That’s basically what was being said and it’s not functionally different because the vast majority of the public does not work in elections or their verification. In essence if 99% of the population does not have access to data or cannot interpret said data, trust is needed.
I read certain phrases from what they wrote and it infers that people do not know who voted for who or what. That just isn’t the mechanism. It’s done by computers. It has to be tabulated for a multitude of reasons. It’s not anonymous to the mechanism. It is anonymous to the public. Which is not what the original statement. It was that the trust is built from no one at all ever knowing or being to tell.
First, I’m writing about a person who’s watching and doesn’t know if they can trust the system. My point is that there’s no alternative to trust in the system, the system is built on trust.
Second, if you’re inside the system, if you’re an election worker or a government authority, you can tell who voted. But, you can’t tell who that voter cast their votes for – at least in a functional democracy.
The authorities can, and should, have all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that all the votes are being handled safely and counted correctly. But, if the public doesn’t trust the authorities, there’s nothing that the authorities can realistically do to convince the public that everything is above board. You can’t “prove” that the system isn’t rigged.
Oh you can tell. But it’s not going to be easy to report it without getting caught. Part of the process is auditing. We would take certain stacks that had incomplete marks and try and figure out who or what they meant. But it’s just hi ho hum work because it’s a madhouse. Remembering that Betty Smith voted for Prop 17 by the end of the day would be really difficult without being very obvious that was who you were looking for.
Then there are verifications on who voted at all that were registered to the right polls. All their answers are on their ballots. Security is what keeps it secret and a precise way of dealing with it. In a big room with many eyes. Kind of like a casino’s money vault.
