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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

#191

Post by jokethrowaway »

gumby wrote: post #184
daenz wrote: post #31

They make it sound so simple: Bribe the Judge of Elections who oversees everything. Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates. Certify that the fake results are correct. Lie if anybody asks. This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy?

> This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? Apparently this demonstrates the power of the invisible hand of the marketplace.

Very true.

And that's why we should decentralise power to the most local entity we can (somewhere between a central government and the individual affected by a choice) and have as few elected officials as possible.

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

#192

Post by mgraczyk »

helloguillecl wrote: post #178

I cannot imagine a system more transparent than the one implemented in the country where I come from (and some others as well): After closing the polls, the paper votes are counted manually (in from of candidates representatives and public in general) by the poll station "vocales". "Vocales" are citizens (4 in total) randomly selected for each poll, who must operate the poll during the entire day. They must report th…

It sounds like this is worse than what I've experienced in multiple US jurisdictions. Any of the random nominees can unilaterally discard my vote without detection. In the US, I physically insert my ballot in a sealed counting machine that the poll workers cannot tamper with without detection. Nobody who has access to my ballot knows which vote is mine, so nobody can censor me without detection.

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

#194

Post by tptacek »

It's weird that you can bribe individual EJ's in Philadelphia like this. In Chicagoland, every polling place has a team of 4-5 judges, and they all have to sign off on the final election result, and all the procedural steps that arrive at that number; every individual vote is recorded in the pollbook. I don't even know how you'd generate fake votes in the first place, even if you bought off all 4 EJs.

You can't just make people up! Every vote is tied to a specific registration. We do same-day registration, but those votes are cast provisionally, with a paper log; there aren't many of them, and they can all be set aside and audited after-the-fact.

You certainly can't just make up a final tally. The numbers from the individual voting machines and the paper ballots have to match up; we had to stay an extra 2 hours after the polls closed last time I did this (in 2020) because of an equipment screwup that kept us from doing the final certified count/reconciliation.

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

#195

Post by pyronik19 »

president wrote: post #179
mercy_dude wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no evidence of fraud because our institutions are unwilling to investigate allegations of fraud. If you ask why they aren't willing to investigate fraud, there's an excuse for that. Then, any attempt to audit or secure the election process is shot down with another excuse. Then you start to wonder, how long has this been happening for? No wonder there is zero confidence in this system - it's all corrupt. The…

Precisely, the fraud is so prevalent and grotesque gaslighting is the only mechanism to deal with it.

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

#196

Post by wjmao88 »

gtirloni wrote: post #183
helloguillecl wrote: post #178

I cannot imagine a system more transparent than the one implemented in the country where I come from (and some others as well): After closing the polls, the paper votes are counted manually (in from of candidates representatives and public in general) by the poll station "vocales". "Vocales" are citizens (4 in total) randomly selected for each poll, who must operate the poll during the entire day. They must report th…

You can have electronic voting machines print a paper record which can be counted in case of issues.

we could even have generated guid on the paper records that you can look up in a database to make sure your vote is being recorded correctly, without exposing any identifying information.

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

#197

Post by extheat »

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

It's a lot safer to keep the payments small. Less suspicion, less at stake, both parties still win at end of the day.

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

#198

Post by sidlls »

seoaeu wrote: post #163
ohgodplsno wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And 100% of the votes from those precincts without observers should’ve been discarded. The real problem is that we don’t fund elections properly. This sort of thing isn’t a problem in other developed democracies. It’s only one here by design.

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

#199

Post by mgraczyk »

wjmao88 wrote: post #196
gtirloni wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have electronic voting machines print a paper record which can be counted in case of issues.

we could even have generated guid on the paper records that you can look up in a database to make sure your vote is being recorded correctly, without exposing any identifying information.

I have this in San Francisco, although I've done the "lookup" part only by email.

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

#200

Post by yakak »

unethical_ban wrote: post #175
cultartawayyyi wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 o…

The person you are responding to is clearly suggesting their personal belief that election crimes are so antithetical to American values that it constitutes a crime on par with treason.

Yes, though more generally I am interested in the criteria and thought process that takes place in discussions leading to constitutional conventions to build a republic that is self maintaining despite various threats. The US is not Cannon to me, it is one template and we are poking at a flaw in it.
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