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

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711–720 of 889 posts

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

#712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.

My state is exclusively postal voting, and checks signatures. If the deviation is too great, the reject the ballot. Has happened to my wife. Inconvenient, but it's a non-trivial hurdle.

For the sake of integrity, signature checking should be mandatory for every ballot. It would/could be entirely automated anyway. There is no burden on the states to perform the check.

Nothing would make me more convinced of an election outcome than having my ballot rejected due to signature comparison and getting the opportunity to cast it again

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

#713
post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

> Medicaid ($672bn yearly budget) provides coverage to those on low or no incomes

Only with the ACA expansion, which 12 states have declined, does Medicaid cover non-disabled, non-pregnant, childless adults, and even with children may not cover them except at a very low income (exact eligibility rules vary by state, income-based eligibility for adults with children can be as low as 17% of the federal poverty level.)

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

#714

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…

In America, you vote for president. In Soviet Russia, president vote for you.

That's kind of the subject of this guilty plea.

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

#715

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…

What's EJ?

I wish people defined their acronyms. It doesn't appear in the linked document either.

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

#716

> After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine The most staggering thing for me is how _tiny_ the payments are

Governmental corruption is cheap. The going rate to buy an MP on the U.K. is £10-£15k - they’ll do pretty much anything you ask.

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

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes. That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.

The first step to processing mail ballots is checking that the signature matches the voter's known signature (usually submitted at the time of voter registration). Are you proposing a conspiracy where crooks are somehow forging hundreds (if not thousands) of signatures? And there's no paper trail of communications or money changing hands to coordinate it all?

That is certainly not the information I have found. It is my understanding that in many localities the signatures are spot checked randomly.

I would be greatful to read that what you have stated is true, but I sincerely doubt it.

If you believe that to be true, it would be much easier to dismiss concerns

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

#718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even know how you'd generate fake votes in the first place > You can't just make people up! > You certainly can't just make up a final tally > the paper ballots have to match up It seems you live in an area with auditable physical copies of the poll receipts. Good. That should be the standard. But 5 states still don't do that: https://www.axios.com/2018/02/16/five-states-without-paper-t... And I seem to rec…

Receipts would not have mattered here. The guilty parties were literally casting votes for people they knew would not show up. It’s an identity issue, much harder, and with its own set of controversies.

Yes. Specifically, pro-Democrat media and organisations have spent the last several years arguing that measures to make fraud like this harder, such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when voting, are themselves election rigging. There are endless headlines counting every single entry removed from the electoral roll or even just marked for extra checking as a vote suppressed. Again, this includes people who won't vote because they're not living in that state anymore! They've been campaigning against checking if votes are being cast under the same person's identity in more than one state too, so using their identities is basically an easy and safe way to add fraudulent votes in much of the US. There was even a theory in widespread circulation on social media that the 2016 election was rigged in favour of Trump, based on counting every person whose voter registration was flagged as inactive and requiring further confirmation as a stolen vote for Clinton.

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

#719
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 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.

I oppose Voter IDs because I don’t think we need them. I’m on the fence with a National ID because I’m concerned it would have the same problems as Voter ID.

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

#720

> After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine The most staggering thing for me is how _tiny_ the payments are

really makes you think about how strong America's democracy actually is if it can be corrupted this cheaply.
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