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

531–540 of 889 posts

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

#531

Post by dudeinjapan »

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…

In America, you vote for president. In Soviet Russia, president vote for you.

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

#532

Post by ricudis »

nostromo wrote: post #267
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…

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'…

Long gone are the good old times where you just had to place some local policemen/military in every voting center "friendly advising" people who should they vote for. "For their own security", of course (reference: Greece 1961)

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

#533

Post by vxNsr »

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…

Find precincts with low turn out, stick your own people in there as judges, at the end of day add as many votes as you like for the people who didn’t turn up to vote following basically the same method the former democratic senator in the story did.

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

#536

Post by tzs »

maxerickson wrote: post #359
wjmao88 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we could even have generated guid on the paper records that you can look up in a database to make sure your vote is being recorded correctly, without exposing any identifying information.

It's very difficult to provide an easy to use vote receipt that can't also be used for tampering (threats or bribes for the wrong/right votes). (Maybe I am reading too much meaning into "recorded correctly")

This is a solved problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675726

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

#537

Post by rootusrootus »

tptacek wrote: post #522
happyopossum wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow your problem here - there are a ton of people who are registered who never vote, you simply log the votes under the names of people who didn't show up.

All at the end of the evening? If you do it in the middle of the day, and the actual voter shows up, there's a good chance you're spending the night in Cook County Jail.

That's the bit everyone seems to miss. Almost all these hypothetical opportunities for fraud fall apart quickly because they require an actual registered voter to exist but not vote, and the moment that voter walks through the door and is told they already voted, all hell will break loose.

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

#538

Post by fn-mote »

vxNsr wrote: post #525
rlewkov wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your a member of a union Before election Union boss: "we expect everyone to vote for candidate X" After election Union boss: "show me your vote receipt"

The receipt is kept with the machine. I’ve never been anywhere where they give you proof of who YOU voted for.

I don't know the scheme used, but _you_ also need to be able to verify that the vote was counted correctly in this situation. So make sure you read the receipt.

It's better than what we have. Vote-changing can be uncovered by an audit. ... But I still prefer the coercion-resistant systems that let you verify your own vote was counted correctly after the fact. Someone else posted a link to a bunch of papers.

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

#539

Post by cubano »

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…

Any system created by humans can be hacked by humans.

- some wise someone somewhere

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

#540

Post by rootusrootus »

nabla9 wrote: post #212
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…

> Beren took pains to ensure that the number of ballots cast on the machines was a reflection of the number of voters signed into the polling books and the List of Voters. After the polls closed on Election Day, Beren and her associates would falsely certify the results.

So presumably they were destroying valid votes and replacing them? Seems like a pretty awful process for maintaining control of ballots if it allows for that.
Post reply on HN