Even if it means, saying the election (in particular areas) was a fraud, and must be done again.

They may not have 90% of precincts counted within 90 seconds of the close of polls, but they generally have all the votes counted within 24 hours.

There is not endless bickering over who a valid voter is. No hanging chads.

American exceptionalism has created the most contorted, most gamable electoral system.

in my small town I have asked for a printed receipt, every time I have been denied one. I can go to Sheetz and order 2 death dogs and fries and my printed order come out immediately showing what I ordered and the prices.

There is only one reason that we vote with machines that cannot be verified. There is only one reason why we vote with machines that are never independently audited. That reason is so that Republicans can pre-program those machines to cheat, either flip votes, or undercount votes.

The situation of the boxes of absentee ballots just discovered in the mail center in Florida, in a Democratic area, undelivered, that now cannot be counted because they were not delivered on time just makes me want to pull out my hair. I still have hair at 71.
You darn well know if those boxes of ballots were from a Republican area of Florida they would be making an exception to count them. Sorry but I need to say this, fucking crooked bastards.

When did you ever get a “receipt” of your ballot? I’ve voted in many states on many types of systems over the years, and no receipt or copy of your ballot has ever been involved.

Back in the day, in New York in the 70s, I voted on old-time lever machines. You pulled the lever next to each preferred candidate’s name and checked to see you pulled all the right levers before pulling the curtain back to cast your vote. No receipt, no paper trail. These were the most easily hackable machines ever.

In Minnesota and Massachusetts (and later Illinois) I used optiscan paper ballots—either fill in the circles or connect the lines with a pen. You check your ballot to see you filled it out correctly and then take it over to feed it into the scanning machine. No receipt, no copy.

This year (in Illinois) we had to vote early, at an early voting site because we were going to be out of town. There are only electronic machines at these sites, because they can’t stock separate paper ballots that may differ for the more than 2000 precincts in my city. We chose this over absentee ballots because we’ve had plenty of stuff lost in the mail over the years. You choose candidates on the touchscreen and then get to review. There is also a paper record encased under glass that has all your choices printed that you can review before pressing “cast ballot.” But no receipt.

When you mail in a ballot you have no receipt.

Even in the olden days, when you wrote down your choice on a piece of paper and put it in the ballot box, there was no receipt.

All of these types of voter systems are vulnerable to hacking, tampering, ballot-box stuffing, etc. which is why we have poll watchers. Thus it has always been.

You either trust the systems or you develop conspiracy theories.

Here in Colorado, when I vote via mail-in ballot, you detach a strip from the top of each ballot that has a # identifier on it that is unique to that ballot. That # is how the ballot is tracked. I can sign up for electronic notification of every step of the process (your ballot has been received, your ballot has been counted, etc.). if there is a problem with the ballots and a manual recount is needed/required there is a method using the unique ballot ID #s, in theory anyway, how even a single specific ballot can be called up and verified against what the voter says they voted.

Other states could do something like this if they wanted to.

Yes, you can track that your ballot was received, and/or that it was counted—two things that are unnecessary to confirm when you vote in person. You’re there to verify both those things yourself. When you vote in person, you are also given a specific ID.

What you don’t know, in any of these cases, is whether your ballot was counted correctly. You have to trust that.

There is no way in hell, however, that you will ever be contacted to confirm how you voted. That’s just not going to happen, whether you voted by mail or in person.

Absolutely positively wrong.

The optical scan systems start with a paper ballot that can be recounted manually if there is any question of fraud or a tight race. Manual recounts always have watchers from both parties who look over the shoulders of the counters.

At least that's the way it should be. The fact that the lever pulling machines had to be trusted does not mean we are stuck with that idea, and it definitely doesn't mean that they were never compromised.

This is very very important to our democracy.

Imagine a dishonorable boss or abusive husband demanding to see it. Imagine claims that George Soros paid people for their vote for Democrats. I think you could get what you want - confirmation that the machine correctly interpreted the machine's interpretation if - like on order processes (think Amazon), if they produced a summary - ie a list of office: your choice - then asking you to confirm or go back to change. The negative on this is that it would mean the machine would take longer for each person.

Alternatively - replace ALL machines that do not have a paper readout that you approve that could see that could be used for a recount with optical scanners. The reason is that the "raw data" - the paper ballot put in the machine - can be looked at and recounted.

I think the FL ballots in question are optimal scanner type ballots. This means that even if the scanners miss count by looking in the wrong place, the paper ballots remain and could be recounted. MSNBC says they will sort out all the ballots that have either no vote on a race being investigated or a double vote. Some reports are that in Broward county many people did not register a vote for Senate - though they voted down ballot. If this is because people did not vote on that - whether because they missed it due to a confusing ballot or because they didn't favor one over the other, then there is pure and simple no vote cast. If the scanner was not programmed to correctly pick up a vote there, those votes will be exaimined and the indicated votes counted.

While I would think that we would have heard complaints that there was no Senate race vote if that many people missed it. After all, Senate and Governor were the top two races. I KNOW I would have had questions - before putting in my optical sanner ballot here in Vermont - if I thought the Senate race was not on the ballot. Were questions raised?

After 2000 with the FL Palm Beach butterfly ballot and the lesser known 2004 Ohio caterpillar ballot had negative impacts, why does the DNC not advocate for ALL Democrats on the board of election to seriously look at and even test the ballots as soon as they are designed.

It's those who count the votes

In 2006, Wikiquote dug up such a source: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary by Boris Bazhanov, published in 2002. Translated from the Russian, the version which, according to Bazhanov, was uttered in 1923 by Stalin in reference to a vote in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was this:

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

The quote is a rough match for the words commonly attributed to Stalin, with the notable difference that the context is quite specific. Stalin wasn’t speaking of elections and voting in general. He was speaking of a particular vote by a particular body.

While it would be a bit of a stretch to assert (given the vagaries of translation, the unreliability of memory, and the existence of earlier examples) that the sentiment “The people who cast the votes decide nothing; the people who count the votes decide everything” originated with Stalin, there is at least some evidence that he once said something like it.

Republican lawsuits not withstanding?