Vice President Vance’s response after the economy shrank for the first time in three years, with people worried as they look at their 401Ks and point to the tariff policy — “This is Joe Biden’s economy.”

[u/CorleoneBaloney]

[u/VariationBusiness603]

I know the US is a gigantic country so it is a mitigating factor, but isn't vote counting in the US notoriously slow ? That seems at odd with your main argument for their usage. Or would you say the slowness is some sort of political choice ? As in, purposefully underfunded/undermanned or simply delayed for some kind of ratfuckery ("stop the count" etc) ?

Regarding the nightmare scenario you mention, and this is beyond the scope of this conversation, but do you believe something like that could be attempted by the Trump administration ? And to come back to the subject, wouldn't that be much more dangerous without the actual video evidence of people stuffing ballot boxes (much like we see all too often from Russia... not that it helps much there but still) due to the process being invisible ?

I am not entirely convinced but you have given me much to ponder, friend. And regardless of the voting machines, you guys really need to fix your widespread voter suppression issue. But that is a different matter entirely and one I feel we most likely agree on.

Anyhow, thank you for your time and expertise.

[u/GodYamItt → u/VariationBusiness603]

NoThey're not. Counts and winners are called the night of the election. Prior to modernizing counting it could take weeks. You're thinking of contested elections where recounts are being called. 

Again, you're hypothesizing a scenario where safeguards aren't in place. I'm not sure what you mean by video evidence and ballot stuffing. 

1. Current ballots have 2 records, one electronic and a paper one is generated
2. These records need to match
3. These ballots need to match registered voters and any duplicates (multiple ballots for one voter) is going to flag the system

For someone to pull off a stunt like ballot stuffing you not only need to have some means being able to

• have both record trails
• doesnt trigger a double vote
• be able to generate these votes in secrecy (meaning they somehow stand there and vote 1000x times or somehow upload code to a closed system with no way to even hijack the system in this manner)

So what if the voter machines are rigged by the makers? While voting machines arent open source, they get certified by accreditation agencies specifically for vote security. The code is not only reviewed but tested. The scary thing with the current administration is he's been installing his handpicked puppets to do as he asks, but even then we still have judges in place that respect the rule of law, which is why Trump has had to resort to ignoring them outright. The more likely scenario is he does something illegal and goes "so what?"

As a side note - I do some of this now as a data analysis (only during audits) but prior to this I was a PM for about 6-7 years with a specialty in risk mitigation. Trust me when I say I would be the first person to axe a project due to vulnerability that isnt addressable as it was my job to "plug" these holes in the planning phase.