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cogman10 12 hours ago [-]
Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
Terr_ 12 hours ago [-]
To go beyond the understatement of "bad idea" (and likely make the subtext into text): This thing is unmistakable malice, not mere incompetence.
There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.
majormajor 10 hours ago [-]
There's a voted-into-oblivion reply to this from someone trying to both-sides things "I don't want to hear about it when it was changed quickly for Covid too".
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
euroderf 2 hours ago [-]
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!... see only the Great Oz.
NicoJuicy 9 hours ago [-]
The current administration will just blame it on someone else, like they always do.
mapontosevenths 9 hours ago [-]
"I can't believe Obama did this to us while we were in the middle of fighting Joe Bidens war in Iran! It's almost as bad as Bill Clinton's darn Tariffs!" - Future Trump, probably
NicoJuicy 9 hours ago [-]
And who complains will get their funding withdrawn.
llm_nerd 11 hours ago [-]
There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
kkotak 8 hours ago [-]
You'd be surprised what hate is capable of. Once you paint a side as the enemy and convince half of the population of that, it becomes easy to carryout acts even if they're detrimental to the your side too. Look at the US economy and inflation caused by the tariffs and wars for instance. It's the 'our side is winning' mentality shortsightedness that destroys nations and institutions. By the time people realize this, it's often too late.
jimmydddd 2 hours ago [-]
It's strange though, because Trump's elderly voters are the ones who vote by mail. Some observers say he would have won the incredibly close 2020 race if he hadn't discouraged mail in voting.
llm_nerd 14 minutes ago [-]
I did hear a lot of people claim this, and it seemed mostly like unqualified schadenfreude and fantasy.
In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.
lenkite 3 hours ago [-]
After hanging out on Trumper forums to try and understand their point of view, I realized that they have a VERY narrow view of who they want in their "ideal democracy": Pure White Conservative Christians, No browns or blacks, No voting women (their place is in the home and the kitchen), No gays, Must love guns, must support everything that their GEOTUS says even if he contradicts himself.
majormajor 10 hours ago [-]
"Abhors democracy" isn't necessarily the right phrase for the on-the-ground majority. The leadership, sure. But not the average folk.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
prh8 10 hours ago [-]
Even the house is unfairly tilted towards smaller states because of the 538 limit
FireBeyond 10 hours ago [-]
There's a sizable part of the group that truly believe that cities get more representation than they do, that there are more rural Americans than urban.
vkou 7 hours ago [-]
This isn't a 'bad idea', this is a blatant attempt to at election fraud.
rg2004 9 hours ago [-]
You're giving them too much credit. There is zero critical thinking happening.
sieabahlpark 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dplgk 11 hours ago [-]
Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
dpkirchner 10 hours ago [-]
Hopefully they're embarrassed.
somenameforme 8 hours ago [-]
If you genuinely don't understand what's happening - it's the same reason that political discussion on Reddit became completely detached from reality. On these sort of topics you have a relatively small number of hyper partisans that aim to censor discussion through the abuse of flagging, and they're mostly successful. So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world, or even on e.g. Hacker News. I'm not really sure why anybody would want this outcome; I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
Capricorn2481 6 hours ago [-]
Everything you're saying can be true and co-exist with the reality, which is the current administration has been so vindictive, short-sighted, and nakedly serving the billionaire class, that its own supporters have had to completely disengage with everything The Executive Branch is doing.
If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.
You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.
There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.
wallst07 3 hours ago [-]
"If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on."
Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.
MisterMower 5 hours ago [-]
I think GP is right: this place has become an echo chamber. Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal, it would not be seriously considered, or worse, flagged. And why would anyone waste their time when they know their efforts will be immediately dismissed and memory holed?
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
somenameforme 8 minutes ago [-]
In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
hackyhacky 2 minutes ago [-]
> It reads as the exact sort of evidence free misinformation driven conspiratorial sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about.
It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.
We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.
* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors
* Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence
* Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom
* Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election
* Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution
Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about election results, believe them.
It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?
wallst07 3 hours ago [-]
The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
somenameforme 5 hours ago [-]
There are currently 20 root level comments. 8 have been flagged. Which is again starting to look a lot like Reddit.
Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that would much more closely resemble what we see in things like support polls.
But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.
LeBit 4 hours ago [-]
If the quality comments that have been flagged are like what you see on /r/conservative , it might be that you subjectively see quality where others see something else.
Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?
wallst07 3 hours ago [-]
You don't get it, or are not following through. The thread started with why a Conservative wouldn't post here. It's simple, it's not worth getting comments downvoted or flagged for having an unpopular opinion [not nationally but here].
You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wallst07 3 hours ago [-]
Nope not embarrassed, it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit. There is no room for discourse or nuance.
If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
I've said this before and the replies are usually about the topic or opinion but it's not. Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
cogman10 14 minutes ago [-]
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.
For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."
One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.
hackyhacky 7 hours ago [-]
> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Democrats: 67%
cogman10 24 minutes ago [-]
#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
MithrilTuxedo 12 hours ago [-]
What business is it of the USPS except to transmit all mail regardless of purpose?
The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.
testfoobar 8 hours ago [-]
Yes - USPS should behave like a layer 3 network: moving mail pieces to destination addresses independent of source & destination.
Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.
In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service
to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all
voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requiring USPS to use those
lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters.
USPS officials were tasked with crafting the details of how the new system
would work, including the creation of a new portal for states to upload their
voters’ information and the back-end software that would allow mail delivery
sites and local post offices to track, and potentially block, ballots
entering into the mail on their way to voters.
The whistleblower is saying the rules are crafted so certain people don't get counted. Specifically, minorities, specifically, democrat minorities.
beanjuiceII 2 hours ago [-]
it doesnt say that at all you are making that up
linuxhansl 9 hours ago [-]
> The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states.
Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Edit: Spelling.
cobertos 5 hours ago [-]
Their job is whatever the government tells them it is, things like this don't just spawn out of thin air, there's usually rationale for it[0].
The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.
It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system
"Their job is whatever the government tells them it is"
Sounds like authoritarianism.
leptons 7 hours ago [-]
>Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
That's this administrations exact intended purpose for forcing this.
skybrian 11 hours ago [-]
I'm wondering how easy the USPS is to route around.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?
hyperhello 10 hours ago [-]
No, the procedures are designed to reject more votes in blue areas, just like the procedures that somehow conclude that people named Williams, John, or Washington should be dropped from the rolls for being similarly named as other people named Williams, John, or Washington.
skybrian 10 hours ago [-]
But suppose there are states that don't cooperate with that?
dboreham 6 hours ago [-]
The postal service is run by the federal government.
repeekad 5 hours ago [-]
And elections are supposed to be run by states...
beanjuiceII 2 hours ago [-]
the procedurse are not designed to reject more votes in blue areas lol being involved at the organization forr 15+ years its always so funny to hear what ppl on this site cook up; i get a good 'what are they saying now on orange site' with my co-workers
earth-tattoo 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
samstokes 6 hours ago [-]
Oh, I see, you are posting the same misleading comment on multiple threads here. I'm sure you are doing so in good faith, so here is a link to my other comment explaining why it is misleading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546715
earth-tattoo 17 minutes ago [-]
1. Why send ballots until verified.
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
holgerschurig 4 hours ago [-]
The very sad state of the US democracy, especially how they do elections, was even fodder to a german language book "König von Deutschland" (King of Germany) by Andreas Eschbach.
