Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 536 posts

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#471

Post by foobarqux »

tptacek wrote: post #400
foobarqux wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to tell you except that typically the person doing the PR (in any country and field) often doesn't have a clue about the details of the process that generated the results they are reporting, despite any ceremony (in fact the ceremony is often intended to hide that fact). They usually have as much to do with producing the numbers as Jake Tapper does when he gets the numbers displayed on his telepromp…

It's not a PR person reading the numbers. It's the President of the CNE!

Who presumably is more of a politician (and therefore PR person) than an analyst (even if they were an analyst some time in the past).

I can guarantee Jensen Huang is not vetting each number he repeats, even if he was a skilled engineer in the past.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#472

Post by andrepd »

foobarqux wrote: post #89
andrepd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the results are legitimate, how come independent polls were giving 30 percentage points less to Maduro than he obtained? Why were international entities not allowed to observe? And what about the multiple instances of harassment of opposition candidates? I'm not a fan of US imperialism, but that doesn't mean you need to support any thug whose rethoric opposes the US, going so far as to deny evident reality.

Maybe you should look up who funded the "independent polls".

You're very correct in applying skepticism! Now why don't you do the same to the ruling party's claims?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#473

Post by wruza »

noirscape wrote: post #450
ithkuil wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't they outsource the election count rigging to Russian or Chinese? Because they didn't know they would need help?

Because the Russians (don't know about China) also don't try to hide it. Not hiding your election fraud isn't always a sign of incompetence; it's also a show of power over the people these dictatorships are oppressing. In Russia, the election is blatantly forged[0]. The goal here isn't just to validate the dictatorship it's to dare you to speak up against it so the nice men with guns can knock on your door and tell y…

Knock it off why? The electorate doesn’t care, it will never get to tv or average feed or even have effect on an average person who barely understands the graph. Everyone knows it’s rigged. This “power show” argument copes with dumb reality more than anything else, it is a HNer idea of how to be a dictator. Power doesn’t need to show itself in such an intricate way, as if it was hiding. It’s right in your face all the time.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#474

Post by zamadatix »

johnklos wrote: post #222
zamadatix wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're probably just happy to keep the site somewhat reachable during spikes like this without constantly babying it. I.e. I doubt they are interested in filtering itself as much as even less interested in alternatives.

There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users. Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad? I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS. Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the firs…

> There are so many abuse protection companies out there that don't stigmatize non-western Internet users.

And there are also cases it's apparent and relevant to grandstand about, this is not one. The DDOS pages required me to go through hoops and try several devices even browsing from the US to this US site. Not typical, sure, but it is what makes the hyper charged complaints feel particularly off center.

> Also, do we really think that Columbia's IT people are that bad?

Nah, they are probably great. Likely very busy and wishing they had more staff/time like most "cost center" IT teams though.

> I doubt a page like this would get a substantial DDoS.

Any particular page is unlikely to get a DDoS but the site as a whole is likely to get them relatively frequently (disgruntled students and the like on top of the usual gamut) which is why the entire site is fronted by a CDN and given a single protection policy rather than setting everything up for each page posted.

> Making it inaccessible to half the world, particularly much of the country that the article is about, is conceding ahead of time to the people that might want to DDoS a page like this in the first place.

Again, these are probably good points on a general Cloudflare rant but posting them in this case actually makes the argument sound weaker since it's a presumed cause that doesn't seem to be the actual cause.

In an ideal world where we had extra IT time and could solve every problem and were talking about generalities of providers like Cloudflare I'd 100% agree with you. Sometimes reality gets in the way and it's not the reason we want to get fired up about or the reason we want to get fired up about isn't as easy or important to solve as we'd like it to be in the particular case though. Alternatively, if the topic were about Cloudflare instead of this particular school hosting this particular article I'd still agree as well. In this case it's none of the above - and why I say it's about not needing to baby it instead of an alternative. Similar load based protections for this site would also have kicked in with any provider, regardless our thoughts on Cloudflare.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#475

Post by dkarl »

ptero wrote: post #346
dkarl wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to have election observers here, but it would be political suicide for any politician to suggest it. Most Americans detest the idea that any influence from outside could improve anything here.

I don't have this feeling. As a single data point, the vast majority of my friends, both democratic and republican, are concerned about the other party pulling some tricks and would welcome as much independent transparency as possible; international observers and anything else. My 2c.

For my data point, the Republicans I know who are concerned about election meddling would consider virtually any foreign country, or the entire international community at large, to be potential conspirators against us. Russia gets a pass as long as Trump vouches for them, but he could turn that on a dime if he wanted.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#476

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #249
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose there was legitimacy to this, which many believe, why wouldn’t we still talk about this in 2024? Are we not allowed to discuss history?

By 2024, most people should have figured out that there wasn't legitimacy to this.

Why? What happened in 4 years that revealed to everyone beyond a doubt that it wasn’t legitimate?

Where I live, no one questions that the election was rigged. Most believe it was. I haven’t done enough of my own research to know one way or the other.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#477

Post by meepmorp »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #352
guywithahat wrote: post #348

This is why you don’t vote away your right to bear arms

True. But might not be a popular comment here. It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem. There is one logical resolution to where Venezuela finds themselves. No one really believes they’re going to pull out of this economic situation, nor now this political one.

> It seems many think you can carbon tax out of any problem.

What relevance does this have to gun ownership?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#478

Post by AnimalMuppet »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #476
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 2024, most people should have figured out that there wasn't legitimacy to this.

Why? What happened in 4 years that revealed to everyone beyond a doubt that it wasn’t legitimate? Where I live, no one questions that the election was rigged. Most believe it was. I haven’t done enough of my own research to know one way or the other.

Losing 60 out of 60 court cases that claimed election fraud should have been a data point. (Or 60 data points.)

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#479

Post by user3939382 »

mihaaly wrote: post #453
user3939382 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say "US state department controls math" that's a nice strawman. I said there's a reasonable explanation for the anomaly but the real reason you're seeing this is because of the State Dept's dissatisfaction with the election. I'd hope at least the crowd on HN would be smart enough not to be duped by the establishment but I guess not.

Of course you didn't say that, that was an irony you silly, you just do not understand math and draw out sensless mass manipulation bollocks from your desperation hat as a consequence. Not understanding the obvious.

> you just do not understand math

Based on what?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#480

Post by digging »

user3939382 wrote: post #261
digging wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed

Sure here you go https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/07/31/falsifying-vote... https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/e-voting-audits-...

I just read your first article and it's decent.

As I expected, it makes no attempt to offer any evidence that the CNE has published reliable results, or that the math in TFA is faulty in any way. It simply talks about the difficulty of falsifying specific documents, and how that would make it difficult for a false report to continue when pressed (which is exactly what's happening - Maduro is pressed, and has no evidence to show). And it concludes with a pretty strong suggestion that the CNE's unverifiable tallies are, in fact, a lie.

So, I appreciate the independent confirmation that Maduro's victory is a likely sham. It's also quite reassuring to note that producing actual fake ballots would, in fact, be extremely difficult - just as you claimed! That gives me hope that Maduro will fail to convince others of his victory, since it's probably a complete fabrication.

Post reply on HN