ThunderSizzle · 4h ago
Nearly everything you said is solved with the roll out of early voting for nearly a whole month or more prior to the actual election say.
Also, all rights come with responsibilities, and part of the responsibility of voting is registering to vote, getting your ID, and showing up to vote. We shouldn't bend society to let people who don't want bare minimum responsibility to participate in their right.
We have no problem putting serious restrictions on rights of people in other areas coinciding with responsibility.
duxup · 4h ago
In Minnesota we have paper ballots, we run them through an optical scanner straight into a lockbox attached to the scanner. The scanner counts the votes, but there's a paper copy and they can audit the machine and ballot 1:1.
In theory you could just run it through the exact machine again and you'd get a good test for what is going on, and you have a physical copy to count / verify.
I think it is a good system, and about as close to digital as I want to get.
Some solid old school tech and some reasonably new.
nobody9999 · 1h ago
>In Minnesota we have paper ballots, we run them through an optical scanner straight into a lockbox attached to the scanner. The scanner counts the votes, but there's a paper copy and they can audit the machine and ballot 1:1.
That's exactly how we do it in New York as well.
What's more, before I'm given that paper ballot, I need to provide my name and address, then provide a signature which is compared to the signature on file with the Board of Elections. If the signature doesn't match, I don't get to vote.
virgildotcodes · 6h ago
How on Earth are we able to have a global digital financial system that is able to keep track of trillions in transactions per year but running a seasonal election with < 100 million participants through a digital system seems too hard?
peanut-walrus · 5h ago
1. There is no requirement to make it impossible to determine which transactions someone has made, in fact, quite the opposite.
2. Transactions get rolled back all the time for various reasons.
3. The global digital financial system is a result of decades of evolution and millions of man-years of work.
dmix · 5h ago
Listing a few: Market incentives, general competency of the organizations running the systems, government procurement using the same set of bigcos who only care about getting the contract not about delivering quality after. Not that I have an opinion on paper ballots but I understand the concern for such a sensitive system.
eirikbakke · 5h ago
If electronics is involved in the act of voting, the voter has no assurance that the ballot remains secret (even if you're a software engineer!). With paper/envelope/box, by contrast, the voter can see and understand the full process.
viewtransform · 5h ago
This is a solved problem in India [0] - and the system is brilliant in its simplicity[1]: Fixed function non-reprogrammable battery operated electronic units, no connectivity, randomization of voting units and a paper trail for verification.
Because of the incentives of the US voting system. Voting is not mandatory so parties are incentivised to mess with voting access to make it easier for their demographics to vote but not others. There's also a general distain for letting 'the wrong people' vote in America.
normalaccess · 5h ago
Not a bug but a feature... The messier things get the more "Realpolitik" can happen (using it pejoratively).
bspammer · 4h ago
Even if you ignore all technical problems - the problem with electronic voting is that it provides a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Even if an election is run perfectly legitimately, bad actors can make credible-sounding claims around hackers editing votes, or voting machines being rigged.
avs733 · 5h ago
Because this isn’t based on logic it’s based on feels and intuition.
dkiebd · 6h ago
Those handling the financial system have an interest in it running right whilst those handling the election system have an interest in tampering with the results.
evan_ · 4h ago
Sounds good until a strongman recruits tens of thousands of masked thugs to patrol cities and beat up anyone who looks like they might vote for the opponent of said strongman.
tshaddox · 5h ago
Are you just talking about the part of election security that ensures that only eligible voters vote (and each only once)? Because paper ballots have little to do with many other aspects of election security.
somat · 5h ago
disagree, I think paper ballots are just as easily hacked(printers are cheap). I think that while technical mechanisms are nice and should be used, they should not be depended on to secure the election. The only real solution is to have a politically neutral well motivated uncorrupted election officer corps. and if this sounds hard, it is. Thus why people keep trying to turn to technical means to secure an election and are baffled when it lets them down.
Among it's many faults, I think this is one advantage of the weird US method of running elections at the county level. While it is probably easier to corrupt individual election corps, due to it's distributed nature it is harder to systematically corrupt all of them. This does mean that US elections are strangly inconsistent from county to county, but that is the price you pay for a distributed system.
As a counterpoint to the "electronic election transactions are impossible to secure" platform, look at the credit card processing systems, yes there is fraud, but compared to the volume of daily transactions it is insignificant. the point being, large scale trusted electronic transactions are possible.
Let's get back to brass tacks and stop all the monkey business. Even if there is no tomfoolery goin on (and I believe there is) why not make it beyond doubt?
ModernMech · 1h ago
Why is anyone talking about voting methods when the President can call up a state and ask them to gerrymander 5 congressional seats? What's the fucking point in caring about the integrity of various voting mechanisms if they can just fix the outcome anyway? You don't need to scam the voting box, just win a majority in the legislature and then prevent the other side from ever winning again. Sidesteps the whole voting ID issue very cleanly.
Volundr · 6h ago
> Unpopular opinion: Paper ballots with in person voting (with an ID) is the only 100% fool proof and verifiable voting system.
I don't know that it's that unpopular. I disagree with the 100% fool proof and verifiable claim though. I can think of lots of interesting ways of screwing with it, e.x. manipulating the chain of custody or tampering with the ballots to make errors likely.
Everything is a balance. Paper ballots aren't magically 100% secure, and in person voting comes with trade offs. Ex making it difficult for the military to vote, and making it such a big production for my highly disabled sister that she probably wouldn't bother.
I happen to think the pros aren't worth the cons and that most of the handwringing around mail in ballots and machines are FUD rather than measured concerns. That doesn't mean I disagree that in person isn't "more" secure.
jltsiren · 5h ago
> I happen to think the pros aren't worth the cons and that most of the handwringing around mail in ballots and machines are FUD rather than measured concerns.
You can't trust the machines. You can't trust the election authorities. You can't trust the post office. Those are fundamental assumptions, not FUD or measured concerns.
Elections should be designed for bad situations, because the results don't matter that much when things are good. Maybe a civil war is likely, or maybe it just ended and people are trying to rebuild trust. In any case, people don't trust each other, and they don't trust the authorities, but they are still trying to have legitimate elections.
The goal is not 100% security, 100% correctness, or something equally silly. The goal is a system where either every major party has a justified belief that the elections were legitimate and fair, the reported results are mostly correct, and there was no substantial fraud. Or at least one party questions the results due to widespread fraud. You want to trust the results, even when you can't trust the people running the elections.
Many paper ballot systems have been designed under such assumptions. The system assumes that the people running the elections cannot be trusted, but they also can't trust each other. You can't trust the people, but you trust that the system will detect and report any attempts at large-scale fraud.
yibg · 4h ago
There has been no evidence of wide spread fraud and there is every evidence that elections have been legitimate and fair. A non trivial portion of the population still thinks the 202 elections was rigged. End of the day, somme people will consider whatever doesn't go their way rigged.
