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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

#861

Post by xpe »

gumby wrote: post #407
xpe wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A joke, I'll bet, but that is not what Adam Smith meant.

Most of the contemporary zealous acolytes of Adam Smith would be shocked and angered by what he actually wrote, were they to try reading it.

I am inclined to agree.

Many know of "The Wealth of Nations", but how many have read Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#The_Theory_of_Moral...

> Although The Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as Smith's most influential work, Smith himself is believed to have considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be a superior work.[79]

> Rae, John (1895). Life of Adam Smith. London & New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-7222-2658-6. Retrieved 14 May 2018 – via Internet Archive.

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

#862

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #856
willcipriano wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, and it'll cost you $50 (actual costs vary from state to state). And requiring voters to spend $50 to get an ID that lets them vote is totally not going to be in violation of the 24th Amendment (that bans poll taxes). That's why all states with voter id laws also have to offer a free "walking" id. > A final thing I'll bring up is this: to get my photo ID, I basically need to show up to the appropriate state offi…

The social security card is one of the hardest bits of ID to get (I've had the pleasure of replacing several, for myself and family members).

I replaced 1 this spring and it was literally just a web form.

https://www.ssa.gov/ssnumber/

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

#863

Post by greyhair »

cobbzilla wrote: post #850
nerdponx wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this exactly what (in theory) systems like PKI or even PGP are supposed to fix? I know this is probably techno-utopianism, but it'd be pretty cool if every resident were issued a certificate (for free) with their state or federal government as the certificate authority, which would be used for voting, paying taxes, etc. instead of ad-hoc verification systems like Name + SSN + Address. I can imagine so many horr…

(dons mad scientist hat) Create a system like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31668814 for voting. Voters remain anonymous yet can still verify their particular vote was counted correctly (and in fact that all votes are counted correctly) You’d still want a paper trail.

"You'd still want a paper trail" Our new voting machines in our county are awesome, I hope they are used across the state (NJ).

You get a blank piece of paper that you insert into the machine. You vote electronically, and it prints your vote out in plain readable text on the paper, and presents it to you protected under a piece of glass (maybe pexiglass?) to validate your choices. If there is something wrong, you can reject it at this point. If you accept it, it records your vote electronically, and swallows the paper ballot as a record.

Nice clear printed text. No chads.

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

#864

Post by greyhair »

extropy wrote: post #508
stretchwithme wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did she fix it?

The machine prints a paper ballot that is considered the actual vote. Any electronic copy is just a counting optimization. https://www.wired.com/2003/11/e-votes-must-leave-a-paper-tra...

We have those in NJ now. They are very cool. The printed ballot is presented to the voter, protected under glass, to verify that it is correct. It is then swallowed by the machine and the vote registered.

Very clear printed text. No hanging chads.

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

#865

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #862
tptacek wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social security card is one of the hardest bits of ID to get (I've had the pleasure of replacing several, for myself and family members).

I replaced 1 this spring and it was literally just a web form. https://www.ssa.gov/ssnumber/

I replaced one in 2019 and had to make an appointment at the Social Security Office days ahead of a time and wait 2 hours there in person. The web form existed, but I wasn't eligible.

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

#866

Post by [deleted] »

troad wrote: post #291
cycomanic wrote: post #288

It's interesting how everyone is talking about "how this can be so easy". Really what was done here was absolutely small fish compared to the much bigger issues with the US electoral system. I mean party operatives deciding voting districts, the legislative essentially selecting the judicative (admittedly an issue in many other democracies as well), a electoral system where a vote has vastly different influence depen…

Not liking the institutional design of the political system of the United States is a radically different class of problem than electoral fraud by an elected official.

[deleted]

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

#867

Post by MertsA »

claytongulick wrote: post #660
JoBrad wrote: 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 this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states. IANAL, but I believe that something like this would require a constitutional amendment, unless it could be squeezed in under the umbrella of the ICC like most other federal overreach laws.

The problem I have with this is that we essentially already have a national ID system. Social Security numbers are ubiquitous despite their original intention to not be used for identification because there's no existing national alternative. Everybody knows how stupid this system is yet we've painted ourselves into a corner and I don't think we'll ever walk back our reliance on it as an ID unless there's legislation mandating it and publishing it for everyone that has one assigned.

Personally I think there is some constitutional justification for a national ID system. The commerce clause gets abused a lot IMHO but identity is at the core of just about any contract. You could argue that state identification and plain old name, address, signature are sufficient, but it's not like SSNs are ubiquitous for no reason. Even as dumb as it is to use a single number for someone that never changes, the benefits of a single static identifier that is the same across a person's lifetime and established by the government outweighs the horrific insecurity of it all. Fundamentally a government is the root authority of legal identity for all the citizens of that country. The government should provide a modern secure way of establishing identity for both public and private matters.

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

#868

Post by seoaeu »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #736
rootusrootus wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voting has been solved centuries ago. Yes, but then we threw in a huge wrench when we decided that votes needed to be secret, too.

No. Voting has been secret also for centuries. Paper ballots allow secrecy of the vote _and_ verification of voters. Something that electronic ballots will never be able to do.

As has been stated repeatedly in this thread, paper ballots wouldn’t have prevented this case

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

#869

Post by seoaeu »

sidlls wrote: post #828
seoaeu wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to be uncharitable. You said that we should have retroactively discarded 100% of votes from specific precincts, so I pointed out why allowing selective invalidation like that is a really bad idea.

No, you uncharitably ignored the majority of my comment in your haste to make a sarcastic response.

I ignored the part where you called for mundane improvements, and zeroed in on the small bit where you called for blatant voter disenfranchisement

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

#870

Post by pyronik19 »

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.

"Factchecks" are nothing more than left wing propaganda opinion articles, they offer little to nothing of value. The "circumstantial" evidence is damning and they STILL refuse to investigate it.
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