Solutions to election integrity

originally posted by: Lazarus Short
Laz's solution: do away with voting entirely.

How are petit and grand juries filled? By a random selection of voters. How to fill political positions? A random selection from qualified American citizens...for ONE TERM. No druggies, welfare recipients, felons and the like. It would eliminate the problems associated with political parties, entrenched power structures, and no one would be in office long enough to become particularly corrupt. It would also put a nice cross-section of citizens in office - no more preponderance of lawyers and minions of the rich.

Randomocracy is our future!

Instead of actually voting randomly, you could use random checking as a way to verify it.

This is similar to Exit Polls

en.wikipedia.org...


Historically exit polls have only rarely deviated from the actual outcome. If you see a huge discrepancy between exit polls and an actual outcome that makes it likely somebody cheated.



But with mail in ballots, there is no way to conduct one of those.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Lazarus Short
Laz's solution: do away with voting entirely.

How are petit and grand juries filled? By a random selection of voters. How to fill political positions? A random selection from qualified American citizens...for ONE TERM. No druggies, welfare recipients, felons and the like. It would eliminate the problems associated with political parties, entrenched power structures, and no one would be in office long enough to become particularly corrupt. It would also put a nice cross-section of citizens in office - no more preponderance of lawyers and minions of the rich.

Randomocracy is our future!

Instead of actually voting randomly, you could use random checking as a way to verify it.

This is similar to Exit Polls

en.wikipedia.org...


Historically exit polls have only rarely deviated from the actual outcome. If you see a huge discrepancy between exit polls and an actual outcome that makes it likely somebody cheated.



But with mail in ballots, there is no way to conduct one of those.

This was exactly what happened to Bernie in the primaries. All other tickets on the ballot were dead on with exit polls, but suddenly Bernie started getting beat by Biden even though exit polls showed strong for Bernie and overall polls showed for Bernie. It was discussed as anomalous at the time.

This has lead some to think that the primaries were a testing ground for the shenanigans specifically to get Biden through, but to test the efficacy of the cheat as well.

The old system was great where you just punxched holes in a blank card and they were collected and randomly strung through one of the holes to stack em up and without great scrutiny a threader collecting them had no way to tell whom you voted for. You were responsible for the punches so had to be careful but then the strung stacks are stuck in a machine and I'm guessing using light the votes seperated and then it just counts up the numbers on each side mechanically and feeds the numbers. No silicone processors for online level programming...why the heck would we ever want our voting machines online or with enough computer processing in them to do any more than a simple calculator with nothing but an addition button and an equals button. What's that, two bit technology maybe? Nothing else should be involved in the voting process at all and especially programs which present ballots virtually we must trust is the dumbest idea ever since tens of thousands of people will handle them and any one can quickly alter the programming. Then the only thing to worry about is assuring legal voting citizen and link by social or something which then get run thru the system at the end and if any doubles occur disqualify all those ballots. No electronics ai or PC crap should be anywhere near a secret ballot system as u know damn well everything we vote on them is kept somewhere. Whether you can do anything with that info I dunno but ...

originally posted by: Cigarettes
90% tax rate for cheaters.

Since taxes are merely legalized theft, I am adamantly opposed to such an absurd idea.

Better... eliminate the personal income tax, and go to a flat 10% sales tax on all non-essential items (food, clothing, gas, etc). Of course the devil is in the details, and obviously there would be a lot of details to work out (ie, how do you define each category of 'non-essential' items).

Don't have a job? Pay 90% of the minimum wage rate for your tax. Can't pay that? Welcome to felony status.

Seriously? That is just plain deranged. You want to charge people for living and breathing? You just made felons after anyone who simply decides to live off the grid/land.

What do you think we could do to get exit polls back?

As long as there are two separate, independent entities verifying the results, I feel reasonably secure.

It's impossible to make the voting process fully tamper proof, because someone will always be administering it. But when two or more independent entities are verifying results, they can't avoid being caught.

Hey guys, since this is a brainstorming session, allow me to take lateral thinking to the extreme...

Why don't get rid of elections every four years at once? Please, hear me out here...

First, a few inalienable truths:

- Nowadays, we have technology that could allow us to have a more streamline voting system (I don't think anyone can argue that)
- The people whom we elect are public servants, and their performance should be subject to periodic reviews (at the end, that's what elections are every four years, isn't it?).

What don't we get rid of the elections and instead, we subject them to yearly performance reviews? Why wait four years, do we have that luxury in our workplaces? NO!

What about a point system, in which the public officials are scored by the citizens YEARLY, using a point system? The way I envision it is this:

Every person in voting age will have personal access to a main scoreboard (which access will be granted by two factor authentication) where each officer can be scored between 0 to 10. The citizens can score the candidates at any time during the year: they will be able to even modify their scores at will throughout the entire year, up to a certain day, when the score is final for the year and will not be possible to modify. That score will determine if he can continue in the job or we need to get a different person for the position. For example, we could say: "If you are over an AVERAGE score of, say, 5, in years 1, 2 and 3, we will wait for year 4 for a mandatory election (to prevent becoming stagnant in the positions); but if the score falls below 5 in any of the first 3 years, the person will be immediately remove from the position.

Benefits:

- Every citizen control their board in real time, any time of the year. Fraud becomes more difficult.
- The elected officers, as they can also see the general scoreboard throughout the year, can see in real time what the people thinks on their performance, and take steps to correct it before year end.
- Lobbing does not have a place in an environment like that. (That's a good think, innit?)
- Electoral campaigns? GONE. Your presentation card will be your own performance.
- Which, in turn, will eliminate all the fraud that may exist during campaigns, (the place where the REAL FRAUD lays), as there will be no more.

One point would need debate. To prevent that non voters affect the results, the final score will have to be the average of the people WHO VOTED only. That way, every vote is a REAL VOTE. To do that, there are two options that I can see: use only the scores of the people who voted (simpler solution of the two), or make the vote mandatory. I am sure that it will be supporters for of each one of them, and it may require a separate discussion.

I do not see ANY reason for this not to work. You?