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Why is Mitch McConnell afraid of unhackable voting machines?

weaver2 said:
How is having a paper trail to verify that the state is not cheating a federal government encroaching on states rights. Unless you think states have a right to cheat. So, if McConnell is not afraid of bills that require paper ballots to certify the election is honest why is he refusing to pass a bill requiring paper ballots.
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It's not up to Congress to control how states conduct their elections.
 
weaver2 said:
Read the whole article. Look at who owns the corporations that manufacture voting machines. Then come back here and say it's OK for voting machine manufacturers to be beyond any certification that they are honest, accurate, have a paper ballot back up and are incapable of being hacked.

Unless you think that it's OK for the owners who manufacture voting machine to keep the codes secret, make the counts untraceable and tilt elections then there needs to be better control over manufacturers and machines.
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I haven't said a word about any companies. Calm yourself, eh?
 
Napoleon said:
Paper ballots produced by what? The voting machines you believe to be compromised?
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The voting machine does not produce the paper ballot. A paper ballot is filled in by hand by the voter then counted by a machine. If the counting machine breaks down, malfunctions or is hacked the paper ballots can be counted to correct or verify the vote.

The paper receipt produced by electronic voting machines is not a paper ballot written out by the voter. It is simply a machine produced receipt. If the machine has been hacked to tilt the election the receipts, which are kept by the voter, are not available to the election committee only the machine count is and it can be falsifying the count while printing out the voters receipt correctly.
 
weaver2 said:
The voting machine does not produce the paper ballot. A paper ballot is filled in by hand by the voter then counted by a machine. If the counting machine breaks down, malfunctions or is hacked the paper ballots can be counted to correct or verify the vote.

The paper receipt produced by electronic voting machines is not a paper ballot written out by the voter. It is simply a machine produced receipt. If the machine has been hacked to tilt the election the receipts, which are kept by the voter, are not available to the election committee only the machine count is and it can be falsifying the count while printing out the voters receipt correctly.
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Ah, yes. So you chose option two in my post. Pass.
 
Mycroft said:
It's not up to Congress to control how states conduct their elections.
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Who is it up to then? When the state doesn't care that or is purposefully using voting machines that: are clearly not accurate or have been hacked, or are breaking down and giving false results, or there is no back up paper ballot filled out by the voter to certify the results or a foreign country is tampering with the machines who is responsible for making sure a state is acting ethically?

What is wrong with a paper ballot filled out by the voter? How is requiring a paper ballot interfering with state control.
 
weaver2 said:
Who is it up to then? When the state doesn't care that or is purposefully using voting machines that: are clearly not accurate or have been hacked, or are breaking down and giving false results, or there is no back up paper ballot filled out by the voter to certify the results or a foreign country is tampering with the machines who is responsible for making sure a state is acting ethically?

What is wrong with a paper ballot filled out by the voter? How is requiring a paper ballot interfering with state control.
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Were you alive in 2000?
 
Napoleon said:
Paper ballots produced by what? The voting machines you believe to be compromised? Or are you suggesting that we should go back to putting the fate of elections in the hands of a bunch of retards who don’t know how to poke a hole in a piece of paper?

View attachment 67260662
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There are types of paper ballots other than the punch type. Maine and Oregon give each voter a paper ballot on which the voter fills in a circle to indicate choice. The machine counts the circles and the paper ballot is left intact and saved in the secured box below the counting machine.
 
weaver2 said:
There are types of paper ballots other than the punch type. Maine and Oregon give each voter a paper ballot on which the voter fills in a circle to indicate choice. The machine counts the circles and the paper ballot is left intact and saved in the secured box below the counting machine.
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Yes, and those have proven to be equally problematic.
 
