Please critique my proposed policy to ensure an honest vote

I agree with most. But instead of absentee or vote by mail. Can be done much more secure by computer. YES there are very secure website, Banks have them everywhere.

Add:
(1) Face recognition software.
(2) Use of a password provided when you register
(3) Out of wallet questions
Your suggestion are:
  1. Costly
  2. Impractically
  3. Would never be implement because 85% State Chief Election Officials say their state elections are secure.

You're proposing a solution for problem that does not exist.
 
Your suggestion are:
  1. Costly

All DMV's already have facial recognition.

Yeah, security is costly. If you want it, you'll pay the price.


  1. Impractically

There is nothing impractical about security.

You either have a system, or you don't.

Our elections, don't.


  1. Would never be implement because 85% State Chief Election Officials say their state elections are secure.

Who fucking cares?

Who cares what a bunch of ignorant fucking morons who've already repeatedly demonstrated their complete incompetence, have to say?

Hey - fucking Katie Hobbs in Arizona FAILED TO TEST THE PRINTERS. She violated state law and her own procedural handbook in failing to do so

These are the fucking idiots whose opinions you want me to respect?

I think not.

You're proposing a solution for problem that does not exist.

That's a leftard lie and a TERRIBLY STUPID THING TO SAY. Even that horrible slag Hitlery saw the problems.

Not just one, problem, but DOZENS. All over the fucking place. Most of them related to the technology. Some of them traceable to human error.

Did you hear? Three states got hacked on Tuesday. Mississippi, Illinois, and I forget who was the third one - AND the DNC, they got hacked too.

NO PART OF THIS IS SECURE.

Don't give me that leftard bullshit about "there ain't a problem". You're not qualified to make that statement. Only a licensed and bonded and EDUCATED security professional is qualified to make that statement.

Right now, there are four basic levels of security compliance that the industry recognizes. They're numbered 1 thru 4. US ELECTIONS ARE A => ZERO <=
 
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All DMV's already have facial recognition.

Yeah, security is costly. If you want it, you'll pay the price.




There is nothing impractical about security.

You either have a system, or you don't.

Our elections, don't.




Who fucking cares?

Who cares what a bunch of ignorant fucking morons who've already repeatedly demonstrated their complete incompetence, have to say?

Hey - fucking Katie Hobbs in Arizona FAILED TO TEST THE PRINTERS. She violated state law and her own procedural handbook in failing to do so

These are the fucking idiots whose opinions you want me to respect?

I think not.
The pictures available to election registrars come from the DMV which requires a voter who needs glasses to drive to wear them in the license photo. The problem is glasses cause multiple problems in facial recognition. First, it the picture is taken with glasses, the voter should remember to wear them to vote. If voter changes to contacts, he needs to get a new picture. Even changing frames can effect the accuracy of recognition. Then there's beards and mustaches and even certain types of makeup and facelifts can have an effect. All these changes that occur in the image reduce the accuracy of face recognition. So that 99.7% accuracy is far less.

And those ignorant fucking morons that are responsible for the election is exactly who legislators turn to in making any significant changes to the election process. In fact, they are ones that will recommend changes to the legislature. Legislators will do nothing to change an election system without the recommendation from Chief Election Officer for the state, typically the Secretary of State. And the Secretary does do shit until he has recommendations from subordinates. Remember elected officials must always have a scapegoat.
 
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The pictures available to election registrars come from the DMV which requires a voter who needs glasses to drive to wear them in the license photo. The problem is glasses cause multiple problems in facial recognition. First, it the picture is taken with glasses, the voter should remember to wear them to vote. If voter changes to contacts, he needs to get a new picture. Even changing frames can effect the accuracy of recognition. Then there's beards and mustaches and even certain types of makeup can have an effect. All these changes that occur in the image reduce the accuracy of face recognition. So that 99.7% accuracy is far less.

And those fucking idiots that are responsible for the election is exactly who legislators turn to in making any significant changes to the election process. In fact, they are the ones that will recommend changes to the legislature.
 
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The pictures available to election registrars come from the DMV which requires a voter who needs glasses to drive to wear them in the license photo. The problem is glasses cause multiple problems in facial recognition. First, it the picture is taken with glasses, the voter should remember to wear them to vote. If voter changes to contacts, he needs to get a new picture. Even changing frames can effect the accuracy of recognition. Then there's beards and mustaches and even certain types of makeup can have an effect. All these changes that occur in the image reduce the accuracy of face recognition. So that 99.7% accuracy is far less.

