Let me put it another way: Imagine your political system is not a democracy, but rather an exotic system I'll call a hepatoscopracy. The political succession is determined not by people voting, but by a priesthood that ritually slaughters a goat and reads its entrails. Their reading then designates who is to be the next emperor.
After a while, you notice that the priests reading the entrails are always interpreting the entrails to choose imperial candidates from the same family, regardless of how the entrails themselves ought to be read.
What do you do?
Well, you could produce dense arguments about how they read the entrails wrong, forensically analyse photos of the slaughtered goats' guts and post about what a fraud all this is.
Alternatively, you could try to co-opt the priesthood, read entrails your own way and make guys from your own family emperor.
Also alternatively, you could try to gain a foothold in the institutions that accept and validate the priesthood's readings and put a stop to this nonsense. Or pursue other legal or institutional reforms that limit the freedom of the priesthood to interpret the entrails however they want.
Of these various strategies, one of them is not very likely to work.
Cooption and institutional entryism both require large numbers of people who view the problem as real and serious. Recruiting people must have as its first step explaining, repeatedly, that the entrails don't say what is being claimed. Otherwise why would anyone join you in the attempted remedies?
I think you're much too negative about this stuff. The widespread alarm over the 2020 US election, which sure _looked_ rigged whether it was or wasn't, did trigger significant attempts at reform. If nobody had bothered talking about voter fraud then there would have been no response to it.
Part of my point is that reading entrails is a dumb superstition. There is no correct way to read them. So the readers of entrails interpret them how they want given their degrees of freedom.
Is talking constantly about voter fraud productive? At the scale frequently alleged in this discourse, it seems like it would rather be demotivating. Why vote at all if you believe the Democratic Party can just will 20 million votes into being on a whim. As I say in the piece, reforms to make election manipulation of all kinds harder for the establishment is a good idea. Another reason I am impatient with voter fraud, as I do not think it is even nearly the most significant way elections are manipulated.
Holding elections when fraud comes easy is a lot like reading those entrails. Lots of talk without action is enervating and dispiriting, net result is a confused, impotent electorate?
In the 2020 election 20 million votes appeared from nowhere. In 2024 the same guy who they didn’t want in the White House was on the ballot but those 20 million votes didn’t show up. Yes, Big E voter fraud has happened and is real. 80% of Americans want voter ID yet it can’t pass our congress. It might not show up in every election but it seems they want it in their back pockets just in case. In NJ the voter rolls should be questioned as many are on them getting registered from getting drivers licenses. 6,600 have been caught and the state currently is in court fighting against having their registered voter rolls from being audited. Voter fraud does happen. You are correct though. It doesn’t matter and won’t change a fucking thing.
How? Politicians are pretty much hated in the U.S. and most of them fail forward. It’s maddening really. We have an indoctrinated society on the coasts that is lurching our country towards communism and that would radically change everything. Congress pisses on our constitution. We are 41 trillion in debt and nothing gets done. How does anything change? Revolution is the only thing that will change things. It’s shitty to admit but nobody listens to the voters once they get elected. Everyone feels that way. If you have answers I’m all
PS: I can't speak for anyone else but I myself am so hungry and thirsty all the time for this sort of honesty in political discourse. I'm just famished for it.
The functioning of a democratic republic, where the people accept the peaceful transfer of power, depends upon the losing side feeling that they had a fair chance. Obvious widespread cheating, or arrangements that allow it to easily take place, undermines this essential condition for acceptance of results. Institutional acceptance is no comfort to the losers where the official institutions like the judiciary have become highly politicized and lost their credibility through appointment of hyper-partisan judges not constrained by normal judicial rules limiting their interference with the actions of elected officials. Perhaps if there is widespread public complaint about cheating and investigations of it the politician perpetrators and facilitators will come to realize that their acceptability and ability to lead is affected by it. That is probably a forlorn hope, as usually all they want to do is get past the next election by any means fair or foul. When you combine this situation with parties like the US Democratic Party which have been captured by extremists, you have a situation that can eventually lead to civil strife.
Your point is valid, but there can be a different objective in discussing voter fraud, which you touched on more or less tangentially, i.e., election security. I wish that term would be used instead of voter fraud. While you're correct that attempting to overturn results by alleging voter fraud, justified or not, is more likely to hurt than to help, the obvious and deliberate destruction of election security (in the US at least) must not be allowed to stand. The undeniable fact that a large section of the polis believes elections to be largely fraudulent is itself a powerful argument for serious election reform, so the incessant complaints of fraud serve a useful purpose.
