Tech reporting out WTFs tech support
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[Update: Apology] AT&T tells customers to upgrade phones to avoid losing voice calls... two years early
![[Update: Apology] AT&T tells customers to upgrade phones to avoid losing voice calls... two years early](https://i0.wp.com/9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/06/att-store-41.jpg?resize=1200%2C628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
In an email going out to customers, AT&T warns that customers may lose voice access if they don't upgrade their phones. The problem? It's 2 years early.
I mean, I get that bashing the phone company is de rigeur. But has the author ever even been in the same room as an end user? 18 months lead time is probably too little if at&t wants any hope of a smooth transition.
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Nice. I wonder if there's a tool you can use to test if you're actually using VoLTE?
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@Tsaukpaetra You'll know. Your dialer will be
screaming it at you from the rooftopsprominently indicating it, and if it's between two VoLTE compatible devices it'll sound significantly less muffled.
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@TwelveBaud said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
it'll sound
Ah. See, my phone doesn't like doing phone things so I rarely use it to make phone calls...
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@HardwareGeek said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
my phone doesn't like doing phone things
We'll see if my new phone does better.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
my phone doesn't like doing phone things
Pretty common thing for smartphones.
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@Carnage Yeah, the first smartphone I had (years ago) was pretty bad as a phone (poor reception and very noisy speaker). So when I went to buy the next one a couple of years later, I specifically looked for this in reviews. And I was annoyed at how little review space it occupied! You have like 10 screens on how the camera behaves in poor light, and half-a-line on the reception quality.
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@remi said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Carnage Yeah, the first smartphone I had (years ago) was pretty bad as a phone (poor reception and very noisy speaker). So when I went to buy the next one a couple of years later, I specifically looked for this in reviews. And I was annoyed at how little review space it occupied! You have like 10 screens on how the camera behaves in poor light, and half-a-line on the reception quality.
is the proper emoji here. Using phone for calling? How boomer!
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My phone came with VoLTE enabled by default. After a few months using it, phone calls stopped working (I don't remember if what happened was that other people couldn't hear me, or I couldn't hear other people). Eventually I called Claro (my cellphone service provider) and I was told to disable VoLTE and that although it VoLTE may work sometimes, it's not currently supported by them.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Ah. See, my phone doesn't like doing phone things so I rarely use it to make phone calls...
This topic popped up in my /unread for some reason so I'm following up.
My new phone (a china Realme XT something or another) seems to do phone things pretty well. How I know? All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year, can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Ah. See, my phone doesn't like doing phone things so I rarely use it to make phone calls...
This topic popped up in my /unread for some reason so I'm following up.
My new phone (a china Realme XT something or another) seems to do phone things pretty well. How I know? All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year, can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!
Isn't it illegal to pay/accept payment for votes?
But maybe you mean that they have to pay to call you?
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@Carnage said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Ah. See, my phone doesn't like doing phone things so I rarely use it to make phone calls...
This topic popped up in my /unread for some reason so I'm following up.
My new phone (a china Realme XT something or another) seems to do phone things pretty well. How I know? All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year, can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!
Isn't it illegal to pay/accept payment for votes?
But maybe you mean that they have to pay to call you?No, not pay to vote, pay for me to accept your call and listen to you drivel your advertisement to me for several minutes.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Carnage said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Ah. See, my phone doesn't like doing phone things so I rarely use it to make phone calls...
This topic popped up in my /unread for some reason so I'm following up.
My new phone (a china Realme XT something or another) seems to do phone things pretty well. How I know? All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year, can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!
Isn't it illegal to pay/accept payment for votes?
But maybe you mean that they have to pay to call you?No, not pay to vote, pay for me to accept your call and listen to you drivel your advertisement to me for several minutes.
That would be a wonderful service for telco to provide.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year
Second time I post this in 24h, but:
How would they even know that??
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@topspin said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
How would they even know that??
Was last year an election year?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
listen to you drivel your advertisement to me for several minutes.
I know that phones is outdated technology and that how to use it is now lost for ages, but did you know that you can... hang up on them!?
When I get unsolicited marketing calls, if it's a robocall I immediately hang up, if it switches to a human fast enough I let them speak for 5-10 s so I know it's marketing bullshit, then interrupt them and firmly tell them "I'm not interested, goodbye." At that point, either they take the hint and we end the call politely, or more often than not they don't (because there is a no-marketing call list on which I am, so if they call me they're already scummy enough to not honour that list...) and I just hang up on them.
