Once More About Elections Processes and Fraud

If you haven't yet listened to the challenges to the election results, you should.

When I posted about usually getting the president we deserve, I was assuming that none of the factions in the current contest would be stupid enough to make use this soon of the tools of voter fraud that they have been putting into place. I was naively hoping that there would be time for common sense to reign back the erosion on election practices that has taken place.

I had been hearing what the normal news outlets have been mentioning about the challenges that the Trump Campaign legal team have been mounting with a mixture of, I don't know, cynicism, ennui, exasperation, disappointment, rolling eyeballs, etc., that they would be "dragging this out yet again".

Last night, a friend posted a link to a youtube video of the Trump campaign's legal team' press conference:

https://youtu.be/buQCdCSDWQQ

I don't know why I find it astonishing. I don't know why I want to be so naive.

Voting has to be a transparent process to be valid. 

In the simplest case, where voters are not intimidated by threats from the parties presenting their proposals and candidates, secrecy is not necessary. A simple raise of the hands in favor or against is all that is necessary. Everybody can see who voted for what/whom, and everybody can count.

But people get their ego's all tangled up in the results of elections, and then attempt to alter the outcome unnaturally. So the simplest case doesn't scale well.

There are many ways to try to alter the results of elections:

• Campaigning itself is one such attempt.
  
• If campaigning doesn't appear to be working, and people aren't willing to accept that, they might use intimidation, explicit threat, and actual force to prejudice the outcome. 
• And if that doesn't work, they might prepare to attempt to alter the outcome by legal technicality after the fact. 
• But legal technicality relies on vagaries of courtroom process, so, if, during the election, it becomes apparent that they are going to lose, they might try to alter the outcome by interfering with the process, so they don't have to gamble on those vagaries.
  

Election best practices has provided a means of circumventing these problems.

Elections best practices require that the ballot be cast in secret, but counted in the open.

With or without a lot of thought, it's clear that there are contradictory requirements here: cast in secret, count in the open. 

Once it's open, it's no longer secret.

Somehow, you have to reliably separate the identity of the voter with the content of the vote in between the moment the ballot is cast and the moment it is counted.

Here is one simple way to do it: 

1. A place to store the ballots which have been cast -- a ballot box -- is prepared, and inspected and shown to be empty, and secured before voting starts.
2. The ballots are counted before voting starts, to be sure there will be enough for all the registered voters, and to be able to check the number of ballots in the box and the number left over against the number of voters receiving ballots.
   
3. Judges, ballot handlers, and observers are also provided. Observers must include representatives from all parties with interest in the results, and they must be allowed to actually stop the process and ask for corrections to be taken, if irregularities are observed.
4. Votes are taken as follows:
   1. A voter requests a ballot.
   2. The voter is given a ballot and some sort of covering that hides the content of the ballot. Neither the ballot nor the cover provide a means of identifying the voter.
      
   3. The voter is provided a place to mark the ballot in private.
   4. The voter marks the ballot by hand in private,  and places the ballot in its cover before submitting it.
   5. The ballot is submitted directly to the election judges, who transfer it directly to the ballot box without exposing the ballot contents.
5. At the end of the designated balloting period, the ballot box is opened and the contents counted in the presence of the judges and observers. The counting process itself has to be observable. If machines are used, they should only be used to verify a hand count.
6. Judges and observers must be allowed to record the counts taken and take their records with them.
7. The ballots must be packaged and the packages sealed before being transported from the balloting place.
   
8. Ballots and counts must be transported to a central place where the ballots can be securely stored until the election results have been properly certified, and the counts can be tallied with the results from other ballot places, and the results for each balloting place must be published.

The reasons for being so particular are roughly as follows:

1. If we aren't careful with the ballot box, it's too easy to stuff it with fake votes.
2. Counting the ballots used and the ballots not used is a way to anonymously check that the box hasn't been stuffed and that valid ballots haven't been discarded.
   
3. Without observation and without someone competent to judge, it is way too easy for the election place staff to do all sorts of things to undermine the results. Especially, observers from each party can help to keep the others honest.
   
4. Concerning what the voter does:
   1. It's way too easy to buy the vote of someone with an unrequested ballot.
      
   2. Disclosure of the contents of the ballot also subjects a voter to potential reward and/or retribution.
      
   3. Observation of the voting being cast is another way to discover the contents of a ballot.
      
   4. Use of a machine provides places to hide devices to eavesdrop on the vote. In fact, it's hard to design an electronic machine that would not leak at least some of the details through radio noise.
      