NWRatCon said:
McConnell blocks 2 bills on election security on heels of Mueller warnings (abc). This was a sort of mini-scandal and a puzzlement to many. It shouldn't be. McConnell claimed that the democratic bills were "partisan". Huh? Well, it turns out, fair elections are a partisan issue. Mitch McConnell is right. Secure, open elections would elect more Democrats. (WaPo, opinion, subscription) He's been fighting efforts to secure the election for some time. Kentucky is one of the few States that employs really hackable machines without a paper trail. Kentucky wants to replace voting machines. Some counties aren't sure why (Courier-Journal). This bill would allocate more money toward that effort, and that scares McConnell. Maybe because he likes voting fraud? How could that be? Oh, wait...

#MOSCOWMITCH TRENDS ON TWITTER AS MITCH MCCONNELL BLOCKS ELECTION SECURITY BILLS DESPITE 'UNPRECEDENTED LEVEL' OF RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE (Newsweek). Hard to have your back scratched if you're shutting out your partner's plaything.
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I don't blame Mitch for allowing Kentucky--his home state by the way--secure their own election process. I would have a huge problem with any election security process that was controlled by either political party. I do support paper ballots whether counted by hand or electronically. I do support fool proof methods--supported by both political parties--to detect if there has been any tampering and, if there has been, then that precinct should have its paper ballots hand counted supervised by both/all political party officials. And if there is a recount, those paper ballots better coincide with the signatures of those who picked up the ballots to vote.

We have had news accounts of precincts or counties that reported more votes than they had registered voters. That kind of thing is far more risky to the integrity and confidence in our elections than the possibility that a voting machine might be hacked by somebody.
 
weaver2 said:
Who is it up to then?

~snipped because I'm not interested in discussing your arguments in support of a paper ballot~
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Seriously? Are you unaware of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America?

The 10th Amendment states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

States Rights - constitution | Laws.com
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AlbqOwl said:
I don't blame Mitch for allowing Kentucky--his home state by the way--secure their own election process. I would have a huge problem with any election security process that was controlled by either political party. I do support paper ballots whether counted by hand or electronically. I do support fool proof methods--supported by both political parties--to detect if there has been any tampering and, if there has been, then that precinct should have its paper ballots hand counted supervised by both/all political party officials. And if there is a recount, those paper ballots better coincide with the signatures of those who picked up the ballots to vote.

We have had news accounts of precincts or counties that reported more votes than they had registered voters. That kind of thing is far more risky to the integrity and confidence in our elections than the possibility that a voting machine might be hacked by somebody.
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Somebody is Putin.

And another somebody is Moscow Mitch.

The other somebodies are the Putin-Trump Rowers.
 
Tangmo said:
Somebody is Putin.

And another somebody is Moscow Mitch.

The other somebodies are the Putin-Trump Rowers.
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I have been advised I am not allowed to respond appropriately to a post like this. So I'll just wish you a pleasant afternoon.
 
Mycroft said:
He's not.

He's afraid of Democrat bills that result in the Federal Government encroaching on State's rights and responsibilities.

You should be, too.
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So we should be "afraid" of more secure voting machines? That sends chills up my spine.
 
AlbqOwl said:
I have been advised I am not allowed to respond appropriately to a post like this. So I'll just wish you a pleasant afternoon.
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We all learn as we go.

So I respect your decision however realized. We share in these things.

The learning process is mutual, often commonly experienced, and, in the end, beneficial.
 
weaver2 said:
I doubt that McConnell's interests lie in helping Russia hack Kentucky's voting machines. It's more believable that he doesn't want any interference with his own hacking. There is only one reason that anyone would be against bills that assure honest, fair, accountable elections with paper trails to verify the truth of the election results.
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Ding! Ding! Ding!

It has been exceedingly obvious since 2000 that the Republican party's overall strategy is to pick machines that allow them to manipulate without being caught. (Remember the Diebold voting machine scandals? It hasn't gotten any better - Defcon hackers find it’s very easy to break voting machines (CNet)) There was a good deal of reporting on it at the time. Backup paper ballots help prevent this kind of manipulation because they can be audited. That's why Republicans don't like paper - it's how their operatives get caught. Why North Carolina's Election Fraud Hurts American Democracy
 (TIME). Contrast that with Rhode Island: Russia Wants to Undermine Trust in Elections. Here's How Rhode Island Is Fighting Back (TIME).
 