You're 20 years behind the times.

We can even take masks off now

We're very good.

And those fucking idiots that are responsible for the election is exactly who legislators turn to in making any significant changes to the election process. In fact, they are ones that will recommend changes to the legislature.

Yeah, duh, what's wrong with this picture?

These are not security professional's, are they? No they're not. They're dumbass partisan election workers. Their job should be to execute TO THE LETTER the instructions from the security professional's who are THE ONLY ONES WHO KNOW WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING IN THIS DOMAIN.

Would you let a bunch of partisan hackers make security recommendations for your design? No, you wouldn't, would you? And yet that is EXACTLY what we do when we let the inmates design the asylum.

We have SERIOUS election problems in this country

Very serious indeed.
 
I agree with most. But instead of absentee or vote by mail. Can be done much more secure by computer. YES there are very secure website, Banks have them everywhere.

Add:
(1) Face recognition software.
(2) Use of a password provided when you register
(3) Out of wallet questions
That's all well and good until some unscrupulous regime programs that computer. Paper ballots notarized if mailed in or filled out at a supervised polling station and hand counted counted with trained poll watchers nearby is about as fool proof secure as it gets.
 
That's all well and good until some unscrupulous regime programs that computer. Paper ballots notarized if mailed in or filled out at a supervised polling station and hand counted counted with trained poll watchers nearby is about as fool proof secure as it gets.

See, so, this is where the process experts come in.

Why go after an antiquated process? That we already know in advance doesn't meet modern security standards?

Here, look: controlling a process is expensive. The tighter you have to control it, the more expensive it gets

So, why not go the other way when you can? In this case, an open adversarial process yields the desired results, more quickly, more cheaply, and more efficiently than a streamlined but highly regulated one. The key words are checks and balances.

It can get very simple. When you go to vote - if you're a Republican, you get checked in by the Democrat election workers. Adversarial step #1. If you're a Dem, you get checked in by the Pubs.

Then, you have a same-party person give you your actual ballot, after checking that the opposite party properly did its job at check in. And you have someone from the opposite party watching when you place your ballot into the collection box.

These are deliberately adversarial process, it works, and it's cheap. But it has to be followed to the letter. So you need enforcers from each party watching the workers, and you need an oversupply of trained workers because you want everyone to be yankable at any time for any reason. (But attach a lot of legal paperwork to it, and a stiff penalty for abusing the process).

I can expound on this method in detail, if you wish. You can ask the Six Sigma people in the manufacturing world, or the Scrum type in the software world, how this all works and the wisdom of it.

The best systems are those that are self correcting and require no maintenance. Good luck finding one, but that's what we strive for. :)

As far as the programming - that too should be adversarial. Ask anyone at NASA how that works, they'll tell you about design reviews and functional reviews. Y'know, you have a bunch of engineers sitting in a room and one of em says "all we gotta do is put this switch on the front panel", and then some QA guy says "front panel's already full, where you gonna put it?", and the instant they hear THAT the ergonomic psychologists take over and don't let go till they've figured out the exact best location where a human being can access that switch in an emergency.

So like, if you're a Scrum boss trying to implement this, you don't have to worry about the "why's", that's already been decided in the context of a much larger adversarial process. Similarly, if you're an election worker, you shouldn't have to know about the "why's". In fact you shouldn't even be involved with them. Engineers on Scrum teams who question the requirements 'after the fact" generally don't last long. They're viewed as excuses for slipping the schedule.

Similarly, the QA guy follows the test plan. He doesn't write it, someone else does that. He only figure out how to test every unit so it meets the requirement.

A well designed process is worth an untellable fortune. Once you have some experience with mission critical processes (which is what voting is), you'll understand why the adversarial approach is so important and so beneficial (and in a partisan world, so natural). The last thing in the world we want is some partisan dictator determining our election processes, amirite? Done the adversarial way, there's little danger if that. There'll be a hundred adversarial alarm bells if even the smallest untoward event happens
 
See, so, this is where the process experts come in.

Why go after an antiquated process? That we already know in advance doesn't meet modern security standards?

