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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

#321

Post by Schiendelman »

fastball wrote: post #200
js2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You found one in the 0.00002%. Notably, this occurred during a primary. It's still awful, but the GOP trusts the Democrats to run their own primaries and vice-versa. I wonder how this came to light years after. https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

The problem with fraud is that it's a "victimless" crime, so there could be a lot of fraud going undetected that we just don't know to look for.

There really couldn’t be, no. The mechanisms by which people think there could are easily falsified.

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

#322

Post by Schiendelman »

benmmurphy wrote: post #250
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…

That Wikipedia article is a bit weird because it says fraud allegations and 26 people indicted but no mention of convictions. However, the special grand jury report claims 58 people were convicted and it is very clear that an organised fraud had taken place. https://sites.duke.edu/pjms364s_01_s2016_jaydelancy/files/20...

Update Wikipedia!

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

#323

Post by Schiendelman »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #291
chillwaves wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you commit fraud on the national level?

You don't need to. In the US you can lose the nation by 3 million votes as long as you win 3-4 swing states in the presidential or senate vote -- be it your brother making 538 votes disappear or your staffers creating 203 ballots with your name on it...

It’s really really difficult to do either of those things, especially in vote by mail. In Washington, for instance, I can see who is registered, who voted in a given election, and match that to the vote totals.

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

#324

Post by moduspol »

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…

I'm absolutely willing to accept that very few people are (e.g.) voting twice in different states, filling out ballots mistakenly sent to their address, and similar small-scale stuff. But I do share your skepticism that when the stakes are this high, nobody's trying to meaningfully affect this. Especially this year when anyone could have told you the election will come down to the same small number of states waiting for days to count ballots in a small number of precincts.

We know how well the TSA does because we actually try to send people through with weapons to see how often they get caught. In 2015, the answer is that 95% of weapons get through.

I think we need the same kind of thing for elections. How tough is it to get / remove a few boxes of ballots overnight from wherever they're stored prior to being counted? When you do, is that immediately detected and reported, or is it presumed to be a mistake and just accepted? How many people does it take?

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...

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

#325

Post by matwood »

guscost wrote: post #251
tptacek wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To repeat myself because I think it's worth being clear about this: we have enough insight to know that the premise of ballots being randomized statewide does not hold, at all. The reason we were all hitting refresh on Wasserman and Cohn's feeds on Twitter was that each Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday batch was attributed to a specific county, and we had expectations about what returns in those counties would look li…

This pretty much adds up, and invalidates the whole analysis in my opinion. But I still believe that the first conspicuous batch of mail-in ballots being dumped in the witching hour, after poll watchers were told the counting was done for the night, is fishy , and I will not be surprised if the court considers it part of a larger pattern of behavior which causes ballots (legitimate but unverifiable, in many cases) to…

The first couple days the big counties were counting 24/7. The managers were on TV talking about their teams, and you could watch live streams on many of the counting areas.

The court is likely throwing nothing out. The no poll watcher lawsuit was already laughed out of court when the lawyers had to admit a 'non-zero' number of poll watchers were present the whole time [1]. Trump might be fine lying on Twitter constantly, but in court his lawyers would prefer to not commit perjury.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-check-trumps-claims-poll-w...

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

#326

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #172
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, we do detect a small number of voter fraud cases. People have gone to prison for it. Fair enough, though now I'm wondering why I keep hearing "no shred of evidence of voter fraud" from so many people. > But voter fraud, on the "retail" level, is heavily penalized and extremely unlikely to impact outcomes. There are currently four states (AZ, GA, PA, WI) with less than 1% margin between the candidates. Georgi…

Half a percentage of the AZ vote is over 16,000 votes. See why this crime doesn't make sense?

16,000 votes is only a half a percentage of people in AZ committing voter fraud, and that's assuming they each only submit one fraudulent ballot. Apparently people have been caught submitting dozens of ballots in the names of people they didn't have any right to. If 0.02% of people did that, it flips the state.

You can also make the "doesn't make sense" argument about voting itself, since exactly zero of the states will be decided by a single vote with extremely high probability, but lots of people still voted.

It's not much of a stretch to expect that a fraction of people smaller than the lizardman constant are not doing a diligent cost benefit analysis.

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

#327

Post by moduspol »

benmmurphy wrote: post #262
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…

It is very easy but more costly than a recount to verify the integrity of an election. Auditing relies on the assumption that real voters can be linked to attestations and the aggregate of attestations can be linked to the aggregate of votes. In Australia when you vote in person your named is checked off on the electoral roll. This is an attestations. When you submit an absentee ballot you also fill out a form. This…

It might be tougher in my state because we allowed ballots that were received by mail on Election Day, but without a postmark. One of the accusations of voter fraud includes backdating the postmarks on some number of ballots so they would be counted.

Obviously postmarks weren't created or intended to be cryptographic verification of when something was received anyway.

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

#328

Post by matwood »

moduspol wrote: post #324
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…

I'm absolutely willing to accept that very few people are (e.g.) voting twice in different states, filling out ballots mistakenly sent to their address, and similar small-scale stuff. But I do share your skepticism that when the stakes are this high, nobody's trying to meaningfully affect this. Especially this year when anyone could have told you the election will come down to the same small number of states waiting…

> But I do share your skepticism that when the stakes are this high, nobody's trying to meaningfully affect this.

Thing is, it's much easier to impact the result legally through voter suppression.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54380684

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...

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

#329

Post by jcadam »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #291
chillwaves wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you commit fraud on the national level?

You don't need to. In the US you can lose the nation by 3 million votes as long as you win 3-4 swing states in the presidential or senate vote -- be it your brother making 538 votes disappear or your staffers creating 203 ballots with your name on it...

People are being willfully obtuse when they say the kind of fraud being alleged isn't possible. A certain political party spent that last six months forcing rule changes on swing states vis a vis mail in voting that you can't compare this year's election to any that came before.

Most of the fraud allegations (at least the ones where the numbers would be large enough to make a significant difference) revolve around these unsolicited mail in ballots and the extended deadlines which we've never had before in this country.

And please, kicking out GOP poll watchers (and only GOP poll watchers) and blocking their ability to observe and inspect ballots might not prove fraud took place, but it does prove criminal intent in my eyes, and the eyes of millions of other Americans.

These concerns need to be addressed.

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

#330

Post by moduspol »

matwood wrote: post #328
moduspol wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm absolutely willing to accept that very few people are (e.g.) voting twice in different states, filling out ballots mistakenly sent to their address, and similar small-scale stuff. But I do share your skepticism that when the stakes are this high, nobody's trying to meaningfully affect this. Especially this year when anyone could have told you the election will come down to the same small number of states waiting…

> But I do share your skepticism that when the stakes are this high, nobody's trying to meaningfully affect this. Thing is, it's much easier to impact the result legally through voter suppression. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54380684 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...

That's a separate conversation, though. I agree reducing poll locations can make some people less likely to vote, but it's not in the same category as fraud.
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