FJAG
Army.ca Legend
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Brad Sallows said:>So having a nation wide conspiracy to steal an election by manipulating the vote is an almost impossible prospect.
Which is why it's meaningless to raise it as either a boogeyman, or to dismiss fears of vote fraud ("successful national vote fraud is impossible; therefore, all successful vote fraud is impossible"). But wherever an election might be decided by a few hundred votes (eg. FL, 2000), productive vote fraud - before or after polls close - is viable. And note that it's the viability that matters most - not whether anyone actually capitalizes on it.
And even if you dismiss the viability of productive/successful vote fraud, there is still the incontrovertible taint of any fraud, regardless of its effect.
When someone raises concerns about electoral integrity, neither "we've studied it, and found nothing significant" nor "it doesn't exist, we assure you" is an acceptable response. The only acceptable response is "we'll button that down right now".
All that is required is one day on which polls are open for a reasonable length of time - say, 12 hours - with an opportunity for advance/absentee voting only for people who can prove they will be unable to vote in person at their designated polling station on voting day. Voting rolls should be regularly and frequently cleansed. Proof of identity should be required (and the allowable identity should not be difficult to obtain - if necessary, picture voter ID registration cards should be provided at public expense).
Keeping track of people is akin to herding cats. There will always be individuals who aren't up to date on the voters' lists but here in Canada we have reasonable ways of dealing with that so that a person who wants to vote can do so.
http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e
These are in some cases onerous on certain people but not incapable of being done. (when a letter from a soup kitchen or shelter can be used then the system is certainly catering to fairly extreme circumstances).
The trouble down under, from what I understand, is that identification rules, advance voting rules and even the number of polling stations, and poll opening timings in "unfriendly" territories are curtailed or restricted in such a way as to discourage "unfriendly" voters from even bothering to show up to vote. That's a systemic fault which could easily be fixed IF there was a will to do so.
Long story short; the US needs an Elections Canada type system. Regrettably they most likely won't and therefore will continue to be subject to valid claims that the system is difficult for certain classes of voters to use and hysterical claims that the entire system is rigged through massive fraud.
:cheers: