Supreme Court says states can punish Electoral College voters

I don't oppose things just for the sake of opposing. Only if there is a viable alternative. Within our system of government, and until somebody can come up with an alternative, I think it's better to have a Senate than it would be to not have it. If we completely reformed the way the House of Representatives is elected, that's when I would start considering the possibility of doing away with the Senate.

 

I am not looking for a long, drawn out, pedantic conversation on this topic which isnt important or pressing enough to be in the news during this election year. I will take you at your word that you are a computer security expert.

With your purported knowledge, you know full well that technology is always evolving. Even if we could ( which we cannot) say that a system could be devised today that is impenetrable, that most certainly does not mean that it would be impenetrable in 5,10, or 20 years. The citizenry needs to be confident in the election process, and with an internet based platform, there would ALWAYS be doubts, and in that case those doubts could very easily be legitimate.

You are also wholly ignoring the very real possibility of someone or some group working from the inside to achieve the same aim. Or perhaps those working on the inside are working with and/or guiding the hackers on the outside. There simply is not enough transparency for the public at large to have confidence in such a process.

 

That could be a problem in 20 years if we were still using 20 year old technology in voting. As you say, technology keeps evolving. But it evolves on both sides.

But here's the thing: hackers aren't that interested in being at the edge of technology just for the sake of being at the edge of technology. They just wan't to make a quick buck. So they have evolved in the direction of exploiting human stupidity and carelessness. That will always exist. It requires much less sophistication. But if we hire competent IT experts to install state of the art security, that will not be an issue at an IT level.

I believe that in all elections to come there will be doubts ... regardless. Starting with the last one. If Trump was making false fraud allegation in an election he won... imagine in one he loses.

That would require a conspiracy of humongous proportions. Not only to carry it out, but to cover it up. If such a conspiracy were even possible, it would make no difference how the voting had been carried out. They could do it now with paper ballots. Even with mail-in ballots, though it would probably be more difficult.

 

-In regards to technology constantly evolving.....Our election process CANNOT be trusted with a constant game of cat and mouse where the outcome is always in doubt which is what you get with constantly evolving technology on both sides of that equation.

-We arent talking about run of the mill hackers trying to find whatever mischief they can find. We would be talking about political machines funding hackers for the singular specific purpose of stealing an election. That could include exterior hackers, people working inside the system, or some combination of the two. Surely this would be an important enough topic that it is NOT impossible to realistically envision such a scheme.

-It would require a conspiracy of humongous proportions?... Depends how one defines humongous.

- The same level of interference could NOT accomplished with paper ballots in 50 individual elections in 50 different states. Not even close.

-Lets not keep bickering endlessly about this. It seems to me like we have both had our say. There is nothing worse than an endless argument that goes nowhere over an irrelevancy such as this.

 

I am immensely less concerned about people (which will be invariable on the right) baselessly screaming "fraud" when they lose than in actually having an election that is free of any fraud. It's inevitable that some people will always claim there was "fraud" when they lose. So why bother with the boy who cried wolf? Better use the energy to allow as many people as possible to exercise their right to vote.

Hackers are not like you see in the movies: some brilliant guy who infiltrates a system and takes over through some "back door". That does not happen in real life. That is not how hackers operate today. And even if somebody did manage to find some TV-type genius hacker, the system would not be on line long enough for them to crack it and use it. And if they even tried... they'd be found out and patches would be made before the next elections.

You would need to have a conspiracy of many people working inside, plus the participation of multiple security firms hired to detect vulnerabilities. And even if they did have that (which is unlikely) there are many ways in which any manipulation can be found out and corrected.

Something like the conspiracy of supervisors of elections all over the country, with IT security firms with programmers who worked on the system, with.... To tell you the truth. I don't think even a conspiracy of humongous proportions would do the job.

Same goes for Internet voting. Except paper is easy to destroy. Computer records.... not so much.

Sure. The fact is that we will have online voting in the near future (one or two elections from now) And there will be people who question them. But that's no different than it will be with paper ballots and mail in voting. As I said before: if Trump and his supporters were questioning the results of an election they won... what do you expect will happen with an election they lose?

 

You'll support anyone with a (D) next to their name.
Anyone.

 

Actually they did...

States can no longer direct their EC voters to vote on the basis of cumulative national vote totals.

This is a HUGE victory for the HEARTLAND. 9-0

 

We have both long ago had our say. Enough already.

You think that we will have online voting in 1 or 2 elections in the future. I think there is not a snowballs chance in hell of that occurring. I would be happy to bet my house that you are wrong. Our positions are well staked out. There is no reason to keep droning on endlessly about what amounts to two wholly unprovable opinions. This forum works best when it is an exchange of ideas rather than a marathon of who can keep arguing the same point seemingly without end.

 

I don't think so. It says that states that require EC voters to vote the way the state has said, can be punished if they don't. There's nothing about how the state determines which candidate it wants to vote for. That is still entirely up to the state.

(I'm no legal scholar, but that's how I read it.)