Right now the complaint for voter fraud are things like no ID requirements, mail in ballots etc. If those go away it'll be something else.
jltsiren · 4h ago
You have a short-term perspective. Republics often last longer than a human lifetime. They should prepare for scenarios that happen once every few centuries.
The most important aspect of elections is that the vast majority of losers accept the outcome. If they don't, the elections failed. It doesn't really matter if there was fraud or if the losers just don't accept the result. The fundamental reason is the same in both cases: too many citizens don't support the system.
nobody9999 · 1h ago
>The goal is not 100% security, 100% correctness, or something equally silly. The goal is a system where either every major party has a justified belief that the elections were legitimate and fair, the reported results are mostly correct, and there was no substantial fraud. Or at least one party questions the results due to widespread fraud. You want to trust the results, even when you can't trust the people running the elections.
Right. Which is why in all 3500+ elections (and yes, every county has a separate election, with separate ballots, separate rules and separate groups of folks managing the elections. In fact, it's your neighbors who manage and staff the elections in your county) every election day, there are generally representatives from each candidate and party involved in each race, from city council member, animal control officer, coroner, mayor, congressperson, etc., etc., etc. at each polling place and counting center (where different) who are there to make sure their candidate is not shortchanged.
This happens everywhere, ever time and is nothing new. IF there are claimed "irregularities," recounts are performed and lawsuits filed and adjudicated.
But don't believe me. Go ahead and work at the polls. They hire and train folks to work at polling places during the elections. See for yourself. Or is that too much work and you'd rather rely on someone else (you trust them, but not anyone else?) to tell you what goes on at the polls?
Please.
on_the_train · 2h ago
Then you just throw away the ballots, mark them as invalid, fudge with the counting or the transmission of the counts. That's how we do it in my country.
thejazzman · 6h ago
unpopular for many valid and party leaning ressons.
quink · 6h ago
Australian here. Electronic voting is a joke. And a not very funny one.
In fact, I’d call electronic voting unpopular given the many, many examples on this page.
Nursie · 4h ago
Except it doesn’t matter whether it’s foolproof or verifiable.
The only thing that matters is seizing on a narrative and running with it, whipping up fear and discontent.
The solution is to heal the partisanship in US society that infects everything there, and acts like poison on public discourse and trust.
alistairSH · 6h ago
Paper ballots can be faked. Or lost. Or stuffed.
Anyways, haven’t most/all districts gone to paper ballots, the electronic part is just auto tabulation. They can be counted manually if necessary.
jeltz · 5h ago
What is the point then? Why introduce a machine where none is needed. In most countries all votes are counted twice by his d and the initial voubt finishes in a few hours.
platevoltage · 5h ago
We had half the country believe a conspiracy theory based upon the fact that they didn't get to know who won the Election day of. There is NO way Americans would accept universal hand counting.
bediger4000 · 5h ago
They're faster.
normalaccess · 5h ago
Are they? we used to have same day numbers... Now elections can take weeks to figure out who won. Progress in the negative direction.
bediger4000 · 5h ago
Can you point to a solid reference that national elections had same day numbers and the years of those election s?
jeltz · 5h ago
Same day results should be more than good enough and that is possible with hand counting in most of the world.
Count me as one who strongly opposes mail-in and early voting because I believe it violates the sanctity of the voting booth.
alistairSH · 5h ago
Do you have anything beyond a gut feeling here? Several states do primarily mail-in voting and it seems to work fine.
baggy_trough · 5h ago
How would you know if it didn’t? The very nature of the problem means that it’s hidden!
nobody9999 · 1h ago
>How would you know if it didn’t? The very nature of the problem means that it’s hidden!
Even if it's at a polling place on the day of, it's still a secret ballot. As such, of course it's hidden. It's a secret ballot. What are you going on about?
baggy_trough · 1h ago
Absolutely, which is why I oppose mail in ballots. They don't have that property!
platevoltage · 5h ago
Do you also oppose a federal election holiday? because pretty much everyone who opposes flexible voting options does so because they want less people voting.
baggy_trough · 1h ago
That is an uncharitable view. There are too many federal holidays, but I would support repurposing one, or voting on the weekend.
kristopolous · 5h ago
"sanctity of the voting booth"?!
> More than one in five polling places have closed over the last decade, according to an ABC News and ABC Owned Stations analysis of data from the Election Administration and Voting Survey, the Center for New Data and the Center for Public Integrity.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/protecting-vote-1-5-election-day-p...
This is after Shelby County v. Holder, and now states are shutting down polling stations to suppress the vote --- well you can no longer accuse them that in the courts, but it is clearly what they are doing.
There's no "sanctity of the voting booth" - shutting down polling stations and DMVs and then requiring people to visit the DMV and the polling station and making it intentionally more difficult for some people, this is all very very obvious and you can't hide it from me by waving a flag in front of my face.
Here's the actual plan:
Require in person voting, "protect" the polling places with armed masked goons working for ICE to "keep illegals from voting" and then call it freedom.
Give me a break. Do you really think we're that dumb?
baggy_trough · 5h ago
Yes that’s right, the sanctity of the voting booth. The ability, and indeed the requirement, to vote in private so as to avoid all influence is an important value. Of course, one may prepare beforehand.
kristopolous · 15m ago
Politicians writing rules to suppress the votes they don't want, is this a brand new concept to you?
Have you honestly never heard of this before?
Does the actual reality that exist in the actual world that we actually live in matter more than some imagined ritual of yours?
Tossing unnecessary burdens on the process is how they mess with this thing you think is so holy
byronic · 5h ago
Polling places aren't open during a plurality of hours in which people who work irregular hours can vote -- the Alabama example above affected me personally but generally is true in most of the southeastern United States. We don't get the day off, there isn't a means of transport unless you already live in a city that provides "rides to the polls," and lines are often long and slow to move.
I'm not saying that to deride your instinct here that a polling place being a private booth is kind of Cool™, just that providing accessibility (or, if I had my druthers, making voting _mandatory_ and giving everyone the day off to do it) sometimes requires we open the idea book and consider how we can make sure everyone who has the right to vote can do it.
snickerbockers · 5h ago
Im so old I can remember when this used to be a common left-wing opinion.
BTW, Dominion is actually diebold amalgamated with a couple other "voting" machine vendors into a single corporation.
CharlesW · 5h ago
Yep, it's disconcerting to see HN'ers demand that their federal government trump states' rights and issue mandatory centralized digital IDs.
platevoltage · 5h ago
We are already forced to use our social security number as some sort of personal serial number when doing things that don't involve a government funded pension.
jeffbee · 5h ago
It's unpopular because it's stupid and wrong, not because we are stupid and wrong.
bediger4000 · 5h ago
Human marked, human and machine readable both is good practice. Risk limiting audits after elections is good practice. CA, WA and CO at least do all this.