The usefulness of the complaints is buttressed by the objective reality of dismal election security. The main culprit in the US is mail-in voting, especially the practice of mailing ballots out promiscuously. Registering voters automatically at the DMV is a close second.
The mail-in voting as practiced now is largely a result of the COVID psyop in 2020 and should not be allowed to stand. I know that it's spitting into the wind even saying that, but we must nevertheless speak the truth relentlessly. Especially because the facts here are not a matter of controversy. It's beyond dispute that the integrity of our elections has been seriously degraded. Those people fighting every attempt to improve election security are rightly suspected of promoting election fraud, whether specific instances can be discovered and proved or not. We should certainly refrain from spurious allegations, but pointing out credible signs of fraud serve a useful purpose IMO.
I'm honoured to have played a small part in inspiring a Eugy post :)
This is cynical, mostly correct, but not entirely. This part:
> (If they win, though, we suddenly don’t have to talk about voter fraud for some reason.)
stood out because it doesn't describe reality. What you're trying to suggest here is that the right talk about voter fraud only as a purely tactical claim that they don't really believe. The evidence is clear that they do genuinely believe voter fraud is a huge problem for them.
Trump did win in 2024! Yet he and his base didn't suddenly forget about voter fraud; the ridiculous psychodrama over trying to pass the SAVE Act sucked up a lot of political oxygen over the next two years. Red states did pass improvements to voter security, albeit nowhere near enough, despite leftist judges trying desperately to stop them. And American voters know their elections are bullshit. Support for fixing the most obvious problems is extremely high and bipartisan - one of the very few issues where huge majorities of average Americans want to take action.
Yes, you can say that the moment the corrupt judges accept the results then it's all over and the cheaters win, as happened in say Brazil where one of their corrupt Supremes announced the results just minutes after voting closed.
But that ignores the core issue. You can't just assert western institutions have huge legitimacy and so nothing will change, what is the historicity of that? To take one notorious example: all the experts were sure the USSR's institutions was in fine form right up until the exact moment they collapsed. The monasteries of Britain had stood for over a millennium, until Henry VIII used their corruption as an excuse to liquidate them all over night (what treasure remained after the King's men took their piece was looted clean by local villagers within weeks). Bukele faced resistance from El Salvador's institutional culture, and reacted by just abolishing those institutions. The American left are constantly trying to assassinate right wing politicians or people acting within those institutions, and directly intimidating institutional employees.
Clearly, institutions can appear strong while being rotted away internally until they experience sudden collapse. That's the bigger risk, story and conversation we need to be having here.
Well, I would separate the two issues: Pursuing reforms to proscribe not only voter fraud but all the other means via which your political opponents massage democratic outcomes to favour their camp is a good idea, and indeed it is consistently pursued by the right – with very mixed success.
Alleging specific instances of voter fraud in the wake of losses is however not really successful. I don't think right-wing discussions of voter fraud are tactical at all, because they don't work. It's more of a cope, about how we didn't really lose, even though we did.
That's where we disagree, I think they do "work" in some sense. Discussions of voter fraud have at least two positive outcomes:
1. It motivates lawmakers on the right to view their position as precarious and to improve security. Maybe not enough, but it does. And more secure elections are good for everyone, not just the right.
2. Those improvements, if people believe they work, increase trust in elections and mean in future more obviously bogus allegations of fraud get quickly shut down.
Even now, what we see in this discussion is that the American right are identifying suspicious statistical patterns (or not, whatever), but are in fact accepting that if large scale fraud happened they don't currently know how. So (2) is happening, somewhat. The problem is that American elections are rather unusual in how open to fraud they are, due to the widespread mechanization and total lack of care for proper audit trails the designers of the process seem to have. So while some improvements have been made, in some places, it's probably not enough to shut down discussions of voter fraud entirely because there are still gaping holes in the process.
But in principle, if all the obvious ways things could go wrong get fixed, eventually people would pipe down and go back to conventional political explanations for losses.
BTW, I agree with you that things like mass enfranchisement of illegals or children is a more powerful tactic that will probably have more influence overall, worldwide.
Combine that with the prize you can win: control of the government of the most powerful country in the world, and the ability to control how trillions of dollars are spent (and billions diverted). You get to tell hundreds of millions of people how they can live and what they should think; and if anything bad happens, you’re not responsible!
