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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

#621

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…

Other countries have NOT figured out gun control, as the recent fall of Hong Kong and imprisonment of the entire continent of Australia have illustrated.

The solution is not a simple one as you imply, otherwise it would have been solved already. Give people some credit!

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

#622
> conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Pennsylvania elections

I'm gonna go ahead and guess 2020 wasn't tacked on for obvious reasons.

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

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is why designs usually require the voter to be able to inspect the paper ballot before finalizing it. Shenanigans like that would be caught, as the machine has no way of knowing how close the voter will look.

In yesterday’s California election (Los Angeles County, specifically), it had me review all of my choices on the screen (after I was done), then it printed out the form so I could review the printed copy. Then (very confusingly) the final step was to insert the form back into the machine. Basically everyone was confused by this review and reinsert process, but still it seemed like a good system for ensuring there are no glitches.

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

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2020 in Pennsylvania the standard was that a signature existed not that it matched the voter rolls. The incentive not to closely scritinize signatures when mail in ballots in your county strongly favor your perfered candidate is clear. "If the Voter’s Declaration on the return envelope is signed and the county board is satisfied that the declaration is sufficient, the mail-in or absentee ballot should be approved…

Thanks for sharing this! That's absolutely concerning, and definitely opens up a possibility for monkey business if fraudsters can just scribble down anything in the signature field. Given the millions of mail ballots in Pennsylvania in 2020, I would expect someone noticing ballot theft at scale (i.e., "I never got my mail ballot but it says I already voted!"), but regardless this is something I would still want corr…

The standard for a match is so low, its practically useless.

https://youtu.be/v_liXxu0XL8

He did an audit of the envelope images for the Maricopa county election board, and testified under oath.

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

#625
post #241
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 100% of the votes from those precincts without observers should’ve been discarded. The real problem is that we don’t fund elections properly. This sort of thing isn’t a problem in other developed democracies. It’s only one here by design.

What you’re proposing is that the official in charge of running elections can cut funding to precincts that usually vote for his opponent, and then later invalidate all ballots cast there?

That's an incredibly uncharitable read of my comment.

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

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Nobody likes to get down to the details of actual fraud events, really. Neither side. Democrats because they don't believe it happens often. Republicans because when it does happen, 9 times out of 10 the perp turns out to be a Republican. This has been the amusing reality for years now. I personally think that fraud of a significant scale in a country with thousands of different voting systems is basically impossible…

This guy was a Democrat

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

#628

Earlier 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…

I had a paper ballot print out under plastic after I made my in person vote in california. you have to agree that everything matches up with what you actually voted for. the times that the "system messes up and the voter has to change it" it's almost always either user error or the touch screen being calibrated incorrectly.

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

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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"

This is such a bad example that strikes me as contrived just to take a dig at unions. Why not replace: /Union boss/Employer/, it still works.

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

#630

Maybe this will come across as yet another Australian telling the Yanks how to suck eggs at this democracy thing (because I'm sure you haven't had enough of us tut-tutting you about your gun laws or health system), but I believe there are several key factors that mitigate against large-scale electoral fraud in Australia. 1. We have a single federal, non-partisan (ie. beauracratic not political) electoral commission,…

Why would you want low-information voters to be forced to vote in a compulsory voting system?

Australian "democracy" is hardly a shining star in the world, given state politics is a corrupt mess with branch stacking (featuring cash in manilla envelopes exchanged in car parks, no really, this happened!) and outright corruption. Then you have both major parties being practically identical (both vehemently voted for anti-encryption and metadata retention bills).

You also made the common misconception that the US is a democracy. It wasn't, never was, and was never founded as one. The US is a republic, and elections are based on state representation and not individual voters. This prevents coastal elites in California and New York from dictating policy for poor farmers in Idaho.

I also find it hard to believe the AEC is not partisan, considering their mainstream bias (the three majors receive preferential treatment).

Preference voting is also terrible, given it severely punishes minor parties, who are rapidly rising in popularity. 1/3rd of Australians don't vote for the corrupt major parties yet they are barely represented.

As for "encouraging centrism", I'm not sure anyone should want that given Australia is a basketcase of mass surveillance, war crimes (indiscriminate slaying of civilians in Afghanistan) and violating UN Human Rights guidelines they are a signatory to (they prevented citizens from leaving the country). Such a shining star for democracy and centrism, blasting away Afghanistani civilians and covering it up. Sounds amazing!

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