[Dr. Franklin]

That is not true. The Constitution calls for the legislatures to "...appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..."

You understood my point.

The legislatures don't have to appoint directly, but they could if they wanted to.

The only way to know for certain that a slate of electors is properly appointed is for the legislatures themselves to appoint them. Otherwise, confusion results.

I think the only modernizations that we need is in voting technology. Let Visa or Mastercard run the elections with credit-card-like voter IDs and point-of-sale-like voting machines.

So we will just replace Dominion with banks to run our elections! What could go wrong with that? We just need more corporate control over our elections? I am of the opinion that we need to return to dumb elections with people counting ballots, and others watching them count them. First announce the total votes cast, then start counting them, and not vice-versa. Machines might be used to check that count for errors in particular batches of ballots, but should not be trusted exclusively, or primarily as at present.

The financial companies have no trouble validating a credit card purchase within seconds anywhere in the country, so they should have no trouble tabulating votes across the country, either.

Right, because they WANT to catch fraud. Those running the elections only want to catch fraud if its for an opposing candidate. Otherwise, they hide fraud for their favored candidate extremely well.

[Political Junkie Too]

The difference between Dominion and Visa/Mastercard is several:

1. With Dominion (or any) voting machines, local election officials are still in control of reporting the numbers from those machines.
2. Local election officials are also running ballots multiple times through their counting machines.
3. I'm talking about taking control of tabulating the vote away from partisan local officials and moving them to regulated enterprises that have accounting oversight (e.g., Price Waterhouse Coopers). Most of those process are hands-off.
4. I'm saying that we move the tabulating of the vote to businesses that have proven technologies that can handle national load within minutes of votes being cast.
5. And yes, I'm saying that these regulated companies (like Visa or Mastercard) have brand reputation to protect. They won't be motivated to manipulate the vote at the risk of their products being boycotted.

-PJ