"we the people" trusting political parties to administer their own elections and count their own votes is like shepherds trusting wolves to perform the lamb census.

this is painfully obvious when you stop and think about it.

yet decade after decade, we do nothing.

why?

i was once speaking to a hospital CEO about all the regulations in the space and how they made no sense. he said something profound that stuck with me:

"you have to understand, it's not like this because people are idiots. it's like this because someone wants it this way."

this is true of the US electoral process as well. we are the richest, most technologically advanced country in the history of the humanity.

does literally ANYONE believe that if we put our minds to it, we could not create an accurate, verified, real time voting system?

of course we could. but any even baby step in this direction is met with avalanches of resistance and outlandish accusations.

it's very obvious that the vested interests do not want to see the system change.

and why would they?

they control the current system.

the bigger and more powerful government becomes, the more corrupt it becomes. coercive power draws corruption like jam draws ants.

gato's law:

"as soon as you allow politicians to determine what is bought and sold, the first thing bought and sold will be politicians"

can anyone seriously think that if having "your guy" win office is so valuable that $ has tainted politics that this would not focus like a laser on the process of elections?

that cites with longstanding one party control would not have machines to ensure control is retained?

election fraud has been with us for ages, almost certainly from the very beginning. the question has never even been "if" we have it, but "how much?" and "did it flip the results?"

many seem to argue that it does not affect outcomes.

i find this line of reasoning silly.

of course election fraud affects outcomes. why would anyone go to the trouble and the risk if it didn't? you can go to jail, get barred from politics or have an election nullified if you get caught.

so why would anyone do it, over and over, if it did not affect outcomes?

these are not people shoplifting for the thrill of it.

these are well run, experienced political machines that know exactly what they are doing and have more institutional knowledge about how to pull and to keep the levers of power than elon musk has about stock promotion.

and it is time for this to end.

if we're going to have elections, then we need to have real ones and the technology to do it is readily available.

and this starts with real voter ID.

voter ID is a fake controversy. it does not "suppress voting."

puerto rico has incredibly strict voter ID. you have to get a special photo ID to vote from a voter registration office.

it's a laminated, hologrammed ID.

it takes 2 forms of ID and proof of residence to get.

you go down to the office, show them your ID and your social security card/passport and your proof of residence.

people from 3 different parties all handle part of your application and keep watchful eyes on one another.

you need this card to vote, you can only use it in one place, and they check it against a picture of the card and, thus, your face. you sign on the line next to it then get sprayed with UV ink to prevent multiple voting. (they scan you when you come in)

this is serious system.

and yet puerto rico has some of the highest voter turnout in the US despite being one of the poorest places.

voting is not suppressed. this is a baseless claim with no evidence or even plausibility. those making it are just trying to keep access to fraud and fiddling.

but even this is not good enough. we need a whole system to make voting work and count properly and it's really not that hard to design in the age of public key cryptography

voter ID needs to come with a private key. you can store it on the card and create real verification

then, we need a system to administer the election.

but who can we trust to design it and run it? no one.

fortuitously, that's exactly what we can use.

this whole system needs to be open source and auditable by anyone not the BS black boxes politicians like

and we can do that

we need an open contest to design this open source system. all code to be published, audited, and compared. this is how all good encryption schemes work. you'd never trust closed source encryption.

put some big bounty on the win to bring the best of the best to the contest.

then keep a standing bug bounty where anyone who can break it or tamper with it gets paid a pile of dough.

make it safe by paying handsomely for people to constantly check it for flaws.

look how well things like apache web server work.

this is a tried and true plan.

and it's a plan everyone can trust because it's code everyone can see and a system designed by top security people to withstand scrutiny and verification.

we need this. we could easily have it in 4 years, possibly 2.

once you see it, it seems obvious, no?

this current goat rodeo is going to become the norm if we do not do something. this sort of system is real, verifiable voting outside the control of the vested interests.

so, i challenge team donkey and team elephant to agree to this and sign on.

make it happen.

if they won't, i want to hear why.

giving lip service to free and fair elections then resisting the development of a system to ensure them and take the corruption out will be tough to defend.

we the people need to demand this or we the sheep are gonna get fleeced. again.