   5. The more hands and the longer a distance a ballot passes through before being put in the ballot box, the more opportunities there are to use sleight-of-hand to misdirect the ballot, slip an added ballot in, or surreptitiously observe the contents before the ballot goes in the box.
5. Counting the votes once at the voting place helps assure that the ballots that are sent to central storage are the same as the ballots that are received there. It means that more people have to be present from the time the polls close until the counting ends, but that is a good thing. More eyes reduces temptations and provides more opportunities to blow a whistle on fraudulent activities. Moreover, no voting place should be set up to take more votes than two or three people can count and check by hand in an hour or two. And machines at this stage are too much temptation for hidden shenanigans.
   
6. The more records of the results at the various stages, the more opportunities to confirm their validity.
7. Sealed packages are significantly harder to open and alter the contents of than unsealed packages.
   
8. Central counting is too much temptation for shenanigans, if it's the first count. On the other hand, centralizing the second count allows the use of machines at that point. Secure storage and published results from each step allows greater confidence of the results, and of the results if a review and recount is required.
   

• First observation: Yes. This takes time. 

There is no necessity that the process be finished overnight, or even in a day. This can actually a good thing, because it can help prevent parties with too much interest in the results from knowing whether they want to take the risk of interfering with the process until it's over.

• Second observation: Machines which can be used to hide or expose parts of the process must not be used in the voting or counting process.
  

Except, there might be limited use for those voters whose physical limits would prevent them from marking the ballots by hand. And they can be used at a central location to confirm the original hand counts.

• Third observation: Mail-in ballots prevent the use of both observers and judges in critical parts of this process. Their use must be limited to by-necessity-only.
  

It's extremely frustrating for me to have to point this out, but it's just not possible for judges and observers to see what happens between the time the ballot is requested and the time it is submitted, to make sure that the ballot does not get diverted to fraudulent purposes. 

And it's not easy for them to observe the request and submission process, either.

Cries of "But mail-in is so much less stressful!" notwithstanding, mail-in, if allowed, must be limited to cases of necessity.

• Fourth observation: Society must support the polling process in ways we do not presently support it, if we want valid results.
  

People whose jobs prevent them from attending a regular voting place during the designated times are prevented from voting, and that also biases the results.

But mail-in is not a solution.

This is a place where we can improve current practices. I can suggest a few things that would help:

1. Employers should be required to give employees necessary paid time off to go vote.
2. Voting judge, observer, and counting duties are no less important than jury duty. Failing to properly staff a voting place is just begging for fraud to occur. We should be willing to do something similar to jury duty for election duty.
   
3. Alternative voting places and times should be provided instead of mail-in. Alternative voting places would make it easier to provide election judges and observers, and more possible to confirm who has already voted. Computer systems could also legitimately be used to determine who has voted already, but only carefully secured systems.
   
4. Mail-in ballots, if used, must never be opened and counted until after the voting places have closed and all voters have been confirmed, to avoid encouraging ambitious voters from doubling up. They must also be stored securely and opened and counted in the presence of judges and observers, just as in-person ballots.
   

• Fifth observation: Counting votes by machine to confirm the original hand count is an extremely simple process. It does not require the use of software developed by big companies, and especially not by foreign companies. 

I suppose I should expand a little on my impressions of the charges being made.

People working for the election are supposed to be working under oath, or as if under oath. Trump's legal team has found people willing to testify under penalty of perjury that people who are working for the election have broken their oaths.

Should I believe a hundred or so odd-ball malcontents who are willing to cooperate with the monkey pretend president with the orange hair? Or should I believe the thousands and hundreds of thousands of dedicated election workers?

I know how easy it is to get swept up into following the egoist.

And I have also worked real jobs for a long time. I know how easy it is for dedicated, hard-working, well-intentioned workers to say, 

This is unreasonably difficult. Getting the job done is more important than getting it done right!

and carelessly invoke truisms like

The perfect is the enemy of the good!

and convince each other to do things that shouldn't oughta be done.

I don't know who has broken their oaths. But it is apparent that a number of people have. At bare minimum, a number of people are seriously deluding themselves about what is right. 

I hope we can solve this without somebody starting witch hunts, but it looks difficult, unless one side yields things they think they shouldn't yield, which is also a bad result.

Whatever happens in these challenges to the election results, we should be looking at these as a wake-up call. We shouldn't be so caught up in our pursuit of good ends that we ignore the potential damage from our methods. 

We are treating our elections processes way too lightly.

An Awkward Proposal for an Amendment to Correct Election Processes

[JMR20200103: If you are interested in what I have to say here, you should also be interested in this post revisiting voter fraud: https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/01/revisiting-vote-voter-fraud.html.]

Amendments are extreme means. The travesty of the current presidential election rather calls for at least suggesting extreme means.

