Golda has an old-school way to double check the accuracy of votes: ask people in person. In a country with over 100 million voters, is that even possible? And more importantly, is that cool?
“We have this rational way to verify and check if the machines are committing any kind of fraud or if there's any other kind of fraud being committed. And I just want to say, I think we should be ready to do that.”
Listen to Golda’s submission featured in Episode 74 of How Cool Is This? and read a transcript of the full episode below:
Golda: Hi, I'm Golda Velez. You can look at election security in a very non-partisan way because everyone is concerned that the election be free and fair and that all the votes be recorded correctly. This is not Hocus Pocus. It's not magic. It's not rocket science. It's actually really easy to detect if votes are flipped or if extra votes are added.
The totals are there by precinct, and precincts on the average are about a thousand, a little bit more than a thousand people. And you have a record that like, whatever, 500 Democrats voted, 500 Republicans voted. There were this many votes for the Democrat. There were this many votes for the Republican.
If you get a situation where 500 Democrats voted, but there were only 300 votes for the Democrat, you can be a little suspicious. And what you can do is you can go knock on their doors, because you have their addresses and you can literally go knock on the doors. And this has been done. Clint Curtis did this in Florida, 2006.
You just go with, he said, it took about 40 people, 10 days. You do have to have a certain number of people. So you have to have a certain number of volunteers to do it. You pick a precinct where the numbers are really off and you just go knock on the doors. You ask people, how did you vote? He gathered paper affidavits, where people swore how they voted.
You don't have to go on the street with an AK47 threatening people. You can just check, you know, did this actually happen? So we have this rational way to verify and check if the machines are committing any kind of fraud or if there's any other kind of fraud being committed. And I just want to say, I think we should be ready to do that.
I do think we should have confidence in our election, but part of confidence is just being willing to do very reasonable things that are rational to check and then going through a process with the courts and with affidavits and with the voters testifying to see if there's any problems. So that's how we kind of want to secure this election.
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Brian: Okay, Nick, how cool are door-to-door affidavits to verify the election?
Nick: It reminds me of like, Dog the Bounty Hunter. I can imagine some sort of voter fraud vigilante going door to door, making sure that we got the right votes. That sounds kind of exciting.
Brian: I might have a more cynical take on it. It's cool that she's willing to do it. It's not cool that she has to, and in a pandemic that's especially concerning.
Nick: I think that she has to go door-to-door to verify the results does kind of suck. You would think that we would have a system by now that would make it so we didn't have to do verification after the fact.
Brian: How does this affect the people who don't want to say who they voted for because they feel like the ‘woke mob’ is out to get them? Now there's actually a mob that's asking them who they voted for.
Nick: I think that would be pretty intimidating. I think that a lot of people would be inclined not to reveal their vote. If someone came up to me and was in my face demanding to know who I voted for, I'm probably not going to tell them.
Brian: But if you don't tell them, then your vote doesn't count. So that's not cool. But at the same time, if the machines can't be verified, I don't know if there are any other options.
Nick: Well, that makes me think, why do we have people congregate in specific locations during a certain period of time to kind of cast their ballots? What if everybody could just stay home and then someone from the government showed up and said, “Hey, what do you think?”
Brian: Or if there were any other way to make it easier, so we don't have to go all the way, especially in a public health crisis, and congregate, that would be cool.
Nick: Brian, would you be one of these people that tried to verify the results of the election door-to-door?
Brian: I think I would, but I would hope that it could be done without my involvement.
Nick: So you would prefer to let other people deal with this situation.
Brian: This “situation” being democracy.
Nick: So you want to reap the benefits of democracy without having to put in the hard work?
Brian: Yeah, not cool.
Nick: No, not cool at all. But, I would do the same thing. If you're a hypocrite, I'm hypocrite. This podcast is hypocritical.
Brian: We never said we were cool. We just said we know what is, and if Golda is willing to do this, that is cool.
I think it's not cool to think about a mob of people ringing the doorbell asking who you voted for, but it's probably a lot more like the census, which is just 50 pieces of mail and three different people coming to your door and phone calls. And you already did it one time, but they're still asking you [levels of] disorganization.
Nick: But it is cool to me to think about people taking democracy into their own hands, deciding that I want to literally pound the pavement and make sure that the election we had truly represents the will of the people. I think it's cool when people look at something and they say, “Hey, I want to help solve that problem.”
Brian: Yep. Overall, that is cool. If you have any ideas, call our hotline ( 848) 863-9917.
Nick: Or reach out to us at howcoolisthis.show
Brian: Thanks for listening.
Golda is the Co-Founder of Civ.Works, an ad-free social network designed around civic engagement. You can follow Golda on Twitter here.
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