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@topspin said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year
Second time I post this in 24h, but:
How would they even know that??Also, do restrictions apply to what you voted, whether you voted, and whether you registered to vote?
Of course, I'd expect all of those to be equally protected, but I'm a European weirdo. Having to register to vote seems odd to me.
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@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Having to register to vote seems odd to me.
That is because you are registered de facto when being issued an ID. And you are required to request an ID. In
citizens can vote in local elections. Because they aren't officially issued a local ID they need to register.
Funny side step: in the Dutch but with French benefits commun of Voeren the town hall was mostly owned by French parties until the above rule allowed
residents to vote and swing.
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@topspin said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
All these damn guilt-tripping "wah wah you didn't vote last year
Second time I post this in 24h, but:
How would they even know that??Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be so you can protect against the type of fraud where you cast your ballot, but the government doesn't tabulate it.
Who they voted for is not. However, if @Tsaukpaetra is getting calls from the Biden campaign encouraging him to vote, they probably are guessing, based on a demographic profile they have of him, that if he voted, he's likely to vote for Biden.
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@Luhmann said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Having to register to vote seems odd to me.
That is because you are registered de facto when being issued an ID. And you are required to request an ID.
No, the ID is irrelevant (*), at least in the Netherlands.
Every Dutch national, and every foreign national residing in the Netherlands, is however registered by the government, with a BSN (comparable to a US social security number, but marginally more secure).
That registration is used for voting. And when applying for an ID. And taxes. And (theoretical) military draft. And medical insurance. And lots more, like appropriate in any Orwellian society.(*) except that you need to show a government-supplied ID when voting, to prove your identity.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be
I get that it needs to be recorded, but why as a public record instead of an internal government database that is only published in anonymized form?
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@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be
I get that it needs to be recorded, but why as a public record instead of an internal government database that is only published in anonymized form?
So that you can look it up and see yourself in it.
Anonymous data may be fudged. But if you can look up that you were tabulated, then that makes it harder.
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@acrow said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be
I get that it needs to be recorded, but why as a public record instead of an internal government database that is only published in anonymized form?
So that you can look it up and see yourself in it.
Anonymous data may be fudged. But if you can look up that you were tabulated, then that makes it harder.
I don't see how that helps much, since you can still miscount my vote. In the end, the only way to verify that your vote was counted correctly is to sanity-check the published results for your district.
I'm guessing this is just an artifact of the over-complicated voter registration system in the US.
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@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
In the end, the only way to verify that your vote was counted correctly is to sanity-check the published results for your district.
You mean, like, make sure that the number of votes cast in a district is less than or equal to the number of registered voters?
Guess what we don't do here.
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@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@acrow said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be
I get that it needs to be recorded, but why as a public record instead of an internal government database that is only published in anonymized form?
So that you can look it up and see yourself in it.
Anonymous data may be fudged. But if you can look up that you were tabulated, then that makes it harder.
I don't see how that helps much, since you can still miscount my vote. In the end, the only way to verify that your vote was counted correctly is to sanity-check the published results for your district.
They can, technically, miscount it. But they can't add e.g. dead voters, if the list is published.
I'm guessing this is just an artifact of the over-complicated voter registration system in the US.
No, it comes from the fact that it's harder to subtract votes than add them, afterwards. Because you can always slip in more ballot papers. But destroying them risks leaving evidence.
And it's possible to get caught of straight up counting wrong, too, since there's a paper trail (either physical ballot papers or an electronic record). And you really don't want to get caught of purposefully miscounting votes.
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@acrow said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
No, it comes from the fact that it's harder to subtract votes than add them, afterwards. Because you can always slip in more ballot papers.
Well, if you'd keep track of the number of voters with their primary residence in each district - as other countries do - and publish the number of people who didn't vote, then the total number of votes can be sanity-checked in the same way as the number of votes for each candidate/party.
If the statistics seem off and the result is challenged, there's still a paper trail that tells you who cast their votes - that list just doesn't have to be public information before anything strange happens.
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@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Having to register to vote seems odd to me.
