Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by jonfw » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

Schiendelman wrote: post #323

MagnumOpus wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's only a handful of states that actually matter in an election. Do we have these numbers for Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania?

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

#352

Post by moduspol » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #337

moduspol wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To commit fraud at the level required though just isn't plausible in a national election. Even in a close state like PA, we're going to end up talking about 45k+ votes. In MI, 100k+ votes, WI 20k+ votes, etc... All these states have mixes of R/Ds running things, and any fraud claims quickly ends up in grand conspiracy fallacy territory. This is not some 1000 vote situation like FL in 2000 (which was actually much mor…

Philadelphia received over 350k mail-in ballots [1]. Biden's current winning margin for the whole state is under 46k [2].

Wayne county (Michigan) received over 430k [3]. He's won Michigan by 148k [2].

In Wisconsin, the margin is just 20k [4], with the most populous county representing 459k votes.

In Georgia--same kind of thing.

Normally I agree with the dismissive "it's so decentralized, you couldn't do it." But it's different this year. Anyone could have predicted that the pro-Trump areas would finish counting faster, and then the pro-Biden areas would have multiple days and nights to count, all in staunchly pro-Biden areas capable of swinging the election. Of course we expected mail-in votes to lean Biden, but that doesn't mean anywhere from 51-99% indicates "no fraud."

I'm not saying any fraud happened. All I'm saying is that it's not rational to presume it couldn't have happened without being detected. And it's worth some efforts to see how well we'd catch it if it were occurring.

[1] https://whyy.org/articles/pa-election-2020-results-thousands...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...

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

#353

Post by save_ferris » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #91

save_ferris wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's perfect, but in principle I don't see it as a bad things that people in say Montana have a means to influence the presidency. Under the electoral college system, voters in so-called swing states have much more influence on the outcome of the election than voters in states with established political supremacy. To your point above, in a system where the popular vote determines the outcome, every pe…

> voters in so-called swing states have much more influence on the outcome of the election than voters in states with established political supremacy I can't imagine any system where there aren't "safe" areas that politicians essentially ignore. Sometimes these "safe" states/areas aren't as safe as they were thought to be (2016 Midwest, 2020 Georgia and Arizona, Texas looks to be heading that way). The Midwest is a p…

> I can't imagine any system where there aren't "safe" areas that politicians essentially ignore.

Of course, when you're campaigning for the support of millions of people in a large country, some areas will be prioritized over others. The problem that swing states create, which we've seen play out on multiple occasions in the US, is that a candidate can win the popular vote by a margin of millions and still ultimately lose the election. It doesn't seem logical that a democratic system exists where the majority winner can still lose the race because of how particular states are weighed in terms of electoral power. With gerrymandering factored in, the system is further skewed to require an even lower vote threshold for a particular party to retain a majority in congress versus another. Compounded, these modifications begin to fundamentally undermine the democratic system, which further discourages voter turnout and participation in the system entirely.

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

#354

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

jrumbut wrote: post #162

sweettea wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Philadelphia, Detroit, and a number of other cities are notoriously slow in counting their ballots. This happens every election that I can remember, going back to 2000. If I had to guess, the complexity of counting may increase in a non-linear way after a certain number of precincts. I'm unconvinced the proportions should be consistent at the state level or any level really. There have been GOTV events that have thou…

> If I had to guess, the complexity of counting may increase in a non-linear way after a certain number of precincts.

I'd bet that the larger counties, while they have more ballot counting machines, probably don't have proportionally more. Expensive, specialized, maintenance-intensive, etc. Every county needs at least one, but beyond that I doubt there is a huge priority on having excess capacity.

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

#355

Post by rootusrootus » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

lki876 wrote: post #289

> The first conclusion has to be that I found no evidence of fraud in any of these elections. Given that people have been convicted of fraud and invalid votes are found, we have learned that either (1) this technique does not find evidence of fraud even when it happens or (2) the fraud that happens is marginal. (2) seems likely, but given the small margins in some swing states, even a relatively small numbers of frau…

What constitutes a small margin? Even in Georgia the margin is just over 10,000 votes. Fraudulently casting that many votes undetected would be a non-trivial task.

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

#356

Post by ryathal » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

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…

Intercepting mail in ballots would be quite difficult and obvious. A far simpler solution would be to simply fill out the request forms that were conveniently mailed out to every voter on the rolls in my state. This led to thousands of households receiving applications for residents that no longer lived at that address

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

#357

Post by lmilcin » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

I think it is naive this is any kind of proof of anything.

The fraud can happen in many ways. It might be a person leaning one way or another thinking they are working for a good cause. Actually, I think making it difficult for people from opposing party to vote is a kind of fraud, made in broad daylight.

Proving absence of fraud is much more difficult than showing there aren't obvious signs of it.

BUT, and here is important thing, this is really a question of burden of proof, and in this case it is on the accuser. In absence of proof it is assumed voting was legitimate. Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.

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

#358

Post by tcgv » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

rjmunro wrote: post #317

tcgv wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, a blockchain based voting system would allow individual voters to ensure that their votes haven't been tampered with, without breaking anonymity. If one or more voters fail to check their vote registered in the blockchain, they could submit a complain providing their voting key and voting receipt (this receipt could be any proof of vote, like a public verifiable signature provided by the blockchain at the ti…

The main reason you can't force people to vote for you is that once they get in the polling booth, no one knows how they specifically voted. If you allow people to "check their vote" later, an attacker could verify that they voted in the way the attacker wanted.

You're right, this approach would require a strong protection against deanonymization of votes, which could allow attackers to guess who voted for each candidate, for instance according to voting time and location.

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

#359

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

FeeJai wrote: post #272

Ok, so let's look what Merkel did what would never be possible in the US according to that post (and by the authors opinion proves that the US is so much more on the right than Germany): > In the 2008 financial crisis (and now again) the government paid part of workers’ wages to save jobs (Kurzarbeit) Trump went even further and sent checks directly to every taxpayer. > She stopped mandatory military service US got r…

[deleted]

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

#360

Post by matwood » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #352

matwood wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To commit fraud at the level required though just isn't plausible in a national election. Even in a close state like PA, we're going to end up talking about 45k+ votes. In MI, 100k+ votes, WI 20k+ votes, etc... All these states have mixes of R/Ds running things, and any fraud claims quickly ends up in grand conspiracy fallacy territory. This is not some 1000 vote situation like FL in 2000 (which was actually much mor…

Philadelphia received over 350k mail-in ballots [1]. Biden's current winning margin for the whole state is under 46k [2]. Wayne county (Michigan) received over 430k [3]. He's won Michigan by 148k [2]. In Wisconsin, the margin is just 20k [4], with the most populous county representing 459k votes. In Georgia--same kind of thing. Normally I agree with the dismissive "it's so decentralized, you couldn't do it." But it's…

So you're arguing that absentee ballot by mail is the problem? None of the states in question did automatic mail in voting. Each voter had to apply for absentee. And given the politicization of the pandemic, Trump made it a virtue signal to vote day-of in person. So of course the absentee vote was heavily D, and it came in from heavily D areas to start.

I voted absentee and honestly it felt more secure than any in person voting I've ever done. I had to apply, fill out, and then drop off my vote in a box. My wife wasn't even allowed to drop off my vote, and instead I had to do it personally. I was then able to track it online and verify it was counted without an issue. Contrast this to when I hit some buttons in person and have no idea what happens after that. The point is, you have to trust the process at some point, and in this case fraud is so unlikely across multiple states with 10s of thousands of votes.