Just curious, do most people prefer human tallied ballots? Is that even possible these days with so many ballots coming in?

I mean, I don't trust voting machines. Never have. But what's the alternative?

7/30/2019 3:30:12 PM

My district uses paper ballots

7/30/2019 3:35:13 PM

Quote :

"But what's the alternative?"

what is used in a lot of places- machine counted ballots that have a paper copy that's kept that can be hand counted or audited

7/30/2019 4:05:04 PM

^ exactly. the gold standard is hand-marked paper ballots combined with post-election risk-limiting audits. elections have been successfully carried out using paper ballots for a long time. the voting machine vendors are just trying to sell new products, which are not sufficiently secure.

^^ wake county has done a good job of leading on this issue.



and this isn't to say that there aren't many other threats to our election system ranging from gerrymandering, absentee ballot fraud, early voting access and of course disinformation campaigns, but this is an EASY one for our elected and appointed officials to get right

[Edited on July 30, 2019 at 4:45 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2019 4:36:52 PM

aaaaaand the Chairman of the board just resigned

7/30/2019 7:47:41 PM

considering that most of us are semi-suspicious of our election system currently, the optics here are terrible. Public turns out and demands human readable ballots, NCSBE stubbornly agreed, they call another meeting in 48 hours presumably to overturn that decision, meanwhile the chairman resigns because of some fucked up sex joke he told.

SMH.

7/31/2019 6:31:18 AM

so after today's meeting, the board WILL continue with the meeting to consider the proposed amendment to the certification rules, which will take place Aug 23

https://twitter.com/democracync/status/1156943140189814784

8/1/2019 12:09:00 PM

https://truthout.org/articles/voters-say-touchscreen-machines-switched-votes-in-nine-mississippi-counties/

8/29/2019 12:58:33 PM

And that is a perfect example of why 1000s of people wrote to the NC Board of Elections to advocate for Hand-Marked Paper Ballots, instead of proprietary voting machines that encodes and tabulates votes with an unreadable, unverifiable barcode
Roy Cooper appointed a chair to the Board of Elections who voted with the Republicans to kill an amendment that would have forced the voting machine vendors to produce a human-readable mark on ballots. And Cooper KNEW that this vote would be the very first responsibility of the chair. It's infuriating.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2019/08/24/board-of-elections-dismisses-security-concerns-votes-to-allow-barcode-ballots/

And then yesterday in the NC General Assembly, Representative Chaz Beasley proposed another amendment that would require human-readable paper receipts for voting machines, and the amendment failed.

NC is getting fucked over

8/29/2019 5:03:45 PM

Probe of missing Georgia votes finds "extreme" irregularities in black districts
Last year's lieutenant governor race may have had a huge undercount in black precincts. Sound like coincidence?
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/30/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts-and/

Quote :

"There were 159,000 fewer votes cast in the lieutenant governor race than in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. While it is common for down-ballot races to see fewer votes, the lieutenant governor race had twice as much drop-off as other statewide races, even though it was the second race on the ballot, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. There were 80,000 fewer votes cast for lieutenant governor than in other down-ballot races, which represents a 4 percent drop-off from the gubernatorial race, compared to a 2 percent drop-off among even less charismatic down-ballot races. For various reasons, this appears illogical. Historically, the lieutenant governor race has had a much lower drop-off rate than other statewide races in previous elections. "

Quote :

"n one case, a voting machine in Kemp’s home precinct recorded that Republicans won every race, while the other six machines in that same precinct showed that Democrats won every race. The machine showed Republicans winning by roughly the same margin by which Democrats won on the other machines. A statistician’s analysis cited in court documents said “odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million,” the Journal-Constitution reported. "

Quote :

"But the problems were far more widespread. The documents show a decline in votes on electronic voting machines in 101 of the state’s 159 counties, even though paper absentee ballots in the same districts did not show a significant decline. "

fucking stick to paper

Quote :

"“The undervote problem did not happen at the same exaggerated levels in many primarily White neighborhoods that overwhelmingly voted for Stacey Abrams and other Democrats, rebutting the argument that the difference can be explained by party-driven voter behavior.”"

8/30/2019 3:00:48 PM

Kemp definitely stole the GA election. He was the one in charge of oversight in his own race.