I guess what this post says - I think what it says - is, in a nutshell, that voter fraud, whether actual or only alleged, is not the real issue. It is a dead cat, as management speak has it. It is a symptom, not an underlying disease. It is the whinging of people complaining it’s hot yet not noticing the building is on fire.
Interesting position, I’m going to have to take my time and think this, in light of millions of unsolicited mail-out ballots and strange local elections anomalies; and the almost universal disregard of western “democratic” governments for the wants and needs of those who “elected” them.
Homo bureaucratis doesn't care if the product is rot; he cares only that the box was checked, the hearing was held, and the committee met in accordance with the bylaws. Legitimacy is derived from the ritual, not the result.
I may be being too reductive but it sounds like you’re saying if there appears to have been cheating, because everyone cheats, even flagrant cheating, we’re just supposed to sit back and take it, because we’ll never be able to prove it, much less change it and trying to do so is useless.
I have hard time with that.
I recently saw this meme which seems to capture that sentiment pretty well. Here’s what it said:
“Pattern recognition might be my least favorite neurodivergent ability. iOh... I see exactly where this is heading.
Surely everyone else sees it too, right?"
Oh.
They don't.
Guess I'll just sit here in silent horror and watch the disaster unfold exactly as predicted.”
Prospective solutions – how to fix this for the future – are good.
Lost elections, generally speaking, are lost, and very often alleging voter fraud is a coping strategy more than it is a realistic effort to work out how not to lose in future.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the whole voter fraud narrative. That's happened here in our “sort of” Alberta independence referendum, actually just a referendum to hold a referendum - don't ask. Conspiracy theories abound. Less than 25% support to hold a real separation referendum, our side lost, decisively. Funny all this voter fraud stuff comes up when, in actual fact, most Canadian national and provincial elections are reasonably well run affairs, considering Canada's massive size and spread-outedness. Oh, there's probably some chicanery going on in isolated little incidents here or there but it's likely never enough to swing any election from its actual intended result. The Dems in the U.S. won a massive, decisive mid-term victory that any likely fraud played little to no part in this outcome. Time for the Republicans to lick their wounds and begin prepping for the presidential election in two years, that's the one they're really going to need to win going forward.
Also, a little side note - if a cow moos in the forest does anybody hear it? 😃
“actually just a referendum to hold a referendum - don't ask.”
We can explain it to them. While it would have been better to hold the actual referendum question it was bogged down in the courts with natives and others challenging the validity do it all.
I’m sure those questions would have been settled eventually but it would have festered on.
I think it was a good strategy, ask if we really want a referendum, to get it cleared away.
If it had gotten anywhere close to 50% story would have changed.
Many have fallen for the nonsense Carney puts out there, as he works to further control the narrative. The budget this week extended “media subsidies” to TV and radio so they are working to choke out all deviations from their narrative.
Voter fraud is irrelevant to discuss, I agree. The State has zero interest in invalidating the system, fraud or not. "Democracy" is the only system we have, so we're stuck with it, but on the other hand, letting the people vote for whatever the want directly is too risky. Voting seems to be getting more and more ritualistic, and less and less about selecting the people or policies "the majority" wants. "Vote to keep THEM out!" But what's the alternative? Kings? Voting keeps society organized, and prevents a violent revolution, because another chance to "get your party in power" is always just a year or two away.
I would actually welcome a King, as then we, the people, can no longer be blamed, or look at each other with distaste as the "them" that voted for The Hated Thing. I would also completely welcome the possibility that if "they" can use AI to rig the votes however they want, maybe "they" will dial down the rhetoric designed to try to legitimately convince people to vote one way or the other. Civility in political discourse is designed to make the loser not feel so bad. "Well, our new leader is barely distinguishable from the old one, anyway..."
I've always thought that election results for which the vote count is within the margin of error should be decided with a ceremonial coin flip. That certainty would have solved Bush/Gore.
Let me put it another way: Imagine your political system is not a democracy, but rather an exotic system I'll call a hepatoscopracy. The political succession is determined not by people voting, but by a priesthood that ritually slaughters a goat and reads its entrails. Their reading then designates who is to be the next emperor.
After a while, you notice that the priests reading the entrails are always interpreting the entrails to choose imperial candidates from the same family, regardless of how the entrails themselves ought to be read.
What do you do?
Well, you could produce dense arguments about how they read the entrails wrong, forensically analyse photos of the slaughtered goats' guts and post about what a fraud all this is.
Alternatively, you could try to co-opt the priesthood, read entrails your own way and make guys from your own family emperor.