What does in person (with an ID) add to election security? That practice most certainly restricts voting unless there's a holiday for election day.
What keeps in person voting from being manipulated less than other good practice elections?
Why did in person voting become a big issue only just before and after 2020 election?
Why didn't anybody pay attention to what some states did after 2000 election?
jeltz · 5h ago
In person voting on election day makes replacing people's votes much harder. You only need to compromise a handful of people who guard the ballots othewise. The ratio of votes per staff guarding is much lower on election day in at least my country. Compromising enough people on election day would be ridiculous in my country.
nobody9999 · 1h ago
>Compromising enough people on election day would be ridiculous in my country.
Given that there are >3500 elections (one for each county) in the US every cycle, and all the competing eyes on the polls, counts and storage of ballots in each of those 3500+ counties makes compromising enough people to affect an election incredibly unlikely.
FridayoLeary · 6h ago
The counterargument is that mail in ballots help increase voter turnouts and that requiring id will turn people away. It's a weak argument because you shouldn't try to increase turnout by making voting less secure. Any other solution should be found instead.
platevoltage · 4h ago
I'm supposed to believe that my mail in paper ballot in California was less secure than when I voted in PA by pushing a button on a screen with no paper trail, on a machine made by a company with political ties.
litoE · 5h ago
I've never understood why elections are held on a Tuesday. Why aren't they held on a Sunday, which would eliminate the excuse of "I have to go to work"?
byronic · 5h ago
If you work at someplace other than Chik-Fil-A you're not guaranteed Sundays off either
Sabinus · 3h ago
Early voting solves this. There are some voting booths open all week, then on the Saturday/Sunday the main vote happens and they all open. If you can't make the Sunday you pop in during the week.
the_gastropod · 5h ago
There are people who work on Sundays.
litoE · 4h ago
I could be wrong, but I'm inclined to believe that many more people work on Tuesdays than Sundays.
bediger4000 · 5h ago
What, exactly is insecure about voting by mail? Are drop off ballot boxes also insecure? In the same or different ways?
jeltz · 5h ago
Mostly same way. Drop off ballot boxes are vulnerable to insiders while election day voting isn't really. It is much easier to have tons of volunteers watch the votes on election day compared yo watching votes for e.g. a couple of weeks.
baggy_trough · 5h ago
There's no way to know who actually filled it out, for example.
bediger4000 · 4h ago
That's true in any Australian ballot system - there' no link from ballot to human voter, and that's for a reason.
baggy_trough · 1h ago
I support that which is why I oppose mail in ballots.
kevingadd · 6h ago
If we really want to increase turnout, we can just make voting mandatory like other countries have.
Requiring ID is a problem given that a lot of people don't have easy access (or access at all) to legal ID, for various reasons, some as simple as cost. Having a license costs money on an ongoing basis and you need to have access to documents to prove your identity like a birth certificate, and some citizens don't have those through no fault of their own, like losing everything in a fire or even the relevant records agency itself burning down. Thankfully there are often fee waivers for hardship but there are certainly corner cases where saying 'if you want to vote you need ID' is basically a poll tax, something we rightfully banned in the US a long time ago.
platevoltage · 4h ago
I used to think voting should be mandatory. Now I think that mandatory voting would just exacerbate the name-recognition issue. I have no issue with uninformed people not voting. I have a huge issue with uninformed voters voting.
We also have an entire party who thrives on reduced turnout, and they basically control everything right now.
temp0826 · 5h ago
Enforced compulsory voting and ranked-choice voting (along with term limits and ending citizens united) would be pretty great.
platevoltage · 4h ago
Ranked Choice - absolutely. I would be much more enthusiastic about voting if I wasn't forced to vote for the empty garbage dumpster in order to keep the garbage dumpster full of baby diapers thats been set on fire from winning.
I really think people are too uninformed for compulsory voting. I envy these people. It would be nice not to care. I don't need them looking at a list of candidates and being like "Oh I remember that guy, he made a cameo in Home Alone 2, check"
mrangle · 5h ago
Compulsory voting is what regimes do when their government is so obviously corrupt that a strong voter turnout is the only thing left that lends an air of democracy. Most often suggested if flagging voter turnout might be seen as a possible public indictment of the system's democratic legitimacy. Now we can't have that sort of protest. The People will be enthusiastic! lol.
FireBeyond · 4h ago
Ahh, Australia, "so obviously corrupt" that mandatory voting is the only thing that lends an air of democracy.
I love this notion that the US is such a special snowflake that there's always a reason that things that work nearly everywhere else couldn't possibly work here.
mrangle · 4h ago
Your individual opinion of Australia, name calling, appeal to group behavior, and vague "things that work everywhere" doesn't negate the fact that not voting is a form of protest (or often just a simple preference) that a healthy democracy shouldn't have an issue with.
After all, if nine months of partisan rioting in an election season is kosher before a "free and fair election", which leads to over twenty five deaths, then not voting shouldn't be a big deal.
Unless, of course, a compulsory level turnout has value in lending legitimacy given the the broader context of antidemocratic events.
Democratic governments should not have the political protection of citing the compulsory turnout. Whether the political currency lent by the compulsory turnout is implied or overtly cited.
The political currency that the turnout lends is something that needs to be earned via the legitimate practice of government.
If the government processes become corrupt, then the voter turnout should be one avenue of reflecting that opinion by the populace.
The choice to withhold a vote is as democratically "sacred" as the right to vote.
FireBeyond · 3h ago
> Your individual opinion of Australia, name calling, appeal to group behavior, and vague "things that work everywhere" doesn't negate the fact that not voting is a form of protest (or often just a simple preference) that a healthy democracy shouldn't have an issue with.
You are free to not vote for any candidate in Australia. You are free to write "Fuck you all" on your ballot. All you must do is attend a voting station. And unlike the US, there are many legally enshrined protections to ensure you can.
I'm not sure your complaint. You are the one that tarred mandatory voting with a wide brush. I apologize for offering a counter-argument.
mrangle · 2h ago
Is the counter argument that Australia has compulsory voting and that you think it's a fine place? I don't dispute the right to an opinion. You can think that Australia is great and compulsory voting is great and "works". Go in peace.
Whereas my arguments are referencing democratic logic. I'm attempting to speak to a general logical framework of principles, rather than to (too much) give specific place opinions.
I took your "counter argument" statement about the existence of Australian compulsory voting as fact.
I'm not sure what the point is of returning to, what, partially contradict me on the details of Australian voting and where it isn't exactly totally compulsory?
Truly with all due respect, I think that you're having an argument with yourself at this point.
jeltz · 5h ago
The solution is obvious: make ID free and as hassle-free as possible to get.
platevoltage · 4h ago
That would essentially make the Voter ID fight a non-issue. I'd be fine with it, but I'm not naive enough to believe that election integrity is the motivation here, because it's not.