8/30/2019 4:00:33 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/president-trump-tried-to-register-to-vote-in-florida-using-an-out-of-state-address/2020/06/03/687d0014-a4f2-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

6/5/2020 12:33:38 PM

https://www.wral.com/worker-at-center-of-n-c-ballot-fraud-probe-seeks-local-seat/19179741/

7/8/2020 12:48:16 PM

https://www.ksnt.com/elections/3-felony-criminal-charges-filed-against-steve-watkins/amp/

GOP rep

7/14/2020 9:00:33 PM

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-campaign-2020-voter-suppression-consent-decree-1028988/

7/17/2020 1:56:09 PM

More anecdotal voter fraud

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7edq3/trump-voter-allegedly-murdered-his-wife-then-cast-her-ballot-for-trump-too

5/17/2021 11:22:39 AM

At least he didn't murder his wife just so he could commit voter fraud. I always wonder what else people like this cheat on because "all those other guys are cheating" too.

Believing individual voter fraud is a problem makes complete sense if you believe your own individual voter fraud might make a difference. It's amazing how broad a permission structure the voter fraud myth has created.

5/17/2021 12:36:49 PM

Quote :

"I know she was going to vote for Trump anyway."

There you have it. Not fraud -- only murder (and fraud).

5/17/2021 12:43:10 PM

It was her dying wish!

5/17/2021 1:16:36 PM

https://www.wral.com/arizona-auditors-backtrack-say-no-election-data-destroyed/19684828/

5/19/2021 11:28:55 AM

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdep5/dan-patrick-pays-voter-fraud-bounty-for-first-time

Quote :

"Shortly after the 2020 election, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick offered up to $1 million in reward money, to be paid out of his own campaign coffers, to “incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud.” And now the first person to claim that reward is Eric Frank, a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania who reported a Republican for voting twice."

10/21/2021 2:15:21 PM

http://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1504427340037718018

Quote :

" AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- AP review shows Texas rejected about 13% of mail ballots, nearly 23,000 total, in first election under new voting law."

3/17/2022 3:29:22 PM

^

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdkk3/mark-meadows-voter-fraudY

Mark Meadows being investigated for registering at a house he's never lived in. Why would he even do that? I'm sure nothing will come of it.

3/18/2022 11:47:23 AM

will be interesting to see, although at this point the slow pace of investigation (at least as publicly discussed) is a question. NCSBE is Dem majority and in a state with a Dem governor.

3/19/2022 10:25:44 PM

http://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/1584884731962966023

Quote :

" Mail-in applications and ballots of voters of color were rejected because of Texas' new ID requirement at much higher rates than those of white voters, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. https://t.co/tZ73kakt6B"

wow what a shocker

10/25/2022 10:40:26 AM

Quote :

"In the March primary, 12,000 absentee ballot applications and more than 24,000 mail ballots were rejected, leading to a 12% rejection rate statewide. That represented a significant increase compared with previous years. For example, the rejection rate for the 2020 presidential election was 1%."

Voter suppression works.

(though I wish they'd compared primary-to-primary and not primary-to-general)

10/25/2022 3:15:02 PM

10/25/2022 7:27:11 PM

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/07/1180630924/takeaways-npr-eric-investigation-voter-data-election-integrity

Quote :

