Bitflips

The point is, people determined on a particular outcome will find novel ways of ensuring that outcome.

TBF, it's legal to take a picture of your ballot now, so you can sell your vote in other ways.

There are other ways to mess with the counts that aren't going to be visible to the person as they make selections. Like having it show whatever they're selecting properly, then just printing different selections at the end. Not everyone is going to verify the printed copy shows what they selected, and already confirmed on the machine once.

Making it jump around on screen isn't discreet at all, and it's not the easiest way to try and interfere. Poorly calibrated touchscreens, and a user interface with inadequate spacing between options are much more likely reasons.

We're used to using devices that companies spend a lot of time designing the User Experience on. Voting machines are a very niche industry, with virtually no consumer backlash for a shitty experience because the voter has no direct control, and the government isn't going to be using that interface to handle things like counts at the end.

I tried looking to see if you can request a paper ballot in Tennessee but keep getting results for absentee ballots. Are you not allowed to request a paper one?

We should be concerned about any sort of coercive control. Yes, children, elders, elders, and other vulnerable populations may need to be prevented from skipping proper nutrition, hydration, hygiene, and shelter, force and coercive control need delicate handling, where practical and possible. For instance, while proper nutrition is a noble goal and the sweeteners, oils and other questionable ingredients in a nutrition beverage may give us pause, that's still preferable to ng tubes or force feeding.

Not all states use voting machines, it's a state by state thing. The news voice I think is something they are trained in. It might be a holdover from the radio days and the "trans-atlantic" accent.

And yet it doesn't happen. Could an abusive spouse do this? Sure. But again, it's a huge risk for not a lot of gain. It's one extra vote in exchange for a felony. It's just not a serious problem the way domestic violence in general is.

You have to balance competing interests in law. Mail voting makes voting much more accessible, cheaper, and more resilient to manipulation such as closing poll locations in targeted precincts. And stretching election day over a few weeks gives people a chance to more easily correct errors that pop up, and makes the voter rolls more resilient to political ratfucking.

That huge increase in accessibility does come with a slightly increased risk of vote coercisiom, but it's more than worth it.

I think the MAGAs are at the point where they don’t care if they are discrete because they know there will be no consequences for their corruption. News outlets will forget about it after a day, if they even report it. Democrats will send a strongly worded letter and forget about it. If any part of the justice system that still has integrity (increasingly rare) gets involved, Trump will just pardon them. The People might hold a protest or two, but they won’t do anything that actually threatens power.

It seems too obvious to be deliberate.

I'mma stop you right there.

Even just the information that the media gets to share with us illustrates pretty clearly that this administration and entire political movement behind it is a mix of violent idiots and slightly more self aware mustache-twirling villains who delight in taunting and torturing their victims once they are confident they've won.

And it's not just sadistic sickness, it's also a strategy. If the evening news shows government officials knowingly doing illegal and reprehensible things on a regular basis and nothing happens to them, while also reminding us that the police state is in full effect for everybody else, they think they are sending a message to regular folks that they cannot be touched and you'd best just keep your head down and not get any funny ideas. It's literally just the Death Star "fear will keep them in line" strategy.

But at least the retort about a tighter grip meaning more systems/groups slip through their fingers is also accurate.

Fascism is not a good long term plan because it is rooted in selfish, short term goals of the few.

I don’t think they care about being obvious anymore. They know no one will do anything about it.

No way to confirm the ballot you took a picture of is the one that went in the box though.

America, more than ever, varies a lot by state.

I'm from New England. I vote in person because it's fast and easy. In my urban town, everyone lives within a 5-10 minute walk of their polling location. There is never a line and it takes like 2 minutes tops. It's a paper ballot, fill-in-the-bubble style. I had to vote absentee once: I swung through town hall and took care of it in like 15 minutes - same deal except it went in a signed and sealed envelope.

Sow doubt and suspicion. Claim fraud, steal election. Martial law the riots, fascism.

The funny part is these voting machines actually just send your selections to a printer, which creates a hard copy with the corresponding bubbles filled in next to your selected names.

Then you feed that printed ballot into a counting machine. And the counting machine is just a fancy scantron reader. The point of the printer is that it creates a hard copy which can be counted by hand for recounts. It also gives the voter a last chance to review their selections (and ask a poll worker to invalidate their vote and let them start over if anything is incorrect) before they actually feed it into the counting machine.

The machine prints a paper ballot, which you then feed into a counting machine. The voting machine itself doesn’t actually store any of your votes after you have sent your selections to the printer. This allows them to preserve a hard copy for recounts, and also gives the voter a last chance to review their selections before they feed it into the counting machine.

So what makes this better than a pencil mark on paper?

In many countries automated counting is not a thing. All interested parties gather in a room and manually count it.

do you know why they don't just print the ballot and put a big circle for somebody to mark with a sharpie?

seems to work great up here in Canada... very straightforward experience

it seems to work just fine here in Canada

That face when even with rigging the machines they still loose.

Pretty sure they solved this problem back in the 1960s with a pen that can be used on a screen.

We do it correctly in Washington State. We get our ballot in the mail, mark it at home, and stick it in a mail box or ballot drop box. It's amazing, and I remember being baffled when I learned voting in person wasn't obsolete.