The president is not supposed to be king/queen for the day or for four years. He or she is supposed to be there to keep Congress in check and be the head of a limited executive branch. He or she is supposed to just be another ordinary citizen with what is supposed to be just a relatively ordinary job.

But now we have Congress holding court with their retainers, whom we call lobbiests and vested interest groups and political parties. When government was small, there was no reason for the retinue.

And we have the courts holding court with their retinue of lawyers, etc. When government was small, ...

And we have the presidential contenders holding court with their retainers -- the political parties and campaign committees, etc.

My wife is listening to the radio in the morning as usual.

The talk show host is commenting on the US elections, comparing the presidential race to AKB-48's popularity contests. My wife says the comparison is insulting to AKB-48. (My family is none of us fans of the idol manufacturing entertainment corporations, and AKB-48 often gets particularly critical evaluations.) I know the comparison is not unique, and it isn't even the first time Dojo has said it. And American pundits and commentators have compared this election unfavorably to American Idol, too.

But it's really bad this year.

I explained to my daughter that things are not supposed to get this bad.

Now, I personally think that neither Clinton nor Trump would be the worst president elected in the US.

Mr. Trump, if the ironic happens and the decoy gets elected, would have to pick a cabinet, the cabinet would have to be approved, and such a cabinet would help him figure out what a president really is allowed to do. Unfortunately, he would thereby be easily turned into a puppet of the power mongers who think they are the hidden aristocracy.

Ms. Clinton's approach to politics has improved a bit since eight years ago. But she definitely let's her mother's instinct for protectionism interfere with her comprehension of the general duties of citizenship. The e-mails thing and other such blunders I chalk up to the people she has gathered around her. And she definitely has shown herself to be manipulable by those power mongers.

Either way, there is likely to be some more unfortunate erosion in the Constitutional checks-and-balances.

And it is not the personalities that are the problem here.

It's the reinterpretations, the changes in traditions such that a particular Constitutional restriction really doesn't mean what it says any more, so that they can "accomplish" the "things" that their backers want.

We need to untangle partisan politics from all of the political processes, and one place to start is the presidential campaign.

We are told (by whom?) that the electoral college was intended to provide a buffer between popular opinion and the office of president.

I don't believe it. Maybe that was what some people thought.

My impression is that the electoral college was really intended to provide an organized way to get the results of the state balloting safely to the capital for this one office that has to be elected by all the states.

In the late 1700s, we had unreliable postal roads. (erk!) No TV, no telephone, definitely no Internet.

And the Constitution was not designed to bring all the states together into one homogenized nation. Each state has its own Constitution and its own laws. That includes election law.

So we had the problem of different election processes in each state, meaning that a citizen's vote in Virginia was not the quite same as a citizen's vote in New Hampshire.

The electoral college was intended as a way to let each state handle elections its own way, and then the states themselves pass their results up to the national level. It was intended as a protection against vote tampering.

As a convenience, it also provided for difficult cases such as statistical ties.

Florida's "hanging chads"?

Florida was a failure of the system. It wasn't the first time we'd seen that particular failure. Florida was a statistical tie. No way is less than one percent difference meaningful.

In plain words, neither Bush nor Kerry won Florida, hanging chads notwithstanding.

Elections are statistical processes. At the time the Electoral College was established, the methods and means for transmitting the results of the processes were not well established. Some of the statistical mathematics were also not generally understand.

And, what is more important, what might have worked well in one state probably would not have worked well in another.

Once again, as I understand it, the Electoral College was not to protect the office from popular opinion so much as it was to protect the transmission of the results.

What has happened now is that the two predominant political parties have essentially hijacked the election processes, establishing their own machinery (the primary elections being the most prominently visible parts) for state operated methods of choosing electors.

The most effective way to protect abused power is to hide it.

Can we get that through our heads?

Putin is a figurehead -- a strong figurehead, but he can not go against the real power holders if he wants to stay alive.

Kim Jung Un is so hard to decrypt precisely because he is trying to work the real powers in Korea against each other, and it's not really working the way he expects.

Obama wanted to do a lot of good things, but the limits he ran up against were not just Constitutional limits.

So, we need to break the political parties' hold on the election. That means that we need to change something. (And we'll have to revisit this question again in a few decades, I'm sure. Social engineers are always so blind to the results of their manipulations.)

So, I'm proposing:

An Amendment to Correct the Elections Processes.

[Except this is way too much detail to be made part of the Constitution. I really need to refine the ideas here a bit more.]

Section 1: Ballots used for national elections, including state processes for national elections, and the processes for casting ballots, shall conform to the following requirements:

The ballots shall be rendered in physical and durable form.

The ballots shall be directly readable by all who use them, including the person legally casting the ballot and the persons who, by law or judicial direction, count the ballots.

