Scott Adams on voting fraud
This is somewhat my attitude, too, and has been from the start:
Our burden of proof standards are backwards because we are conditioned to think of trials. But the world is not a trial.
If any part of your election system is electronic and impossible to audit, the starting assumption has to be fraud. The government needs to prove fairness.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 28, 2021
It’s never going to happen, though. The government will never be required to prove fairness. How could that be done, anyway? It’s like proving innocence. The most that can – and should – happen is that states put effective protections against fraud in place.
But when many protections against fraud are removed or undermined, as they have been in some states over the years and especially immediately prior to the 2020 election, and there is no reliable way to prove fraud after the fact even if it has occurred, then trust in the voting process is gravely and perhaps fatally undermined.
Which is exactly what occurred.
I used to respect him…lately not so much.
John Guilfoyle:
Sometimes he’s good, sometimes not. I think that’s been true from the start, when he was explaining Trump’s rise.
New York had adequate safeguards when I was active in electoral politics ca. 1987. Not great, but adequate. Other states could have adequate systems just by examining what New York was doing at that time. Instead, they’ve taken one measure after another which has damaged ballot security and the probity of elections.
I’m not seeing the problem with Adams’ remarks.
We can fix this problem. We have two problems: Republicans have been feckless and the Democrats have combined fecklessness with malevolence.
To beat a dead horse a bit more. I never understood why SCOTUS did not declare the elections in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere null, from the outset because they violated their own laws by the manner in which they modified their election procedures. I cannot recall whether Trump’s legal team hammered that point before the elections or not. At any rate the results were predictable. You don’t take the actions that Pa and other states did to ensure a fair election.
I was also mystified how SCOTUS could throw out Texas’ challenge by ruling that they had no standing to sue. That is nonsensical. Any simple soul would say that in a national election, every citizen has a legal interest that the process be legitimate in every precinct.
Our system failed on many counts; and IMO SCOTUS represented the biggest failure of all.
For the future, I believe that, given that each state is responsible for governing its own elections, there must be a minimal, enforceable national standard. I should think that a competent lawyer, or court, could find constitutional justification that voting rolls must be open, and that voters must be citizens with verifiable indentities.
So…AD…What’s your “fix”?
And to answer your first question…
Here, he leaves out the “hackable” option, and avoids the “no ultimate oversight by SCOTUS.” Both of which we saw in spades in 2020. The government not only has to demonstrate “fairness” but also “accountability.”
He has also come late to the COVID-notVax skeptic’s party & is pretending no one could have had any reason to be skeptical before now.
So the Boss is correct…when he’s good he is. When he isn’t good he doubles down & pretends you’re stupider than he is & until you agree that you’re stupid he’s not going to address your challenge. Kinda like Vox Day.
Electronic voting equipment is something which shouldn’t be allowed anyplace. Paper ballots and optical scanners fed by the voters themselves work fine. Touch screen systems where the vote is tabulated within the touch screen machine are inherently untrustworthy.
If effective protections against fraud are put in place then you’ve effectively ensured that the system is basically a fair one.
“then trust in the voting process is gravely and perhaps fatally undermined. Which is exactly what occurred.” neo
They don’t care. In fact, they welcome it. By definition, criminals and ideological fanatics only care if they’re caught. Fatally undermining trust in the voting process is considered a feature rather than a bug when the goal is societal disruption.
Art Deco,
“We can fix this problem. We have two problems: Republicans have been feckless and the Democrats have combined fecklessness with malevolence.”
I presume you imagine fixing the problem through the voting process. If so, your optimism that the “two problems” can be voted out of power is misplaced.
Oldflyer,
Regarding SCOTUS; think cowardice, corruption and ideology and your mystification will evaporate.
@GB:
Cowardice, corruption, KOMPROMAT, and ideology.
Everyone sits on that court has done things they’d rather not have made public.
Knowledge of those things is power.
Don’t know why I’m using a Russian word… since it’s the Three Letters and the You-know-whos doing the most of it. Of course the Russians and the Chinese and the Mongolians do it too. Everybody does. If they can.