In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.
That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...
Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!
rg2004 9 hours ago [-]
Given that they are dedicated to causing chaos in the midterms, how is it best countered? Whisper campaigns to tell all your friends to vote in person? When he loses, what stops him from putting troops in the streets? Is the recourse just wait until he goes? We all see what's happening, how do we meet the moment?
hiddencost 6 hours ago [-]
I'm skeptical that the federal government can be saved. I suspect we will experience a process of balkanization.
tintor 6 hours ago [-]
balkanization is an offensive word
tremon 2 hours ago [-]
So is "federal" at this stage.
hackyhacky 13 hours ago [-]
> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
mrj 8 hours ago [-]
He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.
dashundchen 8 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile, the piece of excrement votes by mail himself.
While voting by mail himself. Yes the hypocrite-in-chief. Rules for thee, none for me.
monero-xmr 7 hours ago [-]
Having bare minimum protections against invalid voters, illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system.
I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
ar0 6 hours ago [-]
Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted.
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…
pvaldes 6 hours ago [-]
Some years ago a postman in Spain was caught with a sack in his home with 3000 votes that never were delivered to their destiny. This happened many months after the election. Last year in December some thieves broke into a small village post office and stole the money and the sack with 124 mail votes that were found later partially burnt. The few voters involved were allowed to re-send his vote before the elections and an organization of 12 people were detained later for this an other assaults to post offices before the local elections.
So yes, mail voting has a few issues still, not a lot, but is not impossible to break. If every worker in the post office is from one party and nobody in that party votes by mail, bribing and corrupting the system is doable, and even easy; specially if your work depends on it.
If you do this in small populations or at scale you could easily remove enough votes from the system until winning the place by one single vote. If you are malignant enough you could even blame later millions of "lazy" people for not voting and laugh about it.
Mail voting depends on trusting what your postman is not a plant.
> The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
I think the evidence suggests they are not particularly constrained by reality? Recall "They're eating the cats and dogs."
hackyhacky 7 hours ago [-]
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
microtonal 7 hours ago [-]
many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it
Just trying to understand as a non-American: which people are eligible to vote, but are unlikely to get an ID?
gorbypark 6 hours ago [-]
Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID.
Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.
The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.
MisterMower 5 hours ago [-]
> It’s not that uncommon for an adult to not have an ID
It’s extremely uncommon.
You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.
The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> It’s extremely uncommon.
34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.
The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.
> as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote."
And which of the two people are lying? Would you have to... verify ID to figure that out?
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
I'm assuming that your question is not offered in good faith, but just in case I'm wrong: no, you could just see where they live.
jjav 6 hours ago [-]
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
horsawlarway 7 hours ago [-]
Literally, what the fuck are you talking about.
As in, please be more specific with your claims that we don't require identification to vote.
Because it strikes me as a very low effort Fox News talking point, not any reality.
Most states allow you to cast a provisional ballot on polling Day without an ID, but require that you return and present an ID to accept it.
But no state is accepting votes without identifying the voter. They just vary somewhat in what alternatives they accept.
I have never voted without being required to present gov issued ID. Ever.
gspr 7 hours ago [-]
The comparison to western European countries doesn't hold up. Speaking from Norway: yes, it's true you have to provide ID to vote, both in national and local elections. The difference is that obtaining ID is trivial, to the point where essentially everyone here legally has ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the most common way for someone not to have ID would literally be "all of it was in my luggage and the airline lost it", or some similar very temporary state. In the US, the people who do have ID do not even form a representative sample of the population as far as I understand
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
teh_infallible 6 hours ago [-]
You need an ID to drive, buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, board a plane. And people manage to do all those things.
bojan 6 hours ago [-]
You can do all that with a driving license, but a driving license is not a proof of citizenship and thus of your eligibility to vote.
In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.
ahoka 6 hours ago [-]
This is not true. For example not every citizen can vote (people under guardianship or criminals) and not citizens can vote in local elections in the EU, if they came from another EU country.
bojan 6 hours ago [-]
Yes. There are all kinds of edge cases.
The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.
impossiblefork 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID.
Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.
A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.
tancop 5 hours ago [-]
Some of the Republican proposals would require a proof of citizenship at registration time. You would still be able to register without a passport but you need to take your birth or naturalization certificate. Not everyone has them at home so you might need to go to your parents place in another state or risk getting it mailed. Good luck.
The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.
Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.
Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID
So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.
gspr 6 hours ago [-]
> In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.
Nitpick: E.g. Norwegian ID cards can be had by any legal resident. The card will say that you're not a citizen though, so your point about that stands.
Re driving license: Driving license is a valid form of ID for voting here. All eligible people are on the voting rolls automatically (unlike the absurd american system), and the driving license is merely used to prove you are who you say you are.
MisterMower 5 hours ago [-]
In my state government issued ID is used to verify who you are. You are then issued a ballot if your name is also in the poll book.
Your eligibility to vote and have your name entered into the poll book is determined by providing a Social Security number or birth certificate.
So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.
At the moment, yes. Under Republican voter ID proposals that require proving citizenship, no. Having an SSN does not imply US citizenship.
Morromist 6 hours ago [-]
Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now. 20% of americans don't have them. They're pointless, take a lot of time and effort to aquire and are needlessly expensive.
I don't have one because I have a passport.
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now.
If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.
altacc 6 hours ago [-]
In much of Europe you don't need ID for those, except a driving license, which happens to be an ID but primarily exists to prove you are qualified to drive. If you look young you are asked to prove your age if buying cigarettes or alcohol but the requirements for that are relatively low.
Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.
gspr 6 hours ago [-]
No, all people do not manage to do those things (even if they wanted to).
Arodex 6 hours ago [-]
The GOP and Trump supporters have so far spent millions of dollars trying to prove voter fraud. Mike Lindell of my pillow has lost his fortune trying to prove it.
They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.
HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.
michaelmrose 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
stouset 9 hours ago [-]
And when it all goes to shit, they can just use that as evidence that mail-in voting shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
kulahan 7 hours ago [-]
It’s worth mentioning that destroying the USPS has been a largely bipartisan effort, for reasons I cannot understand.
Edit: when the PAEA passed in 2006, it had 410 “yes” votes. Not a single democrat, and only 20 republicans voted no. This was, and still is, the primary reason the USPS is no longer able to function.
ycombinete 7 hours ago [-]
That's a global thing. Postal services are very expensive public services. Low hanging fruit for cost savings.
kulahan 7 hours ago [-]
That's the crazy thing about the US. Our postal service is, for some reason, not funded by taxpayer dollars, but also not allowed to run a profit, they are not allowed to change prices without congressional approval, and they must fund their pension for 75 years - well beyond any requirement anyone else in the US faces, to include both federal agencies and private orgs. If they didn't have that last requirement, they'd be solvent.
tancop 4 hours ago [-]
No tax funding, no profit and price controls are normal for a state owned company. In other countries the postal service is not expected to pay for itself all the way but subsidies are limited by law. The prices are supposed to be lower than market as a public service.
jjav 6 hours ago [-]
> Low hanging fruit for cost savings.
