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

#631

Post by groby_b » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #465

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…

You don't have to make people up. There there plenty of dead people on rhe registry. Although they are supposedly doing better about that lately.

Dead people on the registration list has of course not much to do with dead people actually casting a vote. Not to mention that many "dead" voters aren't dead, but the SSA fucked up.

The Heritage Foundation, which is very much in love with the idea of voter fraud, has been able to find a total of 19 cases since 1997 where somebody used a deceased person's registration to (attempt to) vote.

So maybe let's kick the facetious "supposedly" of the last sentence.

And if we wanted to do better with that - the same crowd that is oh-so-concerned with voter fraud is oddly opposed to a federal registry, federal ID, or free state ID. All things that'd help tremendously with increasing the accuracy of voter rolls.

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

#632

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

tomcatfish wrote: post #595

rootusrootus wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the conspiracy theorists out there who still think there were more than seven million fraudulent votes cast in 2020, I wish I could give them the opportunity to try and vote fraudulently, with no legal consequences. You can do whatever it takes (caveat: no violence) to get those fake votes in. Document everything you did, record it all, present it when you're done and there will be no legal repercussions. We'…

All you've done is add insult to a hypothetical and pretend it's a point of argument. I shouldn't be surprised though, because "talk is cheap"

That's not an insult, it is a challenge. Put up, or shut up. Calling into question our fundamental democratic systems just to score points in identity politics is low brow, we should challenge anyone who makes those accusations to back them up with facts.

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

#633

Post by eyelidlessness » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #30

Americans have a really tough time with the notion of materiality. America is such a big country that, as a matter of statistics, anything that can happen is happening. That doesn’t mean it happens often enough to call into question our basic systems. In this case it’s the right that fails to grasp materiality. Yes, people vote illegally, ballot boxes get stuffed, their is collusion, etc. No, it doesn’t happen often…

> a few isolated instances of innocent people being falsely convicted or forced to plead guilty as proof that such errors are pervasive and undermine the integrity of the justice system.

I think you misunderstand the nature of the critique. Granted I’m just one leftist among a few tens, but the systemic prejudice of the justice system is not a few isolated cases, not limited to wrongful convictions, and mostly invisible by design. Most of it is fully legal and unassailable from a legal standpoint. They don’t need to get away with crimes if the law is in their favor.

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

#634

Post by shakna » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #621

hef19898 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> 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.

Australia, imprisoned? Because of our gun laws?

I have access to four different shooting ranges within twenty minutes travel, and my friends go hunting every other weekend. How exactly are we imprisoned?

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

#635

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #391

hammock wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It would have taken roughly 80k votes to switch the 2016 election from Trump to Clinton. However people had no idea of that beforehand. What if they paused ballot counting on the night of Election Day, assessed how many votes they needed, and worked overnight to get the votes needed, reporting new totals the next day? Wouldn’t that solve the issue you raise here?

They would need to be able to mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of votes on hours of notice. They would also need to be able to distribute those votes broadly enough not to cause suspicion when an unexpected trove of votes are added late. These votes would also need to be cast intelligently enough to match all expected down ballot elections not to draw suspicion. I don't think there is a way to do all of this wi…

[deleted]

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

#636

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #568

rootusrootus wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet it didn't when tons of people were told that in the 2020 election. Two examples from a quick search: https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/houston-woman-turned-away-from... https://abc11.com/nc-vote-provisional-ballot-voter-already-v...

I guess it depends on how literal "all hell will break loose" is defined :). It was worth a story in the news, which is significant. How many of those does it take before it becomes a national headline? Way before we get to enough votes to matter. Imagine in either location it was, say, a dozen people saying that? There'd be calls to invalidate the election results in those areas and redo.

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

#637

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:47 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #588

rootusrootus wrote: post #527

Earlier 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…

As a card carrying “brown person” I’m confused by your argument. I’ve never seen anyone checking skin color at the door at the DMV.

I have seen your posts on HN, I don't buy that you're actually confused. Overt racism at the door to the DMV is not at all how you disenfranchise a group of citizens, especially in modern times. You make sure DMVs in predominantly black neighborhoods have short hours at times most inconvenient, you make sure polling places are understaffed and overbooked, things like that. It insulates you against direct evidence but still achieves your goal.

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

#638

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #576

rootusrootus wrote: post #527

Earlier 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…

Because a narrowly focused voter ID card is more difficult for naysayers to rebut, because they are themselves claiming we need exactly that. I support a real national ID card myself.

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

#639

Post by hammock » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #391

hammock wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It would have taken roughly 80k votes to switch the 2016 election from Trump to Clinton. However people had no idea of that beforehand. What if they paused ballot counting on the night of Election Day, assessed how many votes they needed, and worked overnight to get the votes needed, reporting new totals the next day? Wouldn’t that solve the issue you raise here?

They would need to be able to mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of votes on hours of notice. They would also need to be able to distribute those votes broadly enough not to cause suspicion when an unexpected trove of votes are added late. These votes would also need to be cast intelligently enough to match all expected down ballot elections not to draw suspicion. I don't think there is a way to do all of this wi…

> They would need to be able to mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of votes on hours of notice.

The ability does exist, for example in Fulton County there is video of workers pulling suitcases full of ballots out from under tables and running them possibly multiple times through machines after poll watchers had been sent home. An investigation revealed there was no widespread voter fraud, but in an alternate universe those ballots could have been shenanigan votes.

>They would also need to be able to distribute those votes broadly enough not to cause suspicion when an unexpected trove of votes are added late.

The votes that were added overnight actually weren’t broadly distributed at all. Suspicion was raised (and dismissed, since investigations suggested no evidence of widespread voter fraud).

>These votes would also need to be cast intelligently enough to match all expected down ballot elections not to draw suspicion.

If I recall, many if not most of the votes added overnight did not have downballot selections at all. Of course, this fact is not evidence of widespread voter fraud.

>I don't think there is a way to do all of this without a sweeping multi-state conspiracy.

I tend to agree. A multi-state conspiracy is more likely than districts in Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia and other swing state cities acting independently of each other - that is, if widespread voter fraud did occur, which of course there is no evidence of.

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

#640

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:56 AM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #557

faddypaddy34 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter id laws have been shown to increase voter turn out in the United States. Most states give free IDs for voting. It is a federal law that you must show an ID to register. Stop with this misinformed nonsense that there is a crazy conspiracy to keep "brown" people from voting. Maybe once yes but not for awhile.

Related, this funny/sad video from 6 years ago about actually asking black people about getting IDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGmKHrWKMQ (4 minutes long) Summary: They pretty much all responded "whoever thinks we don't have / can't get IDs is ignorant and probably a bit racist".

Just like white people are authoritative about other white people, if we ask black people for the truth they must be right. Or, you know, not.

- 13% of Blacks, 10% of Hispanics, but only 5 percent of Whites lack photographic identification.

- 12% of adults living in a household with less than $25,000 annual income lack photo ID, compared to just 2 percent in households with over $150,000 annual income.

- 15 percent of 17-20 year olds lack photo ID, and 11 percent of those ages 21-24 lack photo ID.

So yeah, ID requirements are not a half bad way to skew election results in your favor.

And consider for a moment just how strong an advantage Republicans have in the house of representatives these days compared to how weak their actual number of represented voters is. All the little efforts absolutely add up to real results.