America Counts's Philosophy
Can We Trust US Elections?
In 1948 Lyndon Johnson ran for the US Senate in Texas; he said that if he lost it would be his last race. When the results were finalized he was 88 votes behind his opponent. Then 200 very unusual votes mysteriously appeared, putting him in the lead. Hardball political and legal maneuvers ensued, going all the way to the US Supreme Court, where Justice Harlan Black, citing “states’ rights”, nixed further challenges. LBJ was declared the winner, launching his trajectory to Senate Majority Leader and President, where he engineered the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the war in Viet Nam.
What is the lesson here? What can we learn?
That accurate vote counting and vote reporting are essential to the health of our country, because elections matter, and not just to local pols but sometimes to people the world around. That allowing fraud can lead even to wars as well as myriad other social ills and failures. That the cycles of cynicism and withdrawal that fraud and ineffective governance cause results in less accountability by leaders and even worse policies.
But how much of a problem is error and fraud in today’s elections in the US?
There is considerable statistical and circumstantial evidence that significant errors are endemic in American elections. Errors are most egregious nationally in the swing states that determine the outcome of presidential elections, but many races down-ballot are just as significant because they affect us where we live. And the statistical and circumstantial evidence for error is equally strong down ballot.
Does evidence of fraud mean that all election administrators are corrupt?
Not at all—most of the approximately 10,000 county and municipal election administrations in the U.S. are staffed by upstanding people doing the best they can with what they’ve got. But most election administrators and their staffs, especially in smaller jurisdictions and in counties run by party machines or “strong men” are undertrained, underfunded, under-resourced, and forced to use methods, hardware and software that are easily penetrated and hijacked. Unscrupulous actors thus can flip close elections, irrespective of whether the Registrar of Voters is complicit.
How can this be occurring? The short answer is that our elections are insecure, opaque, and lacking any means of holding election officials and their processes accountable. As a consequence, if bad actors have means, motive, and opportunity, they can operate in the shadows and flip elections with utter impunity.
Do we have to simply trust official results when we know the potential for error and the incentive for fraud is high?
No.
If we required solid independent audits the picture would be different—serious innocent errors would be caught and corrected, and bad actors wouldn’t be able to get away with anything. But about half of US States have no audit requirements at all and the other half only weak audit requirements.
Does this mean that all elections are suspect? That the Big Steal allegation has merit? Or, the opposite allegation, that there is no fraud in American elections?
Not at all. Both allegations – fraud everywhere and fraud nowhere—are likely wrong. Even though it is impossible at present to determine with certainty whether any particular election was accurately counted and reported, it is nevertheless probable that most elections in the US are counted accurately enough such that any errors do not change outcomes.
Here’s why.
There are tens of thousands of elections in the US every two years. Most are uncontroversial, and most involve incumbents occupying safe seats who face only minor challengers. In such races the outcomes are seldom in doubt. Because it takes a serious investment in time, energy, money, and political capital (and some legal risk) to engineer, it is not rational to attempt to flip a race against a strong incumbent. We may be assured, therefore, that such races, even when errors occur, are usually decided correctly.
This leaves close races, races where the local party machine fears losing the seat. In races where the polls show that the race could go either way, only a few votes would need to change hands to assure the “right” outcome — and a “loss” by the wrong person would not raise suspicions (thus mitigating legal risk). The investment by the bad actors, therefore, would be small, and the return on their investment strongly positive.
How positive? Well, consider the present balance of power in the US Congress, where one seat in the Senate and five in the House would decide who exercises power over trillions of dollars in taxes, regulations, government contracts, and more. In such a situation the spoils enjoyed would dwarf the investment required to flip the legislative chamber. Down ballot a similar calculus would insure the continuing profits of the local powers that be.
What Is To Be Done?
Today’s social, economic and environmental issues require genuine cooperation both within government and among the public. Whatever issue you most care about, anything that damages our ability to collaborate effectively reduces our collective ability to resolve that issue and all the others.
Yet too often the people we elect consider it their job not to resolve problems but to stop the majority from exercising its will.
How can this problem—indeed, this crisis—be fixed?
The way to stop error and fraud in counting and reporting is to conduct independent election audits. In the near term we should do this in every close election, but in the longer term they should occur in every election, up and down the ballot. Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission imposes independent audits on public companies, to ensure that their accounting and reporting is transparent and accurate, we must impose independent audits on the counting and reporting of votes to ensure transparency and accuracy. If the public interest demands trustworthy accounting to preserve faith in the markets, the public interest certainly demands equally trustworthy accounting to preserve faith in government.
Unfortunately, it is not in the interest of politicians to proactively clean up a system that serves their interests, so we the people have to do it ourselves.
This is where the tools and processes of America Counts come in.
The parent of America Counts, Democracy Counts, Inc., has been creating technology for independent, people-powered audits since 2016. The idea is that local people (of any political persuasion) can use these tools to track official data as it moves through the election process and compare that data with officially reported results. If there are no discrepancies, great! The election deserves qualified trust. (At this stage of development our tools do not cross-check the totality of the process, so there could be errors in unaudited blocs of votes. Until all parts of the process are monitored there is no guarantee that errors are not occurring. But even at this stage of development our audit processes are more comprehensive than those of all but a few states.)
What if discrepancies are found? If the citizen auditors have done their jobs well the data they collected will be strong enough to confront election officials with. If officials refuse to either adequately explain or voluntarily correct the discrepancies, then lawsuits can be brought to force them to make corrections before suspect elections are certified.
The benefits of independent audits go beyond certifying the correct winners, however.
Documenting serious errors will disrupt local political machines. Candidates who had declared victory might be declared losers. Law enforcement might become involved to investigate whether fraud was involved. Those implicated in fraud could find their power weakened or destroyed.
In the political vacuum that results reformers would be able to push their proposed solutions forward. Institutionalized reforms assuring election trustworthiness could be established. Those elected afterwards will owe their elections not to party bosses or to hidden hackers but to the people. And the party turned out of office, in order to come back, will have to win because their ideas and their policies are popular, not because they control the election counting.
Reading the handwriting on the wall, local political machines are likely to push back against people-powered audits and attempt to discredit them. They may attack the reputations of the citizen auditors, to attempt to intimidate them.
Social change is often expensive to those promoting it. Auditors will have to be prepared to pay a price. But the benefits of accurate and trustworthy elections will be worth it, and are possible if enough people work together to achieve a critical mass.
Americans have achieved such things before. We can do it again. Working together we can save the republic on which we stand.
