Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by tunesmith » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #438

ModernMech wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well you see, having to show ID to vote is considered racist in the US. This is not the argument people are making, so I hope you aren’t making it intentionally. No one is saying that requiring voting id is inherently racist. The argument is that requiring voting id without a commensurate effort to make sure everyone has voter id ends up disproportionately affecting minorities. These efforts are subsequently dubbed…

> The argument is that requiring voting id without a commensurate effort to make sure everyone has voter id ends up disproportionately affecting minorities. Democrats have never negotiated in good faith over the requirement to make IDs available though whenever the debate is brought up. States like Wisconsin require voter ID and will make an ID for voting available for free, through the mail, and yet there is still o…

In Wisconsin? With that legislature? Want to guess how easy it will be for them, over time, to make certain cuts to the program that makes it so easy for everyone to get a free ID?

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

#452

Post by _-david-_ » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #377

_-david-_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Republicans do offer free IDs in every state where they mandate IDs for voting. It may not always be the easiest to get since you have to go to the DMV though. Do you think Democrats would be willing to have voter ID laws if the post office offered free IDs?

> Do you think Democrats would be willing to have voter ID laws if the post office offered free IDs? No because proximity to a Post Office isn't a reasonable criteria for suppressing a persons right to vote. Especially because: > It may not always be the easiest to get

>No because proximity to a Post Office isn't a reasonable criteria for suppressing a persons right to vote.

How does Europe do it? Do you believe the way they do it suppresses a person's right to vote? If we did it the same way as Europe would you be fine with ID laws in the US?

If requiring an ID is suppressing voting rights then requiring and ID and a background check (that you may even have to pay for) to purchase a gun is a violation of rights. Do you support removing the background check cost and ID requirement? If not then I don't really care if you think requiring an ID is suppressing voting since you support suppressing other rights with ID requirements.

>Especially because

There are two hardships currently

1. You have to prove you are who you say you are.

2. You have to wait in the DMV

For #1 this is a requirement in Europe as far as I know. I haven't seen anybody saying that suppresses votes. You may be the first?

For #2 that is easy to solve by allowing ID services at additional places like the post office. I would be open to more than just the post office and DMVs, I just used the post office because they already have passport services so it is easy to add other IDs.

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

#453

Post by yencabulator » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

klipklop wrote: post #372

nostromo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I am glad you pointed this out. Few seem to understand that once the envelope is open and thrown away there is no way to verify the ballot being legitimate in many states. It's sad that people think with such a system there is no chance of voter fraud. They will smugly say that a recount confirmed everything was legitimate, etc. Very frustrating that the nuance is lost on them. Ballots need serial numbers that trace…

> Every person should be able to look up their ballot and see how it was counted at the end of the election.

Generally the thinking is that there must never exist a mechanism by which you can prove to some other person how you voted, or voters can be coerced into voting a certain way.

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

#454

Post by j_walter » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #264

j_walter wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying there aren't holes...but there is a lot of evidence shown that can't really be disputed. I'm certainly not saying to take it 100% what they say...but it should be investigated further. Why take pictures of the ballot boxes after dropping off a bunch of ballots at 3AM? Why go to so many different ballot boxes one after another after another? Why use gloves and then throw them away right next to the ball…

The gloves one is easy - some people took Covid as a serious threat to themselves and wore gloves - I saw many people wearing gloves to shop and then throwing them away before getting to their car. It's also interesting that the map of ballot drop boxes was wholly incorrect in 2000 mules. Finally, one of the alleged mules was reached out to - and it transpired he was not, in fact, a mule, but was dropping off the bal…

>Finally, one of the alleged mules was reached out to - and it transpired he was not, in fact, a mule, but was dropping off the ballots for himself, his wife, and adult children, which is entirely within the law.

...and one was reached out to that said she was part of a bigger conspiracy on collecting ballots and dropping them into boxes that weren't being monitored by video. One example doesn't mean it applies to all. How about the guy that dropped off ballots at 3AM, starts to bike away and then goes back to take a picture of the ballot box? That doesn't seem suspicious to you...or the other cases they showed where people were doing this in a way that didn't appear like a "hey everyone look I voted" social media post...

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

#455

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#456

Post by vlovich123 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

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…

Philly is on that list though according to that article.

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

#457

Post by InCityDreams » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #346

dmix wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something political was in the title it would be flagged off of HN pretty quickly. This is a justice.gov article which are frequently posted to HN and election security is a common topic here, so it's pretty safe.

Yes, things have been feeling more partisan around here lately and I fell into that trap. I went back and realized it was from justice.gov and that changed things.

Where is 'around here, lately'? Where you live? This website?

'Partisan'? Some several people's opinions that don't align with yours?

'[T]hings have been feeling[...] What things?

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

#458

Post by creato » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #314

willcipriano wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really solve for all the ways you can rig an election. 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. They have some interesting f…

>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…

It is astonishing to me that anyone thinks signature matching is a good idea. It’s incredibly subjective, and I have no idea what my own signature from years ago looks like.

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

#459

Post by kortilla » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

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…

Is it possible that the solutions in other countries are not optimal?

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

#460

Post by LocalPCGuy » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #427

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ev…

> No one claims fraud doesn't happen. False. I've encountered easily thousands of people who make such claims on the internet. You might then say "No officials make such claims" - here you're technically correct, but somewhat misinformative: the people in such situations have public relations professionals at their disposal, and also tend to have years of experience (or at least observation) of how to do PR. When ele…

Yes, individuals just as mistaken as those who claim fraud is rampant claim there is not fraud. People make those kinds of mistaken statements all the time. How about "most reasonable people who understand the process and have spent a little bit of time examining how it works"? I thought that was closer to the standard in discussions on HN, not "some rando on Twitter spouting off", but I guess not.

It is not speculation that there are people who look for election fraud (and then prosecute it when found). And folks do get caught/prosecuted for just about every election cycle, so "all the time". And the links demonstrate that. I may have expounded on that a bit but the language is not speculative except maybe the portion about whether or not there is enough to make a difference. That is my opinion, but heavily based on the reading on this topic I have done, checking claims from a wide variety of sources, parties, etc. I make no claims to expertise but I do believe the information I have shared is accurate to the best of my ability and folks can do with that what they will (hopefully spend their own time actually making sure they are not misled).