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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

#701

Post by seszett »

otikik wrote: post #689
travisgriggs wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In France it is done four times in a row every five years (presidential + parliament) and also two times in a row every six years (municipal elections, a few places have two simultaneous elections for the city mayor and "associated city" mayor) and I think once every five years (European elections, not sure of the modalities in France as I was never in France at this time).

It has a cost but most people involved are not paid. Referendums are uncommon but that has more to do with political culture than costs I think.

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

#702

Post by 0xy »

phs318u wrote: post #642
0xy wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ant…

Do you really think that most US voters are high-information voters? No. But they are high-motivation voters. Again, this hits at the fundamental difference - one voting system is about the overall stability of the society, in the other its about the primacy of the individual in (almost) all things. Let me ask - in the US, does the government have a duty to govern for/on-behalf-of non-voters? WIth respect to party br…

How can you claim elections are free and fair if the parties that win every election are subject to massive corruption including cash bribes in car parks? By the way, this is NOT an isolated incident or even an isolated area.

I imagine if Biden or Trump was stacking state electors or state nominations with shills by using cash-stuffed manila envelopes you would've mentioned that in your original post -- why do you not care about this corruption in your own country?

The proliferation of cash payments in envelopes to rig selections seems to disqualify Australia from the title of "not corrupt" elections. Again, not isolated.

As for the AEC, they have a long history of targeting people in rules that effectively prevent them voting [1]. Wow, so democratic! Not to mention the privacy breaches, or the audit that said they lied to the public repeatedly about cybersecurity. Wow, AEC elections are so secure! [2] [3]

Let's look at a quote: "Insufficient attention was paid to ensuring the AEC could identify whether the system had been compromised," Mr Hehir said.

Whoops. They didn't even have the capability to know whether the election was compromised, then they lied about it.

>But my kids aren't more likely to die from gunshot wounds

Gun homicides have been declining for 40 years in the US. Increased gun sales are correlated with decreased gun homicides. It seems like you're extrapolating data from media sources rather than looking at crime statistics?

>A person won't die just because they can't afford private health insurance

This is pretty much a lie. Medicaid ($672bn yearly budget) provides coverage to those on low or no incomes. Not to mention those "bill shock" images you've no doubt been manipulated by are highly misleading. People don't pay those figures. Never. Hospitals negotiate 90% or higher discounts for those who aren't insured. Go read personal finance subreddits for yourself to confirm.

>Meanwhile, to the best of my knowledge, not a single individual at any level responsible for the "Collateral Murder" incident has been punished

Australia is covering up the war crimes perpetrated by the military. The only reason it was ever public was because of leaks. The US military (as warmongering as it is) felt the Australian military had a bloodthirsty reputation.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-19/nt-voters-racial-disc...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-18/aec-sends-electoral-r...

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-22/aec-misled-public-abo...

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

#703

Post by MrPatan »

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…

Whose analysts?

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

#704

Post by WWLink »

fn-mote wrote: post #538
vxNsr wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The receipt is kept with the machine. I’ve never been anywhere where they give you proof of who YOU voted for.

I don't know the scheme used, but _you_ also need to be able to verify that the vote was counted correctly in this situation. So make sure you read the receipt. It's better than what we have. Vote-changing can be uncovered by an audit. ... But I still prefer the coercion-resistant systems that let you verify your own vote was counted correctly after the fact. Someone else posted a link to a bunch of papers.

In CA when you vote, there's a tracking mechanism you can use to see your vote was counted. A few years back I remember the ballots had a receipt you could tear off and use to verify it online later.

What would be cool is if you combined that serial number with a hash generated by filling in the ballot after the fact.

Eg you go to a page, supply your serial number and the things you voted for, and it tells you if it was counted and matches what you're saying.

Of course, this could still be used that way... but in CA ballots usually have enough options that it would be difficult for a malicious actor to have that much intent haha.

Most people would probably forget which smaller issues they voted for though.... so I dunno if it'd be reliable.

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

#706

Post by mise_en_place »

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.

If that's the case then one could simply use deceased persons to vote. It's not like they'll come back from the dead as a voter fraud zombie

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

#707

Post by upsidesinclude »

hef19898 wrote: post #594
Izkata wrote: post #550

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. Nope, 8 states automatically mail ballots to all eligible voters: https://ballotpedia.org/All-mail_voting Plus Illinois (and maybe others?) now has a permanent opt-in. (Quick edit: More up-to-date source that removed the state labeled "temp…

I should have mentioned, I never talked about the US.

What was the point of your comment?

This is specifically about the US. Arguing some random position inconsistent with US voting systems is not helpful discourse

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

#708

Post by david_p »

otikik wrote: post #689
travisgriggs wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just checked, France has 70000 polling stations and 280000 volunteers for each election, so it’s rather 0.4% of the population.

We just had presidential elections and are electing representatives for parlement next week, we had local elections in 2020, nation-wide elections are not that rare.

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

#709

Post by IncRnd »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #590
rayiner wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s an accurate representation of how many unions operated in the mid 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa

Searching "vot" brings up one hit on that page, about a union election. Searching "elect" has several hits, none of which have to do with fraud. What part of that Wikipedia page shows unions operating like that?

That's not a page on union voting practices but on Jimmy Hoffa, the well known union boss who was also a well known criminal.

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

#710

Post by upsidesinclude »

xadhominemx wrote: post #483
telotortium wrote: post #397

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.

We know it’s not an issue because if people were returning mailed ballots without the knowledge of the intended recipient, there would be a ton of people who would be logged as voting twice (once the mail in ballot and once in person or after requesting and submitting a replacement mail in ballot).

We do not know that this isn't an issue.

You have described one particular case that doesn't involve fraud or bad actors. That is called a strawman argument.

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