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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

#721

Post by upsidesinclude »

cogman10 wrote: post #353
the_snooze wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Signatures are, frankly, a bad way to determine if a ballot is valid or not. People's signatures change all the time and there's not exactly a science in determining whether or not two are the same. It's ultimately up to the counter to make that determination. Otherwise, I agree with your point. The reason ballot harvesting is much less of an issue than made out is because there's a vast paper trail with each mail in…

That is quite a statement. Especially considering signatures are the primary way ballots are certified.

I don't believe 'signatures change' is reasonable or valid. By the time someone reaches adulthood and has an ID, their mark is likely to be quite distinct. Check your grandmother's signature sometime. My point being, that dismissal is not evidence or fact based, but likely aligns with your opinion.

>ultimately up to the counter

There's absolutely no reason to do that. Digital files already exist of all signatures and the envelope is coded to each voter. The comparison can be done trivially by image processing.

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

#722

Post by mulmen »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #608
xadhominemx wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it’s easy to check if your vote has been registered. If someone threw away a ton of ballots, people would notice.

They're not thrown away in the dumpster instead of fed to the counting machine. They're discarded as invalid over "signature doesn't match" and legal nit-picking. It's another case of regulatory rules being used to stop competition instead of improving market/election integrity.

This has the same problem. I can use a webpage to verify my vote has been counted. If there’s something wrong I can see there’s a problem and what to do about it. If this was widespread it would be caught.

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

#723

Post by upsidesinclude »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #424
upsidesinclude wrote: post #306

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.

And doing that on any kind of scale will undoubtedly end with the perpetrator in jail for voter fraud. It's easy to speculate about how, it's a lot harder to do it in a way that gets away with it without leaving a trail that eventually catches up with them.

Yes and no. I would argue that if enough people are doing this on a small scale then there's potential for significant impact.

All that is required is the belief that it is imperative your team wins. The ideology that you can be dishonest if you do it for the right reasons grants considerable latitude for these types of corrections.

In the case you present, one bad actor is somehow able to manipulate the system en mass. That is certainly likely to draw attention, as you've pointed out.

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

#724

Post by michaelt »

jxramos wrote: post #641
cobbzilla wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow so we need some explicit record of abstaining that the voter can submit and check the status on.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's realistic for the system to depend on non-voters checking their vote's status - what would be the procedure if someone claimed they were wrongly shown as having voted?

After all, it's easy to imagine a situation where certain groups might want to manufacture evidence of voter fraud.

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

#725

Post by mulmen »

klipklop wrote: post #372
nostromo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two steps to the process: Step one, check the signature, the voter roles, and remove the envelope. Throw the ballot into the bin to be counted. Step two, count the ballot. This ballot now has no identifiable information on it at all. There's no way to verify that a person's ballot was correctly tallied. So if you wanted to ballot stuff, you could do so prior to step two. Recounts wouldn't identify fraud, you'…

I am glad you pointed this out. Few seem to understand that once the envelope is open and thrown away there is no way to verify the ballot being legitimate in many states. It's sad that people think with such a system there is no chance of voter fraud. They will smugly say that a recount confirmed everything was legitimate, etc. Very frustrating that the nuance is lost on them. Ballots need serial numbers that trace…

My state provides a webpage for verifying the status of your ballot by serial number. There may also be a way to do so by phone. I’m not aware of a way to obtain the map of ID to voter but I don’t think it’s necessary. Plus it’s radioactive from a voter intimidation and privacy perspective.

> Let's say voter fraud is indeed very low in the US, why not make obvious moves to make it even more accurate and honest?

Because if you aren’t careful you can make it worse.

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

#726

Post by afandian »

jxramos wrote: post #641
cobbzilla wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow so we need some explicit record of abstaining that the voter can submit and check the status on.

Is there an officially recognised category of spoiled ballot paper in the US like in the UK?

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

#727

Post by makomk »

hef19898 wrote: post #414
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.

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 the case of elections, it's because one party has decided that making it as easy to vote as possible helps them win elections and so insists that election fraud does not exist and any protective measures are an attack on democracy itself. And they have the support of most of the media and organisations like the ACLU, so those claims are part of the mainstream beliefs in the USA and other countries' experiences with stuff like vote-by-mail fraud are ignored. At least, that's the kindest explanation I can give, given that one of their former congressmen just got caught rigging a bunch of elections...

You may have noticed that between 2016 and 2020 there were a bunch of media articles about voting security and how poor it was despite this. That's because the US media has no problem concluding that the voting system can't be trusted when the wrong party wins something important, like the presidential election. I'm not even exaggerating here, whether (say) voting machine security is portrayed as a non-issue that's impossible to exploit or a gaping hole that throws into question the entire results aligns exactly with who's winning.

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

#728

Post by phs318u »

0xy wrote: post #702
phs318u wrote: post #642

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…

You are not understanding what the "stuffed envelopes" was about. Federal elections are comprised of the people voting for candidates for specific electoral "seats" (geo regions equating to a seat in parliament). Some candidates are independents, others are party candidates.

What you are referring to relates to the way parties select their own candidates for a given seat. Rules for such things are entirely party issues and nothing to do with either the federal election itself, nor with the AEC. Some parties allow for "higher-ups" to veto the selection of party branch members, or to carry greater weight. There's typically horse-trading as factions of parties jockey for position to become "the" candidate for a given seat. Yes, branch stacking (with shill party members) happens. At the end of the day, they still have to present a candidate that the electorate finds palatable. E.g. in the recent federal election, the Labor party "parachuted" a high-profile candidate into a seat against the wishes of the local branch. That candidate was soundly beaten - contra to the trend in adjoining seats and the rest of the country - precisely because of those sort of shenanigans.

You're clearly a troll and I know I'm not going to convince you of anything, however there are others reading this and they deserve respect. Hence my responses.

Yes. The AEC is not perfect. Never claimed it was. But as far as these kind of institutions go, it's pretty damn good, and you could argue prima facie that it's leagues better than what you've got in the USA.

You've got to be kidding about the gun deaths. Yes, overall homicides may be down, yet active shooter events at schools are up. In what other country not actively at war or suffering a terrorist insurgency would anyone need a school desk like this? https://www.defendourchildren.org/safe-space-security-desk

Answer: only the USA.

I'm going to stop now but if your aim is to convince people you're a reasonable, good-faith interlocutor, you have singularly failed.

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

#729

Post by hef19898 »

upsidesinclude wrote: post #707
hef19898 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

All over this thread I shared details from other Democracies that shiw that paper based, save, secret election cam, and do, work at scale. I'm inclined to consider this to be helpful as it provides additional perspective and context.

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

#730

Post by philjohn »

all2 wrote: post #376
philjohn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the discussion D'Souza has with someone at the WaPo? There are holes in 2000 mules you could drive a big rig through.

Holes in the methodology are small enough, though, to convict January 6 rioters/protestors/whatever-they're-called-now.

I was under the impression that video evidence as well as social media posts were used in addition.
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