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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

#221

Post by Buttons840 »

throwaway3846 wrote: post #216

> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/declaration-of-non-depende... > > Some cheating leaves barely a shadow of evidence. In other cases, the evidence is massive. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead…

This reminded me of a hypothetical situation I thought of.

There's a town of 1,000 people. They have an election. One person wins by 100 votes. It is later found and proven that 99 of the votes for the winner were fraudulent. Who should win then? Who should be elected?

Clearly a lot of fraud went one way. If we look at it probabilistically, then the other candidate (the one who didn't benefit from fraud) should win, because most likely there were other votes that were also fraudulent. And yet, by electing the other candidate, you are ignoring a couple votes that were never proven to be fraudulent, which begs the question: exactly whose votes were thrown away and what is the justification for throwing them away?

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

#222

Post by tempestn »

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…

It's an even more extraordinary claim that widespread fraud did occur—a claim Trump was making in advance, before the votes were even cast, and continued to make, as expected. What I'm seeing from most media outlets are not claims that it didn't or couldn't occur, but simply that Trump is making the accusation without any evidence. Add to that the fact that he's been claiming fraud before the election even started, and it's pretty clear this was his strategy all along to cast doubt on an election he expected to lose (just like in 2016).

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

#223

Post by dragonwriter »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #143
TheDong wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains. Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country? This is a dark path to tread.

> Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't even remove unequal, state-based voting power, which is greatest in the Senate, not the Electoral College.

But direct popular election of the President doesn't impact state sovereignty, which is a matter of Constitutional limits on the federal government and guarantees to the states, which the states control changes to via the amendment process.

> Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country?

Why would states remain in the union if their citizens had only an equal voice?

Why do California and New York remain in the union when their citizens are denied an equal voice, and the states whose citizens are given a greater voice consistently drain their resources?

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

#224

Post by btilly »

xyzzyz wrote: post #211
guildwriter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twisted things being done in our elections goes back to Tammany Hall. If you know where to look in American history it's not hard to find credible instances of important elections having substantial amounts of fraud. Why do people believe that when the chips are down and vast amounts of money and power are at stake that people are simply going to play fair? Especially when the players are some of the most ruthless, n…

This "Chicago political machine" was later shown to have committed voter fraud in 1982. 26 people were convicted[1], and here's the grand jury report[2]. They had been getting away with it, until they didn't. Fortunately, as media reassure us, today voting fraud simply cannot happen: you'd need a whole conspiracy of dozens of people, a real, as one could call it, machine. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Illi…

Fortunately, as media reassure us, today voting fraud simply cannot happen: you'd need a whole conspiracy of dozens of people, a real, as one could call it, machine.

This I find impossible to believe.

How hard is it to intercept mail-in ballots, sign them, then mail them in? Who knows that you did so? I personally find it very implausible that in both elections that Trump was in he produced results about 3% better than polls indicated he would. And both times alleged that the other side was cheating. So much so that pollsters are engaged with asking how they are so wrong when Trump is on the ballot.

You know the old saw that cheaters always accuse others of cheating? What does that suggest about Trump?

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

#225

Post by chillwaves »

xyzzyz wrote: post #211
guildwriter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twisted things being done in our elections goes back to Tammany Hall. If you know where to look in American history it's not hard to find credible instances of important elections having substantial amounts of fraud. Why do people believe that when the chips are down and vast amounts of money and power are at stake that people are simply going to play fair? Especially when the players are some of the most ruthless, n…

This "Chicago political machine" was later shown to have committed voter fraud in 1982. 26 people were convicted[1], and here's the grand jury report[2]. They had been getting away with it, until they didn't. Fortunately, as media reassure us, today voting fraud simply cannot happen: you'd need a whole conspiracy of dozens of people, a real, as one could call it, machine. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Illi…

How do you commit fraud on the national level?