It depends on the country, even inside the EU. In France you must register by yourself every time you move (even inside of the same electoral district, since the electoral register contains your address). There are regularly campaigns before big elections to get people to check that they're registered, and to get young people (who reached 18 yo not long ago) to register, especially since the list is frozen at the 31st December for all elections of the next year so you have to do it in advance (in theory this allows a few months so that anyone who wants to can check the lists, but in practice I'm not sure it's really anything more than an hindrance...).
In the UK IIRC the local council regularly (every year or so?) sends a form to each house, asking to list the persons voting there (and their nationality so they know for which elections they can vote), so while it's not the individual who initiate the registration process, it's still something you have to do.
Also, in France the electoral register is public and can be consulted in the city halls, and you can get an electronic copy but not for commercial purposes. But that's just the register. The information about who voted only ever exists in physical form, since it's provided by your signature next to your name in the copy of the register that is used at the polling station. You can look at it, but you won't be able to get an electronic copy, so the kind of spamming discussed here would be technically almost impossible to do.
France is very attached to a fully-physical voting process, with quite a lot of checks and rituals (I've always said that elections in France are a kind of religious ceremony!), and that's a good thing IMO as it participate to building everyone's trust towards the results. There are a few attempts to use electronic voting but I very much hope they will never take hold.
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@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Well, if you'd keep track of the number of voters with their primary residence in each district
This is all that registering to vote means.
If those numbers seem off, there's still a paper trail - it just doesn't have to be public information.
If it's not public information, you can't verify it yourself. Under our system, you can check for yourself whether your vote was tabulated. If you don't trust the government to tabulate your vote after you give it to them, why would you trust the government audit of the results?
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@remi Here they piggy-back of the municipal resident administration, which you have to get updated if you move to a different municipality. We had a stint with electronic voting in the late nineties, but after concerns about the security and accountability of those systems (particularly surrounding EM emanations possibly revealing which candidate was voted for) everything got shifted back to paper.
There is the occasional suggestion to change the way the paper ballots are set up - they can currently easily get over a square meter in size, which complicates counting.
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@remi said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Having to register to vote seems odd to me.
It depends on the country, even inside the EU. In France you must register by yourself every time you move (even inside of the same electoral district, since the electoral register contains your address). There are regularly campaigns before big elections to get people to check that they're registered, and to get young people (who reached 18 yo not long ago) to register, especially since the list is frozen at the 31st December for all elections of the next year so you have to do it in advance (in theory this allows a few months so that anyone who wants to can check the lists, but in practice I'm not sure it's really anything more than an hindrance...).
In the UK IIRC the local council regularly (every year or so?) sends a form to each house, asking to list the persons voting there (and their nationality so they know for which elections they can vote), so while it's not the individual who initiate the registration process, it's still something you have to do.
Also, in France the electoral register is public and can be consulted in the city halls, and you can get an electronic copy but not for commercial purposes. But that's just the register. The information about who voted only ever exists in physical form, since it's provided by your signature next to your name in the copy of the register that is used at the polling station. You can look at it, but you won't be able to get an electronic copy, so the kind of spamming discussed here would be technically almost impossible to do.
France is very attached to a fully-physical voting process, with quite a lot of checks and rituals (I've always said that elections in France are a kind of religious ceremony!), and that's a good thing IMO as it participate to building everyone's trust towards the results. There are a few attempts to use electronic voting but I very much hope they will never take hold.
I voted in France for the first time earlier this year, and the process did seem a bit ... elaborate. Then again, UK elections are still significantly physical as well, or were before 2009, anyway.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!According to some news reports I've seen, the going rate appears to be $200, at least in Minneapolis.
@Carnage said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Isn't it illegal to pay/accept payment for votes?
Yes. Some people do illegal things; they're called criminals.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
can we count on you voting Biden?!?!" calls.
Fuck you, pay me!According to some news reports I've seen, the going rate appears to be $200, at least in Minneapolis.
@Carnage said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Isn't it illegal to pay/accept payment for votes?
Yes. Some people do illegal things; they're called criminals.
The mind! She boggles!
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@acrow said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
But they can't add e.g. dead voters
Chicago is laughing at your naivete.
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@PleegWat different countries do things slightly differently... here you don't have to update any information when moving -- you should update your voter's registration but that's not mandatory, and other stuff with your local authority goes through other channels when you move (for example local tax register (and payment, actually) is handled by the national tax authority and they have other ways (basically any public register they can get their hands on!) to know where you live).
There is the occasional suggestion to change the way the paper ballots are set up - they can currently easily get over a square meter in size, which complicates counting.
