11 reasons why you can have confidence in the upcoming American elections. What would you add? 1) Paper ballots According to Verified Voting, 98% of Americans vote using a paper ballot. Paper ballots can’t be hacked or otherwise digitally manipulated. And they produce an auditable record. Some voters hand-mark a paper ballot (Arizona). Others use a touchscreen that then prints a ballot receipt (Georgia). Either way, the voter has a paper record, against which he can confirm his selections, and the ballots can be audited after machine tabulation. *Louisiana is the only state that doesn’t broadly use paper ballots. 2) Post-election audits In 2008, fewer than half the states required post-election tabulation audits. Now all 50-states have laws for post-election audits. Post-election hand-count audits dispel allegations of tabulation manipulation or error. If tabulators “flipped votes” from one candidate to another, or if tabulators failed to read votes for one candidate, it’s revealed in a professional post-election audit. 3) Federalized elections People often imagine rigging an election like the scene in Tom Cruise’s first Mission Impossible movie, in which Cruise is suspended from the ceiling while he hacks into a central computer to obtain the “NOC list.” But there is no central computer. There is no national voter registration database. There is no central results server. There is no single tabulation software. There are over 9,000 voting jurisdictions in the United States. They are subject to 50 different sets of state law. Different counties have different election contests, different ballot formatting, different ways of confirming identity, and different tabulation software. These local jurisdictions (often counties) run the election. Not the state. Not the federal government. 4) Bipartisan workers None of the 9,000+ election jurisdictions is run entirely by Republicans or entirely by Democrats. Bipartisanship is built into every jurisdiction and is a productive tension. For example, in Arizona, mail ballots must be removed from their envelopes by two workers of different political affiliation. And if the top official at a voting location is a Republican, the second-in-command can’t be a Republican. The best part is: you can join (and maybe get paid!). Election offices hire lots of temporary workers. 5) Watchful eyes Elections are more transparent than ever. For example, in Maricopa County, you can livestream all critical stages of the ballot tabulation process. In Los Angeles County, there’s an observation deck at the central counting facility. State law usually allows for political party observers at all voting locations and central counting facilities. Nonpartisan observers are often allowed as well. In recent years, both major political parties have aggressively recruited election observers. 6) Disaggregated voting behavior A lot of the disaster scenarios envisioned by Democrats – for example, ICE at the polls – contemplate American elections as they existed 30 years ago when almost everyone voted on Election Day. That’s no longer the case. In November 2024, only 37.4% of Americans voted in person on Election Day. 35.2% voted early in person. 30.3% voted by mail ballot. Of those who vote in person on Election Day, that’s done across approximately 95,000 different voting locations. In many counties, you can vote at any voting location within the county. If there’s a disruption at one voting location, you can drive a bit further to another voting location. 7) We don’t just turn the machines on and hope for the best Yes, we have post-election hand-count audits that reveal errors. But tests happen before the election as well. There are state certifications and federal certifications. Election officials test every piece of equipment before putting it in the field. Does that mean it always works perfectly? No. But there is always a backup plan. 8) The primaries went well Almost nobody cried foul during the primaries. They went very, very smoothly across the United States. The same people are running the general election, and they’re using the same equipment. 9) You have to register to vote 49 states require voters to register before voting (North Dakota doesn’t). This means there’s a record of who can vote. It’s a public record. There’s also a record of who does vote. It’s also a public record. You can compare the registration file with the voted file. If more people vote than are registered, you’ve got a problem. 10) Data nerds Data nerds use these voter files to map voting behavior. If Steve Kornacki of NBC News saw a massive influx of Republican votes in, say, Oakland, California, he’d probably ask some questions, and people would look into it. Ditto if Kornacki saw a big blue density coming out of Provo, Utah. This is one of the reasons why it’s hard to “inject ballots into the system.” 11) Lawyers and lawsuits There are lots and lots of lawyers involved in American elections. Lawyers for the political parties. Lawyers for the candidates. Lawyers for voting rights groups. Lawyers for election integrity groups. This is a good thing (usually). If those lawyers see something that they think is material fraud or error, they can file a lawsuit and have it adjudicated in state or federal courts. ……………………………….. There’s been a lot of noise about why you can’t trust American elections. Confidence among both Democrats and Republicans has gone down significantly since the immediate aftermath of the November 2024 election. But the mechanics of American elections are the same now as they were in 2024. And they were sound then. They’re sound now. Tell me what elements I left off that should be on this list! Happy voting! Stephen

Hi Scott! FWIW: SA: "You wouldn't know if a postal worker discarded mail-in ballots from a Red zip code." SR: Yes you would. People can track their ballots to see if they get back to tabulation center. And if an entire precinct didn't vote, the jurisdiction would investigate. It would look really weird on the partisan density maps (that you see on all the television networks) if all the sudden there was just a big whole. SA: "You wouldn't know if the millions of overseas ballots that require no identification are even cast by Americans." SR: Military and overseas ballots require identification verification, just like other mail ballots. For example, we do signature verification on these return ballot packets. And there aren't "millions of overseas ballots" even across all 50 states. There were approximately 890,000 military and overseas votes in the 2020 general election. Across the WHOLE COUNTRY. SA: "You wouldn't know if a state actor and an insider accomplice hacked voting systems." SR: I'm not sure what you mean by "voting system," but if you mean ballot tabulation systems, then almost all states do post-election tests of tabulation equipment. This often includes a post-election hand count audit performed by the political parties to make sure that tabulators accurately read the ballots. It also ignores that tabulation systems are under lock and key and 24/7 video surveillance and usually have other physical security impediments. Additionally, the software is typically state and federally certified and isn't as manipulable as simply rewriting a line of open access C++ code. SA: "You wouldn't know if someone printed fake ballots and inserted them into the process." SR: If a voter votes in person, he is given one ballot that is specially designed to be compatible with the tabulator. The voter marks his ballot and then feeds the ballot into the tabulator himself. If a voter votes by mail ballot, the ballot must come back in a return envelope that is linked to a particular voter through a barcode. Election offices don't accept loose ballots dropped off at the doorstep. That barcode ensures that each voter only votes once. Once the return mail envelope is verified, bipartisan teams remove the ballot from the envelope, and they keep a log of the number of batches in ballots. When it goes to tabulation, the number of ballots read by the tabulator needs to match the number of ballots in the batch according to the log. This process is done by bipartisan workers and overseen by partisan observers. SA: "You wouldn't know the extent of ballot harvesting in states where it is illegal." SR: I agree that small scale ballot harvesting is exceptionally hard to police. For example, if your neighbors fill out their ballots, put them in their return envelopes, sign their return envelopes, then give them to you, and then you drop them off at the USPS two weeks before the election, then that is ballot harvesting according to many state laws, and it is very hard to police. That being said, if you started knocking on every door in your neighborhood, even the doors of the neighbors you don't know, and saying "hey, give me your ballot," then I find it hard to believe that none of these neighbors would call the police or an election office. If you tried to steal a whole bunch of ballot packets out of the mail, you'd also have to come up with decent imitations of the voter's signature, and I find it hard to believe that a whole bunch of voters would say nothing about their ballots not arriving in the mail. As soon as the intended voter says anything, the original ballot packet would be cancelled, and a new one would be sent to a voter. If this happened to an entire neighborhood, it would be investigated. Have a nice day.