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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

#151

Post by yongjik »

Terrario wrote: post #70
yongjik wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? No, California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter. In fact, even Democrats in CA and Republicans in MT have zero voice - because these states' outcome is predetermined, no presidential candidate ha…

Your argument doesn’t follow. It sounds like you have a problem with the winner takes all system in us elections and not the electorate. Conservative voices in Cali and Liberal voices in Texas would be more relevant in a proportional system and not a winner takes all. These would be particularly relevant for states with split populations. > No places should control an election. People should. You say this but you don…

> removing the electoral college today would guarantee that certain places (coastal/densely urbanized states) control the election.

You're still arguing in terms of places. Coastal urbanized states will "control the election" only in the sense that they have the majority of population and their average preference will have greater influence than the rest, when you average the whole area. In other words, they will control the election in the same way "people living to the south of Minneapolis" or "people who ordered Chinese food in the past year" will control the election.

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

#153

Post by bootcampwhere »

Great effort, interesting perspective. What a lot of people miss is the purpose of the election college and the fact that it is working exactly as designed, framing it as "voter suppression" is an unfortunate way to frame it.

The founders anticipated most people living in cities and so used the college to give more weight to rural votes. It can be argued they miscalibrated but America would be much less conservative if we decided the presidency by popular vote. Change the system and you'll be handing the country over to city dealers, the fact that people that live in cities call themselves Democrats in cities DOES NOT mean there is voter suppression of democrats.

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

#154

Post by guscost »

tptacek wrote: post #142
guscost wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mail-ins took longer to count, because unlike in Florida, they couldn't be counted early. So what you were watching as time went on was large tranches of mail-in ballots that took forever to count coming in from D-heavy areas (or from areas where Biden outperformed Clinton, and where the mail returns were, like everywhere, more D than the election day returns). So if I understand correctly, you're saying that t…

Here's another thing to look at: the Florida time series starts on election day. But vote counting Florida didn't start on election day . The state was allowed (because they are smart about this) to start counting 23 days in advance of e-day. The author of this thread is unaware of that, and has been fooled by Florida's efficiency into believing that vote returns are uniform everywhere. But that wasn't true in PA, wh…

Interesting, that's probably a big factor. Counterexample: Georgia, which started processing mail-in ballots 15 days before e-day (as far as I can tell): https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-...

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

#155

Post by js2 »

okaram wrote: post #146
js2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think arguably the electoral process makes fraud easier. If the goal was to tip the scales, in an electoral vote, the election is very close in the tipping point state, which is usually predictable ahead of the election. In 2016, you'd only have had to add 45K votes in PA. Conversely, if the vote were national, you'd have had to add 3M votes.

Maybe ... actually in 2016 you'd have needed PA,MI,WI (and actually know with certainty those would have been the tipping point states, for which MI,WI at least weren't supposed to be that close, if I remember correctly)

There’s only a single tipping point state. It’s the one that puts you over 270 EV. In 2016, it was PA. I agree knowing which swing state is going to be the tipping point state can be harder to predict, but even if you have to spread your bet, it’s still fewer votes to sway than the popular vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping-point_state

Aside: the EC came close to being abolished in 1970.

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolis...

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

#156

Post by tptacek »

guscost wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another thing to look at: the Florida time series starts on election day. But vote counting Florida didn't start on election day . The state was allowed (because they are smart about this) to start counting 23 days in advance of e-day. The author of this thread is unaware of that, and has been fooled by Florida's efficiency into believing that vote returns are uniform everywhere. But that wasn't true in PA, wh…

Interesting, that's probably a big factor. Counterexample: Georgia, which started processing mail-in ballots 15 days before e-day (as far as I can tell): https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/battleground-states-process-...

Georgia does limited preprocessing of ballots before e-day, to catch and report invalid ballots, but can't count until the day.