That's another thing that varies by countries... In France you get one ballot per candidate, and you put the one you want in the enveloppe.
Putting more than 1 is a blank vote (or maybe null, I don't remember all the subtleties and it doesn't matter anyway since both are treated almost exactly identically except for extreme edge cases that never happen), and so is writing anything on the ballot you pick. Putting several times the same ballot is usually counted as a valid (single, of course) vote (with its own associated ritual when opening it during the counting...).
How you get those ballot papers is in itself part of the Cult of Elections... The normal way is that there is a table in the polling station where all ballots are stacked and you pick at least two (so people can't tell for who you'll vote), although the custom is to take one of each, more or less (i.e. unless there are really too many). It doesn't matter if you pick more than one of the same ballot. There is a paper bin in the voting booth where you can throw the ballots you don't use, or you take them away with you.
But a few days before the election, you normally get a big fat enveloppe with one electoral tract per candidate (if they had enough money to print them... so small candidates usually don't), and sometimes the candidates also put one ballot in there. So you can take those with you in the polling station and use them. But I think you still need to take at least 2 ballots from the polling station, just to pretend.
And some really minor candidates don't even have enough money to print ballots to deliver to polling stations (yes, apparently that's up to the candidate to print them, although there are obviously rules for that since they all look very similar!), so if you want to vote for those you need to print it out yourself before. Which makes me wonder what exactly are the rules for such a ballot to be valid (does it have to be printed at the correct size etc.?).
I think that you can also write in the name of the candidate you want on a random piece of paper and put it in your enveloppe, all that matters is that there is no ambiguity as to which candidate you're voting for. I know that it's definitely legal for local elections in small communes (where you can even vote for someone who isn't a declared candidate!), I don't know if that works for other elections.
So an election with 42 candidates will be a problem for the polling station as they have to lay out 42 stacks of paper (assuming all candidates are providing ballots), but when voting you only have to put one in your enveloppe. Although with elections by lists (e.g. EU elections), the ballot must contain the name of everyone on the list and is therefore an A4 paper sheet (I've never seen larger), which you have to fold to fit into the standard voting enveloppes (A7 or so, I'd guess?)!
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
I voted in France for the first time earlier this year, and the process did seem a bit ... elaborate.
Did you go to the counting as well? It's a public event, done by members of the public (you can watch, but also participate if you wish), and it's making the voting process look crude in comparison...
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@remi said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
How you get those ballot papers is in itself part of the Cult of Elections... The normal way is that there is a table in the polling station where all ballots are stacked and you pick at least two (so people can't tell for who you'll vote), although the custom is to take one of each, more or less (i.e. unless there are really too many). It doesn't matter if you pick more than one of the same ballot. There is a paper bin in the voting booth where you can throw the ballots you don't use, or you take them away with you.
That really wouldn't work here - for the 150-seat parliament, there are probably somewhere between 300 and 500 candidates, though most votes go to the person at the top of the list for each party.
Of course, the differences just pile up. For example, where many countries vote on Sunday, in NL as long as I remember we've voted on Wednesday, which is a normal working day. Even for EU elections, there is a range of days allowed with NL voting on the Wednesday before the Sunday most of Europe votes on.
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@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
That really wouldn't work here - for the 150-seat parliament, there are probably somewhere between 300 and 500 candidates, though most votes go to the person at the top of the list for each party.
Do you then vote for an individual candidate, or for a list? If the latter, then what matters is how many lists, not how many individual candidates overall? If the former, then at some point you need a list of all those 300-500 names on a piece of paper and that would make it... oh wait, I think someone up-thread said... "easily over a square meter in size"
I guess one reason you might get that many candidates is that there is no districts for candidates? I.e. everyone in the whole country picks on the same list of candidates rather than having a different list per district? I think that only works for smaller countries (and parliaments), larger ones always use either local districts or nationwide lists (or a mix of both...), which either way restrict the number of candidates every elector has to pick from.
Of course, the differences just pile up.
There's a joke here about the number of papers involved also piling up...
But yes, there are countless tiny differences, even though on average the resulting process works equally (and reasonably) well in all cases.
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@remi Yup, the whole country picks from the same list, though I think the order of the parties is different in each district (based on how many votes they got in that district the last time round). The same approach is used for all elections (municipal, provincial, national, european, and water control boards); I believe it's mainly the national and european ones having the problem.