I don’t think it’s a matter of proving fraud. The key issue is that there isn’t a REMEDY. We can show that standards were violated. Safeguards were bypassed. Laws and court orders were ignored. But nothing can be done to fix it. We can’t have a do-over election.
And once the Left has won this way, they’ll do it repeatedly.
JG: So…AD…What’s your “fix”?
I am not AD but my fix is:
• Clean up the voting rolls – remove the deceased, non-residents and non-citizens from the rolls
• Restrict/eliminate early voting. Make voting day a National Holiday
• Restrict mail in voting to those out of state/out of country on the day of election
• Voter ID mandatory to vote. No ID – no vote
• Go back to paper ballots
The above is not perfect but goes a long way to ensure that the system is auditable. No other country in the world makes a mockery of the voting process as the USA. It is a disgrace.
X – I’d take that as a starter.
But there has to be a transparency & accountability piece… Jail time for fraud or facilitating fraud. Loss of voting privilege along with that. If it’s linked to a candidate they become ineligible for any further office and forfeit all campaign funds as a fine.
Something like that with teeth.
I have more recently read Molly Hemingway’s Rigged and some time earlier in year The Deep Rig by Patrick Byrne, I am convinced it was the biggest fraud election ever. Problem seems you have proof it was fraud and it gets swept away because no one wants to see it who matters like a court or public officials.
No court took the fraud I think because it would shake the very foundation of elections.
Skip, that’s an awful lot of whistling past the graveyard there. Fraud so great that it may have swung a presidential election, but we wouldn’t want to draw attention to it because it could shake the very foundation of our elections ?
Instead we’ll just pretend it didn’t happen and imagine… what ? That the problem will magically fix itself ?
If not for the media, I might agree with you. Trump likely won handily in 2020 and based on how unimaginably bad Biden and the Democrats are doing, maybe 2024 could be outside the margin of fraud ? I wouldn’t count on it. If not for the media, I doubt the Democrats get away with the fraud in 2020, or that they could manufacture enough votes to pull it off. Unless that changes, 2024 is likely to be more of the same, frnakly.
I presume you imagine fixing the problem through the voting process.
Strange as it may seem to you, countries have cycles of corruption and reform in their political process.
One of the biggest election companies is ESS, right in Omaha. I can see it from my house. Giant flag on the building.
In a free society the integrity of the voting system and elections is critical to establishing the legitimacy of the elected government. That fraud in the 2020 election was never proved in court (it was never truly adjudicated) is of little consequence: the evidence of irregularity is clear, plentiful, and overwhelming such that a great many of us doubt the outcome of the election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Biden as POTUS is thus illegitimate to many and you can see that in his polling numbers and his ability to get his policies implemented. In his own party Manchin and Sinema are emboldened by this condition.
It is in everyone’s, and all parties, interest to correct this mess. But the perceived potential short term loss of power convinces them to do nothing.
The objective is not fairness.
From every liberal I know personally, the objective is to prevent Donald Trump, or someone that resembles him by unknown and classified standards from ever obtaining office, whether through legal or illegal means.
Nobody has ever contradicted that.
Zaphod,
“Everyone sits on that court has done things they’d rather not have made public.”
There’s a great deal of difference between being vulnerable to embarrassment and susceptible to blackmail. Thomas and Alito invariably vote per the Constitution. Gorsuch more often than not does and has done so on critical issues. Given her career trajectory, I’m doubtful that Barrett has anything for which she might be blackmailed. They had to invent outrage to smear Kavenaugh, so he’s another Roberts. He’s a squish not a victim of blackmail.
rcat,
Oh there’s a remedy. It’s just a horrific one. Second only to ‘living’ under the tyranny of “omnipotent moral busybodies”.
John Guilfoyle,
Agreed and “teeth” is the keyword.
Skip,
“No court took the fraud I think because it would shake the very foundation of elections.”