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

#157

Post by guscost »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #148
adjkant wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reductively easy to see that the basic premise is incredibly flawed here: that ballots are uniformly shuffled in all states. Some very basic things that would cause those exact shifts in the data witnessed: 1. Mail vs Drop Box could very easily have a different ratio, which would easily explain a sharp shift if they counted them in different sets for some states when it's a plateau and a hard line jump. 2. S…

> With no shred evidence of voter fraud at any level I feel like this is actually the most suspicious thing here. In a country of over 300 million, in one of the most contentious elections in living memory, not one person was found to have committed voter fraud? It seems more likely that we're just terrible at detecting voter fraud rather than that there were literally zero instances of voter fraud anywhere. Which im…

Well for example there are a more than a few definitely dead people who vote each election, that's pretty easy to show. But finding the, uh, living person who did the fraud is not always easy.

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

#158

Post by tptacek »

guscost wrote: post #157
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With no shred evidence of voter fraud at any level I feel like this is actually the most suspicious thing here. In a country of over 300 million, in one of the most contentious elections in living memory, not one person was found to have committed voter fraud? It seems more likely that we're just terrible at detecting voter fraud rather than that there were literally zero instances of voter fraud anywhere. Which im…

Well for example there are a more than a few definitely dead people who vote each election, that's pretty easy to show. But finding the, uh, living person who did the fraud is not always easy.

Dead people will vote in every election that allows absentee ballots, because people die after they mail their ballot but before election day. Atomicity. It's a bitch.

Every state has an electronic pollbook that tracks voter eligibility. Votes for dead people will arrive, but they should not as a rule be counted.

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

#159

Post by rndgermandude »

yongjik wrote: post #60
Terrario wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? Cali and NY make up almost a third of the electoral votes. Is it really fair for these two places to control and dictate the policies of a country spread as far and wide as the US? Hasnt the blue/red divide, not only in the country but within states themselves show that the desires and attitudes of people are heavily influenced by…

> California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? No, California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter. In fact, even Democrats in CA and Republicans in MT have zero voice - because these states' outcome is predetermined, no presidential candidate ha…

>No, California [...] always vote Democrat

Except 1988, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972 and so on. Aka in my lifetime (yes, I am old).

Georgia always votes Republican, except in this election (probably) or when Carter is running.

An acquaintance who hails from Indiana recently told me Indiana always votes for the Republican candidate, and was surprised to find out Obama took Indiana in 2008.

The Rust belt is deeply blue, except in 2016 when it was more purple with a tint of red.

Kennedy defeated Nixon in Georgia and New York and Nevada, but not in California. (And New York had more electoral votes than California until 1972).

The South used to be Democrat. The West used to be Republican. Except again when Johnson, Nixon, Reagan took essentially the entire nation.

Another example: Support for gay marriage between 1996 and now went from 68% opposition to 67% support. Proposition 8 in 2008 banning gay marriage in California was accepted by Californian voters just 12 years ago with 52% voting against gay marriage, and only 5 years later in 2013 that opposition had dwindled to 34%.

Even parties change: Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump with many stops in between. Demoncrats went from the party in favor of slavery and segregation to the party that claims to be all about racial/gender/sexuality justice.

Demographic and ideological shifts do occur regularly, often at a sluggish speed but sometimes quite quickly.

My point: don't say always.

(That isn't too say that I am in support of the electoral collage or the first-past-the-post voting system resulting in a defacto two party oligarchy; both are bad in my humble opinion).

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

#160

Post by guscost »

tptacek wrote: post #158
guscost wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for example there are a more than a few definitely dead people who vote each election, that's pretty easy to show. But finding the, uh, living person who did the fraud is not always easy.

Dead people will vote in every election that allows absentee ballots, because people die after they mail their ballot but before election day. Atomicity. It's a bitch. Every state has an electronic pollbook that tracks voter eligibility. Votes for dead people will arrive, but they should not as a rule be counted.

There are definitely a few dead people who register to vote after dying, and successfully vote, in every election too.
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