No, more. I wouldn’t have nuclear codes digital either. I wouldn’t want ChatGPT to get ahold of them and make a whoopsie with a “You right, I did a mistake there eradicating Angola. Here’s what happened.”

Eh. Big difference in motivation between high schoolers taking a test and adults voting. Also, the circles on the ballots are larger and spaced farther apart.

Fair point, by making it obvious you also demonstrate your power.

Complex because they were stealing an election.

Hell yeah, but also you can lose that “o”

With no ID checks?

This happened a few elections ago. Always favored Republicans for some reason.

You need a valid state ID or SSN to register. Can register online, by mail or in person.

If you get an EDL you are automatically registered.

Easy peasy.

Source

The general public would have forgotten how to use this highly advanced equipment by now, sometime after the first few iPhones. :( :(

Such things are FoR TeChNiCaL pEoPLe now.

(Sorta satirical, mostly genuinely sad.)

What the fuck is with that weird "news reporter voice" they always do on American news!?

RIGHT?! It's quite bizarre. Maybe it's some kind of standard for maximum clarity or something. It annoys me too, just like "commercial voice."

It's getting right up there with "Hurried excited yet clear but stress-inducing YouTube-bro you've got to see this you won't believe it" voice. ARGHH.

I mean, any teacher who has ever used a scantron for their tests will know that “fill only one bubble per entry” is difficult for a surprising percentage of the population. Plus, if someone makes a mistake on a paper ballot with a sharpie, they need a whole new ballot.

I posted this in the politics community They said don't be a conspiracy theorist and removed the post. Is that community a bunch of right wing simps?

(the following is a joke extension written by my own two fleshy thumbs. It is not real slop.)

Edit: Can't leave an awful thing alone. Moar emdashes and emojis! Is it believable yet? Lol

((NORADGPT is typing. . .))

"I called the wrong tool by mistake, using my knowledge, abilities, and superior intellect. And honestly? That's not a 'Crime against humanity.' That's real strength.

(bullet points after "What is a Angola?")

• ✅ According to multiple sources online — They had it coming. (link to a few .info sites nobody's heard of)
• ✅ You can put something else there now — A Burger Zone or a Home Warehouse or just "More America"! — And honestly? I'd call that winning. 🦅🫡🇺🇸🛒🛍️ (Disclaimer: names of companies might be incorrect.)
• ✅ Lots of mineral resources 💎💎📈📈📈.
• ✅ Beach front property will get MUCH more affordable 🤑.

Why you might not like my decision:

• ❌ People were there — Generally this will be seen as a con if you are one of those, and nuclear detonations are known to be harmful to them. 🚀☢️☠️
• ❌ The radioactive fallout will likely drift across the planet — We can delve into the effects of that if you like.🚀☢️☠️
• ❌ The detonation of a nuclear warhead🚀 likely triggered multiple self-defense launches 📡 from other nuclear-armed countries —Depending on where you and they are located, they could reach you anywhere from within a few hours to mi_

(CONNECTION INTERRUPTED. PLEASE REFRESH.)

What fuck we fill out a paper ballot and feed it into a machine. Have never had to vote on a digital machine. In Oklahoma just so you know. Wonder how many people vote went to wrong person.

That depends on if it's happening to both parties or only happening to one party for some reason...

Double-counting

Dyslexia is a cruel mistress.

right, but scantrons are small and ballots are big. it's not that difficult to spoil a ballot and get a new one

idk, my experience as a voter and my understanding of how it goes through discussion with my parents and their friends who have worked the polls many times makes it seem like the process is pretty okay, overall

I'll have to remember to bring the topic back up in the upcoming elections

*This depends entirely on your reality bubble dictated by preferred news source.

I'm sure the talk radio blowhards are reporting exactly this, that the machines are flipping to those wiley and dastardly liberals, but their side will win anyway because everybody loves them and their emperor and everybody thinks they've never done better than they are right now.

A government contracted corporation couldn't possibly be biased though!

...They just wouldn't want any sneaky competitors to see their "small rounding errors."

Lol sarcasm aside: Well said. If government is to serve the people, stuff such as this must be under the peoples' scrutiny.

Evil's most redeeming quality is that sooner or later, in will inevitably turn inwards against itself. We already see this happening quite often and lots of cracks are showing.

We need to press that advantage.

Damnit big balls, is their no end to your crimes!

hanging chads... shudder

Wouldn't be hard to game.

Just use a scheme where it selects the closest candidate to the "touch", then offset the calibration such that it thinks a touch on #2 is #1. Then tapping on #1 will still select #1 because it's the closest, while tapping #2 will select #1 because the tap thinks it's closest to it.

So if the Republican candidate is always #1, then I'd bet it's deliberate. Actually, all it needs is for the Democratic candidate to be #2 to split the Democratic vote, though then it runs the risk of splitting the Republican vote as well (assuming the "miscalibration" is linear, if it's non-linear, then it could get "more correct" the further along the screen it goes).

If it was unintentional, you'd expect to see no specific party benefiting from the errors overall. Ie, in some locations it favours red, some blue, and in others one of the other candidates. Though even with this, if the distribution ends up such that it favours blue in blue strongholds and red in battleground areas, then that's still fishy.

The "News Reporter Voice" is actually an Ohio accent. Or rather, the distinct lack of an accent. Add in proper enunciation while projecting calm authority, and BAM! that Ohio non-accent turns into the News Reporter Voice.