Thanks to Glenn and John for recognizing that the real danger of violence and instability in future elections is due to problems in the integrity of how votes get counted, not in how votes are cast. I am a volunteer election official in my county. I know how tight the process is and how next to impossible it would be to import fake ballots, miscount ballots either deliberately or accidentally either by machine or by hand, destroy ballots (without getting caught), and all the other things that the Trump supporters claimed to have observed in 2020. But Republican legislatures in multiple states, including some important swing states, are changing their procedures to allow election administration to be done by partisan boards and giving the legislature more power to override the actual voting results. In 2020, 147 Republican Representatives refused to certify the Electoral College vote, based on no evidence whatsoever. The Democrats should focus on passing legislation that (1) mandates paper ballots everywhere. Amazingly, eight states still use voting machines that produce no permanent record, making recounts impossible. (2) mandates risk-limiting audits and standards for ballot counting reproducibility and recounts, (3) eliminates the power of state legislatures to override voting results and send their own slate of electors, (4) eliminates the ability of US legislators to prevent the certification of state election results without some kind of court-ordered investigation into possible corruption of the vote counting process in the state. A voting integrity act limited to measures like that would probably get a significant amount of Republican buy-in.
Thanks to Glenn and John for recognizing that the real danger of violence and instability in future elections is due to problems in the integrity of how votes get counted, not in how votes are cast. I am a volunteer election official in my county. I know how tight the process is and how next to impossible it would be to import fake ballots, miscount ballots either deliberately or accidentally either by machine or by hand, destroy ballots (without getting caught), and all the other things that the Trump supporters claimed to have observed in 2020. But Republican legislatures in multiple states, including some important swing states, are changing their procedures to allow election administration to be done by partisan boards and giving the legislature more power to override the actual voting results. In 2020, 147 Republican Representatives refused to certify the Electoral College vote, based on no evidence whatsoever. The Democrats should focus on passing legislation that (1) mandates paper ballots everywhere. Amazingly, eight states still use voting machines that produce no permanent record, making recounts impossible. (2) mandates risk-limiting audits and standards for ballot counting reproducibility and recounts, (3) eliminates the power of state legislatures to override voting results and send their own slate of electors, (4) eliminates the ability of US legislators to prevent the certification of state election results without some kind of court-ordered investigation into possible corruption of the vote counting process in the state. A voting integrity act limited to measures like that would probably get a significant amount of Republican buy-in.