None, since the USPS is not government-funded.
BoiledCabbage 9 hours ago [-]
Exactly. It's incredible how partisan some peoples information bubbles must be to not see this for what it is.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader of a country who dismantled its democracy (Orban) - and previously pushed the govt to make false claims of vote fraud to keep him in power.
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
Then, when that failed:
> Trump pressured the Justice Department to falsely announce it had found election fraud, and he attempted to install a new acting attorney general who had drafted a letter falsely asserting such election fraud had been found, in an attempt to persuade the Georgia legislature to convene and reconsider its Biden electoral votes.
Like I think there are people in such an information bubble that they aren't even aware these are well established facts. Not partisan talking points, but a recounting of facts of the lengths that have already been attempted to remain in power illegally. And now sudden sweeping changes to voting right before an election amid false claims of rigged elections.
dabinat 8 hours ago [-]
Another reason is that if people only have one day to vote, it’s much easier to disenfranchise their vote just by delaying or inconveniencing them. Texas recently tried this by changing where people were allowed to vote, causing mass confusion.
In Georgia they passed a law making it illegal to hand out bottles of water to people in line to vote while simultaneously reducing polling stations in certain areas to ensure long lines.
llm_nerd 11 hours ago [-]
It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.
wl 10 hours ago [-]
> They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
SiNiquity 9 hours ago [-]
You're right, the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling this summer reversed the appeals court ruling, preserving states' rights to set laws that permit counting postmarked ballots -- if postmarked in time.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
1 hours ago [-]
clumsysmurf 10 hours ago [-]
Speaking of engineering outcomes, today I read:
“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
RickJWagner 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Geeek 12 hours ago [-]
One can observe and accuse based on that observation. What 'sources' do you expect to see?
LastTrain 11 hours ago [-]
He’s just demanding the same kind of rigor he demands from Trump about rigged elections. Here you go RickWagoner the Republican Governor of famously liberal Wyoming smells something fishy too: https://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_7f688e37-3...
RickJWagner 23 minutes ago [-]
Rigor is needed.
Here’s an article talking about 6000 ineligible voters in New Jersey getting ballots.
Surely you agree this is problematic, and oversight is needed?
Then extend that one step farther. It wouldn’t be fair to scrutinize only blue states like New Jersey. Red states like Wyoming should be held accountable too, right?
hackyhacky 10 minutes ago [-]
I think it's amusing how partisan your notion of "rigor" is. Because of a run-of-the-mill software error, you want to take away election power from the states and hand it to the federal government, which at the moment is in the hands of someone who has zero credibility regarding running honest elections?
Moreover, you find these 400 erroneous votes deeply problematic but you, I assume, did not ask for federal election oversight in the following cases:
What I see here is a pattern of attempts to restrict voting among those opposed to the GOP. And these are the people that you trust to provide "rigor" in voting?
doc_ick 10 hours ago [-]
Don’t worry, rickwagoner will find a way not to believe this source. Maybe because it uses https instead of http.
RickJWagner 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwawayqqq11 8 hours ago [-]
So you would like to see a real source of the stated/recorded democracy subversion goal of the GOP? If they didnt state it, its fake news?
Until then, all the past events, from court packing, gerry-mandering to now mail-in ballots (etc pp) is just coincidence?
When trump says "we only need to win once" and then conducts blantant corruption and demolishes institutions/relationships, you think this is just one more isolated coincindence? You think he will leave the white house easily and face the charges, even though his ball room isnt done?
Another commenter noted, how many people seem to live in absolute disinformation bubbles, in your case, i would add "state of insane denial".
NegativeLatency 12 hours ago [-]
They’d said as much explicitly and implicitly with their actions.
RickJWagner 11 hours ago [-]
Source, please.
margalabargala 11 hours ago [-]
You're replying to someone's personal interpretation and opinion asking about a source? That is the source. Do you not understand how discussions work?
Freedom2 7 hours ago [-]
Is there a source for how discussions work?
MithrilTuxedo 12 hours ago [-]
The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
hackyhacky 11 hours ago [-]
> politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
MrDrMcCoy 10 hours ago [-]
If voter ID was accompanied by mandatory free ID services at the polls, it could be a net good. Short of that, it's definitely more harm than good.
mikem170 9 hours ago [-]
Agreed, if id becomes madatory for voting then an appropriate id needs to be provided for free, otherwise it is effectively a poll tax, and poll taxes are illegal.
socalgal2 9 hours ago [-]
What evidence do you have it’s bad? Most of Europe and Asia requires some form of id
hackyhacky 9 hours ago [-]
Most of Europe and Asia have mandatory, free national ID cards.
throwawaypath 8 hours ago [-]
Every state in the US has free ID cards that work for voting.
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
No, they do not. Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee, as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent, and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee. You take this process for granted because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle, especially when it offers no immediate tangible benefit in their daily lives.
If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. The fact that they don't support mandatory ID shows their real agenda: they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
AngryData 11 hours ago [-]
If they gave a crap about the will of the people then why is marijuana still illegal? When you defy the will of the people 99% of the time, claiming your motivation is the will of the people when it is convenient rings pretty hollow.
unethical_ban 8 hours ago [-]
I don't believe you argue in good faith. Troll behavior is so depressing.
deaux 9 hours ago [-]
A good majority of the Americans want Epstein's best buddies' jailed, instead the POTUS is one.
ModernMech 9 hours ago [-]
We just spent a year hearing from some asshole about how the government was spending too much money and couldn't afford frivolities, yet we're supposed to spend money on security theatre to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist, all because some other assholes are butthurt about losing an election fair and square?
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
RickJWagner 20 minutes ago [-]
New Jersey had 6600 hundred non citizens get ballots.
If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
> If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
They didn't overlook it. They fixed the error.
If you are asserting that this error was a partisan, intentional attempt to change the outcome of the election, you're going to need to provide a lot more evidence before injecting USPS into election policy makes sense.
toomuchtodo 12 hours ago [-]
You mean where the sitting president said they were going to try to rig the midterms?
> Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.
His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source?
The article you’ve provided clearly says Trumps dialogue is not to be taken literally. ( It does say there are other ways the election might be tinkered with, but these are for another discussion. )
I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
LastTrain 1 hours ago [-]
“Source please” … “I don’t like your source” Always with you people. In 2020 he personally called state election officials asking them to find votes /in his own election/ but that doesn’t worry you either. Always bad faith, always.
hackyhacky 11 hours ago [-]
> I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
The issue is not the article, but the president's own words. Do you find it concerning that the president has expressed a desire to cancel elections? Or do you think he was joking?