Here, look: controlling a process is expensive. The tighter you have to control it, the more expensive it gets

So, why not go the other way when you can? In this case, an open adversarial process yields the desired results, more quickly, more cheaply, and more efficiently than a streamlined but highly regulated one. The key words are checks and balances.

It can get very simple. When you go to vote - if you're a Republican, you get checked in by the Democrat election workers. Adversarial step #1. If you're a Dem, you get checked in by the Pubs.

Then, you have a same-party person give you your actual ballot, after checking that the opposite party properly did its job at check in. And you have someone from the opposite party watching when you place your ballot into the collection box.

These are deliberately adversarial process, it works, and it's cheap. But it has to be followed to the letter. So you need enforcers from each party watching the workers, and you need an oversupply of trained workers because you want everyone to be yankable at any time for any reason. (But attach a lot of legal paperwork to it, and a stiff penalty for abusing the process).

I can expound on this method in detail, if you wish. You can ask the Six Sigma people in the manufacturing world, or the Scrum type in the software world, how this all works and the wisdom of it.

The best systems are those that are self correcting and require no maintenance. Good luck finding one, but that's what we strive for. :)

As far as the programming - that too should be adversarial. Ask anyone at NASA how that works, they'll tell you about design reviews and functional reviews. Y'know, you have a bunch of engineers sitting in a room and one of em says "all we gotta do is put this switch on the front panel", and then some QA guy says "front panel's already full, where you gonna put it?", and the instant they hear THAT the ergonomic psychologists take over and don't let go till they've figured out the exact best location where a human being can access that switch in an emergency.

So like, if you're a Scrum boss trying to implement this, you don't have to worry about the "why's", that's already been decided in the context of a much larger adversarial process. Similarly, if you're an election worker, you shouldn't have to know about the "why's". In fact you shouldn't even be involved with them. Engineers on Scrum teams who question the requirements 'after the fact" generally don't last long. They're viewed as excuses for slipping the schedule.

Similarly, the QA guy follows the test plan. He doesn't write it, someone else does that. He only figure out how to test every unit so it meets the requirement.

A well designed process is worth an untellable fortune. Once you have some experience with mission critical processes (which is what voting is), you'll understand why the adversarial approach is so important and so beneficial (and in a partisan world, so natural). The last thing in the world we want is some partisan dictator determining our election processes, amirite? Done the adversarial way, there's little danger if that. There'll be a hundred adversarial alarm bells if even the smallest untoward event happens
I don't know. I like to think I'm open minded and up for new ideas and concepts and I am not at all opposed to progress.

But I simply do not trust the machines at this time. Without 24/7 guards, who knows who has access to them and has ability to program them? I fill out my paper ballot in my state but you then feed the ballot into the machine that tabulates the vote. I have zero way of knowing if that machine counted my ballot or if it did, did it tabulate my vote the way I voted? And poll watchers can't help with that.
 
I don't know. I like to think I'm open minded and up for new ideas and concepts and I am not at all opposed to progress.

But I simply do not trust the machines at this time. Without 24/7 guards, who knows who has access to them and has ability to program them? I fill out my paper ballot in my state but you then feed the ballot into the machine that tabulates the vote. I have zero way of knowing if that machine counted my ballot or if it did, did it tabulate my vote the way I voted? And poll watchers can't help with that.

Oh, okay.

The technology.

Well, the best answer I have for that, is "chain of custody".

The instant you're ballot is recorded, you or anyone should be able to go to a public web site after that, and see the status of your ballot. We don't care "how" you voted, just "that" you voted. It would not be hard to show you "how" you voted too, though, if you'd like to verify that.

I don't see how technology is any less reliable than people. I've been around technology lotsa lotsa years, I can count on one hand the number of times things really screwed up. (I have a funny story about Bill Gates being locked out of his office in Redmond, ask me sometime). :p The worst ones are the natural disasters. For instance I worked at Kaiser for a while, part of my security role was to monitor and ensure system uptime for the mission critical medical records. The mainframes are all in a data center in Corona, and they have gigantic lead-acid backup batteries in case of a power outage. We're talking BIG, 12' tall and 4' on a side, and like two dozen of these things (good for like 1000 amps each or some such thing), so you can tell how much caustic battery acid we're talking about.

