Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

probablydance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 467 posts

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

#231

Post by unityByFreedom »

js2 wrote: post #102
unityByFreedom wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Thank you for informing me about that. Still, the main problem with our elections IMO is the ease with which misinformation spreads online via social media. Dumping the EC does nothing to address that and it feels like a scapegoat. Like how we were diverted from caring about net neutrality and Comcast etc. to caring about FAANG monopolies.

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

#232

Post by roenxi »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #20
ve55 wrote: 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…

> It would be impossible for fraud to happen on any regular basis and not coming to light. So the incidence of 0.00002% is somewhat informative.

Individual fraud, sure. But treating 0.00002% as some sort of tolerance on the election results strikes me as likely bullshit. That is nearly 7 9s levels of precision. The electoral system is fault tolerant, but it is not 7-9s accurate. Boxes of ballots will go missing, and it seems very likely that there are polling places out in the countryside that are compromised for whatever reason. There is going to be background error and it just isn't being detected because of lax standards.

Furthermore an argument that boils down to "we don't need to secure this system because we aren't detecting any breaches" is farcical. That raises the same alarm bells as a company deriding GAAP standards and accounting because they are old and boring.

But in context of this election, Biden won the popular vote by >4 million votes and it appears the overrides built in via the electoral college didn't trigger. To get that overturned there would need to be very, very real evidence of systemic mass fraud.

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

#233

Post by guscost »

chaz72 wrote: post #205
guscost wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then you can definitely name one.

The funniest one I’ve heard so far is Joe Frazier. The birthday apparently matches, but this may have to wait to be confirmed in court: https://www.bigtrial.net/2020/11/smokin-joe-frazier-among-22...

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

#234

Post by guscost »

torvusbog wrote: post #196
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.

The "dead people" vote is a myth spawned as a result of technical issues, and is noted and discredited in voter fraud studies. State run voter rolls often didn't require DOB in past or continue to leave it optional in certain circumstances, causing the DOB to be represented as 0 AD, or 1970 AD, or some other spurious result. Even the Steve Bannon funded GAI study on voter fraud[1], which has been discredited, made th…

Here’s one with a DOB that matches Joe Frazier’s actual DOB: https://www.bigtrial.net/2020/11/smokin-joe-frazier-among-22...

And look, I’m not saying this is a significant factor or anything, but we’re arguing about it now so whatever.

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

#235

Post by guscost »

piva00 wrote: post #195
guscost wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How many on average?

Not many, surely. Perhaps even single digits.

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

#236

Post by kart23 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #20
ve55 wrote: 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…

https://www.rollcall.com/2019/04/22/mueller-report-russia-ha...

https://www.voanews.com/2020-usa-votes/us-confirms-iran-hack...

Voter registration databases. If you get access, you can send extremely targeted messaging at a huge amount of people. I wouldn't put it past someone to find key counties and cities, and take a number of actions to influence the vote.

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

#237

Post by theplague42 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #219
majormajor wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe "population centers directing the country" is a bigger problem than "arbitrary historical boundaries directing the country?" If you replace the euphemism "population centers" with the word "people" you get "the problem of people directing the country"... which doesn't sound like a problem to me compared to the minority direction we have today.

People in population centers tend to think similarly due to a similar environment. What a city desires in the nation's leader does not necessarily align with rural voters. You must see the danger in a few, albeit large, groups having the majority of the population. Say LA and New York decide that a communist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents outside the cities stand up against that in an…

Do you think that's a bigger issue than 2000 and 2016 where more people voted for the other guy?

Also, wouldn't rural areas have the same problem? And probably even worse due to less diversity?

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

#238

Post by chaz72 »

guscost wrote: post #233
chaz72 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you can definitely name one.

The funniest one I’ve heard so far is Joe Frazier. The birthday apparently matches, but this may have to wait to be confirmed in court: https://www.bigtrial.net/2020/11/smokin-joe-frazier-among-22...

Never heard of this source - I hope it’s okay in this time of misinformation to ask for a recognizable source?

Edit: I mean I am okay with leaving it as “somebody on the internet says”, but wondered if the evidence was more clear than that.

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

#239

Post by gwd »

btilly wrote: post #224
xyzzyz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> How hard is it to intercept mail-in ballots, sign them, then mail them in? Who knows that you did so?

Well first of all, the person who was supposed to get the mail-in ballot in the first place. In Michigan, you can check to see whether they've received your mail-in ballot.

Don't you think that if 100k Republicans in Michigan didn't receive their ballot at all, but checked and found that they had been registered as having voted, we'd be hearing about that?

> 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.

I find this highly suspicious too. In 2016 it might have been the "Shy Tory" effect, but the Trump voters in 2020 didn't seem at all shy to me.

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

#240

Post by kjaftaedi »

maxerickson wrote: post #46
ve55 wrote: 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…

What 'modern improvements' can be made over paper ballots?

Introduce a machine to print the ballot once candidates are selected.

Voters take their properly formatted ballot, verify the information is correct, and drop it in a box.

Machines should be able to do recounts quickly, and the paper trail receipts can be verified.

No more having to worry about the different mistakes people make on their forms, and counts and recounts would be much faster and require less effort.

Post reply on HN