Follow-up question: was/is he joking about building the wall, mass deportations, eliminating birthright citizenship, or running for a third term?
margalabargala 10 hours ago [-]
That's not what the article says. It says Trump needs the appearance of winning elections, so cancelling is an empty threat.
Manufacturing the appearance of winning is the not-empty threat, rather is what TFA is chronicling.
mcmcmc 12 hours ago [-]
Project 2025
IAmNotACellist 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
aetch 9 hours ago [-]
The republicans, they keep claiming that voter fraud is always in favor for democrats but most of the discovered cases are republican voters.
klntsky 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 9 hours ago [-]
> Survivorship bias
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
teravor 9 hours ago [-]
he is implying that the focus on the republican cases (the survivors) is a red herring because the system is presumably such that an actual conspiracy cannot be detected.
I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
majormajor 9 hours ago [-]
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
Why don't you start with some research of your own and outline how such a conspiracy would work and how large it would have to be.
Don't throw out a hypothetical "could it even be caught?" to try to bias people without doing any sort of even cursory glance at how things work.
Hell, while you're at it, please outline other possible conspiracies, and think about if there are potential vulnerabilities that could very require less major coordination than mail-in ballots. (Not even including the 'have a president who constantly tells everyone that if he loses it will be due to fraud to stoke the flames in advance' strategy!)
hackyhacky 9 hours ago [-]
> he is implying that the focus on the republican cases (the survivors) is a red herring because the system is presumably such that an actual conspiracy cannot be detected.
Maybe GP is implying that, but that's not what they said, because what you describe is not survivorship bias.
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
You are asking the wrong question. The correct question is: If mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists? If there isn't evidence that it exists, then the people who claim that it exists are making statements not based on evidence. In other words, their opinions are either not informed by facts, in which case we should disregard their opinions; or their statements are not sincere expressions of belief, in which case they are liars and we should not trust them.
teravor 8 hours ago [-]
> because what you describe is not survivorship bias
then you should look up what survivorship bias is. the visible group in this scenario are the individuals who were caught. which says nothing about any conspiracies or even other more competent individuals. the sampling is also poor.
> mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists
isn't that obvious? if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape? this example may actually be too on the nose as there is reason to believe exactly this happens with respect to certain state actors while being mitigated by the relative low volume of cash.
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
> then you should look up what survivorship bias is.
I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were not caught, even though there is no evidence that they exist: in this way the situation is quite different from that of missing planes in war. You ascribe the frauds' invisiblity to a supreme level of sophistification. The problem with that mode of thought is that it allows us to assume anything, including that the sophisticated frauds are actually Republican. So you can't call it survivorship bias until you show that those "invisible frauds" actually exist; you are going backwards by calling it survivorship bias in order to justify your unfounded a priori belief that they do exist.
> if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape?
This argument makes no sense. (a) If it's easy to commit a crime, then it's not necessary to be sophisticated to accomplsh it. (b) Widespread mail-in voter fraud is not easy to accomplish, unlike your hypothetical "trivial counterfeit" example, despite what Donald Trump tells you. (c) If only Republicans are getting caught doing voter fraud, then by your argument, Democrats are smarter, which is.... accurate. (d) You haven't even posited a posisble mechanism by which millions of fraudulent votes could be achieved. Believing things without evidence is called "faith" and is not the basis on which we develop laws.
teravor 7 hours ago [-]
survivorship bias is a statistical error, why would you invoke planes? especially after saying this:
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
also, you are the one invoking domestic political factions. I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue. it's probably more likely that a state actor is going to be committing the fraud just to saw chaos and to perhaps one day be too obvious about it.
hackyhacky 7 hours ago [-]
> why would you invoke planes?
I already told you why planes are relevant. It sounds like you really don't know what survivorship bias is at all. Please read the article [1]. Why are you in such a hurry to a discuss a topic that you don't understand?
Applying survivorship bias to the current "invisible fraud" situation is putting the cart before the horse.
> I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue.
It's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone in most systems, including systems where there is no fraud. Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists, and that bar has not been met. Does that answer your question?
it has been amusing watching you try to pretend that you knew what survivorship bias was. first you assumed it had something to do with death. then you invoked the plane anecdote.
now you link the wikipedia without realizing that over 90% of it has nothing to do with planes.
> Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists.
this is an assertion not an argument. I suppose there is no further point to this discussion.
hackyhacky 7 hours ago [-]
My brother in Christ, you are projecting so hard it hurts. The comment that I responded to simply said "Survivorship bias" in response to a question about only Republicans getting caught doing voter fraud. Your attempt to theorize fraud by imposing the a priori notion of survivorship bias makes no sense. Survivorship bias is an error only when some data points do not "survive", i.e. are excluded from counting. The presuppose the latter part without evidence.
> this is an assertion not an argument
What part of the statement "Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists." do you disagree with? You are starting from the assumption that fraud exists, then creating a fantasy explanation about who is committing it, without any factual basis at all.
dabinat 8 hours ago [-]
If Democrats were talented enough to rig an election with zero trace, they would have governed the country a lot more competently during Biden’s term.
Also, why didn’t they rig it again in 2024?
hackyhacky 9 hours ago [-]
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
and yet. you haven't yet.
goalieca 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 10 hours ago [-]
> If I take a look, through a security lens, of the existing mail in process from registration to recording votes, it’s quite shocking.
What about it is "shocking"? Please be specific.
Please note that the alleged justification these changes is widespread voter fraud, which has never been shown to exist at a level even close to significant, despite many years of effort [1].
> the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud.
Or, ya know, make a persuasive case based on evidence of actual fraud and pass a bill in Congress, the way the country is supposed to work?
> This is a kind of comment I would expect on Reddit and not hn.
Yours is a low-effort riposte if ever there was one.
> If you took off your partisan hat, put on your red team hat
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
gopher_space 9 hours ago [-]
From my perspective this just looks like voter suppression. Your hypothetical edge cases operate at a scale that doesn't matter in the slightest, a fundamental rookie security mistake.
AshleyGrant 10 hours ago [-]
> If I take a look, through a security lens, of the existing mail in process from registration to recording votes, it’s quite shocking.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
prh8 10 hours ago [-]
Either your head is 6 feet deep in the sand or you aren't really so non partisan
We have had secure elections for a long time, how is it that the only 2 that Trump has presided over are the ones that are a security concern?
12 hours ago [-]
MithrilTuxedo 12 hours ago [-]
Those who are apt to discard responses to what they should have been apt to discard.
> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail
Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.
Is this common in other countries?
massenpunkt 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, completely normal here in Switzerland. Approx. 90% vote by mail here [1].
Don’t you guys have many more referendums than other countries by nature of your direct democracy? At that point streamlining the process becomes crucial.
Arodex 5 hours ago [-]
Voting by mail is, in the absolute, a bad idea, not because of fraud but because it enables vote buying: you can show someone who you are voting for, and thus receive a bribe for it. The "normal" way of voting in a booth removes that verification step and makes vote buying a fool's errand.
Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.
arjie 7 hours ago [-]
Considering a mail-in ballot gets rid of ballot secrecy anyway, I don't see why they don't just allow online ballots cast with login.gov or whatever.
tumult 7 hours ago [-]
Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy, unless the system has been tampered with, which you could also do with illegal cameras at in-person voting etc. Anonymous envelope-within-envelope is a pretty standard way to keep secrecy, and many states do it, like mine.
eagleal 4 hours ago [-]
> Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy
They mean voter buying cases, "paying you to confirm a vote for X" and see you check the card.
In ballot cabins the buyer can't come with you inside the booth to confirm, so your vote has verifiable privacy/secrecy.
It doesn't really solve all type of vote buying problems (like clientelism lists, etc), but removes that confirmation step.
Paradigma11 43 minutes ago [-]
Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.
IndySun 5 hours ago [-]
If a name and the address associated 'votes', how long before that initial vote is noted in the system? I'm assuming a situation in which there's fake slips out there, or a subsequent digital vote comes in. When is the discrepancy flagged?
ck2 2 days ago [-]
good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
mafuy 13 hours ago [-]
This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.
mcmcmc 12 hours ago [-]
You realize USPS is the government right? It’s literally in the Constitution
Terr_ 12 hours ago [-]
> USPS is the government
The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.
And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.
Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."
jibal 11 hours ago [-]
Fallacy of composition. It would be factual to say that the USPS is part of the federal government, but then the statement becomes completely irrelevant.
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
Jordan-117 12 hours ago [-]
They don't care if it's illegal. They'll do it anyway and trust in the tainted result being a fait accompli that the courts can't (or won't) resolve.
BigTTYGothGF 12 hours ago [-]
> good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
Oh yeah that'll stop them.
gWPVhyxPHqvk 12 hours ago [-]
It's still funny thinking that there's people out there in 2026 who think that "it's illegal" will stop the Trump administration.
downrightmike 2 days ago [-]
That sample is wrong for statistics, 4% is literally not significant. It's also too much for sample controls
daveguy 13 hours ago [-]
No one ever accused this administration of being competent.
emeril 13 hours ago [-]
maybe so, but it is very vocal about they are the most modest
grim_io 13 hours ago [-]
Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
tenuousemphasis 12 hours ago [-]
Ok now what's the potential false positive rate?
peterleiser 11 hours ago [-]
1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.
grim_io 11 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm stupid, but why would sending back mean invalid?
It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.
Am I missing something?
snypher 10 hours ago [-]
Everyone wants a winner on the day, and if the votes are pushed back it goes into 'hanging chad' time, which some appointed judge can just decide if the votes are included / the winner.
dpkirchner 10 hours ago [-]
I'd wager most of us are OK with it taking a few days. There's a (relative) few weirdos that get upset if they see the numbers change as votes continue to be tallied.
wavemode 8 hours ago [-]
No, the verification they're doing is on the sending side, not receiving. The state sends people ballots, the USPS intercepts them and sends them back to the state if they find an issue.
IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late
dabinat 8 hours ago [-]
They only tested 400 out of 10,000, so there’s every chance when it goes back there’ll be another reason to reject it. You’re also assuming that the government’s data is accurate and the rejections are not disingenuous. If the ballots were actually accurate the state now needs to go through the process of proving that particular voter is eligible. Do state elections departments have the time and manpower to do all of that for however many get rejected? The goal is clearly to waste as much time as possible so the ballots don’t arrive on time.
smitty1e 3 hours ago [-]
Stipulating that the article is bollocks, you still have no guarantee that a ballot was marked without coercion applied to the voter.
This is why as much voting in person; on election day; at a polling place; behind a privacy screen; as possible is generally recommended.
chrisjj 5 hours ago [-]
True title: Whistleblower warns Postal Service's new mail ballot system has "potentially catastrophic problems"
jongjong 8 hours ago [-]
Voting doesn't work in a low-trust society.
You can't trust the custodian of the digital system who tallies the votes. The problem is intractable.
The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are firmly against this.
And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged. Nobody with power is asking for any audit...
Arodex 5 hours ago [-]
Why is Mike Lindell broke now? Because he tried to prove voter fraud and failed miserably. He spent millions.
>And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged.
Any proof? Oh, right, "vibes".
nedo_var 12 hours ago [-]
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s5300 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
rf15 9 hours ago [-]
Since everybody voted for Trump again, he just won't have a choice but to take a third term. It's what the people want! /s
Cue civil war?
UltraSane 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
voidfunc 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
UltraSane 11 hours ago [-]
They are all working together. Trump has absolutely no respect for voting and is terrified of Democrats getting majorities in the midterms.
voidfunc 11 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately they are going to succeed.
SoftTalker 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ZekeSulastin 12 hours ago [-]
The entire state of Oregon has done vote-by-mail for the past ~30 years and it seems to have gone fine for them for decades. Then again, their voting by mail wasn't being challenged by an actively hostile Federal government for much of that time.
torben-friis 12 hours ago [-]
I'm not American, but if I'm not mistaken, you don't have election day off like in other countries, right?
If so, how is that not clearly discriminatory for those who can't afford the time to go.
gortok 12 hours ago [-]
No, Election Day is not a paid holiday, or even a recognized holiday. Public schools are generally out (at least the ones used as voting precints) but folks have work, and typically most "in person" votes are cast after 5pm (after folks traditionally leave work).
Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades. It's remarkably secure and quite auditable. The issue the right has with it is that the folks that vote by mail (the military notwithstanding) are typically democrats.
mcmcmc 12 hours ago [-]
> Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades.
Very common for college students who go to school out of state as well. A conspicuously blue voting bloc.
fhdkweig 12 hours ago [-]
It is not a paid holiday. It isn't an unpaid holiday either. And if you work a minimum wage job, you probably need to work as many hours as you can. And if you don't show up to work on Tuesday, don't bother showing up on Wednesday because you don't have that job anymore.
This is absolutely discriminatory against the poor. That's why the republicans fight for these types of restrictions and democrats fight against them.
Arubis 12 hours ago [-]
We have a designated Election Day. It is (as you correctly imply) not a federal holiday. My own perspective is that that is indeed clearly discriminatory, and that some people like it that way.
NDlurker 12 hours ago [-]
Everywhere I've lived has early voting too. I usually vote a few days before election day because it's not so busy.
