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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

#391

Post by slg »

hammock wrote: post #223
slg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones where the vote will be close enough that the fraud doesn't have to be too large. This only looks true when viewed retroactively. It would have taken roughly 80k votes to switch the 2016 election from Trump to Clinton. However people had no idea of that beforehand. That 80…

>It would have taken roughly 80k votes to switch the 2016 election from Trump to Clinton. However people had no idea of that beforehand. What if they paused ballot counting on the night of Election Day, assessed how many votes they needed, and worked overnight to get the votes needed, reporting new totals the next day? Wouldn’t that solve the issue you raise here?

They would need to be able to mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of votes on hours of notice. They would also need to be able to distribute those votes broadly enough not to cause suspicion when an unexpected trove of votes are added late. These votes would also need to be cast intelligently enough to match all expected down ballot elections not to draw suspicion. I don't think there is a way to do all of this without a sweeping multi-state conspiracy.

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

#392

Post by adamrezich »

mulmen wrote: post #357
adamrezich wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does this notion solely come from people who live in states with ridiculous taxes on everything? here in SD it just cost me somewhere around $22 to get my driver's license renewed. when I lived in WA I went to the DMV with a friend who had to get her license renewed one day and I said screw it I might as well get a WA license while I'm here. my jaw fell to the floor when, at the end of the process, they said it would…

> does this notion solely come from people who live in states with ridiculous taxes on everything? You're missing the point. Why should you need an ID to vote? It doesn't make sense. > $22 is not hard for anyone to save, especially with all the generous welfare programs we have. Please. It is a barrier that exists. Not everyone has $22.00. They still deserve access to their human rights. Welfare doesn't fix this. > h…

> Why should you need an ID to vote? It doesn't make sense.

so that only citizens can vote in elections?

> Please. It is a barrier that exists. Not everyone has $22.00.

yes they do. I know one person who does not have a driver's license or state ID, because she doesn't have a birth certificate (lost it). she was almost unable to take her newborn children home because of her lack of birth certificate. she had ample time to save money to acquire these things leading up to her twin sons' birth, but she squandered it weekly on weed. I have worked minimum-wage jobs while living in shitty housing with zero welfare and saving $22 was not difficult. while living in Section 8 housing, receiving WIC and EBT benefits, as well as other forms of welfare, like this ID-less person I know, it would be a cinch. she simply cared more about spending all of her money on weed every paycheck. if she had any desire to vote at all (she doesn't), I would not have any pity for her.

hell, at least around here, if you don't want to work yet still somehow feel like you're contributing to society and therefore want to vote for some reason, it is very easy to panhandle $22 in a single day, as long as you don't spend it on meth or whatever. you're not going to be able to use vague emotional claims that some vague swath of poor downtrodden people (all undoubtedly "minorities" in one way or another, because everywhere in the US is just oh so racist that every time a white person sees someone with a different skin color voting at the booth next to them, their nose visibly wrinkles in disgust, before returning home to recount their experience to their Klansmen buddies, or whatever hallucination you choose to inhabit) who live paycheck to paycheck or are homeless or whatever yet feel that participating in an election is somehow more important than getting a couple dozen bucks together in order to obtain a state ID necessary to participate in society. if you actually cared, again, you would be interested in finding solutions to this problem, instead of throwing your hands up, saying "the mere concept of voter ID in the US is discriminatory and racist and evil and bad and morally wrong, and there's just nothing we can do to change that so the only possible solution is to throw the vote-integrity baby out with the voter-ID bathwater!" if you genuinely cared about this topic then you would be more willing to find compromise in any way, but you're not, so there's not really much further discussion that could be had. and anyway,

> blah blah partisan blah blah blah

here's where I'm done engaging—have a good day.

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

#393

Post by tptacek »

darawk wrote: post #301
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…

> Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myer…

and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls.

Obviously, I believe this actually happened. But: how? What is Philadelphia not doing that we do in Chicago? You couldn't do this here; it's hard for me to even imagine how someone could walk into a precinct and cast multiple votes. And how would they cast their second and third vote? Do you give them a list of no-show registrations from the precinct? And then they just sign the pollbook multiple times?

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

#394

Post by slg »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #389
slg wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't addressing a question of whether election fraud happens or the motivation for it. I was specifically criticizing the idea that "changing the outcome of a Presidential election" is possible without a "sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign". The EROI doesn't matter in that context because the goal is a singular binary event. It either was enough to sway the election and it qualifies for this discussion or it was…

If the EROI is high enough you try it prior to knowing the outcome. Because there is a curve of investment that eats into the Return portion of the equation, they should push up the number of votes (cost) until they hit their desired (cost of capital + profit margin). That is the rational way to act at least. If someone says to you pay $1 to have a 75% chance at $2. you definitely should take it. It's the same with m…

Yes, but if the question was "did someone give you $2?" then your ROI is irrelevant. The question wasn't whether someone would want to attempt this fraud. It is whether someone could successfully execute this fraud.

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

#395

Post by DharmaPolice »

tootie wrote: post #285
jstream67 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 objectionable language seems to be quoting someone else. Although the person they're quoting self-censored in the original tweets so they probably should have done the same.

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

#396

Post by RHSeeger »

tomrod wrote: post #254
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?

Does political affiliation affect integrity somehow?

If you need all the members to sign off,

And a member of party X is more likely to be willing to cheat to benefit party X,

Then having all the members that need to sign off be from party X does indeed increase the ability to cheat for party X.

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

#397

Post by telotortium »

hef19898 wrote: post #375
upsidesinclude wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.

See, that's why ballots are only sent out when people explicitly ask for them. otherwise you get a single-use invitation that is changed against a ballot at the polling station. Showing up with an ID but without invitation gets you struck from the voter list for that polling station, and it gets you a ballot. So that leaves people that are coerced into asking for mail-in ballots and are then forced to vote a certain…

Obviously you should only be able to get a mail-in ballot if you request it. But I live in California, and ballots are mailed out to all registered voters. While convenient, it's bonkers to do it at all, let alone in any state that, unlike California, has close elections.

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

#398

Post by brailsafe »

Big oof moment there. Where I'm from we use a simple ledger with tear-off serial numbers, and a few steps that would make it quite difficult to commit any worthwhile amount of fraud I think. It's a ton of work for the staff, but they manage to scale up and get it done with basically no notice when required.

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

#399

Post by lp0_on_fire »

vharuck wrote: post #364
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Election returns centers have a lot of people in it. In Philly they barred GOP poll watchers from observing the process and they (GOP) had to get a court order to force the center to allow them in...so all it takes is a few partisans at the top of the food chain.

Can you link to evidence of this happening? Because all I could find were stories about how Trump's lawyers argued this was the case, but were forced to admit in court there were poll watchers acting on Trump's behalf: >Judge : “Are your observers in the counting room?” >Trump lawyer: "There's a non-zero number of people in the room.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/11/trump-law...

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/11/05/election-watchers-...

The city played the covid social distancing game and forced poll watches to be so far from the action that one reported needing binoculars to even being to see what was going on. The commonwealth court ordered the city to allow the poll watches within a reasonable distance so they could, you know, observe.

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

#400

Post by lspears »

notinfuriated wrote: post #231
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…

Wild. I don't think $10 would get me to the front of the line reliably at good restaurants.

It works to skip the karaoke line!
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