Earlier quoted context omitted.
France has FPTP, and it works for a lot more than two parties. Admittedly, France has a second round run off in case no candidate has more than 50% of votes in the first round so.
> France has FPTP For the vast majority of it's existence, the 5th republic has had proportional representation in the legislature (only changed with Sarkozy, who instituted 2-round elections - IIRC). Presidential has been 2-round for much longer, perhaps from the beginning of the 5th republic. Straight FPTP as implemented in many places in the US allows plurality winners (ie, winners that don't get 50% of the votes)…
Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
611–620 of 889 posts
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls. Obviously, I believe this actually happened. But: how? What is Philadelphia not doing that we do in Chicago? You couldn't do this here; it's hard for me to even imagine how someone could walk into a precinct and cast multiple votes. And how would they cast their se…
I was a machine operator in the 2020 election in Philadelphia. It’s as you describe, everyone there (4-6 people) have to sign off at the end of the night on the totals. Two people are specifically one from each of the major parties, so it should be bipartisan. The numbers from the machine have to add up to the number of voters in the book. You’d need multiple accomplices to hide the mismatch, at least three people I…
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#613Quoted post unavailable.
I don't see this as a partisan issue. The same motivations exist for anyone in their position to commit fraud. I doubt people of one political tribe are any more immune to them than the those of another. Perhaps it is more likely for fraud to occur from a minority party given they are less likely to succeed without it.
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant brown people, but I expect you know that. Give the FEC the power to issue photo ID for voting. Legislate that it is only valid for that purpose and any other use is illegal. Send out census-style teams to track down every citizen and issue them a card, free of charge. Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this that are entirely self-inflicted. Someone will oppose a national ID, even if we already ha…
Please - we don’t need another single-purpose ID card. Why not just make a single ID card that all privileges that are recognized in all 50 states can be added to? Driver’s license classes, concealed carry, voting, security clearance, donor preferences, etc. everyone has to get a new one every 4 years, and there’s an electronic record for verification of basic info like photo and name when internet access is availabl…
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is how voting with electronics should be. It's great for entertainment/news etc to get early results but ultimately it doesn't matter if it takes a day or two with analog counting. Same day results really don't help with anything.
The printed paper "ballot" may not be what the voter intended. There are multiple stories of electronic voting machines changing the vote on the screen. The voter corrects it, and the correct ballot is printed. But, if the voter misses the change, then an incorrect ballot is printed. Sometimes, the voter has to correct it more than once. Here in New Hampshire, we use paper ballots marked with a felt tip pen. They are…
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s because the people who want voter ID also want to make it harder to get an ID and won’t accept student IDs but will accept eg your gun club ID. Banning mail in ballots doesn’t sound like much of a good policy.
> It’s because the people who want voter ID also want to make it harder to get an ID BS. > and won’t accept student IDs. Nor should they. > Banning mail in ballots doesn’t sound like much of a good policy. Why? Do you disagree that fraud is easier with mail-in ballots?
Nah, typical Texas behavior, along with overregulation of voter drives and arresting anyone who tries too hard to do it. To deny voter IDs you typically shut down DMVs in areas you don't want getting too many of them.
> Why? Do you disagree that fraud is easier with mail-in ballots?
It certainly enables some kinds of it (like forcing your family members to vote a certain way) but also makes some kinds harder (putting the voting site in someone's house and intimidating anyone who drives up). It's very popular in most places it's been tried, and probably a good tradeoff anywhere with rural populations.
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, ev…
In the 2000 Washington gubernatorial race the number of votes counted exceeded the number of registered voters and the margin of victory was less than the number of excess votes.
And even if it is just a local school board seat or dog catcher, it’s still a violation of people’s civil rights. What’s more is local elections usually have way more direct impact on people’s lives than federal elections.
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#618Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No because proximity to a Post Office isn't a reasonable criteria for suppressing a persons right to vote. In rural areas, one often has to travel a long distance to reach a post office or DMV. In urban or suburban areas, while the distance may vary, on average it is significantly less. So, if requiring someone to go to a government office to receive ID to vote suppresses the vote of people who live far away from t…
Requiring Voter ID enables suppression. Specifically by making it harder for some people to vote. Consider the example of the polling station bus being targeted. Those people could have complied but because of their race were prevented.
I take it you are talking about the incident you mentioned in another comment, in Louisville, Georgia, in 2018, in which African-American senior citizens got on a bus to take them to an early voting center, and then told to get off the bus and it didn't take them there? (Did they end up voting in that election? Did the organisers find another way to get them to the polls?)
I don't fully understood what happened in that case, but from what I've read of it, it sounds like the bus was owned by the county, and someone objected to using a county-owned bus for a trip organised by a political advocacy group which was de facto running a GOTV operation for a single political party, and that led to the bus trip being cancelled at the very last minute.
That rule – (implicitly or explicitly) partisan political groups can't use county-owned resources at election time – in itself doesn't seem inherently unreasonable. Possibly it was being enforced in a biased way, but a single incident by itself can't demonstrate bias in the application of a rule. (And even if you had evidence that Jefferson County was indeed applying that rule in a biased manner, how do you determine whether that bias is racial or political?) So, I really don't think this particular incident is a clearcut example of "voter suppression".
Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges
#620It'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…
The guilty parties were literally casting votes for people they knew would not show up.
It’s an identity issue, much harder, and with its own set of controversies.