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

#671

Post by kevinmchugh » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:29 AM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #580

WillPostForFood wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just way below the number needed to influence elections. People say this like there are no close elections, or are only talking about Presidential elections (and ignoring Florida 2020), but pretty much every year there are razor thin votes in statewide and congressional races. Good example is Iowa 2nd district in 2020 which was decided by 6 votes: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrat-rita-hart-ends-elec... GOP Re…

A recent county wide election was dead even. They flipped a coin to determine the winner.

People _hate_ this but it's as fair as anything and probably okay whenever the vote tally is very tight. There are solutions to this, in rcv (or runoffs period) or proportional representation

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

#672

Post by seoaeu » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:29 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #625

seoaeu wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wasn't trying to be uncharitable. You said that we should have retroactively discarded 100% of votes from specific precincts, so I pointed out why allowing selective invalidation like that is a really bad idea.

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

#673

Post by Bud » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

mmcgaha wrote: post #345

thenewwazoo wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost certainly occurred Citation, please.

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...

If you're going to mock someone for not googling, you better come up with the goods: real evidence of substantial fraud in a quantity that would make a difference.

Otherwise, keep the sarcastic BS to yourself. Please.

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

#674

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

javagram wrote: post #66

jaywalk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it doesn’t happen often enough to undermine the integrity of elections in the aggregate. Ridiculous to just throw this out as if it's a concrete fact. Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones where the vote will be close enough that the fraud doesn't have to be too large. I'm not saying it has or hasn't hap…

> Even changing the outcome of a Presidential election doesn't require any kind of sweeping, nationwide fraud campaign. Just enough well-placed ones Were that to have happened, analysis of the voting results would show a divergence in results in those “well placed” areas. For a presidential race, there are a lot of eyes on this comparing demographic data with vote totals. For instance, in 2020 there were some allegat…

Wasn’t 2020 election was decided by 5 states and within them no more than a dozen counties?

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

#675

Post by throwawaylinux » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #524

mistermann wrote: post #427

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…

> when it does happen, 9 times out of 10 the perp turns out to be a Republican.

Citation, please.

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

#676

Post by dukeofdoom » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #476

tptacek wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense when you write it that way, but not in reality. There is a risk/reward to doing this. Part of your premise is that you can know when an election is going to come down to 6 votes. But in fact Meeks vs. Hart was newsworthy because results like that are incredibly rare. 99 times out of 100, if you try to juke the election, you're putting yourself at pretty grave legal risk and accomplishing absolutely not…

Part of your premise is that you can know when an election is going to come down to 6 votes. Assuming that's true, you just need to know when it is going to be close, and that only requires polling, not prescience. https://www.thegazette.com/article/polling-shows-iowa-2nd-di... Slightly more than two months before Iowans begin voting, polling shows the open-seat race in the U.S. House 2nd District as a dead heat. In…

No post body was provided.

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

#677

Post by kevinmchugh » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:33 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #340

kevinmchugh wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should expect some number of dead people to have voted in every election, totally aboveboard. There's always going to be someone who dies in a car accident on the way back from the polling place. Add early or by-mail voting and the attendant micromorts from a bigger gap between votes being cast and being counted, and you'll see more dead people having cast votes. Older people are much more likely to vote and much…

Just way below the number needed to influence elections. People say this like there are no close elections, or are only talking about Presidential elections (and ignoring Florida 2020), but pretty much every year there are razor thin votes in statewide and congressional races. Good example is Iowa 2nd district in 2020 which was decided by 6 votes: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrat-rita-hart-ends-elec... GOP Re…

I would just like to point out that my comment is about expecting legitimate votes cast by voters who are dead before election day.

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

#678

Post by travisgriggs » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:34 AM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #662

hef19898 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But isn’t there something poeticly sound about this? It’s kind like “the family that eats together stays together” and other platitudes like that. A nation that requires a heavy involvement in the whole process is going to value it more. In the states, we worship money and automation, so we automate it true point where very few are involved. And then we’re surprised when “win at all cost” incidents start to rise over “determine the public will.”

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

#679

Post by slg » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:34 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #639

slg wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 univ…

If you are going to make claims like this, you really should back them up with sources. I was only able to find info about one of the issues you mentioned.

>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.

"The 90 second video of election workers at State Farm arena, purporting to show fraud was watched in its entirety (hours) by @GaSecofState investigators. Shows normal ballot processing. Here is the fact check on it." [1]

>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).

Source?

>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.

Source?

[1] - https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/13348252336106332...

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

#680

Post by dpierce9 » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:35 AM UTC

jbritton wrote: post #591

dpierce9 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying ballots were separated then transported to be counted? I don’t know of anywhere where that happens. In Detroit there were allegations that ballots were ‘left unattended under a table’ which amounted to actually meaning ‘most of the employees left a secure facility which was videotaped the entire time and live streamed’. Trump actual gained votes in Democratic Wayne County. I read all of the allegations…

I don’t claim fraud, but I do have procedural concerns. I’m of the understanding that ballots stripped from their envelopes were transported to counting centers. Perhaps bribing one driver would be sufficient to swap 1000s of ballots and there would be no trail. I find the following from https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/05/gateway-pu... “”” Only after ballots were validated were they delivered to the TC…

So after expressing your concerns and asking a bunch of questions with easy to find answers that address most of your concerns, you still have those concerns?

Where does it say that ballots were stripped before delivery? Do you have evidence of that? The politifact piece says the signatures were validated then they were taken for processing. Signatures are on the outside of the envelope. That isn’t delivering naked ballots. Stripping the envelope happened at the processing center based on the videos of them describing the process [0], videos of them carrying out the process which were live-streamed and still available, and the State’s published documents describing the process.

Everyone is concerned that voting is done well. Your concern seems to move between ‘specific things which didn’t happen’ and ‘hypothetical perfectionism’ which is an unmeetable standard.

Edit, added video link: [0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...