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

Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

desfontain.es

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 662 posts

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#281

Post by bobthepanda »

jrflowers wrote: post #276
whattheheckheck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual antidote to this? 5calls.org?

The other party needs to run better candidates. It’s their job to drive voter turnout in their favor (not internet argument warriors) and they’ve lost two out of the last three elections by sabotaging their own primaries and doing “Our candidate isn’t good but at least they’re not a got dang cheeto!!” campaigns. “Less bad doesn’t have to mean good” is a mantra with a current 67% loss rate, soon to be 75%, and then 80…

There also needs to be, probably, more party diversity.

The fact that the current president has such a stranglehold over their party is pretty unprecedented; normally, the big tent parties have lots of little camps with power bases that somewhat insulate independence, whether that be on an issue or regional level. It's kind of odd that the disenfranchised members of that party have not started up their own party.

Also, I think the current gerrymandering race to the bottom has pretty clearly demonstrated the need for a better system of voting and district mapping. The House elections are already regulated by congressional act, not by the constitution.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#282

Post by mantas »

watwut wrote: post #93
throwawa1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

1.) Migration is constant and big topic. 2.) Democracy happens to be destroyed by local far right movements, composed of people who were there for years and did not migrated anywhere. The extend of foreign destruction is Vance trying to destroy democracy in Europe openly, Putin doing it secretly and Musk openly enciting pogroms. None of them immigrated to EU.

Mainstream parties could take a hard stance on immigration and destroy „far right movements“ overnight. But somehow they are not interested in saving the democracy, instead they prefer to ignore hot topics and pretend they don’t exist. Hmmm, maybe it is this ignorance destroying the democracy?

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#283

Post by Rygian »

talon8635 wrote: post #125
Rygian wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What is your religious affiliation" makes absolutely no sense in a census exercise. IMO.

The point might be going over my head… why does it make no sense?

The United States are listed as a secular state (ie. it "is or purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion")

Edit: As I research a bit further, I have stumbled upon an interesting counterargument [1] that enumeration of ethnicity and ethnic groups results in "more political discrimination and state-sponsored violence targeting ethnic groups". Perhaps a similar conclusion could be reached about religious census information.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2...

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#284

Post by vjulian »

estearum wrote: post #102
whattheheckheck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual antidote to this? 5calls.org?

Voting and getting everyone you know to vote

Many of us find voting insulting, given very low marginal power in a vote; it’s akin to throwing breadcrumbs to the poor. The structure of governance (the reality, not the mythology taught in schools or pushed forth as propaganda) is not in support of ‘the people”.

Right or wrong, this is how many of feel. Voting is silly and futile.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#285

Post by estearum »

prepend wrote: post #254
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are doing everything they can to ensure that only the people who are legally allowed to vote are the ones voting Illegal voting is so rare that almost every time folks go looking for it they come up empty handed. Examples of voter suppression, on the other hand, are trivial to fine. (And both parties do it, particularly around primaries.) In my state, we’re trying to enact a citizenship-proof requirement which…

If someone mails in my absentee ballot and I don’t complain, how do you detect that voter fraud? Or if someone knows their friend is sick and votes without an id, how do you detect that? It seems like there are currently many ways to vote illegally that don’t get detected.

Can you describe specifically how someone finds enough complaint-free absentee ballots and sick friends to vote at any meaningful scale?

Doing this even 10 times seems unbelievably hard.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#286

Post by SadErn »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #251
patrick451 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are doing everything they can to ensure that only the people who are legally allowed to vote are the ones voting.

You should carefully examine the evidence you have supporting that belief. Start by observing that this is a partisan issue in which the official positions of the two major parties disagree on a factual claim, not merely the policy . A disagreement on policy can (sometimes) be chalked up to a difference in values, even though those do sometimes arise downstream of factual incorrectness. But a disagreement on facts is…

> you should be able to comfortably go searching for evidence to falsify it and support the alternative, and fail to find such evidence, confident in your assumption that you won't find it.

The system is confidentially designed to provide little to no evidence of the fraud it allows. Even simple signature and ID checking is banned in California.

The system itself is the evidence of the fraud. It is purposefully designed to hide evidence and prevent detection.

You are obviously an intelligent person but you've allowed your curiosity to be subjugated by propaganda.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#287

Post by estearum »

Jiro wrote: post #236
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are doing everything they can to ensure that only the people who are legally allowed to vote are the ones voting Illegal voting is so rare that almost every time folks go looking for it they come up empty handed. Examples of voter suppression, on the other hand, are trivial to fine. (And both parties do it, particularly around primaries.) In my state, we’re trying to enact a citizenship-proof requirement which…

Illegal voting is "rare" because the system is set up so that it is in most cases impossible to detect.

Can you describe the specific chain of events required to create a fraudulent vote that is "impossible" to detect?

Surely if you can confidently state the system not only is this way, but is purposely designed this way, you should have zero problem describing it exactly step by step.

Extra credit if you can describe a method that can produce 10, 100, or 1000 votes.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#288

Post by estearum »

rayiner wrote: post #272
estearum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting and getting everyone you know to vote

Yes more people should vote: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... (“Projecting onto the full voter file, if every registered voter voted, it’s likely that Trump would have won by even more.”).

Yes, more people should vote.

Always funny when Trumpers try to this out as a gotcha lmao.

As a believer in democracy, I think it's better that our government is more responsive rather than less responsive to the public.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#289

Post by intended »

p-e-w wrote: post #111
estearum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting and getting everyone you know to vote

Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high. Clearly this isn’t the answer. And neither is protesting, considering that 4 of the 5 largest demonstrations in US history happened in the past 10 years and achieved nothing.

I highly recommend the research done by Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Yochai Benkler.

In a nutshell, you have an issue where part of the information economy/market is captured. To the point that agenda can get set by theories or podcasts that have little truck with reality. Any checks or reviews of the claims, simply do not get surfaced within that ecosystem. This creates a more efficient system for political messaging.

You cannot have an effective democratic system when your consensus building mechanisms have been (intentionally) compromised and weakened.

Post reply on HN