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Covering up sex abuse is way, way easier than trying to rig an election. You can do it case by case, it’s not a public event, there’s no particular timeline, there’s no adversarial party keeping watch, and you’re a church, which most believers put a lot of trust in.
The place where it really matters to affect election outcomes is swing states, which basically by definition tend to have a mix of partisan power (even if some counties swing all blue/red, state officials are going to have some variety). The partisan competition keeps things in check. And not coincidently, these swing states are the places with the most scrutiny. Decentralized or not, running any ~county-level plot is nearly impossible to pull off without attracting an investigation.
Having a bunch of little independent groups/individuals doing small-scale fraud is very unlikely to affect an outcome, and also you can’t presume only one side does it.
(Ironically, at this point Dems have a solid lead with regular voters (a significant advantage in boring mid-terms) and so efforts to expand the vote are more likely to hurt Dem chances.)
Overall, if you’re able to analyze why sex abuse by religious officials could be covered up you, should be able to understand why significant voting fraud can’t be covered up the same way.
You’re nitpicking the analogy without really addressing my point. Your previous comment pointed out that it would be extremely difficult for a coordinated group of national conspirators to fraudulently alter the election results in enough swing states to change the election. I’m saying there wouldn’t need to be a grand conspiracy. Recent elections have hinged on only a few tens of thousands of votes in the right places. With such small margins, all it would take to tip the scales is one side having either more motive or more opportunity to cheat than the other. I’m not even saying that necessarily happened in 2020. Thanks to insecure vote by mail procedures coupled with the secret ballot, it would be almost impossible to tell one way or the other. (For the record, I support the secret ballot, but I’m opposed to vote by mail except perhaps with the narrowest of exceptions.)
I’m not nitpicking, I’m trying to explain why this other model is aLao unlikely to either work or remain undetected, because it’s not trivial to add the right amount of fake votes.
You do realize mail in ballots can be audited right? Fraud at any meaningful scale is still very hard to pull off because things have to align with voter registration.
Voting by mail is excellent and I’m glad my state has long had it.
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