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Last week, this comment spurred a few subthreads about electronic and/or digital and/or online voting (depending on what one wants from it). I felt like the dominant view was that it was a terrible idea, hopelessly insecure, and perhaps even a bridge too far for one being able to think that an election is legitimate.
Today, I saw this article, saying that Kamala Harris' name was left off of some Montana ballots, causing them to shut things down until they could fix the problem. As I started reading, I casually wondered, "Shut what down? Just the ballot-printing process? Why is the headline saying 'voting system'?" Then I read the article and learned for the first time that Montana has an "electronic absentee voter system" that allows, for example, "Max Himsl, a Montana voter living in the UK," (who reported the issue) to "fill out his ballot online".
Whelp, I guess it's arrived. Is it a stupid, terrible idea? Is it hopelessly insecure? Has it delegitimized Montana's election? It is something that nobody's doing, nobody would do, nobody would be stupid enough to do, and it's a good thing that it's happening now?
Having not personally looked into the technicals of the system at all yet (obviously, having only just heard about it five minutes ago) and having said that I thought that a lot depended on technical specifics, I have little idea about how to feel other than that it seems obviously impossible for online voting to seriously maintain secrecy in voting, which I do care about. Of course, almost any system that allows for absentee voting seriously struggles on this point (as was pointed out by one of those international pro-democracy organizations that I quoted long ago), though I think that most people are somewhat willing to give up a little bit of this if it's a small number of absentee votes.
In order to have a functioning democracy, you need to be able to convince the losing party that they lost a fair game. Therefore, any problems or irregularities with the elections delegitimize the elections to some extent. It doesn't even matter all that much if it's deliberate tampering or honest mistakes, or if nothing at all happened and it just kind of looks like something might've. The loser has no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt. Really nothing should even look like it's going wrong.
This is why I've found the Democratic response to Trump's/Republican claims of 2020 election fraud so frustrating. As someone who believes that there's no good reason to believe that any meaningful election fraud took place in 2020, if I were in charge of the Democratic party, I would have responded to such accusations by investigating with so much fervor that even the most die-hard Trumpist would think we should be scaling it back. If fraud were not found, then this would embarrass and discredit Trump and his ilk, and if it were found, then it will help us to run more valid elections in the future, as well as possibly correct errors in the 2020 election. This seems like a win-win. Mocking the fraud accusations seems like a pure power move - "I won, therefore I get my way instead of yours," instead of "I won, therefore my belief that the contest was fair has no credibility, and thus I'll defer to your judgment for the sake of keeping our democratic republic credibly such."
If dozens of Trump-appointed judges finding no fraud, why would some commission appointed by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer convince anybody?
The reason why more than half of Trump voters believe there was fraud is because Trump to this very day continues to say so.
Note than in the 2022 midterms, many candidates in a lot of different races all claimed there might be fraud in the lead-up, but all of them, including very MAGA types like Mastriano in Pennsylvania all conceded and gave very typical except Kari Lake in Arizona, who is now losing a Senate race by 5 to 10 points.
There were no big changes in the laws in most of these states between 2020 & 2022, but nowhere the same amount of people think that for example, there was fraud in Catherine Cortez Mastro's 0.8% win in Nevada, despite at the time, Nevada being a completely Democratic-controlled state.
I mean because there would be a complete investigation for one thing. What made the conspiracy theory take off more than it ever would have is the fact that nobody officially ever looked at the evidence. The Message was always “nothing to see here, and if you’re asking questions about it, you’re falling for disinformation.” That message cannot inspire people to believe that the election was fair. There’s no discussion of the evidence, no day in court, no witnesses cross examined, nothing that would give the impression that there’s anyone official who cares about the claim.
There were plenty of days in court - there was just zero actual evidence to get past the first hoop despite being in front of in many cases, Republican or Trump-appointed judges.
There isn't zero actual evidence, there isnt evidence that doesn't have other possible explanations. Which is, unfortunately, how the system will always be by design. You can even catch a bunch of people on camera dropping load after load of ballots into boxes and they say, "well could be legit." You find statistical anomalies, well thats only circumstantial. You have people mishandling boxes in a polling place? Meh. You have proof the governor made illegal "emergency rules" again meh.
To catch fraud the fraudsters have to be incredibly stupid, like following a post truck and stealing mail in the middle of the day.
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