"The far right's growing influence and 4 other takeaways from NPR's ERIC investigation June 7, 20235:00 AM ET Miles Parks Why are Republicans abandoning one of the best tools the government has to catch voter fraud? That simple question is the focus of a new NPR investigation, published Sunday. The tool is the Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC. It was created almost a decade ago as a way for states to share government data, in an effort to keep their voter rolls up to date. It allows election officials better insight into when their voters move and die and the rare times when they vote twice in different states, which is illegal. "The little secret is that maybe more than 10 years ago, if somebody voted in Ohio, in Florida, in Arizona and Texas, you would have never known," Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an interview with NPR in February. "With ERIC, we can compare our voter rolls to those states." Eight Republican states have now pulled out of ERIC, including many with voting officials who are on the record as praising the partnership as recently as a few months ago. Ohio pulled out a month after LaRose spoke to NPR. J. Christian Adams, a conservative elections attorney, has long been a critic of how ERIC operates. But he told NPR: "It's this crazy zeal to get out of ERIC ... that is going to cause voter fraud to flourish." So what happened? Here are five takeaways from NPR's investigation: 1. A far-right website kicked things off The story starts in January 2022, when a far-right website called the Gateway Pundit, which has pushed conspiracy theories in the past, began writing about ERIC. Up until then, the partnership was considered a quiet bipartisan success story, with member states that spanned the political spectrum. NPR's investigations team analyzed hundreds of thousands of social media posts on a handful of social media sites frequented by election deniers. We found the Gateway Pundit's coverage started the far right's fixation on the program. Roughly a week after the first Gateway Pundit article, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, announced his state would become the first to pull out of ERIC, citing "concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports." 2. Local "election integrity" groups are a political force NPR found that while Ardoin did not make a big public show out of pulling out of ERIC, he did bring the announcement to maybe the only constituents at that time who would even care: a local group of conservative activists gathered in Houma, La. The crowd, assembled for an "election integrity town hall," applauded for 15 seconds when Ardoin announced he was pulling the state out of ERIC. The event was publicized less than 24 hours before Ardoin's office released its statement on ERIC. NPR's investigation also found these sorts of community election integrity groups to be critical in the effort to discredit ERIC across the country. A group called Protect Your Vote Florida published a page on its website called "How to Influence Florida Legislators to Suspend Contract with ERIC!" "The STRATEGY is to run a campaign directed at key Florida legislators," the group wrote in the post, which included a list of the state's lawmakers and contact information. "Hand delivered letters, emails, phone calls, and social media activity will all be utilized to maximize impact." Emails acquired by NPR through public records requests showed election officials began to field questions from voters and state lawmakers shortly after these calls went out. 3. A Trump ally has coordinated an election denial machine Cleta Mitchell is known by many for working with former President Donald Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election. The attorney was on the infamous call where Trump asked Georgia election officials to "find votes." In the time since, she's been building an election denial infrastructure. Her podcast, "Who's Counting," has become a central hub for stolen election narratives, and she's also started a coalition of grassroots groups across the country called the Election Integrity Network. NPR's investigation found Mitchell to be a ringleader of sorts for the effort to dismantle ERIC. She even hosted a secret ERIC summit with red state lawmakers last summer, according to documents shared with NPR by a nonprofit watchdog group called Documented. Secretaries of state from the first five states to withdraw from ERIC attended the event, according to one attendee. 4. Republican primaries are a driving force behind the ERIC exodus In Louisiana, when Ardoin made the decision to leave ERIC, he was gearing up to run for reelection in a state Trump won by almost 20 percentage points. He was facing numerous challenges on his right. And ERIC was becoming a priority for Republican voters. "We started hearing it on the campaign trail," added Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen in an interview with NPR. Allen ran for his office last year, and shortly after the Gateway Pundit published its first article, he made a campaign promise to pull out of ERIC if he won. This January, he followed through, and Alabama became the second state to withdraw. Secretaries of state in Missouri, West Virginia and Ohio — all states that have pulled out — have announced campaigns for higher office next year, or are expected to run. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis appointed Cord Byrd as his secretary of state last year, and the state's stance on ERIC shifted almost immediately. NPR's investigation found that before he was secretary, Byrd regularly joined election integrity calls hosted by Mitchell. 5. ERIC withdrawals will make for "dirtier voter rolls" and an emboldened far right Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, put it simply in an interview with NPR: The states that have left ERIC "indirectly said, 'We're going to have dirtier voter rolls.' " Brianna Lennon, a Democrat who oversees voting in Boone County, Mo., told NPR that will surely be the case in her county. Before Missouri joined ERIC, the elections office relied on returned mail to find out if a voter moved to another state. "That's what we'll have to go back to using," she said. Election experts say less accurate voter rolls have a direct impact on voters, from longer lines at precincts to mail ballots and information getting sent to the wrong places. Lennon told NPR she's worried about what the ERIC saga means for the 2024 election cycle. She had gotten a sense recently that community election integrity groups were gaining more traction in her state, but she says the secretary of state's decision was the first major policy decision she's seen that lined up so directly with their goals. "I'm sure there are going to be ripples that come from this particular move and I'm not exactly sure what the end will be," she said. "I don't think this is an isolated thing." Read or listen to the full investigation here."

6/7/2023 2:13:24 PM

Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists

https://www.propublica.org/article/right-wing-activists-georgia-voter-challenges

8/1/2023 8:30:43 AM