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

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

#131

Post by rhino369 »

mmaurizi wrote: post #103
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? You don't just cold call a judge. Presumably he knew enough about what his options for judges were that he could pick the ones who would be amenable to the idea and approach them. The bribe at that point is just payment for risk (because the judge presumably doesn't have plausible deniability)

"Judge of Elections" in PA is an elected position for running the polling place for a precinct on election day. It's an extremely low-level position that only involves work on 2 days of the year. It's not a "judge" in the sense someone who oversees a criminal or civil trial.

I'm surprised it is even elected. I was an election judge when I was 18 in Illinois as part of high school project. You just sign up and attend a 2 hour class.

It was fun. The other judge at my poll location was a guy who served in the Wehrmacht during WWII (was conscripted at age 14).

But I easily could have stuffed the box. Most people don't vote. At 7:45pm, you could just vote for people who didn't show up. Nobody but the other judge would have the chance of stopping you.

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

#132

Post by diordiderot »

pphysch wrote: post #118
bruceb wrote: post #27

This person is actually a repeat offender with a history of abusing his office. https://www.inquirer.com/news/ozzie-myers-convicted-abscam-p...

The important question: is he an outlier, or the norm?

The punishment for betraying public trust should be severe.

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

#133

Post by heftig »

anderskaseorg wrote: post #121
superb-owl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think existing systems like Helios have already solved this problem?

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

#134

Post by Kon-Peki »

koolba wrote: post #18

I knew this had to be about either Philly or Chicago without even clicking the link. And of course I was right.

Stuffing ballot boxes to win a judgeship in Chicago is a rookie move. Everyone knows that the legal way to get more votes is to change your name so it sounds like an Irish woman.

> three ballot cues have attained legendary status in Cook County: gender, Irish ethnicity, and first ballot position. Female candidates are believed to hold a significant advantage over male candidates, a belief borne out by election results over much of the past twenty years. The advantage of an Irish-sounding name in Cook County has long been accepted as gospel truth, so much so that several past judicial candidates with non-Irish names have legally changed their names to suggest Irish ancestry. [1]

It's so common that they passed a law to make it so that you really have to plan ahead:

> if a candidate has changed his or her name during the 3 years before the deadline for filing nominating petitions ... the ballot must include a reference to his or her former name or names and the date or dates of the name changes [2]

Not a joke:

> There are only two kinds of people, the saying goes, the Irish and those who wish they were. Shannon P. O’Malley, who is running to be a judge in suburban Chicago, seems to fit into the second category. For, despite the name, O’Malley doesn't appear to be all that Irish. O’Malley is a 55-year-old Chicago guy formerly named Phillip Spiwak who insists he is not trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes. [3]

[1] https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&...

[2] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=4173&...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judge-candidat...

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

#135

Post by Proven »

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 post body was provided.

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

#136

Post by cultartawayyyi »

yakak wrote: post #102
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? You don't just cold call a judge. Presumably he knew enough about what his options for judges were that he could pick the ones who would be amenable to the idea and approach them. The bribe at that point is just payment for risk (because the judge presumably doesn't have plausible deniability)

The risk clearly doesn't fit the crime. A risk of being hung for treason is harder to recruit for.

"Treason" is one of the few crimes which is defined in the US constitution. It has a fairly narrow definition which does not include election fraud:

>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

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

#137

Post by tamaharbor »

johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #129
anderskaseorg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#138

Post by ohgodplsno »

seoaeu wrote: post #108
routerl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates > Why is it so easy? I don't know, it doesn't seem easy to me. I mean, it seems like the result of a ton of long-term planning to implement processes that allow each instance of this to be easy. But the fight against electronic voting machines was fierce, and took a long time. We lost, by the way.

Stuffing paper ballots into a box or tapping the screen of an electronic voting machine are both very easy. This stuff has to be fixed at a higher level, like by making sure the folks running the precinct aren’t corrupt or by having a neutral observer present

Stuffing paper ballots is infinitely harder if your election system isn't entirely fucked. Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right, invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes, increase the amount of voting places so that scaling this up becomes impossible.

Voting has been solved centuries ago. And voting machines will never be part of the solution.

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

#139

Post by thepasswordis »

In case you were curious for more info about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Myers_(Pennsylvania_po...

>Michael Joseph "Ozzie" Myers (born May 4, 1943) is an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1976 to 1980. A member of the Democratic Party, Myers became involved in the Abscam scandal during his tenure in Congress and was later expelled from the House of Representatives after being caught taking bribes in an FBI sting operation. In 2020, he was indicted for election fraud.

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

#140

Post by spacemanmatt »

diordiderot wrote: post #132
pphysch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important question: is he an outlier, or the norm?

The punishment for betraying public trust should be severe.

Sounds like a vote against qualified immunity. I'm in.
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