In a rare step, 3 South Dakota counties are set to vote on counting ballots by hand

[BumRushDaShow]

55. Here we go

How does pointing out how machines can be manipulated help your no-hand-counting argument?

You do realize that my reply was to someone else?

This was the original start of that sub-thread -

brooklynite (95,405 posts)
44. Before criticizing South Dakota... Mon Jun 3, 2024, 04:52 PM

…remember that plenty of folks here were demanding “paper ballots hand counted” back in 2004 when the going conspiracy theory was that Republicans were rigging voting machines.

Twitter/Threads: @ChrisBastianBKL

And THAT is what I was addressing.

Your convoluted responses are simply giving more excuses about how impossible it would be. You have two arguments, one is that Americans are just too lazy, too bored, and incompetent to do the job. I don't buy that, sorry.

I went through a whole argument with you earlier in this thread about the difficulty getting election workers and the complexity of many ballots. My last response was here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3251082

Here in PA, we might actually be simpler than other states that tend to have piles of "questions" and "referendums" to also vote for.

The other..that its all the GOPs fault. You prove this by showing voting suppression actions and laws they have been enacting in Red States. But IF enough voters called their bluff and demanded hand counted ballot operations, don't you think that even the GOP in those States would want to assure their own base of voters, who would be the loudest proponents of hand counting, how this is so much better and safer than those bad bad machines? And the ball would be then in their court to make it as painless as possible?

You seem to grasp but not comprehend as "believable" the idiocy of the GOP.

In other words, YES these idiots WILL cut off their noses to spite their faces when it comes to attacking Democrats.

Seriously. They ARE that stupid and driven.

Case in point - one of the reddest and most rural counties here in PA named "Fulton" (similar to the famous county in GA) decided to jump on the "Dominion Systems machines are fraud" bandwagon by bringing in 3rd parties (including 1 associated with Wake TSI - the group that fiddled with machines in AZ) to do an "audit" of the machines. The Secretary of the Commonwealth (simialr to the Secretary of State in other states), decertified their machines. The courts here said STOP. They ignored the court and eventually brought in 2 more 3rd party companies to "audit" those machines and were told to STOP again.

This is a county that voted for 45 by something like 86%, with a county population of just over 14,000 (a couple thousand more than my city neighborhood) -



They have still been battling with the state of PA with their nonsense -

https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/pennsylvania-fulton-county-voting-machines-challenge/

It was all part of the conspiracy by 45's loons to attack Dominion (and we saw what happened with the Fox settlement and their role in defaming Dominion) -

Efforts to Audit and Undermine the 2020 Election in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has joined the growing number of states where partisan actors have launched baseless election investigations, with Republican lawmakers initiating in September 2021 a “forensic investigation” into the state’s 2020 election results.

Last updated: April 11, 2023

(snip)

One key player leading the push to “audit” Pennsylvania’s election was state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a vocal Trump ally who attended — and organized buses to — the rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In the spring, reporting on the Arizona Senate’s partisan election review revealed that one of the review’s participating firms, Wake Technology Services Inc., had in late 2020 contracted with a group led by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to conduct a review of ballots cast in Pennsylvania’s Fulton County, which had been set up by Mastriano.

Mastriano visited the Arizona Senate’s sham election “audit” in June 2021 and was inspired to implement a similar effort in his home state. Over the summer, he sent letters to York, Tioga, and Philadelphia counties demanding that they turn over election equipment and voting machines. However, in August, Corman pushed Mastriano out of his chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee and replaced him with Sen. Cris Dush, thwarting Mastriano’s plans to subpoena the counties. While no longer the chair, Mastriano remained on the committee and in the Senate’s investigation. In 2022, Mastriano unsuccessfully ran as the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania.

(snip)

https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/efforts-to-audit-and-undermine-the-2020-election-in-pennsylvania

And the county was sanctioned by the courts here - Pennsylvania seeks legal costs from county that let outsiders access voting machines to help Trump

So tell why would the GOP, in a red county that voted 86% for 45, think there was "fraud" there"?

Some believe this was so they could get a copy of the software used so that it could possibly be manipulated.

This is the state of affairs of the GOP.

That its a case of "this is what you and your base wanted" so don't screw it up. Instead of spending money on machines that you show can be corrupted, you spend it on more polling workers.

Someone raised the pont about how many Democrats were calling foul in the 2000 election about machine manipulation. Now its Rs. So, how about to make everyone happy, have it split. All those other peripheral questions on a separate machine processed ballot...with paper trails. And have one main ballot submitted and hand counted, that looks similar to the one I showed you as a sample of Canada's ballot. A simple X beside the Presidential choice.

Back when the problems associated with Diebold voting machines was all the rage here on DU (and that went on for years), particularly with the aftermath of the 2004 OH election and OH SOS Ken Blackwell (a stockholder in the company), supposedly diverting election results through a RNC server and whatnot, that is what prompted the brouhaha about needing some kind of verified paper trail for the machines (which was actually a requirement from the "Help America Vote Act" ) and the debate continues to this day about whether these systems actually produce one that could actually be used in a "hand count".

Even still I maintain it can be done, and that most people would even gladly wait two weeks if they believed that the final result was more honest than using machines. (Whether true or not, its about perception).

Are you kidding me????

The country was FREAKING OUT in 2020 waiting for either candidate to be certified as the "winner". That didn't happen until 4 days later when MY STATE pretty much finished up with enough to take Biden over the top for the Electoral College tally (a system that Canada doesn't have).

The below was 3 days after the election and we were nowhere near done counting here in Philly (didn't happen until the next day) -

It might be worth it for that reason. It seems that the question of the integrity of having a democracy is what is dangerously bantered about. That a lot of folks think we need a dictatorship because the election process is rigged. If a new hand counted process, even if longer and probably a little less accurate, will save democracy in the US, I think its worth it.

People here desire "instant" and expect it, and as long as you have ballots with dozens and dozens of names for dozens of candidates along with other stuff, it'll never be "instant" - not even with machine counting (and I won't even go into what it takes to count the "provisional ballots" and the time for doing that).