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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

#481

Post by camgunz »

willcipriano wrote: post #217
javagram wrote: post #66

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 Were that to have happened, analysis of the voting results would show a divergence in results in those “well placed” areas. For a presidential race, there are a lot of eyes on this comparing demographic data with vote totals. For instance, in 2020 there were some allegat…

> Were that to have happened, analysis of the voting results would show a divergence in results in those “well placed” areas. Why didn't that sort of analysis find fraud in Philadelphia in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018? How are you so certain of its infallibility given it's apparent inability to find fraud like this?

It looks like this was pretty small-time voter fraud in local and low-level elections, where there weren't teams of data operatives scouring returns for any inconsistency.

When people talk about "there is no voter fraud", mostly what they mean are federal elections. The US has great gobs of elections, there's no reasonable way to analyze them all, and we simply don't have the data in most of the cases.

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

#482

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

travisathougies wrote: post #367
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How anyone could state this with any particular confidence is beyond me. The truth is, when someone votes by mail, you have no idea who filled in the ballot. How do you know who filled in the ballot at the polling place? All I would need is to show up and know someone else's name and address and I could vote for them. Vote by mail isn't any worse than that and is possibly better because there's a stronger confidenc…

> How do you know who filled in the ballot at the polling place? All I would need is to show up and know someone else's name and address and I could vote for them Presumably by some kind of voter identification? Like the way most countries do it. > The poling place is open on exactly one day, and you have to wait in line for your turn. Have to go to work that day? Well, tough shit. For some people this is simple, but…

> Presumably by some kind of voter identification? Like the way most countries do it.

Ok, sure, just find a way to implement that which doesn't allow it to be abused disenfranchise voters, which is what typically happens here in the states.

> You could have multi-day polling too, that's fine. I don't understand why this is so hard in this country.

Yep, you could. No politician suggests this for some reason.

> No I can't because I live in Oregon, which despite being a high tax state, is unable to conduct even the most basic election.

Sounds like your problem is less with the concept of mail-in ballots and more with the fact that your state can't handle running a polling location.

> It's not when we have an easy answer to this problem -- have a physical place to vote.

For all the reasons I already outlined, it is not actually an easy answer.

> Why aren't these 'voter suppression' tactics used in liberal states not up to questioning?

They are. If no one is talking about it then they should make a bigger stink about it.

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

#483

Post by xadhominemx »

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.

We know it’s not an issue because if people were returning mailed ballots without the knowledge of the intended recipient, there would be a ton of people who would be logged as voting twice (once the mail in ballot and once in person or after requesting and submitting a replacement mail in ballot).

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

#484

Post by camgunz »

creato wrote: post #458
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…

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.

It is mostly a stand-in for voter suppression. It's not useful otherwise.

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

#485

Post by unclebucknasty »

One of the most effective things we can do to secure the presidential election is do away with the Electoral College. It's much harder to come up with the millions of votes needed to game the popular vote than it is to come up with a few tens of thousands in two or three key states.

Of course the popular vote would also have the bonus of being more democratic (with no downside, since we no longer need to help slave owners feel a sense of equity).

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

#486

Post by xadhominemx »

the_snooze wrote: post #278
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'…

Stuffing mail ballots makes zero sense if you're actually trying to tilt elections in your favor. It requires too much effort and conspiracy to get past the procedure you describe. Your crime-ing efforts are better off throwing away your opponents' mail ballots.

No, because it’s easy to check if your vote has been registered. If someone threw away a ton of ballots, people would notice.

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

#487

Post by _-david-_ »

mulmen wrote: post #462
_-david-_ wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> How does Europe do it? Do you believe the way they do it suppresses a person's right to vote? Not sure, I assume lots of ways? Europe is a whole continent full of countries that have a long history of disagreement. I wouldn't be surprised to learn some of them do suppress votes. > If we did it the same way as Europe would you be fine with ID laws in the US? "Europe" is not itself a compelling reason for me to do an…

>Not sure, I assume lots of ways? Europe is a whole continent full of countries that have a long history of disagreement. I wouldn't be surprised to learn some of them do suppress votes.

>"Europe" is not itself a compelling reason for me to do anything so, no.

I didn't mean to imply you would support something just because Europe does it. Many people who oppose voter ID laws are fine with Europe's laws. I don't actually know how European countries do it, but since nobody really thinks it violates rights I would be fine doing it however they do it.

If some of them may violate rights then presumably some don't? If that is the case then it seems like it is possible to implement voter ID laws without suppressing rights? What would it take for you to support voter ID laws that don't suppress rights?

>I think the Second Amendment it says I can call Boeing and buy a F/A 18 Super Hornet, with missiles. So yes, I think asking for a background check or a name or literally anything other than "paper or plastic?" is a violation of my Second Amendment rights

>I think it is unconstitutional to impose a background check on the purchase of any weapon of war.

Are you being sarcastic or do you genuinely believe this? It seems pretty sarcastic to me.

>This does not mean I agree with the Second Amendment as written but lets stay on track here.

>Please don't put words in my mouth. Let's keep this civil

Seeing how you sound like you are opposed to the second amendment you are likely not a libertarian / anarchist and as such are probably being sarcastic in your support for no ID requirements on weapons. I will continue with that assumption.

If somebody is not some arbitrary distance to a DMV or post office it would be a violation of their rights. If that is a violation then so is ID requirements for guns.

>You forgot "you have to actually get to the place to get the ID". This may not be the DMV but it may be deliberately chosen to reduce your personal likelihood to try. The reasons for this may be racial or political. There is a long, established history of this behavior in the US.

I did forget that one. I am in favor of widespread locations for getting an ID to eliminate this issue. Do you also believe that not allowing mail in voting is a violation for the same reason? If you do believe that then do you think it was a violation of rights to not implement mail in voting until the late 70s for California and later for other states?

>You are still overlooking the part where the voter ID doesn't actually do anything useful. Making it easier to get doesn't change the fact that it provides no meaningful benefit while also infringing constitutional rights

Regardless if it does anything tangible it increases confidence in our elections. Also, voter turnout increases when voter ID laws are implemented. (It may or may not be related though.) It also will lower the amount of accusations of stolen elections.

We also don't know how much voter fraud (that would be stopped by IDs) there really is so it is hard to say it wouldn't have an impact. It may have no impact but also could. Just because you don't catch crimes doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There are very few investigations into voter fraud.

I would also say that anytime a person illegally votes it cancels out a legitimate vote. This is in essence voter suppression. This is just as bad as stooping a legitimate person from voting.

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

#488

Post by unclebucknasty »

dangoor wrote: post #284
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…

Georgia replaced their machines with ones that have paper trails.

Good. I never understood a rationale for not having a paper trail.

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

#489

Post by weakfish »

hammock wrote: post #305
the_snooze wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Election returns centers have a lot of people in it. You'd need a pretty sizeable conspiracy to carry out an attack you describe. At the very least, such a conspiracy would produce some kind of written communications or financial transactions. You'd need pretty good coordination to pull it off, and people are neither psychic nor capable of playing verbal "telephone" at scale.

>such a conspiracy would produce some kind of written communications or financial transactions. How would we ever know if those exist?

How do you know anything exists?

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

#490

Post by xadhominemx »

dionian wrote: post #380
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Voter rolls are public information and used by canvassers all the time. If there were a bunch of fake people registered somewhere, it would be very easy to notice.
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