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@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@remi Yup, the whole country picks from the same list, though I think the order of the parties is different in each district (based on how many votes they got in that district the last time round). The same approach is used for all elections (municipal, provincial, national, european, and water control boards); I believe it's mainly the national and european ones having the problem.
Are you able to vote across parties for different positions? Ideally this person vs that person. Or at least be able to like one party at the national level but like a different party for city stuff.
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@mikehurley said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@PleegWat said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@remi Yup, the whole country picks from the same list, though I think the order of the parties is different in each district (based on how many votes they got in that district the last time round). The same approach is used for all elections (municipal, provincial, national, european, and water control boards); I believe it's mainly the national and european ones having the problem.
Are you able to vote across parties for different positions? Ideally this person vs that person. Or at least be able to like one party at the national level but like a different party for city stuff.
Each level is a different election on (mostly) a different date. But within that you only have a vote for the parliamentary body; the executive positions are filled based on coalition negotiations or appointed by the crown. There crown should be read as the cabinet, which is formed based on coalition negotiations in the national (second chamber) elections; I don't think the king as significant direct power here. The first chamber of the national government is elected by the provincial governments after those have been established via provincial elections.
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@dfdub said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Whether someone's vote was tabulated is a matter of public record. It needs to be
I get that it needs to be recorded, but why as a public record instead of an internal government database that is only published in anonymized form?
So it can be reviewed by any interested party, otherwise quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.
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@Zerosquare said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.Also: the voting itself is supposed to be done in the open, which is what election monitors are for.
Most places in the US require them to be "nonpartisan," but that's bullshit because it doesn't work. Election monitors should be EXPLICITLY partisan. Each campaign should send a monitor to each polling place so that if I'm there to vote for Trump and an election official tries to interfere with me, I'll go to the guy ON TRUMP'S PAYROLL to get it fixed. And if an election official messes with the Biden voter, he can go to the guy ON BIDEN'S PAYROLL sitting on the other side of the room.
Guess which states want to shut down election monitoring.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Zerosquare said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.Also: the voting itself is supposed to be done in the open, which is what election monitors are for.
Most places in the US require them to be "nonpartisan," but that's bullshit because it doesn't work. Election monitors should be EXPLICITLY partisan. Each campaign should send a monitor to each polling place so that if I'm there to vote for Trump and an election official tries to interfere with me, I'll go to the guy ON TRUMP'S PAYROLL to get it fixed. And if an election official messes with the Biden voter, he can go to the guy ON BIDEN'S PAYROLL sitting on the other side of the room.
Guess which states want to shut down election monitoring.
How about we don't give more power to political campaigns and don't entrench the two party system more into our processes.
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@mikehurley said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Zerosquare said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.Also: the voting itself is supposed to be done in the open, which is what election monitors are for.
Most places in the US require them to be "nonpartisan," but that's bullshit because it doesn't work. Election monitors should be EXPLICITLY partisan. Each campaign should send a monitor to each polling place so that if I'm there to vote for Trump and an election official tries to interfere with me, I'll go to the guy ON TRUMP'S PAYROLL to get it fixed. And if an election official messes with the Biden voter, he can go to the guy ON BIDEN'S PAYROLL sitting on the other side of the room.
Guess which states want to shut down election monitoring.
How about we don't give more power to political campaigns and don't entrench the two party system more into our processes.
If Jill Stein or whoever wants to send election monitors who work for her, that should be ok too. I don't think I said anything different.
A big problem in our society is the number of institutions that claim to be politically neutral but are in fact serving their own purposes.
I don't know that I can trust a "nonpartisan" election monitor to help me protect my right to cast a vote for Trump. But if Trump sends a guy in a MAGA hat, I trust that guy. I can see why a Biden voter wouldn't trust MAGA Hat Guy, so Biden should send a guy in a Harris for President hat.
And then MAGA Hat Guy and Harris Hat Guy can each make sure the other aren't cheating. Checks and balances, right?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@mikehurley said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Zerosquare said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.Also: the voting itself is supposed to be done in the open, which is what election monitors are for.
Most places in the US require them to be "nonpartisan," but that's bullshit because it doesn't work. Election monitors should be EXPLICITLY partisan. Each campaign should send a monitor to each polling place so that if I'm there to vote for Trump and an election official tries to interfere with me, I'll go to the guy ON TRUMP'S PAYROLL to get it fixed. And if an election official messes with the Biden voter, he can go to the guy ON BIDEN'S PAYROLL sitting on the other side of the room.