In the event of an earthquake, the batteries break, and you have about 4000 gallons of battery acid, y'know, 12 feet tall, and it has to go somewhere. So we built a big funnel in the floor, that feeds into a channel 1.7 miles long, that dumps the acid out in the middle of an empty field. You can imagine how that went, I'm a computer guy supposed to be doing a security job and now they want me to be an architect. :p it only took me a week to convince them I wasn't one though, they looked at my initial sketches and started laughing and went out and hired a real architect. And THIS guy, he knew about building codes and such, so like, I'm telling him, build the channel out of a certain material because it'll withstand the acid even at high temperatures, and he's like no no no, you have to use an EPA approved material, here pick from the list... and for some reason I was thinking the earthquake was gonna happen on a hot day, so I wanted something rated up to 105C... well, "adversarial", right? The job got done and it works and it's operating in the field right now today. It gets tested about twice a year, more often if there are "events"...
 
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Oh, okay.

The technology.

Well, the best answer I have for that, is "chain of custody".

The instant you're ballot is recorded, you or anyone should be able to go to a public web site after that, and see the status of your ballot. We don't care "how" you voted, just "that" you voted. It would not be hard to show you "how" you voted too, though, if you'd like to verify that.

I don't see how technology is any less reliable than people. I've been around technology lotsa lotsa years, I can count on one hand the number of times things really screwed up. (I have a funny story about Bill Gates being locked out of his office in Redmond, ask me sometime). :p The worst ones are the natural disasters. For instance I worked at Kaiser for a while, part of my security role was to monitor and ensure system uptime for the mission critical medical records. The mainframes are all in a data center in Corona, and they have gigantic lead-acid backup batteries in case of a power outage. We're talking BIG, 12' tall and 4' on a side, and like two dozen of these things (good for like 1000 amps each or some such thing), so you can tell how much caustic battery acid we're talking about.

In the event of an earthquake, the batteries break, and you have about 4000 gallons of battery acid, y'know, 12 feet tall, and it has to go somewhere. So we built a big funnel in the floor, that feeds into a channel 1.7 miles long, that dumps the acid out in the middle of an empty field. You can imagine how that went, I'm a computer guy supposed to be doing a security job and now they want me to be an architect. :p it only took me a week to convince them I wasn't one though, they looked at my initial sketches and started laughing and went out and hired a real architect. And THIS guy, he knew about building codes and such, so like, I'm telling him, build the channel out of a certain material because it'll withstand the acid even at high temperatures, and he's like no no no, you have to use an EPA approved material, here pick from the list... and for some reason I was thinking the earthquake was gonna happen on a hot day, so I wanted something rated up to 105C... well, "adversarial", right? The job got done and it works and it's operating in the field right now today. It gets tested about twice a year, more often if there are "events"...
I'm not saying it couldn't work. I'm just saying that there is no way for the voter to know that it's working as it should. I know when I mark that paper ballot, I can see that mark on the paper. And the poll watcher can see that it is counted as I voted. If the electricity goes off then emergency lights can come on or use Coleman lanterns or candles for light. People can still vote. If the wi-fi is down people can still vote. People who don't have computers or easy access to computers can still vote. And voting by computer pretty much eliminates the 'secret' vote. If I can go on line to see how I voted, others who know how to do that can see how I voted too.
 
I'm not saying it couldn't work. I'm just saying that there is no way for the voter to know that it's working as it should. I know when I mark that paper ballot, I can see that mark on the paper. And the poll watcher can see that it is counted as I voted. If the electricity goes off then emergency lights can come on or use Coleman lanterns or candles for light. People can still vote. If the wi-fi is down people can still vote. People who don't have computers or easy access to computers can still vote. And voting by computer pretty much eliminates the 'secret' vote. If I can go on line to see how I voted, others who know how to do that can see how I voted too.
Um... if they run out of paper, people can't vote. Like what just happened.

Technology is no more or less secure than paper. It all depends how you use it.

The exact same methods we've been talking about for computers, like PKI, can also be applied to paper.

It's the "how you use it" part that's important
 
Um... if they run out of paper, people can't vote. Like what just happened.

Technology is no more or less secure than paper. It all depends how you use it.

The exact same methods we've been talking about for computers, like PKI, can also be applied to paper.

