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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

#681

Post by tptacek »

saghm wrote: post #656
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 can't just make people up! Every vote is tied to a specific registration. We do same-day registration, but those votes are cast provisionally, with a paper log; there aren't many of them, and they can all be set aside and audited after-the-fact. > You certainly can't just make up a final tally. The numbers from the individual voting machines and the paper ballots have to match up; we had to stay an extra 2 hours…

File a FOIA request for voting precincts that weren't able to submit a consistent count at the end of the last election. If you're in a sane state, that'll cost you a single email. State FOIA is often very fast (in Illinois, it's 5 days). See what you think when you have actual data.

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

#682

Post by diffeomorphism »

rayiner wrote: post #587
hef19898 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has pretty liberal mail im voting, we had a bunch electuons during Covid with obvious increases of mail in voting. And we don't need IDs. We do have automatic and central "voter registration" (as basis to get the mandatory ID among other things).

Saying that Germany doesn’t have voter IDs is technically true but a bit misleading. In the US, registering to vote is super easy and can be done online in most states. In Germany, the residency registration that’s also used for voting requires showing up in person within a month of moving. The German system would be much more onerous if implemented in America than one tied to driver’s licenses that virtually everyon…

Don't you also have to update your driver's license when moving? Then what is more onerous about it?

> requires showing up in person within a month of moving

Not during covid by the way. I moved in 2020 and could simply send in the documents by email. Then some time later I had to briefly drop by to get a stamp for my ID, but that was like 5 minutes.

> registering to vote is super easy and can be done online in most states

That is nice, but not having to register at all is even easier.

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

#683

Post by saghm »

tptacek wrote: post #681
saghm wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't just make people up! Every vote is tied to a specific registration. We do same-day registration, but those votes are cast provisionally, with a paper log; there aren't many of them, and they can all be set aside and audited after-the-fact. > You certainly can't just make up a final tally. The numbers from the individual voting machines and the paper ballots have to match up; we had to stay an extra 2 hours…

File a FOIA request for voting precincts that weren't able to submit a consistent count at the end of the last election. If you're in a sane state, that'll cost you a single email. State FOIA is often very fast (in Illinois, it's 5 days). See what you think when you have actual data.

In case it's not clear, I don't actually have any reason to believe that any election I'm aware of has has it's outcome fabricated. I was mostly intrigued by the parent commenter's assertion that it was impossible for the people in charge to just lie about an election since clearly it's possibly for them to at least try. I realized I don't actually know who has the power to hold them accountable, and I was curious if there was a definitive answer for this sort of thing (and although it likely varies by location given how decentralized election regulations are in the US, it seemed like the parent commenter had some first-hand knowledge of how their local elections work and might already know the answer).

Continuing the hypothetical you suggest, what would an individual actually be able to achieve if they did somehow get the evidence they were looking for that the vote count was fabricated? Is there some sort of civil procedure for contesting the vote tally? Would it require a lawsuit against the person or group of people who lied about the totals? Is there some sort of hearing where people can make a case that whoever is supposed to certify the count (e.g. the legislature) can argue against it? Or would it just be a matter of fighting in the court of public opinion to mount enough pressure to get the lying party to cave?

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

#684

Post by rvz »

themitigating wrote: post #282
pyronik19 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-usa-mules/fact-che... The movie is another attempt to use circumstantial evidence without actually having a proper investigation. Then all the Republicans angry that Trump didn't win will go to forums, like this one, and say "watch 2000 mules" without providing any details because when Trump lost they didn't get what they wanted and can't deal with it.

No post body was provided.

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

#685

Post by ok_dad »

adamrezich wrote: post #449
todd8 wrote: post #441

My partner worked as a volunteer election poll worker in 2016. It was her job to take everyone's id and check it against a database to ensure that the person was on the voting rolls. 13 people came in to vote that either voted already at another location or had voted during the period of early voting allowed by our state. This amounted to approximately 1% of the voters that were processed by her that day. There were…

> There were no consequences for trying to vote twice, these people were simply turned away. can everyone agree that this is insane? it should be at least a federal crime to attempt to cast a fraudulent ballot in a federal election. surely, everyone here—pro- or anti-voter ID—should agree with this?

The system worked fine here, they were turned away, no need to get all legal about things. If they had actually voted twice, go get ‘em.

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

#686

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

When elections run close enough that the outcome is in doubt for days and hangs on a few counties, it doesn't take much to swing an election either way.

I think the scandal with the last few election rounds in the US was the notion that a foreign nation (Russia) was putting their fingers on the scale, getting away with it, and even succeeding to swing public opinion on a number of topics. And of course Trump managed to declare Putin a genius days before he invaded Kiiv.

Pensylvania, where this latest scandal happeed, was one of the states where the margin between Trump and Biden was razor thin and of course one of several states where the outcome was challenged. Considering that Trump lost that state you might see his point. But then of course there were other places that narrowly swung his way. Just not enough in the end.

With most of the election rounds since the Clinton era there have been states that were too close to call that used obviously flawed equipment and convoluted/weird auditing processes. Where the winning party appears very reluctant to address the serious issues in their state because the outcome suits them. E.g. the drama with voting machines in Florida has been dragging on for decades.

All this stuff just calls into question the outcomes of the major elections in the last decades. This stuff is disgraceful and the fact that both parties are working hard to ensure nothing changes is more disgraceful.

Carter called it almost a decade ago when he said that the US no longer has a functioning democracy. And that was way before a lot of the crazy stuff in more recent years happened.

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

#687

Post by xyzzyz »

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…

> 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.

Wow, I didn’t know I live in a black neighborhood!

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

#688

Post by sayrer »

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…

How did that work when JFK was elected?

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

#689

Post by otikik »

travisgriggs wrote: post #678
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It almost guarantees that the electorate won’t be consulted often, though. That’s something you can afford to do every 4 years, but not every 6 months.

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

#690

Post by jbritton »

dpierce9 wrote: post #680
jbritton wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I did find this describing the procedures for transporting ballot boxes. So this link resolves my fear that transport security wasn’t addressed.

https://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/vc/vcf/vcf02/mobile_bro...

I appreciate your response, it has made me question my thought process.

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