The ballot shall not change form in casting, submission, transmission, or storage except the minimum necessary changes to provide for the anonymity of the person casting the ballot.

The person casting the ballot may request help from a qualified voter of his or her own choice.

The form of the ballot shall provide anonymity in all elections except where there is unusual, overriding, pressing, and temporary need to identify the person casting the ballot with the ballot cast. In any case, elections for the President, House of Representatives, Senate, and any elected judicial office of the United States shall always be conducted in a manner which protects anonymity.

The form of the ballot shall also provide means of confirming that the number of ballots counted matches the number of ballots cast.

The content of the ballot shall be protected from discovery until after it has been separated from whatever means has been provided to confirm the ballot count, and until after it has been submitted and stored for counting.

Counting shall not proceed until after the polling area is closed for further ballots.

A person requesting a new ballot to replace a spoiled one shall physically and visibly destroy the spoiled ballot and return it. Destroyed ballots shall be kept separately from cast ballots at all times, and shall not be counted except to determine that the total count of ballots used matches the total count provided for the election.

All ballots shall be kept for the purpose of confirming both the process and the result until such time as determined by state or national law.

The methods and means for counting the ballots and transmitting the results to the respective government officers who by law receive them shall be open to review.

Casting multiple ballots in any national election shall be tried as a misdemeanor crime. Aiding and abetting the casting of multiple ballots in any national election shall be tried as a capital crime. Repeated offenses may be punished by temporarily or permanently revoking the privilege of voting, as determined by the courts for a particular case. [And I really need to work more on the language of this one, too.]


Section 2: The President and Vice President of the United States shall be chosen by direct vote of qualified citizens of the United States in their states of primary residence.

Each candidate standing for the office of either President or Vice President shall stand as a candidate for both offices.

The ballots shall provide for the choice of any of the candidates for President and Vice President, once as choice for President, and once as choice for Vice President. The ballots shall also provide for a write-in candidate, and for an explicit vote against all of the candidates in each office.

[Yes, I think that it should be possible to vote for one from one party and one from another, and I think it should be possible to vote for the same candidate for both offices, should one desire to do so.]

When counting the vote of a write-in candidate, it should be recorded and counted as it is written. 

A runoff election shall be held when there is no clear winner for either office, or when the combined count of votes against and votes for write-in candidates are the highest votes for either office. Also, a runoff election shall be held when one candidate receives the highest count of votes for both offices.

There is no clear winner when the highest count and the second highest count are within one percent of each other, one percent meaning one percent of total votes cast for that office.

When a runoff election is held, all candidates whose count of votes for a particular office in the original election is within five percent of the highest count for that office shall be invited to stand again, five percent meaning five percent of the total votes cast. Also, when a runoff election is required, anyone who can reasonably demonstrate their claim to be a write-in candidate receiving more than one percent of the total vote shall be invited to stand.

Further, when a runoff election is required and votes against all the candidates exceeds ten percent of the total votes cast, new candidates shall be allowed to stand in the runoff election. Again, if there are less than two candidates to stand, new candidates shall be allowed to stand in the runoff.

The runoff election shall be held six weeks after the original election. All candidates standing in the runoff election shall register their candidacy in each state at least a week before the runoff election.

The runoff election shall allow for neither write-in candidates nor a vote against all candidates, unless no new candidates stand. If no new candidates stand, write-in candidates shall be allowed.

If a write-in candidate appears to receive the most votes for either office in the runoff election, a confirmation election shall be held to choose from among those who can demonstrate reasonable claim to being the winning write-in candidate. The states shall make no effort to prevent such demonstration of reasonable claim. This election shall be held three weeks after the runoff election. Those who stand in the confirmation election shall register in each state during the two weeks following the runoff election. The states shall not make unreasonable requirements for their registration. The ballot shall provide for explicitly voting against all candidates on the confirmation ballot.

If there is no clear winner for either office after a runoff election and any confirmation election, the House of Representatives shall as soon as possible choose by vote from among the candidates in the runoff and confirmation elections receiving more than ten percent of the respective total votes. If no two candidates have received more than ten percent of the vote, they shall choose from among the candidates receiving more than five percent. If no two candidates receive more than five percent, they shall choose from among all the candidates. A quorum of three fourths of the House shall be required, and they shall vote first for the President, and then for the Vice President.

Section 3: If this amendment is ratified within one month of a presidential election, it will take not take effect until that election has been completed.

If this amendment is ratified, it will be reviewed and either repealed or updated after twenty years.

[JMR20200103: Again, if you got this far, you should probably also read this post revisiting voter fraud: https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/01/revisiting-vote-voter-fraud.html.]