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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15688 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Either way, communities that can't secure their elections shouldn't get their votes counted.

I see the risk factor being malicious actors throw the count off to get certain districts disqualified.

It is such an odd situation, you can't really train many 'professional' poll managers for an event that happens like one day every two years.

So we rely on volunteers with minimal training and small motivation to go above and beyond the call of duty.

It sucks that this once again seems like something trivial to do in a 'high trust' society. But as trust degrades suddenly it becomes almost intractable.

Yeah, I think that's definitely a risk, though I'm hoping after a few elections of tossed out results the community would be more inclined to pay attention, and if they're not, well, I personally won't be too put out if their vote doesn't count in national elections anymore.

In theory it should be pretty obvious if someone tries to scan their ballot at the voting machine multiple times, you just need the guy standing next to the machine to be watching. Of course, it means the election results kind of hinges on him paying attention, but you can assign multiple people to that job if it really becomes an issue.

Volunteer quality is going to depend heavily on the precinct. I live in a fairly well-off neighborhood in a pretty wealthy county, and the election work pays less than minimum wage, and the more important jobs (such as being in charge of the entire precinct) basically require you to work the entire 12+ hour day. The only people willing to do it are going to be at least somewhat motivated to have their community's votes counted, there are much better ways to spend your Tuesday otherwise.

In theory it should be pretty obvious if someone tries to scan their ballot at the voting machine multiple times

In my precinct, the scanners don't give the ballot back to you --- it goes directly into a box that gets retained for recounts and hopefully random sampling. They also scan both sides so it doesn't need to be a specific orientation.

Yes, you're right. The ballets drop down to a box within the machine that we have to lock at the end of the night in my precinct, so there should be no way to scan the same one twice.

Yep.

Maybe if we don't want centralized control over vote counts, we could still have some central FedGov fund for paying the election expenses of given districts so long as they meet certain standards and can pass an audit.

And maybe those that fail, rather than toss out that election's results, the punishment is that their votes won't count in next cycle.

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