The GOP got away with it for 15 years bc anyone who says they suspect cheating is called tin foil since they can’t prove it. Check mate. That said, a federal court held in 2018 that GA’s paperless voting machines were unconstitutional. It’s why GA had to move to paper. 1/ https://twitter.com/pg1958/status/1390737703516397572

It didn’t help that some Democrats have gone along with the paperless voting machine scam. Georgia had a Democratic SOS when it became the first state to deploy touchscreen machines statewide. That year, the state lurched to the right. 2/

Some Ds in Congress voted against paper, including Steny Hoyer & Chris Dodd. The Rs who pushed paperless machines were Mitch McConnell and Bob Ney. 3/

The asserted rzn for paperless machines was that that paper ballots are unfair to voters w/ visual impairments bc they can’t use them. Except paper advocates agreed there shld be an exception for voters w/ visual impairments & other disabilities who can’t use paper ballots. 4/

So in my opinion the rationale was nonsense. 5/

This includes a 2004 letter signed by Mitch McConnell (R), Bob Ney (R) Steny Hoyer (D) & Chris Dodd (D) explaining their opposition to paper ballots. 6/ https://larouchepub.com/other/2004/3111hava_debate.html

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 provided $3 billion in funding for new voting machines w/ no paper trail requirement. The only senators who opposed it were Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. IMO, the Ds who voted for it were scammed. 7/ https://prospect.org/features/2000-sequel/

After the GOP won several devastating and unexpected victories in Georgia in 2002 (in an election conducted w/ paperless machines), many Ds realized they had effed up & should have listened to Hillary. They tried to pass a law to amend HAVA to require paper, but Rs killed it. 8/

About 70% of the US has moved to hand marked paper ballots. But in most places no one ever looks at it bc automatic hand recounts typically occur only if the margin is less than .5% & only a few states require automatic meaningful manual audits (regardless of the margin). 9/

Before the 2020 election, Ds tried to pass a bill requiring automatic robust manual audits for all federal races, but Rs blocked it. I wrote about that here. If no one ever looks at paper meaningfully or at all, machines might as well be paperless. 10/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/31/how-safe-is-the-us-election-from-hacking/

Maybe the mere presence of paper has some deterrent effect against fraud. There’s no way to measure that though. 11/

Rs got away with precluding automatic robust manual audits for all federal races bc anyone who says they don’t trust an unaudited electronic outcome is called “tin foil”since they can’t prove that the unaudited result is wrong. Even Ds will disparage them. See the pattern? 12/

Welcome to hell. 13/

Oh, and then Trump took advantage of this crap election system that Republicans mostly created. It is projection and reverse reality and a total nightmare. Because Ds have not made enough noise, Trump stole & distorted the narrative. 14/

So now Ds are running around pretending vote tallies are secure bc they don’t want to give TFG and his allies more ammunition for their hijacked narrative. FFS. 15/

Presumably for the same rzn, Ds seem to have dropped any effort to require robust manual audits for all federal races in 2022 (as opposed to only the races & places & vendor that Rs choose to #fraudit). If the system is already so great, who needs meaningful manual audits? 16/