It's about keeping the undesirables out of the voting booth.
Sabinus · 52m ago
Exactly. In this very thread a democrat voter is arguing that low education people that are easy to pursuade shouldn't vote.
For the Republicans it's the immoral and poor and 'non Americans' who shouldn't really be voting.
And IMO it's gross attitude for a democracy.
platevoltage · 25m ago
As long as low education people are being persuaded with facts, and not lies, vote away!
baggy_trough · 6h ago
You have to have an ID to work. If we need to get non-workers ID in order to have secure elections, that is money well spent.
platevoltage · 4h ago
That has to happen before we can even talk about Voter ID requirements. I've NEVER seen a Republican mention this as an idea.
mrangle · 5h ago
ID isn't a poll tax because it isn't a poll tax. Voter ID requirements are no more discriminatory than they are for air travel.
triceratops · 4h ago
TSA will let you fly without ID. They have the right to deny you if they can't verify your identity through alternative means, and I'm sure they'll give you plenty of grief. But it does happen.
Air Travel isn't a constitutionally protected right. Try again.
mrangle · 3h ago
That doesn't change the discrimination logic.
No one imagines that everyone is just fine with what is implied to be the same level of discrimination in accessing air travel that they state is going on when voter ID requirements are in force. And yet.
platevoltage · 35m ago
You don’t have to be fine with it. I don’t like having to take off my shoes, but I have to because it’s not a constitutionally protected right. Voter ID is also not about election integrity. It’s about adding road blocks to voting.
FridayoLeary · 5h ago
I feel that forcing people to vote is more authoritarian than democratic. Places like North Korea have something like 99.5% turnouts for elections. One of the advantages of living in a democratic society is the freedom to choose not to participate in it, so long as this doesn't affect others.
The idea just rubs me the wrong way.
I understand America is somewhat unusual among most Western nations that lots of people don't have passports. A driving license should serve as a good ID card but lots of people don't have one of those either. As a Brit the idea of an ID card also feels undemocratic to me. In the UK we have inexpensive passports and a national voter registration database, with signatures and adresses recorded, why would that not work in the US?
platevoltage · 4h ago
I think in any compulsary voting system, you should be allowed to select "none of the above". That would be fine with me.
I fear that uninformed people will just fill in the bubbles though, and then you start getting votes based on name recognition only, and thats already a big enough issue.
nobody9999 · 1h ago
>As a Brit the idea of an ID card also feels undemocratic to me. In the UK we have inexpensive passports and a national voter registration database, with signatures and adresses recorded, why would that not work in the US?
In the US, we also have county (and state) voter registration databases with signatures and addresses recorded. And they do work in the US. The only real difference is that those practices are determined at the county and state levels and not at the national level. That's not a bug. In fact, it's required by our Constitution.
That some places abuse that really sucks. For me at least, that doesn't happen where I live.
lawlessone · 6h ago
I wouldn't say it's 100% fool proof, but paper does require a lot more people to be "In" on it.
But that moron in WH is still spreading lies about that election; he has no shame, no remorse, no nothing. On the contrary, he was successful in portraying himself a victim and win people’s sympathy. Even though he’s the one who called insurrection. There’s no accountability for him.
Look at South Korea, who indicted their politician who did same act. As well at Brazil, who’s rogue politician is in house arrest. But, fking only here, they are awarded with a 2nd term.
As for the second term, we can’t forget that the Democrats basically threw the election. This election was a layup. An easy win. And they did absolutely everything wrong. I almost blame them as much as Trump for this mess.
Good case for that in 2016, sure. 2024, not at all.
I wish there was a way to challenge - these corrupt and lying politicians - in court. Unfortunately, currently, Supreme Court is compromised as well.
They were also lying.
All Harris had to do was challenge Biden's position on the issue, and not parade Liz Cheney out on stage like the "disillusioned Republican vote" was a real thing.
At this point, I have lost all faith in the American electorate to rise above bigotry and see past social media propaganda.
I believe she did great during her nomination acceptance speech and during debate as well. But, you can’t make people understand something if they don’t want to.
She did mess up an opportunity to show that she wasn't just Biden v2 in an interview at some point, when asked what she might have done differently, there was nothing she could think of. Nothing at all.
That was an open goal to differentiate that she missed.
But I'm not sure it would have made a difference.
I don't see any fix for the news cycle besides slowing it down. Even if enough happens to fill 24h in a day there isn't enough time to actually analyze it at all.
Sure, but do you really think the Fox News anchors honestly believed what they were saying?
I’d venture a guess: no. They said what they said because that’s what they had to do to get their paycheck at the end of the day.
Yes, lawyers will say whatever to win a case. But I highly doubt those news anchors really thought the election was stolen. It’s all for ratings. Let’s be honest.
Their homepage right now is featuring a pull up and push up contest between Hegseth and RFK jr.
It hardly appears as though they’re trying to be a legitimate news network. (Same goes for CNN - both are incredibly and undeniably outrageous in their reporting)
But I agree, their audiences take their reporting seriously, even if they themselves are just saying what they say for the ratings.
You can argue that Fox News is intended to be basically the Colbert Report satirizing a certain mindset, but it's an obviously bad-faith argument. The Colbert Report was literally created to satirize the seriousness and mendacity of Fox News and its attempts to persuade people into a set of not just interpretations of the world, but factual beliefs about that world.
There is a line, and Fox runs way over the line into defamatory content multiple times an hour.
I can't immunize myself from currency counterfeiting charges by claiming that I never thought the copies were real, that it was all just in fun, that I was pranking the businesses I spent them at, and that my Youtube channel includes other fun bits of me deceiving people and telling jokes. The one does not exculpate the other.
When Trump is accused of it, her background as a lawyer kicks in and she can correctly articulate the reasons why Trump has not committed Treason.
However, in any other case she will accuse all manner of folks of committing treason and request they face harsh consequences.
Fox News is lies and rage bait.
Fox settled with Dominion for $800M.
“I find all of this so weird because of how it _elevates_ finance. [Various cases] imply that we are not entitled to be protected from pollution as _citizens_, or as _humans_. [Another] implies that we are not entitled to be told the truth _as citizens_. (Which: is true!) Rather, in each case, we are only entitled to be protected from lies _as shareholders_. The great harm of pollution, or of political dishonesty, is that it might lower the share prices of the companies we own.”
— Matt Levine
Here he is talking about shareholder lawsuits (securities fraud) being the primary mechanism of holding social responsibility.
I was curios for the exact source, and the link is:
* https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-03-31/senato...
* https://archive.is/9WcxD
He referenced / quoted it recently:
* https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-04-01/is-...