That was the excuse, the rationalization some told themselves to avoid consciously facing their moral cowardice.
deadrody,
Now that they know that electoral fraud pays and is without consequence, why would they not engage in it in every future election?
If either Trump or De Santis is the 2024 Presidential nominee, the democrats will do whatever it takes to win. They can’t chance either actually deciding to drain the swamp.
Art Deco,
“Strange as it may seem to you, countries have cycles of corruption and reform in their political process.”
Until Obama, that was exactly our political process. The only country with 200+ years of peaceful transfer of power.
What you apparently refuse to face is that leftists (now essentially in control of the democrat party) fully agree with Erdogan’s view of democracy; “Democracy is like a train: when you reach your destination… you get off”
Sooner or later, you are going to have to face just what they mean by “fundamental transformation”…
Steve Walsh,
The very last thing the Left is interested in is the continuance and maintaining of “a free society”…
So…AD…What’s your “fix”?
There’s a program one can design. The question is getting elected officials to take an interest.
1. Have a board of elections in each county, and one for the state as a whole. The employees from the board on down would be people who passed a screening examination. Each county board would have two commissioners, with the more populous counties having two deputy commissioners. The state board would have four commissioners. In each county, one commissioner would be appointed by the Republican county chairman and one by the Democratic county chairman; their deputies ditto. Half the staff positions would be allocated to the Republican side and half to the Democratic side. All the staff positions would be discretionary appointees of the Democratic and Republican commissioners. The state board would work the same way.
2. Voter registration forms would be designed by the state board in accordance with provisions in the election law. The form would be four pages long – a folio of thick stock paper which folds longitudinally and laterally. The third and fourth pages would be for building rolls of stakeholders to elect the boards of philanthropic bodies and public corporations and filling them out would be optional for the voter. The 2d page would be for supplementary information that would be required for a selection of voters. The meat would be the first page. It would ask your full name, date of birth, an avowal that you were a citizen (asking for a date of naturalization if applicable), your formal domicile, the date at which you declared same as your domicile, an avowal that you had filed your most recent tax return from same or intended to file your next from same, an avowal that your palpable residence was your formal domicile or that you were eligible to have a separate palpable residence, the street address of your separate palpable residence, an alternate mailing address, your party preference if any, and your signature (in multiple locations). Anyone who had reached their 17th birthday could register, but their eligibility would not kick in until they reached the age of 18, and their incipient status would be noted on any printouts.
3. The return address of any form you fill out would be your county board of elections. Newly arrived forms would be vetted by a team consisting of a Republican clerk and a Democratic clerk. If it passed vetting, the card would be filed and salient data fields would be added to the county database. If it failed vetting, the form might be mailed back with a blank form and a form letter indicating what the deficiencies were. Other deficiencies might be addressed by the voter appearing at the office or a phone call by the voter to the office, to be referred to a vetting team.
4. The vetting would require the Secretary of State, the state tax collector, and the state commissioner of corrections assemble databases for the clerks to check. These would include an index of death certificates, an index of civil commitment orders, an index of guardianships, a census of the state prisons, a census of the county jails, a census of those on probation, a census of those on parole, and an index of the names and addresses of those who had filed a state tax return the previous calendar year. Your appearance on any but the last database would be enough to prevent your name placed on the roll. In re the last, what the clerks would look for would be anomalies – you not appearing in the database or you at one address when your registration form indicates you’d already moved to another &c.
5. A stock check of the entire database to supplement these flow checks of new registrants. These might be conducted on an annual or biennial cycle depending on manpower. You might attempt with your staff to do the whole thing between late November and mid-March or to distribute it among slow times throughout the year. If you did the latter, each alphabetic segment would be done at the same time each year. Again, all checks would be done by a team of two – one Republican and one Democrat. Anyone removed during the stock check would receive a post-card in the mail at the palpable residence on their original form, telling them they must re-register at their new address.
6. Publish your roll twice a year, once the last Friday in March and once the first Friday in September. The March roll would specify who was eligible to vote in May and in August and to sign petitions due for filing in mid-July. The September roll would specify who is due to vote in November and sign petitions due at the end of January.
