The Potential for Election Fraud

[DISCLAIMER: I am not associated or affiliated with any political party (I am an American)]

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is not alleging that any fraud in the 2020 U.S. election has occurred. While I use the Dominion Election Management System (EMS) as an example, I am not specifically singling them out, but using them as a hypothetical model of any similar system of voting that allows for the potential of fraud (in my opinion).

If you look at the diagram above, you can see that there's a lot of equipment involved at multiple steps between the voter and the official tallies. Some of these steps can be observed by humans to insure the integrity of the votes, but some of the others are not observable at all. Essentially, the votes go into a black box and then the results come out of the black box.

Question: Is the output data the same as the input data?

Answer: Maybe.

Aside from equipment failure and operator error, there are two major components to the guaranty of vote integrity: (1) the honesty of the poll workers and (2) the honesty of the programmers behind the polling equipment.

The former has been with us for several thousand years while the latter is a relative newcomer to the game. Regarding the second component above, let's assume that I'm a programmer working for a voting machine company. Furthermore, let's assume that I'm basically a good person, but I really hate one of the candidates. Is there anything that I can do to make sure that "my candidate" wins? Is there any way that I can rig the outcome in some undetectable fashion?

The short answer is "Yes." In fact, there are many ways to do so. Even more if one or two of my coworkers hate the same candidate. And yet even more ways if a willing poll worker or two helps out.

A simple example: can you tell by looking at this sample ballot if the barcode choices match the others?

Whether or not it happens, voting fraud is likely to be unprovable, even with access to the source code. Whatever code is in the balloting system during the election may not be the same code that is intended to be there. If I were a programmer that rigged the election for "my candidate," even though I thought it was a Good Thing, I would be leery of ever telling anyone. To do so is against the law which, in some cases, carries some severe penalties for violating it.

Soon we will all be voting with our smartphones and we will get the results of the elections almost immediately. Since not everybody has a smartphone, we will begin a new generation of disenfranchisement. Not to mention never knowing what happens to our votes in the cloud. Paper ballots marked in person on the day of the election may sound terribly old-fashioned, but it is the most secure method available (in my opinion).

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Signal-to-Noise Ratio

"The Information Age" has provided a veritable cornucopia of information that is readily accessible by anyone with an Internet or cellular connection. As of this writing, it's been thirteen years since the first smartphone was demonstrated by Steve Jobs at the 2007 Macworld Expo. Today, 2.7 billion people around the world use them on a daily basis to communicate with their friends and loved ones and keep up with current events. Roughly 35% of the planet is now interconnected in a way that has never been possible before. In 1991, there was only one website. Today there are over two billion of them. Most of them are totally irrelevant, misleading, time-consuming, but often entertaining. With one internet site for every four people, we are drowning in drivel.

On May 10, 1996, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey connected two Macs through the Internet and conducted a coast-to-coast video chat. They marveled at the plethora of possibilities that this new technology would bring and how it would forever change the world for the betterment of everyone. Kesey noted, "All of this equipment is allowing us to get out from under the thumb of the major broadcasting companies and build our own audience."

Leary agreed, "Empowering the ten-year-old kid. The ten-year-old kid has got the equipment of a network now." Leary predicted that one day, "Everybody would have the capacity to be in everybody's ear." Twenty days later, he passed away, believing in a modern utopia that would be forged from technology.

Timothy Leary's wish for ubiquitous communications has finally come to pass. Unfortunately, the utopia that he envisioned has not; the interconnectivity of one-third of the planet has spawned something else entirely: a modern Tower of Babel.

However, I can't help but wonder if this is really leading us to a better means of education or not ...

In the world of electronic communication, there is a term called "signal-to-noise ratio" that is a measure of how much signal is getting through versus the (obscuring) background interference. In the parlance of teaching, this would be the equivalent to how much information is being imparted amongst the extraneous information that is being presented. For example, if a student can get 15 minutes worth of information by reading 30 minutes in a book, they have an effective signal-to-noise ratio of 1/2. Similarly, if they can get the same 15 minutes of information from a one-hour video, then they have an effective signal-to-noise ratio of 1/4. Granted that all students (myself included) learn in different modes at different rates, some modes of knowledge transference are still inherently faster than others. In a given day, a student can learn twice as much if their signal-to-noise ratio is 1/2 instead of 1/4. The trend to combine knowledge with entertainment in order to make it more fun and enjoyable is laudable, but it progressively decreases the signal-to-noise ratio.

We effectively hold students captive from K-12 ... that's 20,000+ hours of their lives. What signal-to-noise ratio do we want them to have during those hours? As we make things more entertaining and fun, are we diluting the essential knowledge that needs to be imparted over time? How many hours of actual learning are necessary to produce a literate product for the market-place by age 18?

Good question, but I don't think that the unfettered Internet is the solution.

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Official Election Results

[DISCLAIMER: I am not associated or affiliated with any political party (I am an American)]

It's been six days since the polls closed. Not a single state has certified their ballots and declared a winning candidate, yet the corporate and social media have already declared Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be the winner. While it is extremely unlikely that this will change, the odds are not zero.

