https://www.lawfareblog.com/its-time-start-thinking-about-election-security-2020
By Matt Tait
Lawfareblog.com
November 13, 2018
Those hoping for some peace and quiet after the conclusion of the
contentious 2018 midterm elections have been sorely disappointed. As
absentee ballots continued to trickle in across Georgia and Arizona, and
as Florida braces for a recount of both its senatorial and gubernatorial
races, several politicians -- including most notably President Trump,
Florida’s current governor and Republican Senate nominee Rick Scott, Sen.
Marco Rubio, and others -- were busy alleging voter fraud and casting
doubt on the integrity of the vote count itself.
Although there is currently no evidence to support any claim of voter
fraud at a scale that could plausibly affect any given race’s outcome,
such claims reveal an important and usually overlooked aspect of the
challenge of ensuring election security -- one that the United States will
need to address before its next presidential election, in 2020.
Election security is somewhat of a strange subject because elections
perform a more nuanced and complicated role than at first it might appear.
The primary job of an election sounds simple enough: The goal is to poll
eligible voters, count votes and accurately produce the name of a winner
upon whom everyone can agree to confer power. But this is only half of the
process. For elections to work, it is not sufficient that they produce an
accurate tally of the votes cast. They must also convince the public that
the tally is accurate.
In other words, it is not enough that elections are fair; they must also
be seen to be fair.
[...]
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