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

661–670 of 889 posts

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

#661

Post by claytongulick »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #318
hef19898 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still this never happened in any other democratic country doing paper ballots. Simple reason: If there are more votes in the ballot box then registered voters (ideally this means everyone above voting and eligible to vote) you know someone tempered the ballot box. And having more than one (where I live I'm always puzzled how they find the hundreds of people to monitor the dozens of polling places since we have at…

I vote but I don’t vote in every single election that I can due to other obligations. Their fraud used the voter information of real people who they expect to simply not come to the polling station. It’s hard to catch. If you notice double voting from when the person actually votes then they simply throw out both votes (legitimate and illegitimate). This seems like a tactic that would work well in a place like the US…

I guess it would be fun then to drive around and issue duplicate votes for anyone who who has a sign in their yard that disagrees with me, thereby getting their vote thrown out.

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

#662

Post by thatfrenchguy »

hef19898 wrote: post #601
oneplane wrote: post #577

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 French presidential election got results within hours of closings, as does Germany in every election cycle. Without voring machines. How? Tons of ballot stations that count individually. Those preliminary results are recounted before it is official, usually without any deviations. I agree so, that if a system isn't set up that way, early results should not be important.

As someone who’s done this before, it relies on tons of manual volunteer labor. You need around 0.75-1.25% of the population counting votes + the people running the polls.

The way French elections are run is insanely elegant though, it’s basically perfect from a security/transparency l POV.

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

#663

Post by dragonwriter »

claytongulick wrote: post #660
JoBrad wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states. IANAL, but I believe that something like this would require a constitutional amendment, unless it could be squeezed in under the umbrella of the ICC like most other federal overreach laws.

> Because this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states.

If one agrees that this is true, that's not an answer to the question of why not do it; it does affect the mechanics—either a Constitutional Amendment (to do it federally) or a fifty-state compact (do it as a coordinated state-ID system for all state purposes, which is arguably closer to what was described) would be available mechanisms.

“The Constitution doesn't currently allow the federal government to do it” is not an answer to “why not do this in a centrally coordinated way”.

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

#664

Post by TheDong »

kfrzcode wrote: post #479
happyopossum wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> racism Odd that you'd throw that in there - care to explain how the linked comment is racist?

There's nothing there; tootie is just slandering

You'll have to enable "showdead" (the dropdown on your user page here https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kfrzcode ) before you can see it.

I am able to see the comment they are referencing.

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

#665

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

California has lots of close elections, even if it's aggregate of state level and federal elections don't tend to be close between the two major national parties.

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

#666

Post by bruce511 »

sneak wrote: post #646
shakna wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Australians were not allowed to leave Australia for some months until recently.

Yes, although to the grand-parent it's not clear how guns would have "helped" had you wanted to leave.

I mean, who exactly would you shoot? And after shooting them how would the outcome improve?

If you go to the airport how do you find a plane big enough to take you somewhere? Or enough people to prepare it to fly? And when you get to where you are going, how do you avoid getting arrested?

Ditto a boat. And a boat to where exactly?

Having a gun would literally have made zero difference on anything. Oh, wait, you meant that enough gun owners would get together, and perform some coup-like action to replace the government? Sure. That seems likely to turn out really well.

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

#667

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

the_snooze wrote: post #52
daenz wrote: post #31

They make it sound so simple: Bribe the Judge of Elections who oversees everything. Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates. Certify that the fake results are correct. Lie if anybody asks. This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy?

All the more reason why risk-limiting audits [1] should be standard procedure to sanity-check precinct results, especially for thinly-attended elections where fraud has a bigger impact on the outcome. Unfortunately, these things take time and money, and there's little immediate payoff in doing it, especially in the small elections that need it the most. [1] https://www.vote.pa.gov/About-Elections/Pages/Post-Election-…

Risk limiting audits as described in your link would only catch ballot miscountings. In this case fraudulent ballots were added to the system, so the RLA result would not show anything suspicious.

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

#668

Post by tptacek »

rootusrootus wrote: post #637
rayiner wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comment would be much better without the first sentence.

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

#669

Post by nwienert »

sneak wrote: post #646
shakna wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Australians were not allowed to leave Australia for some months until recently.

To bruce511 -

The type of populace that willingly disarms themselves is the same populace that willingly accepts totalitarian lockdowns.

In America, if the government had tried anything near that, there'd have been riots immediately. And yes, rioters with guns are a lot less likely to be stopped.

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

#670

Post by sneak »

bruce511 wrote: post #666
sneak wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians were not allowed to leave Australia for some months until recently.

Yes, although to the grand-parent it's not clear how guns would have "helped" had you wanted to leave. I mean, who exactly would you shoot? And after shooting them how would the outcome improve? If you go to the airport how do you find a plane big enough to take you somewhere? Or enough people to prepare it to fly? And when you get to where you are going, how do you avoid getting arrested? Ditto a boat. And a boat to…

You seem to underestimate the intelligence of government officials. They would not put themselves in harm's way to stop thousands of armed people from doing what they wish to do. No shots need be fired by anyone.

No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians, or be shot by fellow Australians, to enforce such an absurd prohibition on free and peaceful movement.

Such unilateral authoritarian nonsense can only occur when the majority of the population is disarmed first.

You'll note that the same thing happened in New York City during the 2004 RNC, during Bush's term and Bush's invasion of Iraq. There were unlawful mass arrests by NYPD of thousands of peaceful protesters, who were kettled and housed with limited food and water for 24-48h in large high-density camps along the river. Most were released without charges several days later (when the RNC was over) which, years later, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being paid out as settlement for the illegal actions of the police. This never would have happened if the protest were not approximately 0% armed; the police would not have attempted to kettle a crowd where even a few dozen were able to defend themselves from police violence.

This is why Hong Kong no longer has a free press, fair elections, or due process. They were forced to "fight" well-armed authoritarians with nothing more than umbrellas and laser pointers. Such a battle simply would not have happened in the first place were the population sufficiently armed. Police are not stupid; they will only engage with violence where they are nearly certain not to lose or be harmed (as we observed recently in Texas).

A well-armed population keeps the state from overstepping its bounds without a single shot being fired.

Post reply on HN