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Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

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Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#11
post #2

The adjective form of Democrat is Democratic. Perhaps as a German the author is unaware that usages like "all the democrat votes are ignored" are repeating the Republicans' deliberately insulting word choice. Edit: thanks to currymj below for the link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

"Democratic" is confusing because it could mean either "relating to democracy" or "relating to the Democratic party" whereas "Republican" almost always refers to the party. I don't blame anyone for using a less ambiguous word and this is the first I've heard of "Democrat" being an insult.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#12
What I dislike about a lot of these potential fraud analysis techniques is that if a group that was performing fraud was aware of them, then they would simply perform the fraud 'properly' such that the given technique(s) don't show evidence (since they know what others are looking for and hoping to find, they simply ensure it isn't there).

The same goes for similar techniques like Benford's law: once you know about them, you can improve your sophistication so that no conclusion can be made (There are some interesting exceptions here since most claims of fraud would have one believe that centralized or semi-centralized fraud is much harder to perform than decentralized/random fraud, in which case due to coordination issues, some of these techniques could still bear fruit).

But, the obvious overlaying issue is that the system is broken from the bottom up: there is no authentication, authorization, or encryption. Rather than having random Internet bloggers attempt to detect fraud with the information and tools they have, the system should instead be made secure and robust from the bottom-up, starting with how votes are made, tallied, transported, and so on. Additionally the technologies used, voting machines used, counting methods used, and voting system itself (lacking any ranked-choice or similar options) are all severely lacking modern improvements.

No single person should be counting votes and typing numbers into fields. We should at least try to use some of the multidisciplinary technology developed in the last five or so decades to try to patch this from the bottom-up so that the system is much more robust and auditable for the future, because things are only going to get weirder (honestly, the US election went very smoothly compared to how it gone have gone, imo - there is no better time to prevent future disasters than today).

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#13
post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

Should the vote also be weighted to uphold the interests of other classes of people, like young vs old, or rich vs poor, or bricklayers vs hairdressers?

I consider myself more defined by my age and profession than by my hometown but in an electoral college system it is only that latter fact that affects how a vote is weighted.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#14
post #2

The adjective form of Democrat is Democratic. Perhaps as a German the author is unaware that usages like "all the democrat votes are ignored" are repeating the Republicans' deliberately insulting word choice. Edit: thanks to currymj below for the link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Democratic: Pertaining to democracy; favoring democracy, or constructed upon the principle of government by the people.

Democrat: A supporter of democracy; an advocate of democratic politics.

One adjective for persons another for process. In some cases both would be correct but the meaning will differ.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/democrat https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/democratic

Good, that's consistent with my French and Greek, sorry for checking but your comment really surprised me ! Didn't realize it was a joke until having already checked...

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#15
post #13
post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

Should the vote also be weighted to uphold the interests of other classes of people, like young vs old, or rich vs poor, or bricklayers vs hairdressers? I consider myself more defined by my age and profession than by my hometown but in an electoral college system it is only that latter fact that affects how a vote is weighted.

But the country is not a union of people of different ages and professions, but of different states, technically.

The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones. Without the electoral college, the colonies would not have agreed to unite under a shared federal government.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#16
post #12

What I dislike about a lot of these potential fraud analysis techniques is that if a group that was performing fraud was aware of them, then they would simply perform the fraud 'properly' such that the given technique(s) don't show evidence (since they know what others are looking for and hoping to find, they simply ensure it isn't there). The same goes for similar techniques like Benford's law: once you know about t…

Smart careful criminals are smart and careful. Most criminals are stupid or lazy.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#17
post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

Why don't people in California deserve a means to influence the presidency as much as Montana or DC?

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#18
post #2

The adjective form of Democrat is Democratic. Perhaps as a German the author is unaware that usages like "all the democrat votes are ignored" are repeating the Republicans' deliberately insulting word choice. Edit: thanks to currymj below for the link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

"Democratic" is confusing because it could mean either "relating to democracy" or "relating to the Democratic party" whereas "Republican" almost always refers to the party. I don't blame anyone for using a less ambiguous word and this is the first I've heard of "Democrat" being an insult.

Nobody has ever heard of it other than people looking for something to be offended about.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#19
post #13
post #6

Am I the only centre-left type person in the world who thinks the Electoral College isn't a bad thing (in theory at least). In the Westminster 2-house system in Australia voters vote for representation from their seat. These seats have approximately the same number of people, but they also vote for an upper-house representative and the smaller states are over-represented in terms of population. This is because otherw…

Should the vote also be weighted to uphold the interests of other classes of people, like young vs old, or rich vs poor, or bricklayers vs hairdressers? I consider myself more defined by my age and profession than by my hometown but in an electoral college system it is only that latter fact that affects how a vote is weighted.

I think of it as giving some representation to the land itself (and it's natural resources) as represented by the people who work and live there.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#20
post #12

What I dislike about a lot of these potential fraud analysis techniques is that if a group that was performing fraud was aware of them, then they would simply perform the fraud 'properly' such that the given technique(s) don't show evidence (since they know what others are looking for and hoping to find, they simply ensure it isn't there). The same goes for similar techniques like Benford's law: once you know about t…

The system is secure and robust, at least with regards to the mechanics of individual votings.

Among the main factors is its distributed nature. You just can't run a scam with senior citizen volunteers in thousands of individual precincts.

Then, there are observers. Famous case from this week's election was Republicans complaining that their two dozen(!) observers weren't allowed closer than 6 feet to the ballots.

It would be impossible for fraud to happen on any regular basis and not coming to light. So the incidence of 0.00002% (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/26/15424270/v...) is somewhat informative.

If it were possible to manipulate the vote tabulation in any meaningful way, the GOP wouldn't need to go to all the lengths it does w.r.t. gerrymandering, purging voter roles, coming up with new requirements for voting, or closing voting precincts.

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