Then voting needs to be a national holiday with plenty of polling locations.
fhdkweig 12 hours ago [-]
While I think that making it a national holiday would be a good idea because it would maximize the number of eligible voters, it would still disenfranchise some people. There are jobs that have to be done 24/7/365 (mostly safety jobs), therefor there will be someone who is stuck at work that day. There are people who work at power companies on Christmas Day just to make sure the lights on Christmas trees light up.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
nijave 10 hours ago [-]
I think it's roughly the same in Ohio
sieabahlpark 11 hours ago [-]
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wpm 12 hours ago [-]
How much fraud is proven to be occurring due to mail-in ballots?
uncSoft 11 hours ago [-]
Statistically 0
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast)
2016 0.000089%
2018 0.000024%
2020 0.000051%
2022 0.000010%
Average 0.000043%
That's just fear mongering. Absentee voting by mail has been a thing for centuries. Attempting to limit it to people who are unable to vote in person doesn't do anything to make it more secure, and is a very weak control. It's not like they're going to check up on every single person who claims to have a specific reason they can't get to the polls. Beyond that, no-excuse absentee ballots have been a thing in many states for decades. Three states have been mailing absentee ballots to every voter automatically for a decade or more. Despite this long history, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems resulting from it.
fhdkweig 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. I can't even recall any point in my life when an allegation of fraud was made before Trump came on the scene. I've seen requests for recounts when the margins were close, but never an allegation of malicious intent.
1shooner 12 hours ago [-]
Perhaps every state should just have one very well-monitored polling place.
lukas099 12 hours ago [-]
So that the election is decided by the people who live near the one place?
thataccount 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
none2585 12 hours ago [-]
Over and over and over and over again it has been shown that there is no meaningful voter fraud whatsoever. Stop watching Fox News or as I see below reading yahoo news lol
thataccount 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
none2585 12 hours ago [-]
Amen my white brother. When is senior hour at the buffet? You know how we get in our age
thataccount 11 hours ago [-]
White, black, yellow, red, or brown. 10 or 90. The truth remains.
unethical_ban 8 hours ago [-]
Do you hear yourself?
thataccount 3 hours ago [-]
>Do you hear yourself?
Do you?
Hugsbox 2 hours ago [-]
You realize you're the one repeating demonstrably false statements?
jibal 11 hours ago [-]
> Saying a thing over and over doesn't make it true.
Even saying it once doesn't make it true. Apply that to everything you have said.
thataccount 10 hours ago [-]
Right, except voter fraud is a true thing. That you don't know that isn't my problem as such, but it will become one for the entire country because of people like you.
wtfwhateven 9 hours ago [-]
Why are you lying about what the other person said? They said "no meaningful fraud" as in there's not an amount of fraud that can actually change the results.
thataccount 3 hours ago [-]
>Why are you lying about what the other person said?
Why do you see the truth as a lie?
>They said "no meaningful fraud" as in there's not an amount of fraud that can actually change the results.
Except there is plenty of evidence across the world for over twenty years of "meaningful fraud that could change election results" happening. Heck, it actually goes all the way back to the Civil War and while history records Lincoln being elected, the cheating was such his election almost wasn't.
wat10000 12 hours ago [-]
Your vague handwavey manner of writing sounds very presidential.
thataccount 12 hours ago [-]
It's actually very specific. Look up the previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau and you will see exactly what I mean and why I've said it the way I've said it.
solid_fuel 12 hours ago [-]
“It’s very specific”
“Just look up vague abuses that I’m claiming happened with no evidence”
What does that have to do with anything discussed here?
Wait'll you hear about the Comstock Act and what the USPS has done to enforce that.
thataccount 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wat10000 12 hours ago [-]
"Specific" would involve some sort of detail about what these abuses were, or when they happened, or something beyond just "previous abuses of the US Postal Inspections Bureau."
thataccount 12 hours ago [-]
I figured you were clever enough to do your own searching, but since you didn't take the minimum effort to punch it in a search engine, I gave one example in an above post.
muwtyhg 10 hours ago [-]
How does the article you linked support your point that mail-in voting is abused or rife with fraud?
wat10000 11 hours ago [-]
The fun thing about being extremely vague is that it's inherently unsearchable. I can do a search and find reports of USPIS abuses, but I have no idea if they're the ones you're referring to or not, because you didn't say what you were referring to. And I'm not about to spend a bunch of time trying to work out which ones you meant and how they might connect to voting by mail when you can't be bothered to give even the slightest bit of information.
thataccount 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
doc_ick 10 hours ago [-]
All right Mike Lindell calm down
gradus_ad 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sethherr 11 hours ago [-]
Then it’s necessary to make voting a federal holiday. Like it is in other countries.
folkrav 11 hours ago [-]
We don't have holidays here, but employers are required to provide us with a certain amount of consecutive free hours (which specific number I can't remember) inside voting hours.
sethherr 11 hours ago [-]
That’s fine, except for places in the US (particularly poor urban areas) where you have to wait in line for hours and hours to vote - it would need to accommodate for that
trimethylpurine 11 hours ago [-]
I don't think there is any federal law. Could be a law in your state.
jibal 10 hours ago [-]
Sure, but it's also important to reject gradus_ad's "should", which is completely baseless.
earth-tattoo 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
samstokes 6 hours ago [-]
This is misleading. It's true that you get a ballot, but it's a provisional ballot. Your eligibility to vote gets checked during the counting process.
1. Why send ballots until verified.
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
dboreham 6 hours ago [-]
Disinformation.
earth-tattoo 16 minutes ago [-]
No.
Hobadee 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
> Our elections are beyond broken and untrustworthy.
You assert this without evidence. People have spent years looking for evidence of widespread voter fraud without success [1].
> voting should have a barrier to entry. Your freedoms are important - people died for them.
That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights? They added a "barrier to entry" for voting after the civil war and it didn't go so well. [2]
Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s. Defcon famously has its voting village, where hackers hack voting machines via numerous means. If you think this isn't happening (or at least being attempted) in reality (by either party, and/or outside countries) you are naive.
> That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights?
Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself, and it is a VERY difficult and bloody ordeal that can be lost extremely quickly if not protected. (See all non-free countries, or even parts of Europe where you can now be jailed for making certain comments online.)
I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests" we implemented during Jim Crow, but if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
hackyhacky 4 hours ago [-]
> I mean, there are plenty of instances if you are willing to look
I am willing to look and I see exactly zero cases of widespread, organized, mail ballot voting by non-citizens of the type that Republicans say is widespread, despite lack of evidence. What I do see is low-level cases of some guy filling out two voter registration forms in an effort to win a local election and getting caught immediately, which are cases that Republican proposals would do nothing to prevent.
> Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s
Curiously, this case was not in the list of fraud cases that you yourself provided.
> Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself,
That's not what I asked. Do you have to show your ID before you are allowed to use your freedom of speech? No you don't. Rights don't have a barrier to entry: they are available to everyone.
> if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
Again, that's not how rights work. The Bill of Rights doesn't say "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... unless the person in question gives vibes suggesting that they don't love the the US of A, go America." You can vehemently disagree with your country and still get rights, including the right to vote.
> I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests"
The Republican proposal under question specifically requires people to get a government issued ID that proves citizenship, while ~10% [1] of the US population lacks such ID. That sure sounds like a barrier of entry designed to exclude classes of "undesirable" people.
Right, like you should have to wait in line for a huge amount of time. People hate holidays and time off work otherwise we should do like a national holiday but oh wait the point is the barrier right? We need to close as many polling places as possible and lets make it so the words are extremely tiny and only printed in latin and at alternating angles, cause if its easy to read then people might be able to express their opinions which we worked so hard to make sure people could buy, people shouldn’t be represented, because of your freedoms
Disgusting
rhcom2 7 hours ago [-]
A solution in search of a problem.
unethical_ban 8 hours ago [-]
Agree with the idea that maybe, in a nation of brainwashed and stupid people who can't trust each other, we need paper ballots to make things easy to understand.