* https://archive.is/B7yvw
So all we need now is an angry left-wing billionaire who can launch a thousand defamation lawsuits, or the most sympathetic group of parents of dead children in history.
The last great nightly news anchor was Dan Rather, who was fired symbolically because their organization merely neutrally reported the existence of a sketchy story about possible documents that turned out to be fabricated about George W Bush's military service.
Sandy Hook v Jones was not "political". It was deeply, profoundly personal.
The Gawker lawsuit was also about settling personal scores. Obviously Hogan wasn't as sympathetic of a plaintiff as the Sandy Hook parents. But it was more odious because Thiel wanted to punish Gawker simply for hurting his feelings, not lying about him.
> So all we need now is an angry left-wing billionaire
Is there such a thing?
The closest we've got is the zombie husk of liberal George Soros, who is a center-left finance bro from a Holocaust survivor family who isn't fond of authoritarianism. While a constantly mentioned specter of the right (the fact that he's Jewish and talks with a foreign accent factors, for paleoconservatives), and probably the largest single donor to Democratic causes...
He isn't actually particularly left-wing, and his work isn't remotely comparable in scope or in aggression to the ideological warfare waged by the Koch Brothers, or the dozens of other billionaires who have joined hand in hand to establish the durable top-down political infrastructure of the GOP. If a politician or pundit just plays along with these people, if you stay loyal to the cause even in the most tortured argument, you will be a made man. There are thousands of positions held open at endowed economics departments, think tanks, lobbying firms, and captive media to reward people who fight the good fight for the right. Lose an election? There is always the possibility of another campaign in another district. Conversely there is a constant threat of well-funded primary campaigns against anyone who doesn't toe the line and kiss the ring.
The Democrats have no such leverage. Their operational interests conflict with the interests of their political base. They mostly seem to come into politics poisoned by Mr Smith Goes to Washington, or The West Wing, and then the people who survive are the ones with more ambition than ideology who do whatever they need to do to ensure incumbency. Their institutional infrastructure seems to be ~five lobbying firms whose only apparent purpose is punching left when their base comes into conflict with corporate donors, and skimming off the top. The only time you will see money weaponized in a meaningful way is to fight against a primary challenge from the left, to include running independents against the primary winner in eg NYC's 2025 mayoral. So goes the "big tent" party.
But if by chance an angry left-wing billionaire spontaneously occurred (let's say the Trump vs Musk relationship went down a little differently)... There are tortious weapons sitting on the table unused, which could be put into effect dismantling this flavor of "journalism". As long as red America is being fed cradle-to-grave, violently ethnonationalist propaganda we're going to have a tough time persuading them out of their worldview.
> And that wasn't even the problem, it's that their lies created damages for another corporation
That's the first time i've ever seen anyone on HN sympathize with a billion dollar company:)
But that is exactly what the article was about! Dominion was libelled by Newsmax, so they was able to claim damages from them in a court of law. The law didn't allow them to get away with it. The First Amendment is working as inteneded. Some damage to society is tolerated to protect a much bigger and longer term benefit.
We already ban defamation, fraud, the f-bomb and boobs on publicly available television channels, etc.
> Dominion was libelled by Newsmax, so they was able to claim damages from them in a court of law. The law didn't allow them to get away with it.
Long, long after the damage was done, and it'll take equally long the next time they do the same thing. As the saying goes, if there's just a fine, the fine is just the cost of doing business.
For instance, the total revenue was 171m in 2024. But the cost of revenue was 86m. Then you need to remove the operation expenses, that are 153m. So in 2024, the before taxes net income was a loss of 69 million.
In 2025 they are currently at -30m because it seems they cut in their Operating Expense. Explains some of the anchors leaving in 2024 (the impact of big cuts are often only felt the next year)
Here is a very important titbit:
> Newsmax and Newsmax Broadcasting LLC agreed to pay Dominion and its affiliates over three installments, starting with $27 million that was paid on Friday. Newsmax will pay $20 million on January 15 and another $20 million on January 15, 2027.
In other words, they are not able to pay out the 67m in 2025, and are paying it off over 3 years. Given the negative income it has, combined with the now extra payments for then next 3 years...
They are going to be cutting even more staff, what will affect their ability to generate revenue. It may look like a good deal, only 1/3 of their revenue, a 3 year payment plan. But its more of a survival plan.
Why did Dominion accept this? Because its guaranteed money. Dominion is not out to destroy newsmax, no, Dominion wants cheese and a dead newsmax means no cheese. But the effect will be hard on the newsmax, do not underestimate this. Let alone internally...
Some people will see this as a newsmax win, because most people do not know the difference between revenue. And why payment plans are not good indicator. But in reality, the company was already on a bankruptcy route, and its not going to get better. So unless somebody Musk steps in with major $$$ to buyout and finance them for a long time, ...
Whether or not those changes actually change the "character" of the company is a different question (IMHO Newsmax is morally defunct and cannot be saved) but no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".
if they're a real company designed to make a profit, then sure, 1/3 of their annual revenue is plenty of incentive to make a real change, and could even be a company-ending event. If they're just a rich person's tool to influence public opinion, then whether or not $67m is a big enough number to make a dent depends on the pockets of their funders, not on the company's finances.
Fox News did, they lost 10 times as much money and is more successful than ever BECAUSE they did it, so for them it's just "the cost of doing business" or even an "investment".
On a more society scale, if the damage from outright lies about an election costs on the order of 67m, what's to deter any of the billionaires from funding orgs like Newsmax to help win elections by spreading lies? It's a fraction of what Musk spent for 2024.
I don't have a good answer though that doesn't also have abuse potential the other way.
Even assuming it is, how do we solve the other issues it causes if it's the only way to vote? e.g.:
- How do US citizens that don't live or are not at the time of voting physically in the US vote? e.g. overseas military personnel.
- People that live in remote areas of the country without easy access to in person voting stations?
- Those with limited mobility and have a hard time physically getting to a voting station?
- Those with limited transportation options? e.g. don't have reliable access to a car.
- Those that do shift work and can't or can't afford to take the time off?
- The estimated millions of Americans that don't have a valid form of ID?
End of the day, even if in person voting with a valid ID is the only reliable way to vote, we also need to evaluate the marginal reduction in voting fraud against disenfranchising voters.
This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID - when massive developing countries like India that are still struggling with basic things like sanitation have long ago solved this problem - is nothing short of embarrassing.
There are people in rural India that live in straw huts that have EPIC cards.
The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind but it would never see the light of day in the US, because maintaining a "disenfranchised" voting bloc is more valuable as a bargaining chip than the positive social contributions of such a program.
For many people, getting an ID requires taking a day off work, which for many can mean their family is going to miss one or more meals, or even worse, that they miss a car or rent payment.
Consequently, this is also a strong reason why Republicans have repeatedly blocked attempts to make voting day a national holiday, while at the same time strategically closing down polling locations -- so working poor (predominantly registered Democrats) have a harder time voting.
