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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

#281

Post by hef19898 »

nostromo wrote: post #267
tptacek wrote: post #194

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…

There's two steps to the process: Step one, check the signature, the voter roles, and remove the envelope. Throw the ballot into the bin to be counted. Step two, count the ballot. This ballot now has no identifiable information on it at all. There's no way to verify that a person's ballot was correctly tallied. So if you wanted to ballot stuff, you could do so prior to step two. Recounts wouldn't identify fraud, you'…

And still this never happened in any other democratic country doing paper ballots. Simple reason: If there are more votes in the ballot box then registered voters (ideally this means everyone above voting and eligible to vote) you know someone tempered the ballot box. And having more than one (where I live I'm always puzzled how they find the hundreds of people to monitor the dozens of polling places since we have at least four people per polling station) person monitoring the handing out of ballots. having dozens polling stations, with a limited number of voters, means any ballot stuffing has close to no impact on results, doesn't scale and easy to catch. same goes for properly set up mail in ballots and voting, I know for a fact that all that works without any signatures and other things, a central registry of residents goes a looong way in solving this.

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

#282

Post by themitigating »

pyronik19 wrote: post #193
Finnucane wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, it does take more than imagination to actually demonstrate, it requires facts and evidence.

Quoted post unavailable.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-usa-mules/fact-che...

The movie is another attempt to use circumstantial evidence without actually having a proper investigation. Then all the Republicans angry that Trump didn't win will go to forums, like this one, and say "watch 2000 mules" without providing any details because when Trump lost they didn't get what they wanted and can't deal with it.

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

#284

Post by dangoor »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #219
tptacek wrote: post #194

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…

> I don't even know how you'd generate fake votes in the first place > You can't just make people up! > You certainly can't just make up a final tally > the paper ballots have to match up It seems you live in an area with auditable physical copies of the poll receipts. Good. That should be the standard. But 5 states still don't do that: https://www.axios.com/2018/02/16/five-states-without-paper-t... And I seem to rec…

Georgia replaced their machines with ones that have paper trails.

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

#285

Post by tootie »

jstream67 wrote: post #271
tootie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Election fraud should be concerning to everyone, not just conservatives. I'm also not sure what you are stating is racist conspiracy nonsense - I only see one comment from OP at the moment.

There's a second dead comment with some objectionable language. And the comment on this thread that makes unsubstantiated claims about the implication of this case. And my concern about this posting isn't that we should or shouldn't be interested in this case of fraud, but rather that it's a local news story that is completely off-topic for HN. It's not academic, or technical, or related to entrepreneurship or any of the other topics of interest. It is suspicious that a 1 hour old account posts something that would normally get zero traction on this site suddenly shoots to the top. And the timing this close to the first public hearings on the Jan 6 committee is ever more suspicious.

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

#286

Post by dqpb »

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?

At least they were caught.

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

#288

Post by cycomanic »

It's interesting how everyone is talking about "how this can be so easy". Really what was done here was absolutely small fish compared to the much bigger issues with the US electoral system. I mean party operatives deciding voting districts, the legislative essentially selecting the judicative (admittedly an issue in many other democracies as well), a electoral system where a vote has vastly different influence depending on where you live, election financing which ensure that politicians of any party are beholden to wealthy lobbyists.

Really the issue that some small town election officials can fraudulently cast a couple of hundred votes is the least of your worries. Also worth pointing out, they were caught, so it wasn't actually so easy.

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

#289

Post by tootie »

ipnon wrote: post #113
anonymouse008 wrote: post #89

[flagged]

Nixon showed us it can and does go all the way to the top. "All the President's Men" is worth a watch to see how cheap it is to buy the country. The Committee to Reelect the President brought the Democratic frontrunner to tears in public, and eliminated him from the election, with a measly $3,000,000. Power can be bought at a cheap discount, and only "democratic norms" seem to protect us from this behavior most of th…

Roger Stone was a member of CREEP and has been working for Trump and many candidates in between. No lesson has been learned.

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

#290

Post by Georgelemental »

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…

Compared to America, many other democracies manage to get by with far less fraud. For example, election fraud is effectively unheard of in France; the system is so robust that even in very close elections there is never any real drama about recounts or such. For a country that considers democracy to be fundamental to its identity, the US's performance is embarrasing in comparison.
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