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

Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 889 posts

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#121

Post by anderskaseorg »

superb-owl wrote: post #90
jandrese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely going to be used as proof that Trump won in a landslide in 2020 and all of the poll watchers nationwide are in the (((Democrats))) pockets. > some straightforward cryptographic scheme Anybody who designs cryptographic systems is LOLing right now.

I'm not talking about inventing a new method for encryption. I'm talking about something along the lines of: * Every registered voter gets an encryption key * When you vote, your vote is encrypted with the key * A list of everyone who voted, along with their encrypted vote, is semi-publicly available (like current voter registration lists [1]) * Anyone can check who they're registered as having voted for (but the enc…

The contradiction at the heart of the problem with cryptographically verifiable elections is that, if you make it possible for a voter to prove to others how they voted, you make it possible for their vote to be bought or coerced.

There are zero-knowledge cryptographic constructions that may theoretically allow you to prove things to a voter without allowing them to prove it to others. But doing this in practice with voters who aren’t cryptographers, and whose personal devices get hacked and stolen, has proved to be a difficult problem.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#122

Post by yegle »

eljimmy wrote: post #107
padjo wrote: post #37

Just for context it seems The guy he bribed (i.e. the one who actually did the stuffing) was convicted in March 2020. So this isn’t exactly fresh news.

Interestingly I can't find any news about his sentencing. Did it ever occur?

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele... linked from the article.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#124

Post by adolph »

superb-owl wrote: post #90
jandrese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely going to be used as proof that Trump won in a landslide in 2020 and all of the poll watchers nationwide are in the (((Democrats))) pockets. > some straightforward cryptographic scheme Anybody who designs cryptographic systems is LOLing right now.

I'm not talking about inventing a new method for encryption. I'm talking about something along the lines of: * Every registered voter gets an encryption key * When you vote, your vote is encrypted with the key * A list of everyone who voted, along with their encrypted vote, is semi-publicly available (like current voter registration lists [1]) * Anyone can check who they're registered as having voted for (but the enc…

Please state requirements before elements of a solution.

The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. This system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#125

Post by slg »

jaywalk wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #30

Americans have a really tough time with the notion of materiality. America is such a big country that, as a matter of statistics, anything that can happen is happening. That doesn’t mean it happens often enough to call into question our basic systems. In this case it’s the right that fails to grasp materiality. Yes, people vote illegally, ballot boxes get stuffed, their is collusion, etc. No, it doesn’t happen often…

> No, it doesn’t happen often enough to undermine the integrity of elections in the aggregate. Ridiculous to just throw this out as if it's a concrete fact. Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones where the vote will be close enough that the fraud doesn't have to be too large. I'm not saying it has or hasn't hap…

>Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones where the vote will be close enough that the fraud doesn't have to be too large.

This only looks true when viewed retroactively. It would have taken roughly 80k votes to switch the 2016 election from Trump to Clinton. However people had no idea of that beforehand. That 80k vote number accomplishes the goal only if one knows exactly where to place them. Someone would need to add hundreds of thousands if not millions of votes across numerous battleground states in order to be convinced that their changes would have the desired impact. That certainly sounds like a "sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign".

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#127

Post by pvg »

jaywalk wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #30

Americans have a really tough time with the notion of materiality. America is such a big country that, as a matter of statistics, anything that can happen is happening. That doesn’t mean it happens often enough to call into question our basic systems. In this case it’s the right that fails to grasp materiality. Yes, people vote illegally, ballot boxes get stuffed, their is collusion, etc. No, it doesn’t happen often…

> No, it doesn’t happen often enough to undermine the integrity of elections in the aggregate. Ridiculous to just throw this out as if it's a concrete fact. Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones where the vote will be close enough that the fraud doesn't have to be too large. I'm not saying it has or hasn't hap…

Ridiculous to just throw this out as if it's a concrete fact.

It appears to be a concrete fact this fraud did not change the outcome in any election. The scrutiny also goes way up as you move up hierarchy of election importance.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#128

Post by daenz »

anderskaseorg wrote: post #101
daenz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all this time, "election fraud" is entirely plausible but we've been building a strawman around "voter fraud" and saying that it doesn't happen? What level of bad faith debating is this?

Certain politicians use the myth of widespread voter fraud to push targeted disenfranchising policies like voter ID requirements and mail-in voting restrictions. Conflating individual voter crimes that might supposedly be stopped by these laws, with election official crimes that have nothing to do with them, would be bad faith debating. So it’s important to be clear about this distinction.

That's a fair point. Though I would argue that improving controls around voters make it easier to detect election fraud. If you can tie each vote to a real person, it becomes very difficult to add an arbitrary number of anonymous votes to a candidate, like how Michael “Ozzie” Myers was doing.

If we're looking at it from a cost-benefit perspective, the ability to ensure that election fraud isn't happening (which disenfranchises all voters) is more important than the downsides of extra voter requirements (which may disenfranchise a much smaller number of voters).

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#129

Post by johndfsgdgdfg »

anderskaseorg wrote: post #101
daenz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all this time, "election fraud" is entirely plausible but we've been building a strawman around "voter fraud" and saying that it doesn't happen? What level of bad faith debating is this?

Certain politicians use the myth of widespread voter fraud to push targeted disenfranchising policies like voter ID requirements and mail-in voting restrictions. Conflating individual voter crimes that might supposedly be stopped by these laws, with election official crimes that have nothing to do with them, would be bad faith debating. So it’s important to be clear about this distinction.

As a non-American what's wrong with asking for voter ID? A particular party pushing for open border and waving voter ID requirement seems like a ploy to influence the election. I am open to hear how people can justify both of these policies at at the same time.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#130

Post by wumpus »

daenz wrote: post #47
dralley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter fraud and election fraud are two entirely different things.

So all this time, "election fraud" is entirely plausible but we've been building a strawman around "voter fraud" and saying that it doesn't happen? What level of bad faith debating is this?

> and saying that it doesn't happen?

Why yes, that is a strawman. I know a bunch of people who think that voter fraud is rare. Clearly it's not zero, because a few people get caught double voting every year.

Post reply on HN