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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

#101

Post by tastyfreeze »

TheDong wrote: post #61
tastyfreeze wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are all states that should have an equal say in what president is elected. A republic of states is beholden to the states. Each state is beholden to its population.

Federal law impacts all citizens. It doesn't just make laws concerning the states. Why should a man in wyoming's opinion on what federal laws I should live under count 70x as much as mine? Why should a minority of the country make a decision that impacts the majority of people?

Your vote counts just as much as the other people in your state. You are voting for who your state thinks the president should be. You have never voted for the president directly.

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

#102

Post by js2 »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #69
anonu wrote: post #67

I think arguably the electoral process makes fraud harder. If the goal was to tip the scales, in a popular vote you could basically do this anywhere across the country. But in an EV system, you would need to pick and choose 1 or probably more places (vulnerabilities) to attack to tilt things in your favor

Great point. I don't know why some states all of the sudden want to trust the others' voting systems. One state could choose to go electronic with no paper trail, for example, and we all know that's a bad idea. Voter fraud does not happen on any sort of wide scale. Election fraud could.

One of many bills introduced to address those concerns:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/154...

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

#104

Post by elcritch »

maxerickson wrote: post #64
tastyfreeze wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are all states that should have an equal say in what president is elected. A republic of states is beholden to the states. Each state is beholden to its population.

So take a step back. Why would (the people of/in) California and Texas and so on choose to support such a republic? As it is you've defined a circle. "It's a republic so it should be run based just on the borders of the constituents".

Primarily because the original states were sovereign before creating the union, and they formed a republic that maintains some level of autonomy for states, as the people in those states wouldn't want to loose their sovereignty completely. California and Texas joined because the benefits of the larger union outweighed staying independent (no doubt Texas second guesses that at moments). Fast forward a hundred odd years, and the system while somewhat unfair on a per count vote still at the federal level still allows for greater overall autonomy for citizens of different states. California can and does use its clout and local autonomy to make laws that its population wants (e.g. car emissions standards) without forcing the same on the rest without more effort. It's also why the increase in federal power and presidentialism in both major parties leads to less overall individual autonomy and control, IMHO. Even with a direct 1-1 vote count, a single vote for a president out of a 100+ million votes has much less effect than the same vote for a governor in a state with a population of even tens of millions of people. Generally, the federal government should only make laws that need to or can only be made nationally. The rest should be state level. Its less efficient but generally considered more robust. Also, to a degree the idea of a republic of states implies that the 4 million people of LA cant readily "group-think" the rest of the people in the union into whatever laws enable or inhibit whatever lifestyle/beliefs/etc they want via the federal government. In that sense it maximizes the fairness of "tribes of people" slightly over that of single individuals, which seems consistent for a republic rather than a more direct democracy.

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

#105

Post by maxerickson »

mistermann wrote: post #76
maxerickson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, interested parties observe the process. It's relatively party based (where parties have better access). https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/polici... It's relatively difficult to pull off hoodwink when you've got adversarial observers standing there.

> In practice, interested parties observe the process. On paper, interested parties are supposed to observe the process. What actually happens in physical reality does not always match the guidelines laid out on paper. > It's relatively difficult to pull off hoodwink when you've got adversarial observers standing there. I read assurances about what happens in physical reality on a regular basis. Often, these assuranc…

There's lots of right wing media that said other shit. in unison is just not true.

I think you are overstating other stuff also, but meh.

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

#106

Post by nl »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #30
nl wrote: 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…

This entirely vacuous argument is surprisingly popular. Possibly because it gets mixed up with a related, more convincing one. It can never be right to assign the majority of power to a minority of voters. If giving that power to the majority means they can only govern for the majority, then the opposite also holds true: governments elected by a minority can govern for only that minority. And that would seem to be ev…

Whilst I don't agree with you calling this a vacuous argument I think you do make some useful points.

> It can never be right to assign the majority of power to a minority of voters.

Agreed in principle. Although how this works in a presidential system where there is only one President, it's unclear why someone with 70 million and 1 votes should get 100% of the power and the person with 70 million gets zero.

> There is an argument for the minority to have some powers.

Agreed, and I think the veto and supermajority powers are good examples.

> And your arguments about the the higher value of rural populations is equally ridiculous. "One person one vote" is a fundamental principle, and for every oh-so-important-farmer in Montana

I don't think they are as ridiculous as you make out. I'll let the arguments made in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority stand for themselves.

I'd note that many democratic countries put in place specific representation for under-represented minorities, and that isn't generally seen as awarding the presidency to the minority.

> Tying political power to land isn't democracy, it's feudalism.

This sounds right, but it's important to note this isn't the same thing.

This isn't about allowing only landowners to vote. I'd argue very very strongly against that!

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

#107

Post by sanp »

guscost wrote: post #94

Here’s someone who did analysis of 2020 NYT time-series data, and is trying to make a case that the currently-contested states show odd patterns. Note that this would be circumstantial evidence at best , but still a little fishy when compared with the timeline: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1325592112428163072.html I made a GitHub repo of this analysis ported to Python3, with a quickstart and a matplotlib script…

This is extremely poor analysis. All the "anomalies" are explained by the fact that the ballots came from Dem heavy areas...

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

#108

Post by rayiner »

maxerickson wrote: post #49
tastyfreeze wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking that maybe states should get an equal number of electoral votes. We would get the protection of the electoral college and every state would have an equal say.

That would be less democratic (small d) than the current system. Do you have some reason that Wyoming should actually have an equal say with New York or Texas or Florida or California?

It would dissuade big states from trying to get all of their policy goals done at the federal level, which would be a good thing.

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

#109

Post by nl »

enjeyw wrote: post #44
nl wrote: 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…

I think there's two difference that make it less problematic in Australia: - The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US President - Senate seats aren't distributed per-state on a "winner takes all basis" - rather in rough proportion to the number of votes each party gets. This means that smaller states with outsized influence are still going to be electing a mix of representatives…

> The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US President

This is true, but the non-representitive effects on the Australian senate are much higher than in the electoral college.

> Senate seats aren't distributed per-state on a "winner takes all basis" - rather in rough proportion to the number of votes each party gets.

No argument with this at all - I think most kinds of voting that aren't first-past-the-post (ranked choice etc) are better.

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

#110

Post by rayiner »

TheDong wrote: post #61
tastyfreeze wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are all states that should have an equal say in what president is elected. A republic of states is beholden to the states. Each state is beholden to its population.

Federal law impacts all citizens. It doesn't just make laws concerning the states. Why should a man in wyoming's opinion on what federal laws I should live under count 70x as much as mine? Why should a minority of the country make a decision that impacts the majority of people?

Because federal law is only supposed to be a very small part of the law that applies to people.
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