Paper, Trust, and Democracy
from Slop Happens Hosted by Claudio Luís Vera and Bianca Prins
Your ballot is secret. Your donation history isn't. Your voter registration isn't. And in the age of algorithmic profiling, the data trail you leave before you vote may matter more than the vote itself. In this episode of Slop Happens, Bianca and Claudio dig into something that doesn't get enough attention: not whether elections get hacked on election night, but how the data surrounding them gets weaponized long before anyone casts a ballot. We walk through how Dutch paper balloting actually works — volunteers, sealed packages, signed-off destruction orders — and why that transparency is the feature, not the bug. We revisit the Tascón List (from Episode 3) and what it tells us about petition signatures, donor records, and the permanent data trails that political acts leave behind. The uncomfortable question: if you signed a petition today, would you be comfortable with it surfacing in a background check ten years from now? Paper isn't a primitive fallback. It's tamper-proof by design. Paper, trust, and democracy — and why all three are harder than they look.
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