Each state has its own deadline to finish their vote tallies and announce the official results for their state. The first of these will be Delaware, which has five days to post their official vote counts (unless the deadline falls on a Saturday or Sunday). As a result, the first official results of the 2020 election will be announced today (November 9th). Note that the citizens of Delaware didn't actually vote for Biden or Trump, but elected three party faithfuls who will represent the state when the Electoral College convenes on December 14th. These delegates will actually cast the official votes for the state of Delaware.

The next official deadlines are for Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, and Virginia, which each have ten days to certify their results. The official vote counts for these states will be this Friday, November 13th. California has the longest window in which to count their votes. They can complete the tallying and announce them sooner than their deadline, but they legally have until December 11th to do so under their own state law. This is an interesting deadline in the sense that it violates Federal law which stipulates that the state counts must be certified by December 8th.

The media has done a marvelous job of conflating absentee ballots with mail-in ballots. The U.S. Constitution stipulates that all votes must be received by the close of polls on (this year) November 3rd. Article II Section 1 says:

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

While this has generally been interpreted to allow votes that are mailed in and postmarked by the day of the election, that has been in the context of voters that requested an absentee ballot for a valid reason. This year, a number of states changed their laws to allow for anyone to mail in a ballot. These mail-in ballots have different rules to follow than the absentee ballots; that's because, legally, they're not the same thing.

What has raised legal issues is how some states have changed their rules partway through the election process. Since the election laws are codified by the legislature of each state, any changes made by the state election commission is patently illegal. Any vote counted under the changed rule is an illegal vote. 

For example, in Pennsylvania, the state proceeded with counting ballots received, with or without legible postmarks to prove when (or if) they were mailed. This is in spite of their own law that says the ballots must be received by 8:00 p.m. election night:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court allowed a three day extension to go forward and allowed votes to be counted as long as they were postmarked by the 3rd. Strangely enough, they okayed the counting of ballots with illegible or missing postmarks. The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to block this, but they let the Pennsylvania Supreme Court judgement stand while stipulating that the late ballots be kept separate from the others. The issue here is that the state court cannot change election law, only the legislature. Again, from Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

It can be argued, with some merit, that this year is different because of the pandemic and the need to practice some form of socially distanced voting. However, the ballots in hand, at the close of the polls, should be the only ones counted. Those would be the legal votes, according to the U.S. Constitution.

Even in states with razor-thin margins, a recount will probably not change the outcome. However, the disallowing of late ballots may make enough of a difference to flip the outcome of that state. It is still unlikely that it would change the overall outcome, but by counting every legal vote, we can all be comfortable in knowing that our election system is still honest and secure.

WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER

PS: To those who would argue that the U.S. Constitution needs to be changed, well, surprise! The Founding Fathers had no illusions that their contract was perfect. In fact, they dedicated an entire article to the ability to do so. Article V says, in its entirety:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

If We, the People, don't like it, then We, the People can change it. It's that simple.

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Election 2020

[DISCLAIMER: I am not associated or affiliated with any political party (I am an American).]

Tomorrow is November 3rd, 2020. It will mark the 13th Presidential election in which I have voted. Sometimes my candidates win ... and sometimes they don't. That's how it's supposed to work. As Hillary Clinton correctly pointed out in 2016:

“To say you won't respect the results of the election—that is a direct threat to our democracy! The peaceful transfer of power is one of the things that makes America America!”

Thus I find it ironic that she has been the face of the "resist" movement for the past four years and, as a result, America has become far more divided than ever before.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I also find it ironic that the Civil War began with the election of Abraham Lincoln as the first Republican President, who replaced outgoing Democratic President, James Buchanan. Even before Lincoln was sworn into office, seven southern states formally seceded in order to protect their right to own slaves. It began with the orderly secession of a number of states whose state governments declared that they were no longer part of the United States of America, but were now part of the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln's determination to unite a House Divided set the stage for what followed. The Confederates began the fighting by firing upon Fort Sumter, a Federal facility, in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.

In spite of what many people seem to believe, America is not a democracy. It is a Union of 50 member States that are United by the U.S. Constitution. Each state can act independently of each other, as long as they don't violate the overarching Law of the Land. In return, the Constitution restricts the Federal Government from meddling too deeply into States' affairs.

But, I wander (sorry). Tomorrow we won't know who our next President will be. Not just because of the unavoidable problems in dealing with 100,000,000 mail-in ballots (each of which has to be hand-verified before it can be counted). Nor because every State has their own way of collecting the vote tallies for determining their electors. They are free to do so because the Constitution protects their rights to do as they please under their own State Constitutions.

No, we won't know who our next President will be until December 14th. That's when the electors representing the States will convene in Congress to cast their choices for President and Vice-President. While these electors generally follow the choices of their respective states, they are not legally bound by the Constitution to any prior arrangement. Electors that are sent to Washington and change their assigned vote, are called Faithless Electors. They may be penalized by their home state—even sent to prison—but their vote will still legally stand in the Electoral College (once voted, it can be voided under individual state law, but not replaced).

The proverbial excrement is already hitting the rotating impeller and will only get heavier and nastier before the 14th of next month. That's when we will find out if we are still a Nation of Laws, or a de facto Nation of Outlaws. Six long weeks. In today's instant gratification world, that's practically an eternity. Plenty of time for peaceful protests on both sides of the aisle.

Try to remember what Hillary said about the biggest threat to Democracy. She was right, you know.

WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER

[Video courtesy of C-SPAN without permission]

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