Discussion
No matter the outcome of tomorrow's elections, Wednesday will likely be "the election was rigged by hackers!" day for many disgruntled supporters of losing candidates.
Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Think before you boost, especially when the message tells you what you want to hear.
@mattblaze Thank you, Matt, for being a voice of reason. I have been exposed to news stories that made some pretty big claims about elections, and I think I genuinely may have been swayed by some of them if I hadn't had your consistent reminders that, no, the US election system is actually quite robust, and subverting it in the manner described by those claiming fraud would take a substantial effort that would be impossible to conceal.
So, y'know. Thanks for keeping this one internet rand sane.
@mattblaze Spoken as a true time traveler :-). I thought it would be fun to make up a bingo card that had all of the various pretext theories people use. Making fun of them seems to help mitigate their impact.
@mattblaze The lion does not concern himself with "voting."
There is one sure way of not having your election results rigged by hackers - do it the old fashioned way.
Here in the UK we use paper ballots and pencil (or pen if you wish) to mark an X on your ballot. The ballots are then taken to a central point in the voting area and manually* counted where candidates and there reps can observe the procedure.
*some specific elections may use ballot counting machines but it is not the norm for most. The ballots are all physical.
@raymierussell Thanks for the information. I'm completely unfamiliar with even the most elementary principles of election security, because I've only been thinking about this full time for a bit more than a quarter century now.
Do you know how US elections work? Are you aware, for example, that the vast majority of US voters use hand marked paper ballots?
But thanks for the advice. We'll get right on it.
@raymierussell Yes, I'm snarky and irritable about this topic.
Well that answers that question ;-)
I hate, hate, HATE that "the election was rigged" has become the go-to explanation (across the US political spectrum) for any election that doesn't go your way.
Remember: despite real progress, there are still vulnerabilities in parts of our election infrastructure. But there is NO EVIDENCE that any US election outcome has ever been successfully altered by technical means.
It's not IMPOSSIBLE, but it's not something that we've actually seen happen (so far). Perspective, please.
@mattblaze
Vote fraud and election interference are two different things that could both be labeled "election rigging".
Vote fraud is a very minor issue with minimal impact (this sounds like what you're talking about).
Election interference happens on massive and small scales, both in the past and now. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was very real, very impactful, and very illegal. Making voting less convenient by closing polling stations (happening in my city right now), intimidating legal voters, having the USPS interfere with mail in ballots, etc, is all a very real and dangerous problem.
@mattblaze So I think this has the same root cause as the "Ukraine killed the Russian bots and Twitter became usable" myth.
Which is to say, it's exculpatory. There is a desperate USAmerican impulse to reassign the blame for USAmerican carnage to others. It would be a neat little world if RuuuUUuUUuUUssia was responsible for Trump, and for fascism, and for global collapse. But the reality is that it's the USA that's responsible for that.
It's the same energy as "all homophobes are secretly gay" being implicitly equivalent to saying "straight people aren't the ones doing homophobia".
@mattblaze Except for the gerrymandering.
The fact that Spanky is so freaked out about 2 Dan Sullivans in Alaska should reassure folk that it’s not so easy to hack the machines.
@CStamp I used to work with a guy named Dan Sullivan. I wonder where he is now. I should check around and see if he's listed on a ballot somewhere.
@mattblaze Awww yeah! Election security! Love it when Matt plays the hits!
Encore! Risk Limiting Audits!
FREEBIRD!!!!!
@mattblaze "The election is rigged" for many people is easier to take than "a majority of people are have chosen to ruin the country"
@mattblaze It is frustrating that when people say "the election was rigged" they usually mean it in the context of actual fabrication, which is without evidence, and without some extraordinary measures to do so covertly, utterly implausible.
Meanwhile "the election was rigged" is very real in the systemic, political sense (gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc), with plenty of documentary evidence and far too commonly a reality. It is a shame people fall back on the former.
@mattblaze the psychology behind it is also so weird. Why is it so hard for someone, anyone, to accept that most people who voted disagreed with them? Sometimes your opinion, even if it's correct, is in the minority!
@mattblaze systems seem to work okay, the real "tampering" is the lies and distortions on the news and shared on social media beforehand.
Feel sorry for anyone working a polling station when the allegations and "investigations" start