It's the "how you use it" part that's important
What is important to me is that I am reasonably certain my vote is counted and counted as I voted. With proper monitoring and chain of command of that paper ballot I am as confident of that as is probably possible. With 'technology' I have no way to know. Only whomever programmed the computer knows for sure.
 
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What is important to me is that I am reasonably certain my vote is counted and counted as I voted. With proper monitoring and chain of command I am as confident of that as is probably possible. With 'technology' I have no way to know. Only whomever programmed the computer knows for sure.
I think you should have that option.

If you really don't trust the technology, you should be able to choose to have someone hand count your ballot.

Even right in front of you, if you wish.

I am of the opinion that good processes are mostly independent of the particular technology being used (or none, if that's the case). In other words, if you want paper, you STILL want security, right? It's still important.

And once you hand off the paper ballot, you lose control over what happens on the other side of the handoff, just like with computers. We probably agree that if there's fraud, it's probably human fraud (machines make mistakes, but they rarely do fraud), and thus I would contend that if they want to get you and you cut off one of their avenues, they'll find another way. That's kinda the nature of these fraudsters, right?

In a way this election fraud business is a lot like chasing hackers. I did that, for a number of years. That's how they operate too, they'll recon your defenses till they find a hole and zoom right in. The most important thing is I have to be honest with myself about how bad the holes are. That's the hardest part about this work, EVERY corporation thinks it has sufficient security and I'm usually the guy that has to go show the board what the reality is (the CEO and CIO are usually glowering at me before I even open my mouth lol).

Now... we could do that... here... with the elections - we could be a rogue red team, so to speak. And if the President (whoever it happens to be) wishes to engage us we'll be more than happy to serve if we're guaranteed pardons at the end of it, cause that election tampering stuff is pretty heavy - and most of it is state charges, so not sure how that would work -

But yeah, we could do it. :)
 
What is important to me is that I am reasonably certain my vote is counted and counted as I voted. With proper monitoring and chain of command of that paper ballot I am as confident of that as is probably possible. With 'technology' I have no way to know. Only whomever programmed the computer knows for sure.
I'll say one more thing.

Whichever young investigative reporter goes undercover and discovers how the Dems do this and what the picture is on the ground, will make a career for himself or herself.
 
I think you should have that option.

If you really don't trust the technology, you should be able to choose to have someone hand count your ballot.

Even right in front of you, if you wish.

I am of the opinion that good processes are mostly independent of the particular technology being used (or none, if that's the case). In other words, if you want paper, you STILL want security, right? It's still important.

And once you hand off the paper ballot, you lose control over what happens on the other side of the handoff, just like with computers. We probably agree that if there's fraud, it's probably human fraud (machines make mistakes, but they rarely do fraud), and thus I would contend that if they want to get you and you cut off one of their avenues, they'll find another way. That's kinda the nature of these fraudsters, right?

In a way this election fraud business is a lot like chasing hackers. I did that, for a number of years. That's how they operate too, they'll recon your defenses till they find a hole and zoom right in. The most important thing is I have to be honest with myself about how bad the holes are. That's the hardest part about this work, EVERY corporation thinks it has sufficient security and I'm usually the guy that has to go show the board what the reality is (the CEO and CIO are usually glowering at me before I even open my mouth lol).

Now... we could do that... here... with the elections - we could be a rogue red team, so to speak. And if the President (whoever it happens to be) wishes to engage us we'll be more than happy to serve if we're guaranteed pardons at the end of it, cause that election tampering stuff is pretty heavy - and most of it is state charges, so not sure how that would work -

But yeah, we could do it. :)
So long as each side has the ability to watch and monitor the process, it should be difficult to cheat. The assigned poll watchers should be handed an official document showing the count when it is complete so that the count can't be arbitrarily changed after the fact. It is never impossible to cheat of course, but we could make it a lot more difficult to do.

Again the technology is only as good as the person programming it. It can't make decisions for itself. I can see the paper ballot. I cannot see what the machine is doing internally.
 
You're 20 years behind the times.

We can even take masks off now

We're very good.



Yeah, duh, what's wrong with this picture?

These are not security professional's, are they? No they're not. They're dumbass partisan election workers. Their job should be to execute TO THE LETTER the instructions from the security professional's who are THE ONLY ONES WHO KNOW WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING IN THIS DOMAIN.

