Thread by @RealSteveCox

Regarding parties/politicians, here’s a universal truth:
The only people who want free & fair elections are those who benefit from free & fair elections.

Nobody should be asked to (or shamed into) trusting any voting system. Properly designed electoral systems are trustless.

1/

Trust isn’t required of properly designed electoral systems. If a system *can* be cheated, it *will* be cheated.

Trustless systems are designed to be transparent, inclusive, and neutral.

Any time a system is made more opaque, more exclusive, or more biased, it’s shenanigans.
2/

Tactics for exclusivity:
Purging voter rolls
Voter ID laws (at least where those IDs cost money)
Closed primaries
Caucuses
Banning felons/prisoners from voting
Overloading polling places by having too few of them
Etc.

3/

Main tactic for adding bias:
Gerrymandering to isolate one “side” or the other (attached).
In California, for example, we’re about 60/40 Liberal/Conservative, but our assembly, senate & congressional seats are about 80/20. Check out California’s 33rd District (attached also).
4/

Tactics to reduce transparency:
Voting machines/apps/computers
Private counting of ballots
Underfunding poll-worker training and compensation
Easily rigged games of chance (coin flips)

Sanders is 0-for-10 in Iowa coin flips from 2016-2020...
5/

Then there’s getting rid of exit polls, which goes against transparency *and* introduces bias.

These are all methods for rigging elections and reducing our votes’ power and effectiveness to change the course of our own government.

6/

Here are the tried-and-true solutions:

100% paper ballots
Public counting of those ballots
Open primaries
Ending the partisan monopoly on ballot access
Exclusive public funding of all elections
Districts drawn to standard shapes/straight lines
Mandatory, public exit polls

7/

Commonly proposed smoke-and-mirror “electoral reforms” designed to create the *illusion* of free & fair elections:
Mandatory/automatic voter registration
Election-day holidays
Automatic vote-by-mail (which allows a tactic called “vote harvesting”)

Don’t fall for it.
8/

Always remember: The oligarchy that actually owns and runs our government spends billions every year to make sure our government works for *them*, not us. If they *can* straight-up rig our elections, you’d better believe they *will* (and *do*).

9/

Oh, and one other smoke-and-mirrors electoral “reform”:
Term limits.
This was first proposed by the Heritage Foundation and is designed to *reduce* the power of our vote.

heritage.org/political-proc…

10/

Be skeptical at all times. You’ll notice that your well-founded skepticism of our electoral system is met with indignation by mainstream media and those in power.

“How *dare* you imply things aren’t free and fair here in this bastion of democracy!”

Don’t fall for it.

11/

They’re essentially demanding that you trust the powerful. That’s *never* smart.

Your skepticism isn’t the problem. The fact that skepticism is *possible* is the problem, because that means the system isn’t transparent, inclusive, & unbiased.

Demand trustless systems.

12/12