[From a comment thread
elsewhere. I think this is a good summary of the issues involved in proving to people that the winner of an election actually did win. -Max]
Person #1: Liberal here who never voted for Trump. Biden may have been a bland centrist at one point; today he is compromised both physically and ethically. Democrats are lined up in support of HR1, guaranteed to bring one-party rule to the USA for a hundred years. They're lined up in favor of discrimination against Jews, whites, anyone who fails to demonstrate sufficient zeal in the party's march toward authoritarianism. The party as a whole supports censorship and denial of due process based on tribal characteristics.
That defines a different form of government from the liberal Western democracies arising from the Enlightenment. I was a liberal Democrat from 1960 to 2009 (yes. I'm older than dirt). I have no party today.
Person #2: You've self-identified elsewhere in these threads as having once worked with an assortment of spooks, military guys, government officials, etc., in some capacity. If this is true, I would like to think from your experiences you come to TK with a unique perspective not shared by most here. That's a pretty dire forecast above. And it's rather broad in its generalizations. Anything that stands out in your mind that might bring all this to fruition? And why, for instance, you single out the democrats for their authoritarianism?
Person #1: We must restore the citizenry's trust in our elections. In two consecutive elections we've had half of the country believe the other half stole the election; no democracy can survive the loss of faith of its electorate. The key is the audit trail. That is the ability to trace the ballot from printing through conveying to the voter and the voter casting the ballot to the ballot's being counted and results certified. Anything that breaks the audit trail introduces the opportunity for mischief.
A broken audit trail isn't proof of anything; an intact audit trail, though is strong evidence of absence of fraud. Anything that weakens the audit trail can allow for the introduction of fraud. We need a front to back examination of the most recent two presidential elections, not to overturn them, but to identify where fraud might enter the processes. We then can address fixing vulnerabilities.
The vote-casting process begins with providing the voter access to one ballot. Is the person standing in front of me the one who is registered to vote? In most case we verify identity with government-issued identification cards.
We have used absentee ballots for years. The process was to provide identification and request an absentee ballot from officials. The absentee ballot is then provided to the voter or sent to her/him through the mail. That is a "pull" system. There is an audit trail starting with the request for the absentee ballot and completed with the receipt of the ballot at election headquarters, where the voter's signature is compared to the signature on an outer envelope. The outer envelope is separated from its contents to maintain secrecy of the ballot. The ballot itself is extracted from the inner envelope and put into the "cast" pile from which it will be counted and the vote added to the totals for all issues and elections on the ballot. All of this takes place in full view of representatives from all parties involved in the election.
If election officials mail ballots to the last known address of a voter, there is no way to establish an audit trail. That is a push system. A push system is guaranteed to send some ballots to the wrong address. About 20% of the U.S. population moves every year. If the home address was verified a year ago, there is a 20% chance that the ballot winds up in the wrong hands. If it has been two years, the usual interval between U.S. elections, the chance is 35% that it went to the wrong person. Many voters only vote during presidential elections every four years. During that time, a majority of voters will have moved.
The ballot can be returned via US mail, in person, or by a third party. The third party method is known as ballot harvesting. A single harvester may collect one hundred to five hundred ballots. If a ballot has been mailed out to the voter's last known address - the push system - then a ballot harvester picks it up for delivery to the election counting authorities, and the voter's signature on the outer ballot is not compared to her/his signature on the voter rolls, the audit trail has been compromised three times.
After arrival at ballot counting headquarters, everything is supposed to be witnessed by two or more people. Poll watchers are supposed to have uninterrupted access to all activities. If they do not, there is an opportunity for fraud to enter the process. I do not claim that there was any fraud in either the 2016 or 2020 election. My objective is to get a complete audit to reassure the electorate that our elections are not rigged.
The most secure method of voting is via paper ballot. When machines are used they can be manipulated or changed. One way that machines can be manipulated is via the internet. That is why there is no admitted internet connection to the machines. That is why machines are subject to subpoena and are rarely wiped clean until all possible subpoenas have been accounted for.
Federal law requires that voter rolls be reviewed every so often, perhaps every two or four years. That way on election day there should be no county in the country that has more registered voters than adults eligible to vote.
Of all that: HR1 prohibits requiring identification to vote, it prohibits comparing signatures for absentee ballots, it requires mass mailing of blank ballots to last known address for all voters, with the push system being required for use. It authorizes ballot harvesting for all jurisdictions in the country.
The election machines and software used in Fulton County, GA, reported results through a server in Europe, and were wiped clean while under subpoena. Broward County, FL, was one of 39 counties in the US that recorded more 2020 votes than adults; the county's rolls have not been purged of inactive or dead voters in years, accounting for four orders of magnitude greater number of centenarians living in the county than global average would predict. The chief of elections in the county routinely opened absentee and mail-out ballots with no one else present, and swore that the extraordinary number of people aged over 100 voted in ever election. She was finally removed. Practices such as requiring voter ID, requiring all counties to provide drop-off locations for ballots and purging voter rolls in accordance with federal law are all described by our President as "Jim Crow 2.0"
Why do I call out Democrats? I've never been a Republican; I was a Democrat until I realized the party had adopted pursuit of power rather than liberalism as its core. Have you heard a former smoker beat up on current smokers? I'm a former Democrat. Same thing.
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I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
