by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
It is done.
Now we find out whether politics is indeed the peaceful version of physical war or that barrier is, at least in the United States, gone.
If you think about it for 30 seconds or so (assuming you haven’t ruined your ability to do that with Instragram and similar) you will recognize that politicians and indeed the formal political process has long declared, all the way back to the founding of America and likely far longer, that this is in fact true.
Carl von Clausewitz once said “War is politics by other means” but in fact he had it backwards — its the other way around.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Politics is war without the killing and physical destruction of the property held by your opponent.
You think not?
- Let’s campaign for this politician or that.
- I’m going to fight for ($15 minimum wage | green energy | black lives | whatever-handout-du jour)
- I’m going to defeat my opponent (in office, in political views, etc.)
- My opponent is going to throw Granny down the stairs (including ads of stick-figures doing so)
- My opponent will get you nuked, literally (“Daisy” anyone?)
- My opponent is a {fascist | Nazi | Communist | Socialist | etc} – the implication is that if you vote for the opponent they will kill you, imprison you or destroy and/or confiscate your stuff.  All three are what happens in a war.
Why is it that we have entire nations (e.g. Brazil) where they can count all the ballots within hours of the polls closing but we can’t? There’s nothing complicated about running a hard-to-cheat and entirely-fair election that produces irrefutable results within hours when you get down to it. It simply requires:
- Everyone votes during a single-day fixed window of time.
- Everyone who votes dips their finger in indelible ink so you cannot vote twice.
- Everyone showing up to vote must present reasonable proof of citizenship.  In a nation where close to ten percent of the persons in the nation on a given election day have no lawful right to vote due to being here illegally, a visitor or green-card holder, and ten percent is materially beyond the margin of victory for most races, no balloting is legitimate unless every voter is verified to be eligible to cast their ballot. Since ballots are secret (they cannot be tied to an individual person by design, otherwise there is no privacy in how you vote) there is no way to cure a ballot cast by an ineligible person after the act. It therefore it must be proved at the time of ballot issue. Period.
- Other than serialization of the ballots issued to a voter and tabulated (so “X” ballots were issued, “Y” were spoiled and retained and therefore “X – Y” must be in the tabulation for said precinct or other voting location and “Y” must be in the spoiled container) no means of tracing which voter got what provably-unique ballot is possible.  Therefore nobody can tie a specific vote to a specific person but it is absolutely proved that “X” people voted, each person who did so only did so once, and “X” ballots are present.
- All votes are made onto a physical, tamper-evident thing (the easiest and cheapest is paper of a specific type, bond and with security features embedded in it, no matter how tabulated) which is retained and able to be inspected by anyone at any time to verify that the tabulation of votes was “as cast.”
- All votes are tabulated and counted only (1) after the polls close and (2) no results are permitted out of the counting room(s) by any means whatsoever until all counts are complete and the polls books verified as balanced. This makes impossible determining how a race is going to turn out in advance and thus you can’t “find” or change votes after the fact since nobody has any way to know what the count is or will be until the opportunity to add, subtract or modify the votes as cast has been foreclosed.
- All tabulating, printing and related election software must be open-source including the operating system and all OS/device libraries and drivers, the configuration files that control its operation are signed with a maintained certification chain (as with TLS certificates) the issuing CA keys are under lock and key except when used to issue same, and said media containing same can only be withdrawn and used under direct physical observation of poll watchers by all parties on the ballot. Any violation of the security of said signing certificates results in their immediate revocation without exception. No election operations or tabulating machine may have connectivity outside of the physical room it is in by any means whatsoever, no such hardware capable of same (e.g. Wifi, bluetooth or other than physical wired links) may be present in the room, no such equipment may be visible from outside the room by any means (e.g. through windows) that allows its operation or the material fed into it to be observed beyond the four walls, once the polls are closed and tabulation begins nothing may enter or leave until it is complete and any person or entity that violates any section of this provision is subject to summary public execution without exception. This means anyone can verify that (1) the software has no “back doors” in it, (2) the configuration files (e.g. ballots, where the “marks” have to be, etc.) are as-claimed, (3) the configuration file was in fact issued by who it allegedly was and is valid and (4) nobody has screwed with any of this from outside the place where polling or tabulation occurs and if someone tries it verification fails and said equipment will refuse to operate on said tampered-with file.
- All election materials, including the code, configuration files and physical ballots cast, sans outer envelopes which may contain a signature or return address in the case of absentee ballots, are public domain post-election subject only to reasonable requirements to prevent tampering or destruction.  Any person or entity may examine same at any time and no election materials may be tampered with or destroyed for a period of at least ten years. Physical ballots shall be made publicly available in high-resolution scanned image form, along with the evidentiary basis behind the poll books to prove they balance against said ballots on a precinct basis, no later than ten (10) days post-election and all configuration files, operating systems and other code on an “as-used” basis shall be publicly available as of the date of certification of results.
That’s it.
If you want to argue that there needs to be some exception for people legitimately unable through no fault of their own, and not able to be mitigated by their planning and choice, to vote on the given day (which everyone knows a year or more in advance) then that’s fine. That can be accounted for under this system; all such “absentee” voting must have a verified reason for issue, once issued you are removed from the poll books for the next election used for in-person voting (so you can’t show up and request a ballot on election day) and none of the absentee ballots can be inspected in any way including the outer envelope, opened, validated as acceptable (e.g. bearing signature, etc.) or otherwise have their security violated until the polls have closed.  Once the polls have closed then said ballots are treated as any other; they go into the counting facility, their poll book is validated (e.g. there cannot be more absentee ballots in envelopes than there were validated requests) post closure of the polls they are opened and from that point forward are subject to the same rules as an in-person ballot except that a spoiled ballot (is unsigned, not filled out, etc.) is discarded and recorded as such. The risk of an absentee ballot being spoiled and not redeemable is on the person voting absentee; if you’re going to use that path then you are the one with the responsibility to make sure you don’t screw it up and spoil your ballot because once-issued to you there is no way to replace or cure it. There can’t be a cure process or its entirely too easy to cheat.
