Stop Calling It Rigged: You’re Talking Yourself Into Losing

I spent about a half hour watching a Veritasium YouTube video breaking down the history of credit card security, and it hit me with a pretty simple question: if credit cards get hacked, skimmed, and exploited, why don’t people just stop using them?

The answer is obvious once you think about it. Because they still work. More than that, they’re actually safer than the alternative. Walking around with a wad of cash isn’t exactly a secure system either. If it’s stolen, it’s gone. No audit trail, no recovery, no verification. Credit cards, on the other hand, have layers of protection, monitoring, and accountability built in. Even when fraud happens, the system catches it, reverses it, and keeps moving.

That realization led me somewhere else. If we accept that reality with something as personal and financial as our money, why do so many people suddenly abandon that logic when it comes to elections, especially here in Oregon?

Fraud exists. That’s not the same as gaming the system, and confusing the two is costing Republicans elections in Oregon.

Oregon’s vote-by-mail system didn’t appear overnight, and it certainly wasn’t forced into place without public buy-in. It grew out of decades of experimentation and voter preference. Beginning in the 1980s, counties started testing mail-based elections for local contests. By the 1990s, absentee voting had become so popular that a majority of ballots were already being cast by mail. In 1998, Oregon voters made it official, approving Ballot Measure 60 by a wide margin and establishing vote-by-mail as the standard for statewide elections.

Since then, the system has continued to evolve, not based on theory, but based on real-world experience. A centralized voter registration system was developed to eliminate duplicates and track changes across counties. Signature verification processes were strengthened and tied to DMV records. Ballots were made non-forwardable, helping clean up voter rolls as undeliverable mail is returned. Each ballot is tied to a unique identifier so only one vote per voter can be counted. Tabulation systems are kept offline, physically separated from the internet, and subject to both pre- and post-election testing. After the votes are counted, audits compare paper ballots to machine results, and those ballots are retained for years, available for review if needed.

This is not a casual system. It is a layered one, built over time, much like the systems that protect our financial transactions.

That doesn’t mean fraud is impossible. It never has been, and it never will be. The goal of any secure system is to eliminate fraud, but achieving that requires constant evolution, adapting security measures to stay ahead of new methods. Refinement should make fraud harder, easier to detect, and certain to be punished. On that front, the numbers are clear. Between 2000 and 2019, roughly 60 million ballots were cast in Oregon elections, resulting in just 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud. That’s not zero, but it is extraordinarily rare, and more importantly, it reflects a system that is capable of identifying and addressing problems when they occur.

Even Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, who had every reason to take a hard look at the system, publicly stated that he found no evidence of widespread fraud. What he found instead were isolated, traceable issues, exactly what you would expect in a functioning system.

This is where the conversation often gets distorted. Somewhere along the way, the word “fraud” has been replaced with “rigged.” That shift matters. Fraud means someone is trying to break the rules. A rigged system means the rules themselves are designed to produce a predetermined outcome.

That is a serious accusation, and it requires serious evidence. In Oregon, that evidence simply does not exist.

What does exist is a growing sense of distrust, and that distrust has consequences. When voters are told repeatedly that the system is rigged, that their vote doesn’t matter, or that the outcome is predetermined, many of them eventually stop participating. They don’t return their ballots. They disengage. They sit out elections they could have influenced.

Meanwhile, the voters on the other side continue to participate, consistently and reliably. The result isn’t mysterious. It’s math. When one group shows up and another group stays home, the outcome is predictable.

This is the uncomfortable reality that needs to be addressed. If Republicans in Oregon are losing ground, it is not because the system has been secretly engineered against them. It is because too many of their own voters have been convinced, incorrectly, that participation is pointless.

That doesn’t mean the system should be beyond criticism. There are real issues worth addressing. Ballot collection practices could be more tightly tracked. Signature verification, while effective, is not perfect and can create challenges for some voters. Cybersecurity requires constant vigilance. These are legitimate concerns, and they deserve attention.

But addressing those concerns requires clarity, not exaggeration. It requires understanding the difference between improving a system and dismissing it entirely.

The credit card comparison comes back into focus here. When fraud was discovered in early payment systems, the response wasn’t to abandon credit cards. It was to improve them, to add layers of protection, to make fraud harder and detection easier. The system earned trust not by being flawless, but by being resilient.

Elections require that same approach. They require scrutiny, transparency, and continuous improvement. They also require a baseline level of trust grounded in evidence, not assumption.

Because once that trust is lost, not because of proven failures but because of repeated claims unsupported by facts, the damage goes beyond politics. It affects participation, engagement, and ultimately the health of the system itself.

The path forward is not complicated, but it does require discipline. Be honest about what fraud is and where it exists. Make it harder. Strengthen detection. Hold people accountable when they break the rules. But do not casually label a system as rigged without proof, because that claim carries weight, and when it is used carelessly, it does more harm than good.

If Oregon is going to move toward more balanced, competitive elections, it will not happen by convincing voters the system is broken beyond repair. It will happen by reinforcing confidence where it is warranted, fixing what needs to be fixed, and encouraging participation instead of discouraging it.

The system is not perfect. No system ever is. But it is not rigged.

And if we’re serious about winning elections again, we need to stop telling our own voters that it is.

Head over to my Substack, you might enjoy some of my other election integrity related content. I try to keep it short, to the point, yet give you the sources, so you can cut through the spin, and get to the facts.

Here is that video that inspired this article:

Sources & Receipts

If you’ve made it this far, don’t take my word for it. Go look at the data, the reports, and the actual mechanics of how this system works. The receipts are all there.

• Oregon Legislative Fiscal Office – Vote by Mail Issue Review
  https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/lfo/Documents/2020IssueReview%20-%20Oregon%20Vote%20by%20Mail.pdf
• Oregon Secretary of State – Election Security Overview
  https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Pages/security.aspx
• Oregon Vote-by-Mail Timeline (SOS)
  https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/statistics/vote-by-mail-timeline.pdf
• Oregon Public Broadcasting – Voter Fraud Reporting
  https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-oregon-secretary-state/
• Oregon Legislature – Voting in Oregon Background Report
  https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/lpro/Publications/VotinginOregon.pdf
• Deschutes County Clerk – Election Security Details
  https://www.deschutes.org/clerk/page/election-security
• University of Oregon – Lessons from Vote-by-Mail
  https://news.uoregon.edu/content/lessons-state-longest-history-mail-voting
• Brennan Center – Mail Ballot Security Features
  https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/mail-ballot-security-features-primer
• Oregon Administrative Rules – Signature Verification Standards
  https://oregon.public.law/rules/oar_165-007-0450
• Oregon Newsroom – Secure, Modern Elections Statement
  https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/SOS/Posts/Post/oregon-is-on-the-cutting-edge-of-secure–modern-elections-31980
• Reed College – Ballot Integrity Study
  https://evic.reed.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ballot-Integrity-and-Voting-by-Mail-The-Oregon-Experience.pdf
• Public Integrity – Oregon Vote-by-Mail History
  https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/us-polling-places/oregon-voting-by-mail-strong-for-decades/
• Heritage Foundation – Election Fraud Database
  https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

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Do your own research.
Don’t outsource your understanding to headlines, viral clips, or people selling outrage. The information is public, the systems are documented, and the truth is a lot less dramatic—and a lot more useful—than what you’re being told.