I disagree that people only vote by mail due to laziness or that the administration is taking away voting rights for the good of democracy.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
There's no "oops I didn't know" or "oops I timed the project wrong" or "oops I forgot about the election deadline" or "oops nobody told me about the court-order prohibiting it", etc.
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.
You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.
There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.
Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.
We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.
* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors * Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence * Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom * Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election * Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution
Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about election results, believe them.
It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that would much more closely resemble what we see in things like support polls.
But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.
Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?
You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.
If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
I've said this before and the replies are usually about the topic or opinion but it's not. Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.
For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."
One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156
2 Is a statement with a link. What is wrong with it? https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...
Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Democrats: 67%
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.
Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.
New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement (https://www.propublica.org/article/mail-voting-usps-official...)
The whistleblower is saying the rules are crafted so certain people don't get counted. Specifically, minorities, specifically, democrat minorities.Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Edit: Spelling.
The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.
It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system
[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/02/2026-10...
Sounds like authoritarianism.
That's this administrations exact intended purpose for forcing this.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like, at least for returning ballots, any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
Delivering is another question. I wonder if local governments could drop off ballots if they needed to?
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.
That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...
Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/trump-vote-by-mail-...
I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…
So yes, mail voting has a few issues still, not a lot, but is not impossible to break. If every worker in the post office is from one party and nobody in that party votes by mail, bribing and corrupting the system is doable, and even easy; specially if your work depends on it.
If you do this in small populations or at scale you could easily remove enough votes from the system until winning the place by one single vote. If you are malignant enough you could even blame later millions of "lazy" people for not voting and laugh about it.
Mail voting depends on trusting what your postman is not a plant.
Among other things, consider https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
> The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
I think the evidence suggests they are not particularly constrained by reality? Recall "They're eating the cats and dogs."
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
Just trying to understand as a non-American: which people are eligible to vote, but are unlikely to get an ID?
Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.
The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.
It’s extremely uncommon.
You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.
The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.
34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.
The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.
[1] https://voteriders.org/article/who-doesnt-have-an-id-in-amer...
And which of the two people are lying? Would you have to... verify ID to figure that out?
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
As in, please be more specific with your claims that we don't require identification to vote.
Because it strikes me as a very low effort Fox News talking point, not any reality.
Most states allow you to cast a provisional ballot on polling Day without an ID, but require that you return and present an ID to accept it.
But no state is accepting votes without identifying the voter. They just vary somewhat in what alternatives they accept.
Compare your statement to the info here and come back with something better: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state
I have never voted without being required to present gov issued ID. Ever.
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.
The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.
Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.
A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.
The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.
Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.
Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.
So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.
Nitpick: E.g. Norwegian ID cards can be had by any legal resident. The card will say that you're not a citizen though, so your point about that stands.
Re driving license: Driving license is a valid form of ID for voting here. All eligible people are on the voting rolls automatically (unlike the absurd american system), and the driving license is merely used to prove you are who you say you are.
Your eligibility to vote and have your name entered into the poll book is determined by providing a Social Security number or birth certificate.
So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.
At the moment, yes. Under Republican voter ID proposals that require proving citizenship, no. Having an SSN does not imply US citizenship.
I don't have one because I have a passport.
If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.
Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.
They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.
HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
Edit: when the PAEA passed in 2006, it had 410 “yes” votes. Not a single democrat, and only 20 republicans voted no. This was, and still is, the primary reason the USPS is no longer able to function.
None, since the USPS is not government-funded.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader of a country who dismantled its democracy (Orban) - and previously pushed the govt to make false claims of vote fraud to keep him in power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
Then, when that failed:
> Trump pressured the Justice Department to falsely announce it had found election fraud, and he attempted to install a new acting attorney general who had drafted a letter falsely asserting such election fraud had been found, in an attempt to persuade the Georgia legislature to convene and reconsider its Biden electoral votes.
Like I think there are people in such an information bubble that they aren't even aware these are well established facts. Not partisan talking points, but a recounting of facts of the lengths that have already been attempted to remain in power illegally. And now sudden sweeping changes to voting right before an election amid false claims of rigged elections.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/el...
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
Here’s an article talking about 6000 ineligible voters in New Jersey getting ballots.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...
Surely you agree this is problematic, and oversight is needed?
Then extend that one step farther. It wouldn’t be fair to scrutinize only blue states like New Jersey. Red states like Wyoming should be held accountable too, right?
Moreover, you find these 400 erroneous votes deeply problematic but you, I assume, did not ask for federal election oversight in the following cases:
* Georgia improperly purged legitimate voters https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/georgia-gove...
* Tarrant County, Texas dramatically reduces polling sites in Democrat-leaning areas, despite population growth https://fortworthreport.org/2026/09/01/advocates-demand-incr...
* Tennessee (among other states) gerrymanders its districts to disenfranchise minority voters https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-memphis-voters-fee...
What I see here is a pattern of attempts to restrict voting among those opposed to the GOP. And these are the people that you trust to provide "rigor" in voting?
Until then, all the past events, from court packing, gerry-mandering to now mail-in ballots (etc pp) is just coincidence?
When trump says "we only need to win once" and then conducts blantant corruption and demolishes institutions/relationships, you think this is just one more isolated coincindence? You think he will leave the white house easily and face the charges, even though his ball room isnt done?
Another commenter noted, how many people seem to live in absolute disinformation bubbles, in your case, i would add "state of insane denial".
Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter...
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. The fact that they don't support mandatory ID shows their real agenda: they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...
They didn't overlook it. They fixed the error.
If you are asserting that this error was a partisan, intentional attempt to change the outcome of the election, you're going to need to provide a lot more evidence before injecting USPS into election policy makes sense.
> Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.
His Truth Social account is public. Do we agree that is a reputable source?
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...
I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.
The issue is not the article, but the president's own words. Do you find it concerning that the president has expressed a desire to cancel elections? Or do you think he was joking?
Follow-up question: was/is he joking about building the wall, mass deportations, eliminating birthright citizenship, or running for a third term?
Manufacturing the appearance of winning is the not-empty threat, rather is what TFA is chronicling.
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
Why don't you start with some research of your own and outline how such a conspiracy would work and how large it would have to be.
Don't throw out a hypothetical "could it even be caught?" to try to bias people without doing any sort of even cursory glance at how things work.
Hell, while you're at it, please outline other possible conspiracies, and think about if there are potential vulnerabilities that could very require less major coordination than mail-in ballots. (Not even including the 'have a president who constantly tells everyone that if he loses it will be due to fraud to stoke the flames in advance' strategy!)
Maybe GP is implying that, but that's not what they said, because what you describe is not survivorship bias.
> I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballots? could detection only originate from a defector?
