politics

Is it preferable in a democracy to either ensure all legitimate voters are able to (which means some people who are not legitimate voters will have their votes count) OR ensure all illegitimate votes are not counted (with the risk that some legitimate voters will be denied)

Given there’s been no solid proof of widespread voter fraud in the decades that we’ve been allowing the former, the latter seems super detrimental with little/no upside imo

So I think ensure all legitimate voters are able to vote

aspiring shrimp farmer ~ eng @ bloom (yc s21)

I think there’s definitely a lot of attempted fraud, and some is always going to sneak through, but I also think as a nation we do a better than average job at identifying it before it becomes an issue

As to widespread, I don’t think we’ve had a recent election with enough fraud to actually change results or sway any opinions heavily, even just looking at legal cases and events surrounding last election. Trump & co went something like 0-48 on cases attempting to prove it, audits, investigations, and recounts didn’t find anything. Iirc the biggest change that came from a recount was like 700 votes in Georgia, when Biden won by something like 12k

I think misinformation/disinformation campaigns are a much bigger and more widespread/common issue than any level of vote flipping, electioneering, etc..

I think everybody can probably admit there’s some every year, it would be crazy if every election was exactly 100% accurate. 

So the question is the definition of “widespread” and to your point I don’t know if I see nation wide fraud, but how much fraud do you need to influence an election? Probably not very much if it’s in PA or MI for example