Twitter recently decided to “fact check” a Trump tweet about the security of online and mail voting systems in an election.
I think we need to ask who fact checks the fact checkers?
There seems to be a bit of a propaganda push to move voting online or by mail, officially to reduce costs and to “bring elections into the modern world.” They show utter contempt for the risks and that contempt should be treated with the derision it deserves.
Putting aside the political aspirations of those pushing an electoral modernisation agenda (and their realistic chances of achieving those aspirations) there is a clear reason why we vote the old fashioned way in a democracy.
The reason is because it is impossible to manipulate the election result by influencing hundreds of thousands or polling booth staff and electoral officers without one of them snitching on you.
It is immune to the 3 B’s. Bribery, Bullying and Blackmail.
Even if you got to some of them in multiple locations, how could they doctor or alter enough paper votes without being detected? You would have to have the entire polling booth staff in your pocket, in tens of thousands of locations.
It makes direct election fudging logistically impossible, if not financially impossible.
Even when massive militias do this in some African and Middle eastern nations and produce a desired result by force, it is blatantly obvious this is happening to the point when even CNN needs to mention it briefly to avoid looking out of touch. Nobody is fooled, and these false governments are usually dealt with somehow sooner or later.
On the other hand, everyone with half a brain knows there has been way too much computer hacking and mail fraud in other areas of commerce to trust these systems to something as critical as a national election.
Surely there will be nefarious interests rubbing their hands with glee at what they will see as an open ticket to have their way in an election regardless of what people vote for.
National interest means big money is available for hacking and fraud attempts and that means we will be dealing with something a little more sophisticated than geeky pizza and coke guzzling computer gamers with too much time on their hands.
It is too easy for an international cyber crime syndicate to hack an electoral system to alter the results if given the right kind of money by the wrong kind of people. Mail fraud in an election is a little more involved but still doable by a small army of trusted clipboard gangsters with the right equipment.
How would you prove any of these are happening? If you are not lucky enough to find some malicious software on someone’s computer before it self-deletes, or have someone confess to mail voting fraud to get a 2 year discount on a 4 year jail sentence, you would basically have to verify the origin of every single vote with the person who voted, which is basically what a polling booth does anyway.
Then, after all that, if you find irregularities, you will have to run the election again.
Elections are extremely secure events in a democracy, and they should be treated as such. No risk to security, or con-artistry belittling those risks, should be tolerated.