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

441–450 of 889 posts

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

#441

Post by todd8 »

My partner worked as a volunteer election poll worker in 2016. It was her job to take everyone's id and check it against a database to ensure that the person was on the voting rolls. 13 people came in to vote that either voted already at another location or had voted during the period of early voting allowed by our state. This amounted to approximately 1% of the voters that were processed by her that day.

There were no consequences for trying to vote twice, these people were simply turned away. (There was a mechanism for resolving disputes too. Provisional ballots could be given to voters and these would be counted only if the race was close enough for provisional votes to make a difference in which case these votes would be adjudicated before being accepted.)

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

#442

Post by adamrezich »

hef19898 wrote: post #414
telotortium wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resulti…

because it's a physically massive Republic of 50 independent States, with lots and lots of disagreement over whether the State or Federal government should have more power.

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

#443

Post by mulmen »

skissane wrote: post #411
mulmen wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe this NY Times article isn't biased and is simply reporting on the data. I don't find "NY Times liberals" to be a compelling refutation of the assertion that the Republican party might be good at voter suppression.

I'm not even claiming they are better at it but it is certainly possible and would explain the data.

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

#444

Post by LocalPCGuy »

all2 wrote: post #360
GauntletWizard wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be something stopping you; the voter rolls, and list of names that voted and not, are public. The press could absolutely contact a sample of the voter rolls and verify - "I voted", "I didn't". Any discrepancy (well, any time there's more than one or two, because people do lie or simply forget) should be a scandal.

There are people who did this for the 2020 elections. They found voters registered to empty lots all over Arizona. Steven Crowder, I think the guys name was.

Not sure on that specific claim, but every one of those type of "fraud claims" I've looked into turn out to be false and full of errors in how they used the information they had to try to prove their claims. An example from Arizona - not sure if the same one as Crowder, not going to watch YT videos on this topic - if it's important enough, write it up and publish it with references and proper proof that can be replicated.

https://www.azmirror.com/2021/09/10/voter-canvass-features-b...

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

#445

Post by tptacek »

RHSeeger wrote: post #396
tomrod wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure how it works in Philadelphia, but in Chicagoland the EJs don't generally know each other; we meet for the first time the night before the election to set up the polling station. If you floated the (insane) idea of trying to rig a precinct, the likelihood of one of the other EJs reporting you is extraordinarily high. Meanwhile: the likelihood of you being able to flip even a township election by doing this is low. It just doesn't add up.

I think you have to have some pretty huge procedural gaps to make this viable, which is my point here.

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

#447

Post by slg »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #432
slg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It is whether someone could successfully execute this fraud. Wouldn't this become a certainty given enough Investment? if so then the EROI is a real factor because it tells us that someone not only could spend $ALOT but could also expect to profit from and so is likely able to fund the project.

>> It is whether someone could successfully execute this fraud.

>Wouldn't this become a certainty given enough Investment?

No, because the larger the fraud, the easier it is to detect and detection would make is unsuccessful. This requires an expertly targeted fraud that is both large enough to change the overall result while being small enough to go undetected. I don't think that specific combination is possible without a large conspiracy behind it.

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

#448

Post by tptacek »

cge wrote: post #177
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?

Apart from everything else, if you're not trying to ensure that a candidate wins, regardless of their popularity, and are instead trying to skew the odds toward a candidate who already has a reasonable chance of winning, election fraud becomes easier and harder to detect. As others have pointed out, these "judges" were actually minor, elected election officials, close to being volunteers. They were doing this to make…

EJs pretty much everywhere are volunteers.

A big part of the integrity of the system comes down to controls that are instituted at the precinct level, where there's less oversight but also less ability to plausibly influence the election, coupled with much stricter oversight at the central counting stations.

Downballot elections typically happen concurrently with statewide elections, so that doesn't help you: they don't get counted separately, and you're still stuck evading the same controls that protect the statewide elections.

There are tight elections, but in a reasonably run election system, any one precinct is going to have a very narrow margin --- in the best case for attackers --- to influence results. You can't predict where that narrow margin is going to actually be helpful. But it's going to be incredibly risky anywhere you try it.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a crime.

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

#449

Post by adamrezich »

todd8 wrote: post #441

My partner worked as a volunteer election poll worker in 2016. It was her job to take everyone's id and check it against a database to ensure that the person was on the voting rolls. 13 people came in to vote that either voted already at another location or had voted during the period of early voting allowed by our state. This amounted to approximately 1% of the voters that were processed by her that day. There were…

> There were no consequences for trying to vote twice, these people were simply turned away.

can everyone agree that this is insane? it should be at least a federal crime to attempt to cast a fraudulent ballot in a federal election. surely, everyone here—pro- or anti-voter ID—should agree with this?

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

#450

Post by bigwavedave »

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?

Easy and cheap! TFA says it was only $300 to $5k per election total... Which was then split _at least_ two ways?? I mean, sure, the average politician hasn't been accused of having integrity in a long time, but this is just ridiculous.

Post reply on HN