Also alternatively, you could try to gain a foothold in the institutions that accept and validate the priesthood's readings and put a stop to this nonsense. Or pursue other legal or institutional reforms that limit the freedom of the priesthood to interpret the entrails however they want.
Of these various strategies, one of them is not very likely to work.
But why do you view these as mutually exclusive?
Cooption and institutional entryism both require large numbers of people who view the problem as real and serious. Recruiting people must have as its first step explaining, repeatedly, that the entrails don't say what is being claimed. Otherwise why would anyone join you in the attempted remedies?
I think you're much too negative about this stuff. The widespread alarm over the 2020 US election, which sure _looked_ rigged whether it was or wasn't, did trigger significant attempts at reform. If nobody had bothered talking about voter fraud then there would have been no response to it.
Part of my point is that reading entrails is a dumb superstition. There is no correct way to read them. So the readers of entrails interpret them how they want given their degrees of freedom.
Is talking constantly about voter fraud productive? At the scale frequently alleged in this discourse, it seems like it would rather be demotivating. Why vote at all if you believe the Democratic Party can just will 20 million votes into being on a whim. As I say in the piece, reforms to make election manipulation of all kinds harder for the establishment is a good idea. Another reason I am impatient with voter fraud, as I do not think it is even nearly the most significant way elections are manipulated.
Holding elections when fraud comes easy is a lot like reading those entrails. Lots of talk without action is enervating and dispiriting, net result is a confused, impotent electorate?
Very useful. I will admit I have gotten hung up on this topic. I’m not sure it makes me feel any better to know how meaningless my vote really is.
In the 2020 election 20 million votes appeared from nowhere. In 2024 the same guy who they didn’t want in the White House was on the ballot but those 20 million votes didn’t show up. Yes, Big E voter fraud has happened and is real. 80% of Americans want voter ID yet it can’t pass our congress. It might not show up in every election but it seems they want it in their back pockets just in case. In NJ the voter rolls should be questioned as many are on them getting registered from getting drivers licenses. 6,600 have been caught and the state currently is in court fighting against having their registered voter rolls from being audited. Voter fraud does happen. You are correct though. It doesn’t matter and won’t change a fucking thing.
I think his point is that even if cheating is real, it doesn’t matter.
It might not matter but its important to understand mechanically, no? The shock & awe is worth acknowledging to me.
Yea I said that.
It matters going forward, as Eugyppius pointed out. When you see how it happens, you move to change the institutions that permit it.
How? Politicians are pretty much hated in the U.S. and most of them fail forward. It’s maddening really. We have an indoctrinated society on the coasts that is lurching our country towards communism and that would radically change everything. Congress pisses on our constitution. We are 41 trillion in debt and nothing gets done. How does anything change? Revolution is the only thing that will change things. It’s shitty to admit but nobody listens to the voters once they get elected. Everyone feels that way. If you have answers I’m all
Ears.
Yup. Yup! YUP!!! *YUP!!!!!*
PS: I can't speak for anyone else but I myself am so hungry and thirsty all the time for this sort of honesty in political discourse. I'm just famished for it.
Honest discussion of reality.
That’s all this is, without hallucinations or delusions.
The functioning of a democratic republic, where the people accept the peaceful transfer of power, depends upon the losing side feeling that they had a fair chance. Obvious widespread cheating, or arrangements that allow it to easily take place, undermines this essential condition for acceptance of results. Institutional acceptance is no comfort to the losers where the official institutions like the judiciary have become highly politicized and lost their credibility through appointment of hyper-partisan judges not constrained by normal judicial rules limiting their interference with the actions of elected officials. Perhaps if there is widespread public complaint about cheating and investigations of it the politician perpetrators and facilitators will come to realize that their acceptability and ability to lead is affected by it. That is probably a forlorn hope, as usually all they want to do is get past the next election by any means fair or foul. When you combine this situation with parties like the US Democratic Party which have been captured by extremists, you have a situation that can eventually lead to civil strife.
Your point is valid, but there can be a different objective in discussing voter fraud, which you touched on more or less tangentially, i.e., election security. I wish that term would be used instead of voter fraud. While you're correct that attempting to overturn results by alleging voter fraud, justified or not, is more likely to hurt than to help, the obvious and deliberate destruction of election security (in the US at least) must not be allowed to stand. The undeniable fact that a large section of the polis believes elections to be largely fraudulent is itself a powerful argument for serious election reform, so the incessant complaints of fraud serve a useful purpose.
