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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

#111

Post by tptacek »

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…

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year.

Further, any analysis that compares returns over time and holds Florida up as the model state to match against needs to account for the fact that Florida was able to begin counting ballots early, because they passed state laws to do so†. PA and WI were legally prevented from counting ballots until election day. The returns over time are going to be much different in FL than in PA.

Here's another data point: you're about to see Biden's lead in New York open up and drive his popular vote victory even higher, because NY, which is a shitshow, is only now getting started counting all the mail-in votes. Obviously, the Democratic Party didn't launch a giant vote fraud operation in New York State, which they would have won even with a dead candidate.

† Every state should be like Florida, in this regard.

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

#112

Post by TheDong »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #101
TheDong wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm aware of that fact.

I'm hopeful the popular vote interstate compact[0] will get adopted by enough states to make it so each person's vote counts equally.

What you suggested above is a way to weight citizen's vote's even less equally than they do now, which is what I was responding to. The situation we have now is bad too, imo, but better than each state having an equal vote, irrespective of population.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

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

#113

Post by cma »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #89
maxerickson wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Yes that is how it should be. Each state has different interests. By having electoral votes based on population we are not avoiding the problem of population centers directing the country. How is electing a president different than votes for a constitutional amendment? Each state gets one vote there.

D.C. gets presidential votes I thought?

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

#114

Post by krastanov »

tptacek wrote: post #111
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…

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year. Further, any analy…

edit: OP expanded their post and my comment below is now inconsequential and even misleading.

While I do not find the analysis particularly strong, it does not have the premise you describe. It only has the premise that the mail-in ballots are randomly shuffled before their counting starts (which is also not a reliable claim).

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

#115

Post by nl »

gameman144 wrote: post #98
nanny wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should their voices be amplified while mine (in a rural part of NJ) is muffled? Why should the same persons vote be five times more powerful in Wyoming compared to if they lived in California? Why should we disenfranchise the millions of Trump voters in New York and millions of Biden voters in Texas? What about all the cities in red states and the rural areas in dense ones? I don't see a single good reason for th…

I think this is a better argument for proportional allocation of electoral votes per state instead of winner-take-all (a la Nebraska), rather than arguing against the electoral college itself. If you feel Trump voters' voices are muffled in NY or Biden voters' voices are muffled in Texas, I agree wholeheartedly and would be strongly in favor of proportional allotment of electors at the state level. The electoral coll…

> The top four states have roughly a third of the national population; if federal policy were enacted purely by population, why shouldn't they allocate all federal funds to themselves and deprive other states entirely? The Senate and the electoral college give enough of an advantage to small states that, even though no one or two small states are liable to flip an election by themselves, they are still able to have a voice in federal policy by coalition-building.

I think this explains my point very well. Thanks

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

#116

Post by sweettea »

tptacek wrote: post #111
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…

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year. Further, any analy…

No, the premise is that mailin ballots should have a roughly uniform D/R ratio, no matter what timeslice of a state you look at. Of course they skew, but the idea is that the first mailins counted should have basically the same ratio as the last. Which appears true in most states, but not some, for unknown reasons.

(The skew it proposes as normal, R later in time due to receiving R ballots on a later distribution, exposes an assumption it makes: that counting is in order of ballots received.)

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

#117

Post by tptacek »

krastanov wrote: post #114
tptacek wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year. Further, any analy…

edit: OP expanded their post and my comment below is now inconsequential and even misleading. While I do not find the analysis particularly strong, it does not have the premise you describe. It only has the premise that the mail-in ballots are randomly shuffled before their counting starts (which is also not a reliable claim).

I could be misreading it, but I don't think I am; for instance, the bit in the middle, about how the batches should be getting more Republican as time goes on and returns come in from rural counties (also: not how it works).

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

#118

Post by tptacek »

sweettea wrote: post #116
tptacek wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year. Further, any analy…

No, the premise is that mailin ballots should have a roughly uniform D/R ratio, no matter what timeslice of a state you look at. Of course they skew, but the idea is that the first mailins counted should have basically the same ratio as the last. Which appears true in most states, but not some, for unknown reasons. (The skew it proposes as normal, R later in time due to receiving R ballots on a later distribution, ex…

They're not all counted at once. You watched the returns come in drop-by-drop in PA, and each was attributed to counties and precincts. You are not going to see a uniform D/R ratio between a drop from Carbon County and a drop from Allegheny County.

This is so basic --- you had to have not watched the PA returns come in at all to not know it --- that I read this twice, figuring that I had to have misunderstood what the thread was saying. But I don't think I am; I think this person believes that the mail-in process randomizes the ballots statewide.

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

#120

Post by function_seven »

sanp wrote: post #107
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...

And even if you accept that some shuffling occurs in the mail system, it's not nearly enough to homogenize the entire mail-in ballot intake.

Certain sorting centers (i.e. the first 3 digits of a collection of ZIP codes) are still going to have drastically different demographics than others. So as trays of mail arrive, and are stacked up in the tabulation centers, they're likely to stay clumped together.

It is completely unsurprising that a very large batch of mail-in ballots, arriving in one transport, are going to show a high ratio of D/R votes compared to other batches of mail-in votes. Knowing where the voters in each batch live will explain the differences.

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