But it gets even worse than that. During segregation era, it wasn't uncommon for black women to be turned away from hospitals and be forced to give birth via midwives, then be unable to obtain birth certificates for their children. Because they have no official birth certificates, states deny them IDs.
Example: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-i...
Voter ID laws are explicitly designed to disenfranchise these people, because they're virtually always proposed by individuals representing the very states that denied black people birth certificates, and in many cases, those same individuals proposing the laws lived through the very era when those birth certificates were still actively being denied.
That said: I'm mostly in agreement - the solution is to get these people proper IDs (and by extension, birth certificates). However, I think you'll find the very people proposing these ID laws are going to be the same ones stonewalling any attempts to address the problems I laid out.
> Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word".
That's not how it works here. Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. Thanks in part to multiple levels of safeguards, impersonation fraud has been effectively non-existent. Of course, Rockland County and similar cases may prove the existence of other attacks on our democracy that don't depend on impersonation fraud.
And how is that less of a barrier than requiring an ID? Just fix so that it is easy to get an ID like most other countries have.
Great, do that, first, and once that is in place in a manner that is secure for the future, we can talk about whether it makes sense to condition the franchise on it.
Of course, the people that are most for Voter ID are also opposed to that (in fact, in some cases, they have simultaneously adopted voter ID rules and made it harder to get IDs, specifically targeting minor areas for the latter effect.)
Source?
The fact is you need ID for SNAP and Medicaid benefits.
So who are all these people with no ID, no money, no food, no identity, no anything but somehow all eligible voters?
No comments yet
There are dozens of examples of Republican states attempting to disenfranchise minority voters.
Not sure why you’re bringing up money, food, or identity here. But as a simple example: picture an average middle class New Yorker. They do not drive. They don’t travel internationally. Why would they need to go get an ID? (I lived in NY for about 11 years, and went a long chunk of that without bothering to get an ID. Only did eventually so that I could rent a car)
I wish you’d recognize that the “problem” you’re suggesting needs solving was invented by political actors with the sole intent of increasing their odds of winning elections. There’s no other real problem they’re trying to solve.
Unsuccessful fraud is effectively non-existent.
There is no public data about successful fraud.
So why not make the system bulletproof?
Why do we constantly improve encryption algorithms? Why do modern web browsers not work with cipher suites on 5 year old hardware making them effectively useless e-waste? According to information security folks I can't even be trusted with the hardware in my own house. But we trust that all the mail in ballots were filled out only once by the person whose name is on the ballot. Okay.
The notoriously liberal (/s) Heritage Foundation maintains a public database of all known election fraud cases in the U.S., finding less than two-dozen cases since 1979. Many independent studies come to the same conclusion. Physical voting fraud is statistically negligible, if not perfectly non-existent.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be cautious about fraud, but impersonation fraud will not be how it happens unless we centralize and digitize voting. With that will come the inevitable centralization and digitization of new systemic risks at scale.
That's not the solution because lack of ID isn't really the problem.
These problem is that the Republican party's goal is to disenfranchise people who demographically tend to vote Democratic. The difficulty in getting an ID is not an accidental feature of the system — it is an intentional policy choice made to prevent people from exercising their right to vote.
Until this root problem is fixed, any bureaucratic solutions are simply a game of whack-a-mole. If you make IDs easy to obtain, legislatures will enact rules preventing people from using them [1]. If you amend the state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them [2].
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/stat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_F...
"Funnily", Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was allowed to vote in Florida, who typically bars convicted felons from voting, because "he had not yet been sentenced, therefore the conviction was not yet complete".
I guarantee any other Floridian in the same position will be laughed at if they try to vote using this (non) precedent.
It's impossible enough to get things done these days, why should they waste political capital solving a problem that doesn't exist?
Citation needed
In some places native Americans can’t get IDs because of their address.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-...
https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/voter-discrimination-t...
In Florida, voters passed a law that made it easier for people released from prison to vote. It was still blocked by the legislation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/ron-desantis...
A student ID does not require the holder to get both a state and FBI background check. Besides the background checks, obtaining a license to carry (Texas gun permit) also requires an ID that could be used for voting itself. Student IDs, not so much. Also, I think people really underestimate the number of Democrat leaning gun owners in Texas.
There are far more relevant examples to use, including cost and difficultly navigating bureaucracy for obtaining documents. Throwing that Texas example in there weakens the argument and I really wish people would stop so the real arguments can be taken seriously.
Forgery is far more simple for those than a LTC
This is the percentage of voter fraud found in the US by the conservative Heritsge foundation.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-widespread-is-electio...
The largest voter fraud ever attempted in the US was actually 2020 with the Republican fake electors.
I think you are misunderstanding my intent here.
The student ID thing is a weak argument. If they need a government issue ID/passport to get a student ID -- then so what if a student ID is not allowed? They already have a valid ID to vote with.
It's a distraction. Texas has been doing trumpism since before trump was a thing. Allowing LTC but not student ID does 2 things only and neither has to do with voting; it pisses off people not in their camp and being a valid Texas state ID keeps in line with using a valid Texas ID in places where that is used (not only voting).
A student ID is not a valid Texas state ID (voting or otherwise). Stating that LTC is okay and not a student ID specifically for voting is them trolling and you are falling right into it. It's getting people caught up on something that seems like it's done to disadvantage one side, but really a student ID is simply not a valid Texas ID, nor is it good for anything other than as a supporting identity document to go along with primary or secondary ID documents in obtaining a valid Texas ID. Note: you can't get a LTC without a valid ID.
My vote for largest voter fraud was 2000, of course no one would call it that.
But a student is allowed to vote in the state where they are attending college or their home state. But not both.
Of course Texas did everything possible to make it harder for college students to vote
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/28/texas-young-voter-tu...
States have a constitution right to establish its voting rules. If students want to vote in Texas and Texas requires a valid Texas ID then the student needs a Texas approved valid ID to vote. There is a list of IDs the state of Texas considers valid, including a passport, however a student ID is not a valid ID as recognized by Texas for any state business.
If that is simply beyond your being able to look at without grasping for straws and moving the goal post [we are talking about LTC vs student ID specifically, if you wanted to talk about voting locations then you should of went with that and left the ID thing out of it, which was exactly my point in the first post]. Anyway the only valid conclusion I can come away with from this discussion is that you only want to indulge in faux outrage and win kudos or something.(unfortunate but what a weird way to waste time) You have fun with that and I hope you get bunches of kudos, take care.
https://campusvoteproject.org/student-id-as-voter-id/
You really think it’s an apolitical policy in Texas?
And states don’t have a carte blanche ability to have whatever laws they want to about voting, there were a bunch of lawsuits and laws passed in the sixties about that….
