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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

#161

Post by jasonlotito »

mercy_dude wrote: post #21
duxup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many occurred?

Luckily, Justice Department and FBI will likely have no incentives for investigating that given how they actively positioned themselves in the political debate. So we may never find out.

I mean, except for literally all the cases where they do investigate and prosecute, such as this very thread that we are posting in.

Good thing we have an administration right now that is actually doing something the previous administration didn't do.

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

#162

Post by anderskaseorg »

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.

This is addressed elsewhere in the discussion. Access to ID is inequitable. So you need to either be willing to fund the solutions to that problem, or at least show that the supposed voter fraud problem is worse than the ID inequity problem, and neither has happened.

https://www.democracydocket.com/news/wisconsins-dmv-holds-th...

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

#163

Post by seoaeu »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #138
seoaeu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neve…

> Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right

The story is literally about ballot stuffing at precincts where there weren’t observers like that watching. Which makes the electronic voting part a complete red herring

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

#165

Post by mikeyouse »

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.

Nobody is pushing for an "open border" and the absence of a voter ID leading to fraud is just a dumb conspiracy theory promoted by people that are ignorant of how elections actually work.

All voters need to be registered in the first place at which point they verify your identify, your ability to legally cast a ballot, and your address (falsely registering is a felony in most jurisdictions). On voting day, you show up to the correct precinct and tell the administrator your name, they typically verify that your address is correct and then you can cast a ballot. Casting a fraudulent ballot is also a felony.

So the theory is what? That all of these illegal immigrants are going to register to vote? They wouldn't be allowed to register as non-citizens and falsely attesting is a crime. They would show up on election day and cast a ballot under their own name? They're not registered, so their votes wouldn't be counted. That they're going to imitate an actual voter on election day? Instant felony which is easily caught if the real voter shows up at any point to cast their own ballot. That they're going to intercept the mail-in ballots somehow? Again, when real voters figure out their ballots are missing but votes are recorded in their name, the fakes would be immediately found out.

When the states advocating for voting IDs have a long history of race-based voter suppression, analysis shows the ID mandates have race-based impacts that would suppress votes, and there isn't an actual "attack surface" that would be solved with voting IDs, it's clear it's just a transparent attempt to suppress votes.

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

#166

Post by hedora »

bewaretheirs wrote: post #23
superb-owl wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

Best option is paper ballots that are machine-readable and human-readable. Cryptography doesn't help; what you need are processes which make fraud difficult (for instance, observers with line of site to all ballot boxes from when voting starts until they're counted; cross-checking counts of blank, spoiled, and voted ballot papers before & after voting, translucent ballot boxes that are clearly empty at the start of e…

Exit polls are also an important tool. They show routine, systematic fraud in US elections, starting with the introduction of electronic voting, mostly in areas without paper trails. I'll try to keep this non-partisan, but there are plenty of independent peer-reviewed papers showing clear evidence of count tampering, and they all implicate the same party.

Hint: It's not the party that keeps proposing paper ballot mandates at the federal level.

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

#167

Post by shortstuffsushi »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #61
hintymad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about us vs them. People are labeled "right wing" when they ask questions, regardless of their political affiliation. I think that's wrong.

That isn’t true. People are labeled right wing when they’re regurgitating Tucker Carlson and “just asking the questions” in bad faith. There’s asking questions with the intent of answering them in good faith, and there’s asking questions to generate fud in bad faith. The Republican playbook and talking points right now are to generate fud. That’s why every Republican tries to stuff “fraud”, “radical”, “far left” etc…

> if you continue to allege fraud, some people will stop voting

Could you explain the thought with this? If the people saying "there is fraud" are Republicans, and the people believing "this is fraud" are Republicans, and subsequently they are less likely to vote, wouldn't that lead to them losing more elections, and by a larger margin?

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

#168

Post by stingraycharles »

eschulz wrote: post #155
curiousllama wrote: post #126

> After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine The most staggering thing for me is how _tiny_ the payments are

That seems to frequently be the surprising thing about these corruption cases. I'm reminded of the fascinating case where journalists in Chicago bought a bar to investigate corruption. They were shocked at $10 bribes getting things done for them (30+ years ago, but still a small sum). https://interactive.wttw.com/timemachine/mirage-tavern Many of us would assume the sums of money needed to bribe officials would be hu…

A recent episode of Darknet Diaries has a former intelligence officer explaining that the biggest threat of corruption is from within (its own employees being coerced). Often it’s people in bad moments in their life (divorce, serious illness, someone died, etc) that makes someone accept a bribe they would otherwise never have done. The argument is that the best way companies can protect against corporate espionage and other interference is treating their employees well, as it’s not often people that are structurally corrupt.

I suppose the same can be said about government employees, although the fact that it can be directly in the current government’s interest not to do that is another problem.

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

#169

Post by unethical_ban »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #138
seoaeu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neve…

Other than speeding up voting calculations, reducing paper usage, enabling arbitrary language use at the booth, and other things.

If electronic fraud is a concern, we should mitigate it, because encryption, identity, and date integrity are solved problems.

Furthermore, spot auditing and paper receipts/copies are a thing, or could be.

(Also, voting may be "solved" but voting systems and universal access to the ballot has not. First past the post voting is possibly the worst system to use short of flipping a coin.)

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

#170

Post by tastyfreeze »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #79
systemvoltage wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason progressives are against voter ID laws. I've said that before and will say it again: Most of EU requires ID to vote. I will support Republicans that want to do this. It is sad to bring EU in the picture to convince progressives but it is a magic word that somehow brings logic and reason. We shouldn't have to say "They do it in EU, so it must be good". People have stopped thinking for themselves. Anyth…

I think a lot of progressives would be in favor of voter ID laws if you could ensure it was reasonable for every eligible voter to get their ID. That isn't usually what happens though. Here in Wisconsin when the republican party tried it, their solution to the problem was to make people show up to the DMV and fill out forms for their free ID, then they proceeded to close a bunch of DMVs, conveniently in areas likely…

Isn't it possible that closing DMVs had absolutely nothing to do with voting? Alaska, for example, has been restricting services provided by DMVs to cut back on spending.

Democrats have claimed an inability for some to get IDs as a wedge every time voter ID is proposed. Often the claim is that minorities aren't able to get an ID. What a condescending statement. Everybody that wants an ID has an ID. ID is required for many aspects of life in the US. I do not believe that an inability to get an ID is as widespread as is talked about. Skin color certainly is not a factor on ability to get an ID.

There are 22 states that require photo ID to vote. There are an additional 15 states that require ID but accept non-photo IDs. There are only 15 states that do not require any verification that a person is who they say they are when voting.

Not requiring any ID to vote is a minority position. The Democrat party seems to be exceptionally vocal about not requiring ID to vote. That only leads me to ask why? What do they gain from not requiring ID to vote?

I would be asking these questions regardless of the party that was vocal about the issue. I do not have allegiance to either party. I see government in general as an enemy of the individual. I do support voter ID as it prevents a specific type of shenanigans.

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