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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

#411

Post by skissane »

mulmen wrote: post #382
skissane wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voter ID laws have different outcomes based on economic status. It’s especially difficult for poor people to exercise their rights. Increasingly, Republicans are the party of the poor and Democrats the party of the rich. In the 2020 election, "the wealthiest parts of the country overwhelmingly voted for Biden and the poorest overwhelmingly for Trump". [0] In 2016, "the Republican Party won almost twice the share of…

Or maybe the Republicans are better at voter suppression and that's why you don't see the poor Democratic voters?

I cited a NY Times article on how poor Americans are increasingly voting Republican. Given the overall political lean of the NY Times, I expect they'd be very happy to promote your theory if there was any evidence for it. Yet they didn't mention it, because there doesn't appear to be any.

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

#412

Post by Barrin92 »

Georgelemental wrote: post #290
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.

>For example, election fraud is effectively unheard of in France

Which doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, and the other way around, American politics is dominated by discourse about election fraud more so than actual evidence of it (this case excluded). On the contrary elections in America are extremely rarely fraudulent[1]

You're actually buying into a politically motivated narrative that tries to characterize American democracy overall as not worth participating in.

[1]https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

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

#413

Post by LocalPCGuy »

mmcgaha wrote: post #345
thenewwazoo wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost certainly occurred Citation, please.

Let me google that for you: https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/02/24/macomb-county-nursin... https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2020/11/12/texas-nursing-home-w... https://www.apr.org/2007-07-13/two-charged-with-voter-fraud-... https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/4th-resident-of-villages-f... https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-sheriff-wants... https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/vote-fraud-election-sen...

All told those cases total less than 200 votes. No one (edit: to be clear - no reasonable folk) claims fraud doesn't happen. Just not on the scale that has been claimed at times, and not enough to tip an election with millions of votes. Could a coordinated attack swing a local race, maybe. But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference.

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

#414

Post by hef19898 »

telotortium wrote: post #397
hef19898 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still fail to understand why the US has such a hard time figuring out the simolest of things: elections, healthcare, gun control... I mean almost all developed countries did figure those out ages ago.

EDIT: Thinking of it, I'll add policing to the list. Made worse by the fact that even dictatorships solved it better then the US, totalitarian regimes tend to have better rules and control over law enforcement resulting in targeted brutality, and not the random variety, inflicted by badly trained and scared officers, the US seems to have.

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

#415

Post by sgarman »

AustinDev wrote: post #368
pphysch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here's some anecdata for you... I went to a relatively elite private high school on the east coast. Where I and several other people fixed elections through various methods for clubs and school offices. 2 of 5 people that were in on it now hold public elected office one at the state level and one at the federal level the other three, myself included, do not hold public office. I believe this behavior is the norm. I g…

So out them?

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

#416

Post by NikolaNovak »

Everything else aside, it astonishes me how... CHEAPLY this was done.

Whether I am honest, or simply risk averse, or privileged, or scared... you'd have to add at least a couple of zeroes for me to even contemplate or understand or fathom somebody doing this. How fearless or stupid are these people? Or alternatively, how easy and safe is it to do this, for it to be worth such minor sum of money (compared to power/damage wrought)?

>>"After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election "

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

#417

Post by mistermann »

telotortium wrote: post #397
hef19898 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's interesting how many errors people make when the topic of discussion is a ~"culture war" issue - and this topic is hardware/software/process related, which is right in the wheelhouse of most HN folks.

Has anyone ever read any studies into this phenomenon, or anything closely related?

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

#418

Post by hef19898 »

hamburglar wrote: post #409
hef19898 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed this discussion in the US quite close actually. Simply because we need to have government ID. It is racist to require it if access to those IDs is, in praxis, limited for the demographics that should have limited access to voting. It is not if you are required to have government ID, and it is very easy to get one. getting a provisional passport for travel, with a validity of 6 months, takes all of one hour…

Precisely. You can’t make something a prerequisite to voting if every voter doesn’t have it. And the US is very much against the concept of a national ID. So you can’t have a national ID requirement . And as another commenter points out, it’s not that an ID requirement is racist, it’s that the motivations for it, knowing its impact, are racist.

Man, the US is such a strange place. It is also the only country I know of, top of my head, that doesn't have national ID requirements. No idea why this can be seen as bad thing.

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

#419

Post by stretchwithme »

ncmncm wrote: post #246
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

California was one of those places until Kamala Harris fixed it. No doubt the machines were sold off to one of those. Should have scrapped them.

How did she fix it?

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

#420

Post by the_snooze »

jacobriis wrote: post #363
the_snooze wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example in '2000 Mules' they propose that democratically aligned charities like homeless shelters and elder care homes would gather ballots from their vulnerable populations, fill them out for their preferred candidates, and then have mules distribute those ballots to publicly accessible ballot boxes 3 to 5 at a time. In order for this to actually work, the nefarious operatives would need to forge people's signa…

In 2020 in Pennsylvania the standard was that a signature existed not that it matched the voter rolls. The incentive not to closely scritinize signatures when mail in ballots in your county strongly favor your perfered candidate is clear. "If the Voter’s Declaration on the return envelope is signed and the county board is satisfied that the declaration is sufficient, the mail-in or absentee ballot should be approved…

Thanks for sharing this! That's absolutely concerning, and definitely opens up a possibility for monkey business if fraudsters can just scribble down anything in the signature field. Given the millions of mail ballots in Pennsylvania in 2020, I would expect someone noticing ballot theft at scale (i.e., "I never got my mail ballot but it says I already voted!"), but regardless this is something I would still want corrected if I were a Pennsylvanian. Is the standard still the same?

The signature match is an important part of the mail ballot process, one that even California does.

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