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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

#791

Post by mistermann »

tptacek wrote: post #463
mistermann wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of your premise is that you can know when an election is going to come down to 6 votes. Not in reality, you appended that to your local model. It's true that there is only so much fraud you can get away with, and if the legitimate votes outnumber your ballot stuffing then your plan failed. Presumably fraudsters do not know what the final counts are going to be (unlike how many people in this thread "know" thin…

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Which part of the risk/reward equation I've presented do you disagree with? That the reward is higher than I think it is? Can you be specific as to how many votes you think you'd be able to swing with a scheme targeting e-day voting? Or is it that you think the risk is lower?

I'm disputing the claim that a premise of the argument is necessarily knowing the final vote count prior to launching the scheme. This knowledge is not actually necessary, although having it would certainly be beneficial.

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

#792

Post by tootie »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #644
tootie wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Election fraud is exactly what Donald Trump and his conspirators are about to be dragged over the coals for by the Jan 6 committee. He begged the GA SecState to cook the election in his favor. Basically the exact thing Myers was caught and convicted of in this story. Trump made the accusation multiple times going back even to 2016 that millions of illegal votes were cast against him. The details of his allegation wer…

You don't need to prove voter fraud. If you show that ballots were counted that should not have, you should prevail. For example if under law there needs to be a signature match on the envelope, but such matches were not done, or done to such a low standard that they are useless. Then technically you should be able to have those ballots thrown out. Since a signature on the envelope is a big part of verifying whether…

It "seems"? There are observers and safeguards at every step. There were also 65 separate lawsuits filed around the country related to the 2020 presidential election where a judge was presented with the best evidence available that mistakes had happened (there were zero cases actually alleging fraud) and every case was tossed for failing to meet basic standards.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jan/08/joe-biden/...

There were also multiple statewide audits conducted by outside parties that found no wrongdoing and an insignificant margin of error in counting.

Conversely, this case in PA which was small scale and local was caught, tried, prosecuted and convicted. So, no. Judges are doing their jobs.

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

#793

Post by mistermann »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #460
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…

Yes, individuals just as mistaken as those who claim fraud is rampant claim there is not fraud. People make those kinds of mistaken statements all the time. How about "most reasonable people who understand the process and have spent a little bit of time examining how it works"? I thought that was closer to the standard in discussions on HN, not "some rando on Twitter spouting off", but I guess not. It is not speculat…

I think the centre of the point of contention (and we can work outward from there) can be isolated like so: have there been zero authoritative personnel that have claimed or implied that fraud sufficient to change the outcome of an election is impossible?

And while contemplating this idea, remember that we are dealing with human beings.

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

#794

Post by mushbino »

rayiner wrote: post #582
blackguardx wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird caricature of how a union works. Unions protect workers from being fired by their employers so I’m not sure what a union “boss” could do to someone who upset them.

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

It happens now and has happened in recent times among all types of employers. The historical and union specific example wasn't necessary.

Companies can strongly suggest who employees should vote for and solicit donations to specific candidates.

As far as checking a record of actual votes, that's old days Tammany Hall kind of stuff. Not to say it wouldn't happen again if people could easily get away with it.

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/in-house/can-a-company-te...

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

#795

Post by l33t2328 »

hef19898 wrote: post #732
l33t2328 wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if all the citizens are bribed to vote for someone else? Really, all these systems rely on humans so they have inherent weaknesses.

So, democracy is not your thing?

I’m not sure where you’re getting that impression

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

#797

Post by pyuser583 »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #671
pyuser583 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The position was for county coroner. I don’t think proportional representation would have helped.

What is rcv? How would runoff’s help if there are only two candidates?

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

#798

Post by Izkata »

crabbycrab wrote: post #752
rootusrootus wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like white people are authoritative about other white people, if we ask black people for the truth they must be right. Or, you know, not. - 13% of Blacks, 10% of Hispanics, but only 5 percent of Whites lack photographic identification. - 12% of adults living in a household with less than $25,000 annual income lack photo ID, compared to just 2 percent in households with over $150,000 annual income. - 15 percent o…

How many of those 12-15% are actually unable to get an ID as opposed to "can't be bothered/don't need it"? An ID requirement would get some of those to get one - if they wanted to vote. And how does the voter turnout look for those groups anyway? The only people who might be impacted negatively by ID requirement are those unable (for whatever reason? Why can't there be an easy way to get an ID in the first place?) an…

I don't know about those groups specifically, but overall turnout is typically around 60% for presidential elections and 40% for midterm elections, for every election since at least 2000.

http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout...

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

#799

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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…

Lol everyone knows how to fix the voting system in America it is not rocket science.

But there is no political WILL to do it. Making voting hard, complex and open for abuse is literally how the parties want it.

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

#800

Post by xadhominemx »

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.

Again, many organizations track ballot rejections for exactly the reason you describe. It’s very easy to discover this sort of behavior.
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