Mycroft said:
He's not.

He's afraid of Democrat bills that result in the Federal Government encroaching on State's rights and responsibilities.

You should be, too.
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They already spent over 300 million beefing up defences against foreign states interference in the election process, 700
million more is subject to ridicule. Furthermore, paper ballots in the hands of a democratic precinct managers is a well known democrat
method of cheating or I should say, one of the many ways they cheat, during elections. They always find a few boxes of
paper ballots during re-runs in districts run by democrats. McConnell was right not to let those cheating bills on the senate floor.
 
Mycroft said:
One of the bills rejected by McConnell would require states to go back to paper ballots...whether any states want to do that or not.

The fact is, for all this supposed "Russian interference", not one single vote...whether cast in a digital or paper environment...was affected by the Russians. Simply put, this legislation is an attempt to take constitutional state control over their elections away from the states...for no reason other than manufactured fear of "Russians!!!"
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The Trump haters will never accept it's a solution without a problem. There was no Russian hacking. Not one vote was affected. There's nothing to be fixed.
The Democrat play here is to create fear and manufacture a "problem" and provide their "solution" which not shocking at all, involves centralized control of elections.
No thank you.
Dems can peddle their snake oil somewhere else.
 
Mycroft said:
He's not.

He's afraid of Democrat bills that result in the Federal Government encroaching on State's rights and responsibilities.

You should be, too.
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Ensuring security during federal elections is encroaching on state rights? Now I've heard it all. :lamo
 
I often have to resist the temptation to become inured to the predictable and escalatingly outlandish lengths Trump supporters go to derail the conversation with easily provable, and not particularly inventive, lies. It is important, I think, to point these out when they happen. It's why I always try to include citations to sources when I make an assertion.

I live in a State that has always used paper ballots for all of the audit reasons previously discussed. An accurate and verifiable process has always been required, and paper ballots are easily the best such process. The Secretary of State also produces via website all of the ongoing vote counts to make the process as transparent as possible. Modern machinery has also been consistently rolled out to improve the process. (I used to have lunch with the Secretary of State's attorney on a regular basis and learned all of the ins and outs of the electoral process at that time.) Recently, though, we have moved to all-mail-in/absentee balloting. I miss the tradition of going to the polling place and kibitzing with the precinct workers, but we have a new tradition of the family sitting around the table with our ballots and voter's pamphlets, discussing candidates and issues, and filling out our ballots (secretly - we often don't reach similar conclusions) before driving them over to the city hall to deposit.

I never understood how any jurisdiction would want to have an electronic system that can't be audited. The systems are expensive, prone to breakdowns, and vulnerable to manipulation.... oh, wait... now I see. This Texas bill that opponents say could lead to voter suppression has lost a key bipartisan provision (Texas Tribune); Judge allows outside inspection of Georgia voting system (Atlanta Journal Constitution). In some States it is also exceedingly obvious that they are also being used to suppress the vote in certain areas, allocating the oldest machines to the "Democratic" precincts, or closing them altogether. The GOP’s Sneakiest Voter Suppression Tactic (The New Republic); The Voter Suppression Chronicles (American Prospect).
 
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Geoist said:
Ensuring security during federal elections is encroaching on state rights? Now I've heard it all. :lamo
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There are ways to ensure security during federal elections. Violating the 10th Amendment isn't a good way.
 
Mycroft said:
He's not.

He's afraid of Democrat bills that result in the Federal Government encroaching on State's rights and responsibilities.

You should be, too.
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He prefers that the Russian government do it.

This is what racists used to say when the federal government imposed the Voting Rights Act on the states.
 
Mycroft said:
There are ways to ensure security during federal elections. Violating the 10th Amendment isn't a good way.
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Really. They already make States allow negroes and women to vote. Where will this madness stop!?!?
 
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