The usefulness of the complaints is buttressed by the objective reality of dismal election security. The main culprit in the US is mail-in voting, especially the practice of mailing ballots out promiscuously. Registering voters automatically at the DMV is a close second.
The mail-in voting as practiced now is largely a result of the COVID psyop in 2020 and should not be allowed to stand. I know that it's spitting into the wind even saying that, but we must nevertheless speak the truth relentlessly. Especially because the facts here are not a matter of controversy. It's beyond dispute that the integrity of our elections has been seriously degraded. Those people fighting every attempt to improve election security are rightly suspected of promoting election fraud, whether specific instances can be discovered and proved or not. We should certainly refrain from spurious allegations, but pointing out credible signs of fraud serve a useful purpose IMO.
I'm honoured to have played a small part in inspiring a Eugy post :)
This is cynical, mostly correct, but not entirely. This part:
> (If they win, though, we suddenly don’t have to talk about voter fraud for some reason.)
stood out because it doesn't describe reality. What you're trying to suggest here is that the right talk about voter fraud only as a purely tactical claim that they don't really believe. The evidence is clear that they do genuinely believe voter fraud is a huge problem for them.
Trump did win in 2024! Yet he and his base didn't suddenly forget about voter fraud; the ridiculous psychodrama over trying to pass the SAVE Act sucked up a lot of political oxygen over the next two years. Red states did pass improvements to voter security, albeit nowhere near enough, despite leftist judges trying desperately to stop them. And American voters know their elections are bullshit. Support for fixing the most obvious problems is extremely high and bipartisan - one of the very few issues where huge majorities of average Americans want to take action.
Yes, you can say that the moment the corrupt judges accept the results then it's all over and the cheaters win, as happened in say Brazil where one of their corrupt Supremes announced the results just minutes after voting closed.
But that ignores the core issue. You can't just assert western institutions have huge legitimacy and so nothing will change, what is the historicity of that? To take one notorious example: all the experts were sure the USSR's institutions was in fine form right up until the exact moment they collapsed. The monasteries of Britain had stood for over a millennium, until Henry VIII used their corruption as an excuse to liquidate them all over night (what treasure remained after the King's men took their piece was looted clean by local villagers within weeks). Bukele faced resistance from El Salvador's institutional culture, and reacted by just abolishing those institutions. The American left are constantly trying to assassinate right wing politicians or people acting within those institutions, and directly intimidating institutional employees.
Clearly, institutions can appear strong while being rotted away internally until they experience sudden collapse. That's the bigger risk, story and conversation we need to be having here.
Well, I would separate the two issues: Pursuing reforms to proscribe not only voter fraud but all the other means via which your political opponents massage democratic outcomes to favour their camp is a good idea, and indeed it is consistently pursued by the right – with very mixed success.
Alleging specific instances of voter fraud in the wake of losses is however not really successful. I don't think right-wing discussions of voter fraud are tactical at all, because they don't work. It's more of a cope, about how we didn't really lose, even though we did.
That's where we disagree, I think they do "work" in some sense. Discussions of voter fraud have at least two positive outcomes:
1. It motivates lawmakers on the right to view their position as precarious and to improve security. Maybe not enough, but it does. And more secure elections are good for everyone, not just the right.
2. Those improvements, if people believe they work, increase trust in elections and mean in future more obviously bogus allegations of fraud get quickly shut down.
Even now, what we see in this discussion is that the American right are identifying suspicious statistical patterns (or not, whatever), but are in fact accepting that if large scale fraud happened they don't currently know how. So (2) is happening, somewhat. The problem is that American elections are rather unusual in how open to fraud they are, due to the widespread mechanization and total lack of care for proper audit trails the designers of the process seem to have. So while some improvements have been made, in some places, it's probably not enough to shut down discussions of voter fraud entirely because there are still gaping holes in the process.
But in principle, if all the obvious ways things could go wrong get fixed, eventually people would pipe down and go back to conventional political explanations for losses.
BTW, I agree with you that things like mass enfranchisement of illegals or children is a more powerful tactic that will probably have more influence overall, worldwide.
I think you have a point. One of which is ranked choice voting. It was passed ostensibly under the guise of the following:
1. Determines the candidate with the strongest support
2. Encourages civil campaigning
3.Reduces wasted votes
4. Eliminates the need for multiple elections
But it also has some fatal flaws as we see in Alaska.
The courts probably won't take up any lawsuits because it really didn't break the law.
