Good. The value of being an American is in a death spiral.

The digital part is to make it so that voting is fast and convenient. People are busy critters, so we want them to vote, preferably by quickly filling out a form on their smartphone and instantly sending in their vote.

As they do so, they can order a voting station to print out the physical ballot, which can be picked up or sent by mail to the voter. That ballot exists to verify that the digital voting is intact, if people start feeling like something is up. If people have good vibes about the voting, they won’t show their ballot on social media. However, if someone like Elon is fucking with things, people can assert that he is a cheesehead, and have the receipts to prove it.

It ain’t perfect. But it is important to try to at do “mostly good”, rather than being fundamentally sucky. As it is, the logistics for getting people to the booth, weird rules, and concerns like ICE intimidating people are issues.

Also, America isn’t Estonia - it is a much larger nation, so there are more resources all around to tackle the problem. Heck, Estonia probably wouldn’t mind becoming support staff and selling a license to make a fork of their system. FDR’s administration invented social security, did the Manhatten Project, and many major social works. Government, when it is willing to, can pull off major feats. So the same philosophy can apply to voting systems.

A well designed voting system can last centuries, if we are willing as a society to put in the effort.

The point of laminated receipts, is to allow a voter to give physical proof if something is wrong with the digital system. If there are enough people who reveal their votes, they can use it to force an investigation. By having every physical ballot laminated by default, people can just toss it into a storage box and not worry about it falling apart if something comes up some years later.

You show your physical ballot if you believe that there is foul play, and need to prove it. Otherwise, your vote remains anonymous.

Part of an overhauled America, would likely entail a redoing of all kinds of things. Including a standardization of criminal codes - getting rid of legacy criminal qualifications in every state, and starting fresh from a clean sheet design. Over time I expect that sort of thing to eventually devolve with the introduction of new codes, but we can enshrine things.

For example, requiring attorneys to switch between defense and offensive roles, allowing both sides to pick their representatives, make it so that all legal representation is free, standardize records of lawyers for people to review, ensure juries are split in half, each receiving an explanation of the defense or offense at the same time, ect.

To sum up: make it harder to game the legal system, and give the prosecution and defense equal standing. Right now, prosecutors get too many advantages.

Probably a topic best for the Legal Eagle team to roundtable and do some game theory on.

In theory, pardons can be good for national security stuff. But yeah, outright elimination is definitely an option worth considering. There is a lot of baggage in the Constitution that wasn’t…good. We have much more hindsight to work with than the Founding Fathers.

It is my assumption that an America that has been overhauled, would have UBI. Thus free smartphones, because they make it easier for people to do stuff. Anyhow…

1: Open-source means anyone can look at the code, be it on their machine or at the repository. With things like hashing, it can be verified at each step of the voting process that the vote remains intact by auditors. The voting software should be device agnostic, and be something used in all elections and voting. By making the software itself uniform each year, it is easier to notice when something is off. This is very different from Diebold and other physical devices, because those are black boxes.

2: The receipts are not about anonymity. They are laminated so that people can keep them in storage, and bring them to a poll verification booth if the call goes out. The digital vote is anonymous when cast, the physical ballot reserved for when volunteers are willing to reveal their vote in public. While obviously not fool proof, it is an extra step against corruption if needed.

3: Obviously, there would have to be laws against corruption to go with a redefined nation. Also, a UBI-based society would have less corruption, because money is associated with luxury, rather than necessity. The punishment for being bribed to vote for an interest, could be to have UBI income penalized. UBI supplies, such as beds, food, housing, internet, ect, aren’t taken away - just the money for buying fancy stuff that UBI doesn’t provide. People who are greedy, would have to think about whether they want to lose their guaranteed income for a potential bribe.

4: When it comes to calling for a recount, it could be something like 20% of previous participants of a voted measure calling for it, or 30% of eligible voters, whichever milestone is reached first. Presumably, frivolous calls for a recount would automatically fail if they haven’t garnered support. Presumably, the open-source voting software would be used for collecting the voting metrics.

Buck and Darlene don’t have financial incentives to attack Iran. Our richest and ‘wise’ leaders who had the resources and time to better the world, failed to do so. The argument you present is looking pretty frail, in light of the last decade. Also, in previous centuries, it wasn’t possible for direct voting to be effective in the US: The nation is huge in size. It wouldn’t have been easy to collect votes quickly. With a (free) smartphone in hand, anyone can instantly check out a voting measure and cast their opinion on it.

Secondly, I mentioned that there should be laminated receipts from the voting machines. Every voter may ask for it after casting their vote. Their cellphones can also have a QR code, so they they can go into the local print shop to immediately have their voting record printed out. Plus, open-source voting. That means instead of Diebold making the software, the federal government does, which has to allow inspectors from any state to make unannounced audits of the software chain.

Thirdly, I already mentioned who the voters are: the ones who cast an vote. Requiring absolutely 51% of EVERYONE is unrealistic. Instead, the voting pool should adjust according to how many people cast a vote. So if 5,000 people cast votes, 2,501 have to say ‘Nay’ to prevent a pardon. We can require pardons and other voting things to have 60 day deadline. The first 30 days are an announcement and commentary period, the later 30 days are for the actual voting. This helps prevent secret ‘riders’ and whatnot being free of scrutiny or getting a surprise vote.

I expect this to go badly for America. As a citizen, I prefer failure over success.

Should America be reformed, there should be a rule about pardons: A governor initiates the pardon, then 51% of all participating voters has to reject the pardon to prevent it. Further, the pardon’s effect is restricted to their state. A presidential pardon is national, but again requires 51% of participating voters to deny it.

This form of cancelling vote allows decision makers to have reasonable autonomy, but if voters vote against it, the pardon is easily denied by the public. The voter pool is whoever sends in a vote of yay or nay. So if there are people dedicated to preventing a leader from making bad pardons, they can get out the word and swell the pool of rejection votes.

IMO, we should have open-sourced digital and standardized direct voting on all matters, with physical laminated printouts for verification against the digital votes. Everyone attached to a city can vote there, those who live in a state can vote on state matters, and occupants of the nation can do the same on that level. No gender or qualifications, beyond having a residence within the nation, and having citizenship - regardless of how it was obtained.

I nominate this bastard as a potential resident of Luigi’s mansion.

Someone should present him with a backpack, painted red and burnt, with a student ID. Really, that is something that should be gifted to everyone who supports this bullshit.

“Mr. President, I present you a peace trophy.”

I suspect an offense against the USA would be easy to pull off. The low standards of ICE and the nature of their operation would allow just about any organized actor to have a free hand in the US, if they chose to do so.

At this rate, some rando will become the Ghengis Khan of America, simply because all possible opposition is so fucking stupid.

Wouldn’t surprise me if the Trump Regime deploys bioweapons, and everybody else scrambling to develop counteragents.

Use a VPN and be Vietnamese. They are rolling out a law against unskippable ads, IIRC.

Here’s hoping that Iran’s reach is long enough to put a Shahed on her forehead.

I hope Mamdani and friends oppose this piece of shit. It exists to erase sexuality that doesn’t belong to the straight white dude, alongside filling the pockets of the wealthy by watching our every move.

At this rate, we will have duels to the death between the Blues and Reds.