I for one am not behind this until we have actual privacy laws with teeth, and those laws have put a stop to the ongoing widespread abuses of the identification system we already have. As it stands, people's nebulous fear of handing out their DL/SSN numbers is the main thing holding back a deluge of every other business (including websites) demanding your ID for one purported reason or another, but really to augment their surveillance databases.
Likewise you can't enter a bar, buy booze or cigarettes, rent a car or hotel room without ID because no one can be trusted.
> it hasn't been a problem yet
This is a bit naive. The hackers of yore (think RMS) would refuse to set passwords on their accounts. Those days are over. Would you be open to having a blank password on your HN account? If not, why? It hasn't been a problem yet.
Second, these two things are not the same. People routinely try to defraud businesses because they get tangible value out of it. They don't routinely try to defraud elections: Not only is the punishment more severe for the latter; the would-be fraudster gets practically nothing of value for his efforts.
And to say it's not a problem is not naive. Investigations are routinely carried out in response to allegations of voter fraud, and practically none result in any serious accusations let alone convictions, and certainly none at the scale that could affect an elections outcome.
Jimmy Carter has documented his own first hand account with it.
> We asked John Pope, a friend of ours, to go to the courthouse to represent me. When he arrived he was dismayed to see the local political boss, Joe Hurst, ostentatiously helping my opponent. He was requiring all voters to mark their ballots on a table in front of him and telling them to vote for Homer Moore. The ballots were then dropped through a large hole in a pasteboard box, and John watched Hurst reach into the box several times, remove some ballots, and discard them.
https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-fi...
One thing I have asked a handful of R friends and family is this: after 2016 Trump claimed 3M+ illegal votes were cast. Not only did he have a personal interest in rooting out such illegal voting, but he was duty-bound to do something about it. He formed a committee, headed by Kris Kobach (which is its own significant story) to investigate ... and nothing came of it. So, which is it: was Trump negligent in not stopping this massive amount of illegal voting, were they incompetent in that they didn't find any, or were they just lying?
Another recurring news item every two years is about how some eagle-eyed county registrar has found hundreds of dead people enrolled to vote. Huzzah, voter fraud proved once again! The fact is that people die all the time (and move away) and one of the routine duties of the registrar is to use official records to scrub the voter rolls. When my folks died I didn't go to the registrar and ask them to remove their names. In the half a dozen times I've moved I've never notified the registrar that I've moved. Such reports are a non-story. The next time someone brings it up I'd love to ask: hey, what is the breakdown on that list? How many of them are not citizens? How many are affiliated with each party. I'm sure it would show that there is no conspiracy going on, just people moving and dying.
We are also not required to have or carry ID to carry out any of our constitutionally protected rights.
We would need to set up a service where a representative from the government would come to your house on demand, verify your identity, and issue you a free ID whether you live in downtown DC, rural New Mexico, or somewhere in Puerto Rico. Otherwise this is a non-starter.
I also think you disenfranchise too many people when you do that.
- People who work on oil rigs won't get to vote
- People who do shift work covering the hours the polls are open wont get to vote
- People who are of sound mind, but too unwell to travel to a polling location wont get to vote
- November is Red/blue king crab season in Alaska, guess those people don't get to vote
- Flight attendants & pilots might be away from home that day.
- People in the military might be on exercise that day, we're cutting them off (though I'll assume deployed service members will get to vote wherever they are)
- Long haul truckers are out of luck
- Anyone on vacation is missing their chance
- College students are always a wildcard, do they cast a ballot where they are (ID could be from a different state) or go home for the weekend?
I personally couldn't care less as long as they only vote once.
Also, all rights come with responsibilities, and part of the responsibility of voting is registering to vote, getting your ID, and showing up to vote. We shouldn't bend society to let people who don't want bare minimum responsibility to participate in their right.
We have no problem putting serious restrictions on rights of people in other areas coinciding with responsibility.
In theory you could just run it through the exact machine again and you'd get a good test for what is going on, and you have a physical copy to count / verify.
I think it is a good system, and about as close to digital as I want to get.
Some solid old school tech and some reasonably new.
That's exactly how we do it in New York as well.
What's more, before I'm given that paper ballot, I need to provide my name and address, then provide a signature which is compared to the signature on file with the Board of Elections. If the signature doesn't match, I don't get to vote.
2. Transactions get rolled back all the time for various reasons.
3. The global digital financial system is a result of decades of evolution and millions of man-years of work.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlHJZrXrnyQ
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJReQ8ao0SU
Among it's many faults, I think this is one advantage of the weird US method of running elections at the county level. While it is probably easier to corrupt individual election corps, due to it's distributed nature it is harder to systematically corrupt all of them. This does mean that US elections are strangly inconsistent from county to county, but that is the price you pay for a distributed system.
As a counterpoint to the "electronic election transactions are impossible to secure" platform, look at the credit card processing systems, yes there is fraud, but compared to the volume of daily transactions it is insignificant. the point being, large scale trusted electronic transactions are possible.
Let's get back to brass tacks and stop all the monkey business. Even if there is no tomfoolery goin on (and I believe there is) why not make it beyond doubt?
I don't know that it's that unpopular. I disagree with the 100% fool proof and verifiable claim though. I can think of lots of interesting ways of screwing with it, e.x. manipulating the chain of custody or tampering with the ballots to make errors likely.
Everything is a balance. Paper ballots aren't magically 100% secure, and in person voting comes with trade offs. Ex making it difficult for the military to vote, and making it such a big production for my highly disabled sister that she probably wouldn't bother.
I happen to think the pros aren't worth the cons and that most of the handwringing around mail in ballots and machines are FUD rather than measured concerns. That doesn't mean I disagree that in person isn't "more" secure.
You can't trust the machines. You can't trust the election authorities. You can't trust the post office. Those are fundamental assumptions, not FUD or measured concerns.
Elections should be designed for bad situations, because the results don't matter that much when things are good. Maybe a civil war is likely, or maybe it just ended and people are trying to rebuild trust. In any case, people don't trust each other, and they don't trust the authorities, but they are still trying to have legitimate elections.
The goal is not 100% security, 100% correctness, or something equally silly. The goal is a system where either every major party has a justified belief that the elections were legitimate and fair, the reported results are mostly correct, and there was no substantial fraud. Or at least one party questions the results due to widespread fraud. You want to trust the results, even when you can't trust the people running the elections.
Many paper ballot systems have been designed under such assumptions. The system assumes that the people running the elections cannot be trusted, but they also can't trust each other. You can't trust the people, but you trust that the system will detect and report any attempts at large-scale fraud.
Right now the complaint for voter fraud are things like no ID requirements, mail in ballots etc. If those go away it'll be something else.
The most important aspect of elections is that the vast majority of losers accept the outcome. If they don't, the elections failed. It doesn't really matter if there was fraud or if the losers just don't accept the result. The fundamental reason is the same in both cases: too many citizens don't support the system.