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

#226

Post by tempestn »

guscost wrote: post #188
tptacek wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Narrator: It wasn't simply pressing a button. https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/software-glitch-causes-dela... Again: we watched the ballots come in from Georgia. They came in county-by-county, in partisan-leaning lumps. There was a running joke on Twitter on Wednesday about people who have never been to Georgia suddenly acting like they knew where Clayton County was. It was a whole shared cultural experience! I'm sti…

So you're saying one county, with ~80,000 delayed votes, ~60% of which were for Biden, completely eliminates Georgia as a counterexample here? I don't have a good spider-sense for this kind of number crunching so I'd have to do some math. > It's fine if you're not paying attention, but way less fine to build a narrative about voter fraud based on it. I have not been claiming there is anything to this theory, but it i…

The gaslighting happening here is the accusation of widespread fraud without any evidence, based on the kinds of intentional misunderstandings tptacek spent so much effort laying out for you.

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

#227

Post by tptacek »

tempestn wrote: post #226
guscost wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying one county, with ~80,000 delayed votes, ~60% of which were for Biden, completely eliminates Georgia as a counterexample here? I don't have a good spider-sense for this kind of number crunching so I'd have to do some math. > It's fine if you're not paying attention, but way less fine to build a narrative about voter fraud based on it. I have not been claiming there is anything to this theory, but it i…

The gaslighting happening here is the accusation of widespread fraud without any evidence, based on the kinds of intentional misunderstandings tptacek spent so much effort laying out for you.

For what it's worth, my "you" upthread was meant to be rhetorical, to refer to the batshit Twitter thread, but I can see how it would have been taken as personal. I mean, I still think we should all be able to quickly and decisively agree that the thread was, well, batshit. But I wasn't trying to confront anyone commenting on HN.

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

#228

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #51
joshuaheard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw the same thing. He says Democrats won't vote in California because they know they are going to win, and Democrats don't vote in Texas because they know they are going to lose. I think it would apply equally to both parties. I was surprised to see this article on HN, since most other statistical election fraud analyses I have seen are being dismissed as conspiracy theories. Facebook even censored one of them. I'…

The issue is that the US has not officially selected a President yet. So Facebook, Twitter etc are being prudent and not allowing misinformation until that is the case. And I've yet to see any fraud analysis that is coming from reputable sources i.e. not Gateway Pundit or 4chan so it makes sense to err on the side of caution.

[deleted]

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

#229

Post by btilly »

guscost wrote: post #128
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…

Sure, but the analysis is supposedly showing even vote-by-mail trending toward R in other states, explained by the hypothesis that mail from more outlying areas tended to arrive later. The observed discontinuities in the contested states could be explained simply by the sequence in which these states processed their mail-in ballots (i.e. ballots mailed from cities were processed later), but the fact that so many of t…

You know, if you had been following 538, none of this was either mysterious or unexpected.

The challenge is that the vote counting got behind. Specifically in most places it got behind in major cities. Which voted more D than R, even among mail-in ballots (which already lean more D than R than in person voting in most states - Arizona being a notable exception).

As soon as you correct for where the ballots are from rather than guessing that it is all rural, the discrepancy disappears. But that's inconvenient for a disinformation campaign so gets lost.

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

#230

Post by mistermann »

aw1621107 wrote: post #191
mistermann wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Michigan case was dismissed by the judge ------------------------------------ Thor Hearne, an attorney for the Trump campaign, said he wanted an order directing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to require "meaningful access" for campaign poll watchers to the counting of state ballots, plus access to videotaped surveillance of ballot drop boxes installed around the state after Oct. 1. Michigan Court of Claims Judge…

> The president’s campaign argued that his supporters weren’t being allowed to monitor the tallying of mail-in ballots, but U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond instead argued the two sides to come to an agreement. Just a note on this; (part of?) the reason Judge Diamond asked the two sides to come to an agreement is because the plaintiffs admitted they already had observers in the room [0]: > During the hearing, a lawye…

Ok, now this is much more convincing, thank you for posting it.

I swear, it's like a significant portion of the media is designed to sow dissent and outrage in society. If the links provided were questionable looking you might think twoice, but Detroit Free Press and CBSLocal at least sound like mainstream publications to me. Although considering the quality of their stories I guess that's not saying much.

I honestly think it's highly questionable whether the unique combination of variables the USA has going on is sustainable much longer in this age, I think something's gotta give.

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