You are asking the wrong question. The correct question is: If mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists? If there isn't evidence that it exists, then the people who claim that it exists are making statements not based on evidence. In other words, their opinions are either not informed by facts, in which case we should disregard their opinions; or their statements are not sincere expressions of belief, in which case they are liars and we should not trust them.
I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were not caught, even though there is no evidence that they exist: in this way the situation is quite different from that of missing planes in war. You ascribe the frauds' invisiblity to a supreme level of sophistification. The problem with that mode of thought is that it allows us to assume anything, including that the sophisticated frauds are actually Republican. So you can't call it survivorship bias until you show that those "invisible frauds" actually exist; you are going backwards by calling it survivorship bias in order to justify your unfounded a priori belief that they do exist.
> if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape?
This argument makes no sense. (a) If it's easy to commit a crime, then it's not necessary to be sophisticated to accomplsh it. (b) Widespread mail-in voter fraud is not easy to accomplish, unlike your hypothetical "trivial counterfeit" example, despite what Donald Trump tells you. (c) If only Republicans are getting caught doing voter fraud, then by your argument, Democrats are smarter, which is.... accurate. (d) You haven't even posited a posisble mechanism by which millions of fraudulent votes could be achieved. Believing things without evidence is called "faith" and is not the basis on which we develop laws.
I already told you why planes are relevant. It sounds like you really don't know what survivorship bias is at all. Please read the article [1]. Why are you in such a hurry to a discuss a topic that you don't understand?
Applying survivorship bias to the current "invisible fraud" situation is putting the cart before the horse.
> I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue.
It's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone in most systems, including systems where there is no fraud. Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists, and that bar has not been met. Does that answer your question?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
now you link the wikipedia without realizing that over 90% of it has nothing to do with planes.
this is an assertion not an argument. I suppose there is no further point to this discussion.> this is an assertion not an argument
What part of the statement "Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists." do you disagree with? You are starting from the assumption that fraud exists, then creating a fantasy explanation about who is committing it, without any factual basis at all.
Also, why didn’t they rig it again in 2024?
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
[1] https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-18-states...
[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
what have they found, exactly?
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
and yet. you haven't yet.
What about it is "shocking"? Please be specific.
Please note that the alleged justification these changes is widespread voter fraud, which has never been shown to exist at a level even close to significant, despite many years of effort [1].
> the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud.
Or, ya know, make a persuasive case based on evidence of actual fraud and pass a bill in Congress, the way the country is supposed to work?
> This is a kind of comment I would expect on Reddit and not hn.
Yours is a low-effort riposte if ever there was one.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
We have had secure elections for a long time, how is it that the only 2 that Trump has presided over are the ones that are a security concern?
https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...
more controversy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/mail-in-voting-states....
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/postal-servic...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/us/politics/postal-servic...
Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.
Is this common in other countries?
[1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-f...
Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.
They mean voter buying cases, "paying you to confirm a vote for X" and see you check the card.
In ballot cabins the buyer can't come with you inside the booth to confirm, so your vote has verifiable privacy/secrecy.
It doesn't really solve all type of vote buying problems (like clientelism lists, etc), but removes that confirmation step.
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.
And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.
Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
Oh yeah that'll stop them.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.
Am I missing something?
IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late
This is why as much voting in person; on election day; at a polling place; behind a privacy screen; as possible is generally recommended.
The president, who is ultimately decided by the custodians of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's own legitimacy. The incentives are firmly against this.
And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged. Nobody with power is asking for any audit...
>And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged.
Any proof? Oh, right, "vibes".
Cue civil war?
If so, how is that not clearly discriminatory for those who can't afford the time to go.
Mail in voting has been something that the elderly, infirmed, workers, and folks in the military have done for decades. It's remarkably secure and quite auditable. The issue the right has with it is that the folks that vote by mail (the military notwithstanding) are typically democrats.
Very common for college students who go to school out of state as well. A conspicuously blue voting bloc.
This is absolutely discriminatory against the poor. That's why the republicans fight for these types of restrictions and democrats fight against them.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast) 2016 0.000089% 2018 0.000024% 2020 0.000051% 2022 0.000010% Average 0.000043%
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mail-voting-in-the-us-dat...
Do you?
Even saying it once doesn't make it true. Apply that to everything you have said.
Why do you see the truth as a lie?
>They said "no meaningful fraud" as in there's not an amount of fraud that can actually change the results.
Except there is plenty of evidence across the world for over twenty years of "meaningful fraud that could change election results" happening. Heck, it actually goes all the way back to the Civil War and while history records Lincoln being elected, the cheating was such his election almost wasn't.
“Just look up vague abuses that I’m claiming happened with no evidence”
Here is one instance among many.
Wait'll you hear about the Comstock Act and what the USPS has done to enforce that.
The process is described on the same website you linked to: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/same-day...
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
You assert this without evidence. People have spent years looking for evidence of widespread voter fraud without success [1].
> voting should have a barrier to entry. Your freedoms are important - people died for them.
That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights? They added a "barrier to entry" for voting after the civil war and it didn't go so well. [2]
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
I mean, there are plenty of instances if you are willing to look... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_electoral_fra...
Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s. Defcon famously has its voting village, where hackers hack voting machines via numerous means. If you think this isn't happening (or at least being attempted) in reality (by either party, and/or outside countries) you are naive.
> That's not how rights work. Would you say that there should be a "barrier to entry" for freedom of speech or gun rights?
Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself, and it is a VERY difficult and bloody ordeal that can be lost extremely quickly if not protected. (See all non-free countries, or even parts of Europe where you can now be jailed for making certain comments online.)
I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests" we implemented during Jim Crow, but if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
I am willing to look and I see exactly zero cases of widespread, organized, mail ballot voting by non-citizens of the type that Republicans say is widespread, despite lack of evidence. What I do see is low-level cases of some guy filling out two voter registration forms in an effort to win a local election and getting caught immediately, which are cases that Republican proposals would do nothing to prevent.
> Hackers rather trivially were able to hack optical scan machines back in the 90s or early 2000s
Curiously, this case was not in the list of fraud cases that you yourself provided.
> Yes, there is a barrier of entry for freedom of speech and gun rights; it's called holding on to freedom itself,
That's not what I asked. Do you have to show your ID before you are allowed to use your freedom of speech? No you don't. Rights don't have a barrier to entry: they are available to everyone.
> if you aren't willing to give up something for your freedom, you probably don't deserve it. (Not saying you must necessarily give something up, just that you must be willing to give something up.)
Again, that's not how rights work. The Bill of Rights doesn't say "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... unless the person in question gives vibes suggesting that they don't love the the US of A, go America." You can vehemently disagree with your country and still get rights, including the right to vote.
> I never said the barrier for entry should be a test, like the "literacy tests"
The Republican proposal under question specifically requires people to get a government issued ID that proves citizenship, while ~10% [1] of the US population lacks such ID. That sure sounds like a barrier of entry designed to exclude classes of "undesirable" people.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/213-...
Disgusting
I disagree that people only vote by mail due to laziness or that the administration is taking away voting rights for the good of democracy.