Right. Which is why in all 3500+ elections (and yes, every county has a separate election, with separate ballots, separate rules and separate groups of folks managing the elections. In fact, it's your neighbors who manage and staff the elections in your county) every election day, there are generally representatives from each candidate and party involved in each race, from city council member, animal control officer, coroner, mayor, congressperson, etc., etc., etc. at each polling place and counting center (where different) who are there to make sure their candidate is not shortchanged.
This happens everywhere, ever time and is nothing new. IF there are claimed "irregularities," recounts are performed and lawsuits filed and adjudicated.
But don't believe me. Go ahead and work at the polls. They hire and train folks to work at polling places during the elections. See for yourself. Or is that too much work and you'd rather rely on someone else (you trust them, but not anyone else?) to tell you what goes on at the polls?
Please.
In fact, I’d call electronic voting unpopular given the many, many examples on this page.
The only thing that matters is seizing on a narrative and running with it, whipping up fear and discontent.
The solution is to heal the partisanship in US society that infects everything there, and acts like poison on public discourse and trust.
Anyways, haven’t most/all districts gone to paper ballots, the electronic part is just auto tabulation. They can be counted manually if necessary.
No comments yet
Voter ID and blocking mail-in / early voting are just a few examples of contemporary Republican voter suppression efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...
Even if it's at a polling place on the day of, it's still a secret ballot. As such, of course it's hidden. It's a secret ballot. What are you going on about?
> More than one in five polling places have closed over the last decade, according to an ABC News and ABC Owned Stations analysis of data from the Election Administration and Voting Survey, the Center for New Data and the Center for Public Integrity. https://abcnews.go.com/US/protecting-vote-1-5-election-day-p...
This is after Shelby County v. Holder, and now states are shutting down polling stations to suppress the vote --- well you can no longer accuse them that in the courts, but it is clearly what they are doing.
Just like how Alabama passed a voter id law and then closed half their DMVs, the ones in black neighborhoods. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/alabama-closes-d...
There's no "sanctity of the voting booth" - shutting down polling stations and DMVs and then requiring people to visit the DMV and the polling station and making it intentionally more difficult for some people, this is all very very obvious and you can't hide it from me by waving a flag in front of my face.
Here's the actual plan:
Require in person voting, "protect" the polling places with armed masked goons working for ICE to "keep illegals from voting" and then call it freedom.
Give me a break. Do you really think we're that dumb?
Have you honestly never heard of this before?
Does the actual reality that exist in the actual world that we actually live in matter more than some imagined ritual of yours?
Tossing unnecessary burdens on the process is how they mess with this thing you think is so holy
I'm not saying that to deride your instinct here that a polling place being a private booth is kind of Cool™, just that providing accessibility (or, if I had my druthers, making voting _mandatory_ and giving everyone the day off to do it) sometimes requires we open the idea book and consider how we can make sure everyone who has the right to vote can do it.
BTW, Dominion is actually diebold amalgamated with a couple other "voting" machine vendors into a single corporation.
What does in person (with an ID) add to election security? That practice most certainly restricts voting unless there's a holiday for election day.
What keeps in person voting from being manipulated less than other good practice elections?
Why did in person voting become a big issue only just before and after 2020 election?
Why didn't anybody pay attention to what some states did after 2000 election?
Given that there are >3500 elections (one for each county) in the US every cycle, and all the competing eyes on the polls, counts and storage of ballots in each of those 3500+ counties makes compromising enough people to affect an election incredibly unlikely.
Requiring ID is a problem given that a lot of people don't have easy access (or access at all) to legal ID, for various reasons, some as simple as cost. Having a license costs money on an ongoing basis and you need to have access to documents to prove your identity like a birth certificate, and some citizens don't have those through no fault of their own, like losing everything in a fire or even the relevant records agency itself burning down. Thankfully there are often fee waivers for hardship but there are certainly corner cases where saying 'if you want to vote you need ID' is basically a poll tax, something we rightfully banned in the US a long time ago.
We also have an entire party who thrives on reduced turnout, and they basically control everything right now.
I really think people are too uninformed for compulsory voting. I envy these people. It would be nice not to care. I don't need them looking at a list of candidates and being like "Oh I remember that guy, he made a cameo in Home Alone 2, check"
I love this notion that the US is such a special snowflake that there's always a reason that things that work nearly everywhere else couldn't possibly work here.
After all, if nine months of partisan rioting in an election season is kosher before a "free and fair election", which leads to over twenty five deaths, then not voting shouldn't be a big deal.
Unless, of course, a compulsory level turnout has value in lending legitimacy given the the broader context of antidemocratic events.
Democratic governments should not have the political protection of citing the compulsory turnout. Whether the political currency lent by the compulsory turnout is implied or overtly cited.
The political currency that the turnout lends is something that needs to be earned via the legitimate practice of government.
If the government processes become corrupt, then the voter turnout should be one avenue of reflecting that opinion by the populace.
The choice to withhold a vote is as democratically "sacred" as the right to vote.
You are free to not vote for any candidate in Australia. You are free to write "Fuck you all" on your ballot. All you must do is attend a voting station. And unlike the US, there are many legally enshrined protections to ensure you can.
I'm not sure your complaint. You are the one that tarred mandatory voting with a wide brush. I apologize for offering a counter-argument.
Whereas my arguments are referencing democratic logic. I'm attempting to speak to a general logical framework of principles, rather than to (too much) give specific place opinions.
I took your "counter argument" statement about the existence of Australian compulsory voting as fact.
I'm not sure what the point is of returning to, what, partially contradict me on the details of Australian voting and where it isn't exactly totally compulsory?
Truly with all due respect, I think that you're having an argument with yourself at this point.
It's about keeping the undesirables out of the voting booth.
For the Republicans it's the immoral and poor and 'non Americans' who shouldn't really be voting.
And IMO it's gross attitude for a democracy.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification...
No one imagines that everyone is just fine with what is implied to be the same level of discrimination in accessing air travel that they state is going on when voter ID requirements are in force. And yet.
The idea just rubs me the wrong way.
I understand America is somewhat unusual among most Western nations that lots of people don't have passports. A driving license should serve as a good ID card but lots of people don't have one of those either. As a Brit the idea of an ID card also feels undemocratic to me. In the UK we have inexpensive passports and a national voter registration database, with signatures and adresses recorded, why would that not work in the US?
I fear that uninformed people will just fill in the bubbles though, and then you start getting votes based on name recognition only, and thats already a big enough issue.
In the US, we also have county (and state) voter registration databases with signatures and addresses recorded. And they do work in the US. The only real difference is that those practices are determined at the county and state levels and not at the national level. That's not a bug. In fact, it's required by our Constitution.
That some places abuse that really sucks. For me at least, that doesn't happen where I live.