7. Provide for a selection of your electorate to set up a standing order for posted ballots. Spot orders would not be permitted. Those eligible would be (1) employees of the U.S. government posted abroad, and any spouse in-country with them; (2) U.S. servicemen posted domestically, and any spouse living with them; (3) persons under the age of 25 enrolled at a campus which contains residences; (4) miscellaneous persons living in institutional group quarters; (5) persons who are homebound, certified by a standard form filled out by their doctor; (6) persons whose work supervisor will aver on a standard form that they must travel outside the county at least one day a week. In some states (e.g. Oregon), you might make accommodation for people who live in the deep country. Ordinarily, you’d expect 90% of the population to vote in person.
8. Each county board of elections would publish in March a precinct map and send out 2x a year a notification to registrants as to their precinct. Each precinct would have to follow street maps and in population come as close as possible to 1,000 persons. (There would have to be some variation). NB, currently in the United States we have only 1 precinct per 3,000 residents on average and sh!t states like Georgia have one per 6,000 residents, in case you wanted to know why there were such lines. New York provides for 1 per 1,000.
9. Print up registers for each precinct – one for elections held in May, one for August, and one for November. One, two or three registers would be printed up for each precinct depending on the number of desks to be set up in the precinct in question. A register for a typical precinct would be a bound volume with about 60 thick stock sheets in it. On each page of said registers, there would be entries for four voters – printed name, signature printed off their voter registration card, and a spot for them to sign the register this year. Once printed, registers are stored in a library at board of elections HQ and distributed to precincts in preparation for election day.
10. Precincts would be staffed through an online bidding process, supplemented with phone trees run by the county chairman. Any enrolled Democrat and any enrolled Republican could place a bid for a shift at any precinct in the county, with the stipulation that if you wanted to work back-to-back shifts, you had to place those bids for the same precinct. The way you bid is to rank-order your preferences (from among all the county’s precincts) for each shift and state what compensation you will accept to work that shift at that location. One might posit five regular shifts at each precincts, a delivery shift at the end of the tabulation, contingent shifts in case tabulation runs over into the following days, shifts at HQ to count posted ballots, and bidding for an on-call pool to cover for people who do not show (again, phone trees). The hope is to have a Democratic and a Republican clerk at each desk in each precinct in the county.
11. At a precinct, you sign in at each desk set up. You sign in front of a Democratic and a Republican inspector and you sign with your signature image obscured so a comparison can be done by the poll inspectors. You take a ballot pack and head to the booth. Each ballot pack is bound together like an old-style grocery list pad. You separate the ballots and fill them out in the booth using either pen and ink or a hole puncher. Then you move to the next desk if there is one and get a ballot pack for another set of contests. You can skip the next desk of they do not interest you or come back later as you sign in at each desk. And, of course, you can always leave a ballot blank if you’re not interested in one of the contests in your pack.
12. Postal ballots are to be in the mail seven weeks before the date of the election. The kit will include all the ballot packs that will be used by precinct voters, an envelope in which to place them which is secured with post-it adhesive and is blank except for identifying the precinct, an envelope in which that is placed which has the identifying information of the voter and which the VOTER must sign, and a mailer. Again, the return address is board of elections HQ.
13. At HQ, each day’s arrivals will be placed in a locked bin for one workday. There will be two locks on the bin, one for each elections commissioner. Teams of Republican and Democratic clerks will process the previous workday’s arrivals. That involves removing the contents of each mailer, sorting them by precinct, remarking the arrival of each on a checklist (signed and attested by each clerk), and preparing tables of arrivals for the elections commissioners or their deputies. Each table of arrivals is sorted by precinct and is equipped with the identifying mailers (and their contents) and the enrollment registers for the precincts in question. The election commissioners page through each register and compare the signature on the register with that on the mailer and approve or reject, stamping each entry on the register with their signet. Again, the approval of both commissioners is required. A county of ordinary population (say, 430,000) might see 12,000 ballots returned and about 350 mailers checked each work day.