Would you let a bunch of partisan hackers make security recommendations for your design? No, you wouldn't, would you? And yet that is EXACTLY what we do when we let the inmates design the asylum.

We have SERIOUS election problems in this country

Very serious indeed.
If we ever have a stolen election it will not be due to voter fraud. It will be due to other types of election fraud such as illegally influencing the voting, or the counting of the votes. . This is why both county and state election boards focus on, keeping campaigners away from the poll, keeping the ballots and vote counting secure.

The electoral college actually adds additional security against voter fraud in a presidential election. The fraudster would have to operate in multiple states and know well before the election, how many votes to steal and in which states, and in which county within each state. This is easy to determine after and election but almost impossible before the election.

While voter fraud or attempts at fraud happens on a very small scale in every national election, it's incredibly rare and affects a minuscule percentage of all ballots cast. This is partly due to election administration in the United States being decentralized down to the local level.
 
See, so, this is where the process experts come in.

Why go after an antiquated process? That we already know in advance doesn't meet modern security standards?

Here, look: controlling a process is expensive. The tighter you have to control it, the more expensive it gets

So, why not go the other way when you can? In this case, an open adversarial process yields the desired results, more quickly, more cheaply, and more efficiently than a streamlined but highly regulated one. The key words are checks and balances.

It can get very simple. When you go to vote - if you're a Republican, you get checked in by the Democrat election workers. Adversarial step #1. If you're a Dem, you get checked in by the Pubs.

Then, you have a same-party person give you your actual ballot, after checking that the opposite party properly did its job at check in. And you have someone from the opposite party watching when you place your ballot into the collection box.

These are deliberately adversarial process, it works, and it's cheap. But it has to be followed to the letter. So you need enforcers from each party watching the workers, and you need an oversupply of trained workers because you want everyone to be yankable at any time for any reason. (But attach a lot of legal paperwork to it, and a stiff penalty for abusing the process).

I can expound on this method in detail, if you wish. You can ask the Six Sigma people in the manufacturing world, or the Scrum type in the software world, how this all works and the wisdom of it.

The best systems are those that are self correcting and require no maintenance. Good luck finding one, but that's what we strive for. :)

As far as the programming - that too should be adversarial. Ask anyone at NASA how that works, they'll tell you about design reviews and functional reviews. Y'know, you have a bunch of engineers sitting in a room and one of em says "all we gotta do is put this switch on the front panel", and then some QA guy says "front panel's already full, where you gonna put it?", and the instant they hear THAT the ergonomic psychologists take over and don't let go till they've figured out the exact best location where a human being can access that switch in an emergency.

So like, if you're a Scrum boss trying to implement this, you don't have to worry about the "why's", that's already been decided in the context of a much larger adversarial process. Similarly, if you're an election worker, you shouldn't have to know about the "why's". In fact you shouldn't even be involved with them. Engineers on Scrum teams who question the requirements 'after the fact" generally don't last long. They're viewed as excuses for slipping the schedule.

Similarly, the QA guy follows the test plan. He doesn't write it, someone else does that. He only figure out how to test every unit so it meets the requirement.

A well designed process is worth an untellable fortune. Once you have some experience with mission critical processes (which is what voting is), you'll understand why the adversarial approach is so important and so beneficial (and in a partisan world, so natural). The last thing in the world we want is some partisan dictator determining our election processes, amirite? Done the adversarial way, there's little danger if that. There'll be a hundred adversarial alarm bells if even the smallest untoward event happens
The first problem with your adversarial check is that 41% of voters do not claim a party affiliation so the check-in person would not know anything about your party affiliation. My state and others don't even ask you anything about party affiliation when you register.

I'm doubtful that poll workers are allowed to quiz voters on their party affiliation since 75% of voters cast a vote according their party affiliation. It sort of destroys the idea of the secret ballot.

Lastly, poll worker who check you in to vote just check that your name is on the register. If you are on the list, you get to vote. Depending on the state, if the records at the poll shows you are not illegible to vote and you still want to vote, then your ballot is marked provisional and you have to resolve the issue with the registrar office with in a couple of days for the vote to count.

I don't see that this adversarial check-in accomplishes anything.
 
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