But it so dirty as to have the same effect as actual cheating both in the outcome and in sentiment.
We all have that Reptilian Brain at the bottom of our brain stem. We just can't help ourselves. The need to win is just too strong in us.
Combine that with the prize you can win: control of the government of the most powerful country in the world, and the ability to control how trillions of dollars are spent (and billions diverted). You get to tell hundreds of millions of people how they can live and what they should think; and if anything bad happens, you’re not responsible!
I guess what this post says - I think what it says - is, in a nutshell, that voter fraud, whether actual or only alleged, is not the real issue. It is a dead cat, as management speak has it. It is a symptom, not an underlying disease. It is the whinging of people complaining it’s hot yet not noticing the building is on fire.
Interesting position, I’m going to have to take my time and think this, in light of millions of unsolicited mail-out ballots and strange local elections anomalies; and the almost universal disregard of western “democratic” governments for the wants and needs of those who “elected” them.
Homo bureaucratis doesn't care if the product is rot; he cares only that the box was checked, the hearing was held, and the committee met in accordance with the bylaws. Legitimacy is derived from the ritual, not the result.
My opinions about Democracy accord with those of a certain Mr. G. Carlin -
https://www.azquotes.com/author/2470-George_Carlin
I may be being too reductive but it sounds like you’re saying if there appears to have been cheating, because everyone cheats, even flagrant cheating, we’re just supposed to sit back and take it, because we’ll never be able to prove it, much less change it and trying to do so is useless.
I have hard time with that.
I recently saw this meme which seems to capture that sentiment pretty well. Here’s what it said:
“Pattern recognition might be my least favorite neurodivergent ability. iOh... I see exactly where this is heading.
Surely everyone else sees it too, right?"
Oh.
They don't.
Guess I'll just sit here in silent horror and watch the disaster unfold exactly as predicted.”
Prospective solutions – how to fix this for the future – are good.
Lost elections, generally speaking, are lost, and very often alleging voter fraud is a coping strategy more than it is a realistic effort to work out how not to lose in future.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the whole voter fraud narrative. That's happened here in our “sort of” Alberta independence referendum, actually just a referendum to hold a referendum - don't ask. Conspiracy theories abound. Less than 25% support to hold a real separation referendum, our side lost, decisively. Funny all this voter fraud stuff comes up when, in actual fact, most Canadian national and provincial elections are reasonably well run affairs, considering Canada's massive size and spread-outedness. Oh, there's probably some chicanery going on in isolated little incidents here or there but it's likely never enough to swing any election from its actual intended result. The Dems in the U.S. won a massive, decisive mid-term victory that any likely fraud played little to no part in this outcome. Time for the Republicans to lick their wounds and begin prepping for the presidential election in two years, that's the one they're really going to need to win going forward.
Also, a little side note - if a cow moos in the forest does anybody hear it? 😃
“actually just a referendum to hold a referendum - don't ask.”
We can explain it to them. While it would have been better to hold the actual referendum question it was bogged down in the courts with natives and others challenging the validity do it all.
I’m sure those questions would have been settled eventually but it would have festered on.
I think it was a good strategy, ask if we really want a referendum, to get it cleared away.
If it had gotten anywhere close to 50% story would have changed.
Many have fallen for the nonsense Carney puts out there, as he works to further control the narrative. The budget this week extended “media subsidies” to TV and radio so they are working to choke out all deviations from their narrative.
And our progressive morons clap.
Good morning!/Evening!
Voter fraud is irrelevant to discuss, I agree. The State has zero interest in invalidating the system, fraud or not. "Democracy" is the only system we have, so we're stuck with it, but on the other hand, letting the people vote for whatever the want directly is too risky. Voting seems to be getting more and more ritualistic, and less and less about selecting the people or policies "the majority" wants. "Vote to keep THEM out!" But what's the alternative? Kings? Voting keeps society organized, and prevents a violent revolution, because another chance to "get your party in power" is always just a year or two away.
I would actually welcome a King, as then we, the people, can no longer be blamed, or look at each other with distaste as the "them" that voted for The Hated Thing. I would also completely welcome the possibility that if "they" can use AI to rig the votes however they want, maybe "they" will dial down the rhetoric designed to try to legitimately convince people to vote one way or the other. Civility in political discourse is designed to make the loser not feel so bad. "Well, our new leader is barely distinguishable from the old one, anyway..."
I've always thought that election results for which the vote count is within the margin of error should be decided with a ceremonial coin flip. That certainty would have solved Bush/Gore.