14. Rejected ballots are placed by clerks in a dedicated cabinet with two locks. Accepted ballots are placed in pigeonholed storage cabinets also with two locks. The wraps are removed and placed in plastic receptacles and sealed. The ballot containers are each placed in an appropriate pigeonhole. The checklists and receptacles are stored in these cabinets. If your election is held over two days, these signature checks will be undertaken until the 1st day or the 2d day of the election; if it is held on one day, the checks will be undertaken until the morning of the election or the morning of the day before.
15. Ballots which arrive after checks have concluded for the election will not be tabulated. They will be held in a locked cabinet. When the tabulations for the election are certified, this cabinet will then be opened and clerks will place the ballots therein (in their identifying wraps) in new mailers and return them to sender with a pre-printed note of regret that they arrived too late. Rejected ballots will also be returned in like fashion with a different note. Photostats will be made of the ID information of some rejected ballots for referral to the DA
16. On the afternoon of the day of the election (or the 2d day, if it be held over two days), the cabinets of approved ballots are transported to a tabulation center. Again, these have been coarse sorted before being placed in the locked cabinets, so each cabinet has ballots from a distinct geographic segment of the county. Tables are set up for each segment and the ballots are sorted by precinct. Teams of Democratic and Republican clerks then tabulate each ballot with an optical scanner or electro-mechanical scanner. The results are written down on hard copy forms with an attestation by each clerk. The hard copy results are entered into spreadsheets at a central tabulation desk whose entries are manually cross checked. The postal ballot tabulations for each referendum, and each first-past-the-post contest are complete and known before the polls close. The first round of ranked-choice tabulations is as well.
17. Precinct polls open and close simultaneously at times specified in state law. As we speak, elections are held on the first Tuesday after All Saints’ Day; in New York, polls open at 6:00 am and close at 9:00 pm and tabulation begins. Over the course of a quadrennial cycle, you might see a mean of about 275 people show up at a typical precinct. The ballots cast would be tabulated with optical scanners or electro-mechanical scanners. Tabulating the results of referenda and first-past-the-post contests would be complete that night, communicated via e-mail to the central tabulation desk. The first round of ranked-choice results would be as well. Each ranked choice contest would require a formal ruling by the county or state board of elections before schedules could be set for further tabulation. You might attempt another round of tabulation that evening or postpone to the next day. When the polls are ready to close, the clerks sign a hard copy attestation to be delivered to the board of elections HQ and place the ballots in a receptacle under seal with the lead clerks signing the seal (or, ideally, a locked cabinet with two locks and two keys to be delivered to the board of elections HQ). The precinct is then locked with two padlocks with two keys which are then delivered to the board of elections HQ.
18. Clerks who’ve signed up for contingent shifts appear at the board of elections the next day and collect the keys for the precincts in question and return for tabulation sessions, the number depending on how many rounds are necessary for each of the ranked-choice contests. Tabulation at HQ of posted-ballots for such contests will be ongoing until the state or county board has issued a ruling on the results.
19. On the shift when precinct tabulation is completed, the clerks sign an attestation of hard-copy tabulation. And put a final seal on the ballot receptacles which include the ballots and the registers. Teams of delivery clerks then deliver the ballot receptacles to a dedicated warehouse where they will be kept in inventory for two years. The keys to the station and the hard copy attestations are delivered to the board of elections HQ.
20. In the following days, contractors working for the board of elections will arrive at each station to collect the board’s equipment and take it back to a storage warehouse owned by the board. It is at this facility each year that all scanners are subject to quality control testing.
==
21. Ideally, we move to a system where we have precincts open Friday evenings for four hours and then for 11 hours on Saturday, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. That way there’s ample time for people to vote, rush-hour clotting and queues are not an issue, and the tabulations can be completed for all but a few contests the evening the polls close.
Ideally, also, we rejigger our electoral calendar and prune the menu of offices subject to competitive election.
