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

291–300 of 889 posts

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

#291

Post by troad »

cycomanic wrote: post #288

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 depen…

Not liking the institutional design of the political system of the United States is a radically different class of problem than electoral fraud by an elected official.

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

#292

Post by pphysch »

willcipriano wrote: post #190
pphysch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would suspect that people who behave like he does would out-compete people who behave honestly. From a Darwinian perspective, it would seem that the entire population of politicians will eventually make this same adaptation or otherwise get voted out. It's like steroids, once everyone starts using them the honest people are no longer able to qualify.

Yep, it is corruption after all; it spreads by converting or eliminating the non-corrupt.

But if Washington were to publicly tackle it, USA would be a less attractive HQ for MNCs.

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

#293

Post by notadev »

heretogetout wrote: post #154
johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not everyone has ID that meets the requirements laid out by voter ID proposals, and sometimes getting those IDs can be extremely expensive. Defenders like to say that the ID is free but when you point out the cost of getting birth certificates and proof of name change (common in marriage) they disappear quick. And if it can't be shown that the number of people prevented from voting is fewer than the number of fraudul…

Opponents of voter ID never seem to address the fact that Americans need a valid drivers license or state ID to do virtually anything as an adult in America. Including, but not at all limited to:

- Opening/accessing a bank account

- Driving a vehicle

- Requesting government assistance

- Renting or buying a home

- Getting married

- Buying tobacco/alcohol/cannabis

- Registering children for school

- Getting a hotel room

- Getting a cell phone

Where are these mythical minorities who want to participate in absolutely nothing else in American life except for voting?

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

#294

Post by lallysingh »

stingraycharles wrote: post #168
eschulz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

I read that during the cold war, a common exploit was people fearing massive penalties from their own governments over small issues. E.g., some accounting error that would get them imprisoned. So the US would walk in with a few thousand $$ equivalent and have a really well positioned source that just wanted to survive some basic screw-up.

It's a good lesson in how ratcheting up punishments can be counterproductive, even or especially even, in critical areas.

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

#295

Post by rhodorhoades »

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

#297

Post by tootie »

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?

Election fraud is exactly what Donald Trump and his conspirators are about to be dragged over the coals for by the Jan 6 committee. He begged the GA SecState to cook the election in his favor. Basically the exact thing Myers was caught and convicted of in this story.

Trump made the accusation multiple times going back even to 2016 that millions of illegal votes were cast against him. The details of his allegation were never made clear. He convened a Congressional committee with full subpoena power to investigate and after a little over a year they disbanded having issued no findings nor held a single public hearing. There is certainly _some_ voter fraud that happens all the time, but it's not widespread, not coordinated and has never been plausibly suspected of tilting any election.

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-us-new...

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

#298

Post by HideousKojima »

willcipriano wrote: post #250
the_snooze wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analysis never found fraud? Or there was no analysis at all? According to the DOJ, the fraud centered on Democratic primary elections [1], which don't receive anywhere near as much scrunity or participation as Presidential general elections. [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele...

Let me put this in different terms. What algorithm should they have ran to detect this? If we have such a infallible algorithm why isn't it always used? If it's not a algorithm but instead more of a handy wavy "analysis" by "experts" how do you know for an empirical certainty they didn't just actually fill a room full of monkeys, waited a week and said the results are good?

Comparing ballot totals to exit polling is a fairly accurate way to detect fraud (within a certain margin pf error). But increased mail-in/absentee voting, increasing the number of days on which voting occurs, etc. make it more difficult to outright impossible to perform quality exit polling any more.

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

#299

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

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…

(US perspective here not sure about other countries) This type of thing has made me think we should pay politicians more but then say they can't make money any other ways while in office and for some amount of years after they leave office.

No stock trading, no deals to get a private job after you leave office (unless you leave time to make sure your decisions could have no impact on the business you're joining), and no public speaking fees. You can still speak publicly but you shouldn't be getting paid for it if the whole reason for speaking is that you were a public servant. I think we have some sort of fundamental disconnect between expecting people to be a public servant while still saying they can act as a private individual financially

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

#300

Post by Vladimof »

Retric wrote: post #270
Vladimof wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Chicagoland, every polling place has a team of 4-5 judges, and they all have to sign off on the final election result but what if they are all from the same party?

These where primaries, so it’s not clear why the other party would care.

Technically, they still could be all from one party checking the result for the other party.... even in primaries.
Post reply on HN