Guess which states want to shut down election monitoring.
How about we don't give more power to political campaigns and don't entrench the two party system more into our processes.
If Jill Stein or whoever wants to send election monitors who work for her, that should be ok too. I don't think I said anything different.
A big problem in our society is the number of institutions that claim to be politically neutral but are in fact serving their own purposes.
I don't know that I can trust a "nonpartisan" election monitor to help me protect my right to cast a vote for Trump. But if Trump sends a guy in a MAGA hat, I trust that guy. I can see why a Biden voter wouldn't trust MAGA Hat Guy, so Biden should send a guy in a Harris for President hat.
And then MAGA Hat Guy and Harris Hat Guy can each make sure the other aren't cheating. Checks and balances, right?
I also read what you wrote that it would include the campaign reps having powers. If it's just somebody who can squawk on your behalf and document perceived problems, with no authority, I could maybe get behind that.
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@mikehurley said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@mikehurley said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@Zerosquare said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Exactly. And that's the reason for the system used in France @remi described above. It may seem like a
wooden-table solution, but it's actually a good thing: when anybody can watch votes being counted and even volunteer to count them, it is much more difficult to get away with falsifying numbers.Also: the voting itself is supposed to be done in the open, which is what election monitors are for.
Most places in the US require them to be "nonpartisan," but that's bullshit because it doesn't work. Election monitors should be EXPLICITLY partisan. Each campaign should send a monitor to each polling place so that if I'm there to vote for Trump and an election official tries to interfere with me, I'll go to the guy ON TRUMP'S PAYROLL to get it fixed. And if an election official messes with the Biden voter, he can go to the guy ON BIDEN'S PAYROLL sitting on the other side of the room.
Guess which states want to shut down election monitoring.
How about we don't give more power to political campaigns and don't entrench the two party system more into our processes.
If Jill Stein or whoever wants to send election monitors who work for her, that should be ok too. I don't think I said anything different.
A big problem in our society is the number of institutions that claim to be politically neutral but are in fact serving their own purposes.
I don't know that I can trust a "nonpartisan" election monitor to help me protect my right to cast a vote for Trump. But if Trump sends a guy in a MAGA hat, I trust that guy. I can see why a Biden voter wouldn't trust MAGA Hat Guy, so Biden should send a guy in a Harris for President hat.
And then MAGA Hat Guy and Harris Hat Guy can each make sure the other aren't cheating. Checks and balances, right?
I also read what you wrote that it would include the campaign reps having powers. If it's just somebody who can squawk on your behalf and document perceived problems, with no authority, I could maybe get behind that.
What kind of powers do you mean?
Right now, "nonpartisan" election monitors are supposed to understand the rules of how to cast votes independently from the people who are conducting the actual election.
If an election official is misinterpreting a rule (or deliberately mis-enforcing it), the election monitor is supposed to know the rules well enough to tell them to knock it off.
Basically, I want that set of responsibilities assigned to people on campaign payrolls, so that if someone is disenfranchising a particular campaign's voters and refuses to stop, they'll have their campaign's legal team on speed dial.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Basically, I want that set of responsibilities assigned to people on campaign payrolls, so that if someone is disenfranchising a particular campaign's voters and refuses to stop, they'll have their campaign's legal team on speed dial.
Or maybe simply make it illegal to do any kind of party specific stuff near the voting booths / stations. Goes for the voters as well, of course.
That way your MAGA guy does not even have the faintest of clues who's voting for his clan and who's not.
Problem solved.
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@Rhywden said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tech reporting out WTFs tech support:
Basically, I want that set of responsibilities assigned to people on campaign payrolls, so that if someone is disenfranchising a particular campaign's voters and refuses to stop, they'll have their campaign's legal team on speed dial.
Or maybe simply make it illegal to do any kind of party specific stuff near the voting booths / stations. Goes for the voters as well, of course.
That way your MAGA guy does not even have the faintest of clues who's voting for his clan and who's not.
Problem solved.
I want someone who I trust standing there to witness violations of that law so that violations can be reported and enforced. I don't trust anyone who's not explicitly working for my candidate to do that properly.
Supporters of the other candidate probably won't trust my candidate's guy. Which just means both candidates need a guy to stand there.