22. judges aside, all offices are subject to competitive election or retention-in-office referendum every four years. Judges would serve 12 year terms, with the qualification that judges are debarred from standing for election or retention past the calendar year they turn 72 and must vacate office the calendar year they turn 76, without regard to when they last ran.
23. The electoral calendar is absolutely regular over a quadrennial cycle; a limited menu of offices is up each year and a certain rhythm is maintained.
24. in May, you have ballot propositions, retention-in-office referenda for appellate judges, competitive elections for trial judges, and retention referenda or competitive election for offices adjacent to the judiciary where applicable (corporation counsel, attorney-general, district attorney, public defender, sheriff, &c). You place these elections the same time each cycle – ballot propositions and appellate judges any year of the cycle, general superior court the 1st and 3d year, municipal court the 2d year, and specialized superior courts the 4th year. Corporation counsels the 2d year, attorney-general the 3d year, other offices the 4th year. Some years, you have just one desk and one ballot pack at a precinct, some years you have to separate the contests into two packs at two desks. In May elections, all candidates would be petition candidates and all parties’ aspirants would be on the general election ballot. The order of the candidates on the ballot would vary by precinct and most contests would be of necessity ranked-choice.
25. At the end of August, you have primaries. Each precinct where one is held, you have a Republican and a Democratic desk as needed. In peculiar years, you may have to have multiple desks on each side. Ideally, the nomination and designation procedures in the election law are such that primaries are atypical. You can do this by limited party-nomination contests to (1) spots on multi-member slates for seats on conciliar bodies, which would be allocated according to a species of PR and (2) single-victor elections in constituencies wherein the most popular party has fewer than 2x the number of registrants as the runner up. In other contests, all candidates would be petition candidates and all Republican and Democratic and other aspirants would appear on the November ballot with varying ballot order and ranked-choice the order of the day.
26. In November, you have general elections. Federal officials in year 1; municipal councils, county councils, mayors, and county executives in year 2; governors and state legislatures in year 3, and school boards and specialized executives in year 4 (bar those you elect in May).
27. Ideally, your default setting is to have NO specialized executives elected by competitive ballot or subject to retention referenda In any state and locality, you might create them via petition campaigns. If you do create one, you can re-consider every six years. If you haven’t reconsidered one in 30 years, there is an automatic referendum on the subject in your jurisdiction. As we speak, there are a mess of offices we elect due to inertia rather than popular interest. This would allow some to be scraped off. This will simplify each year’s elections.
The Soros relationship to Dominion does not help.
And the Democrats have been pushing electronic voting.
And the refusal to have the machines inspected and wiping of data is very suspicious.
It seems there was a bit of a false flag / set up operation to over claim in one area, to divert attention from what really happened.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/part-4-soon-jan-6-committee-obtained-deep-state-operative-don-berlins-bogus-election-dossier-claims-leaked-mainstream-media-claim-trump-insurrection/
As mentioned the us is going from a high trust society to a medium one. The high trust factor has been abused to allow voter fraud.
Art Deco:
You forgot the final step that Geoffrey longs for:
28. Summary execution of those he doesn’t like. 🙂
Until Obama, that was exactly our political process. The only country with 200+ years of peaceful transfer of power.
Not sure what your referent is when you say ‘that was exactly our political process’. The mechanics of conducting elections have not been uniform over time and ballot security is always and issue. We’re actually not the only country with antique constitutional institutions and the country has been engulfed in war twice in the last 400 years, not counting armed conflict with aboriginals.
What you apparently refuse to face is that leftists (now essentially in control of the democrat party) fully agree with Erdogan’s view of democracy; “Democracy is like a train: when you reach your destination… you get off”
I’m fully aware of the problem in our political culture. There are problems in ours right now, have been problems in the past, and have been problems in other countries which get worse and get better.
Everyone sits on that court has done things they’d rather not have made public.
You’re projecting and he’s howling at the moon.
The Vaccines ruined his brain lately. He is the perfect example why biden wants vaccine mandates, once you have the jabs they own you confirmation bias kicks in you will automatically fall in line and defend their positions.