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Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

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Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#161

Post by dabinat »

grim_io wrote: post #82
peterleiser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.

Maybe I'm stupid, but why would sending back mean invalid? It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes. Am I missing something?

They only tested 400 out of 10,000, so there’s every chance when it goes back there’ll be another reason to reject it. You’re also assuming that the government’s data is accurate and the rejections are not disingenuous. If the ballots were actually accurate the state now needs to go through the process of proving that particular voter is eligible. Do state elections departments have the time and manpower to do all of that for however many get rejected? The goal is clearly to waste as much time as possible so the ballots don’t arrive on time.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#162

Post by hackyhacky »

teravor wrote: post #159
hackyhacky wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he is implying that the focus on the republican cases (the survivors) is a red herring because the system is presumably such that an actual conspiracy cannot be detected. Maybe GP is implying that, but that's not what they said, because what you describe is not survivorship bias. > I don't know anything about elections, a question worth asking is what would it look like if a conspiracy set out to exploit mail ballo…

> because what you describe is not survivorship bias then you should look up what survivorship bias is. the visible group in this scenario are the individuals who were caught. which says nothing about any conspiracies or even other more competent individuals. the sampling is also poor. > mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists isn't that obvious? if it were eas…

> then you should look up what survivorship bias is.

I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were not caught, even though there is no evidence that they exist: in this way the situation is quite different from that of missing planes in war. You ascribe the frauds' invisiblity to a supreme level of sophistification. The problem with that mode of thought is that it allows us to assume anything, including that the sophisticated frauds are actually Republican. So you can't call it survivorship bias until you show that those "invisible frauds" actually exist; you are going backwards by calling it survivorship bias in order to justify your unfounded a priori belief that they do exist.

> if it were easy to counterfeit currency in an undetectable way for a conspiracy while stupid individuals can get caught. would you be asking this question or would you assume the currency is in a bad shape?

This argument makes no sense. (a) If it's easy to commit a crime, then it's not necessary to be sophisticated to accomplsh it. (b) Widespread mail-in voter fraud is not easy to accomplish, unlike your hypothetical "trivial counterfeit" example, despite what Donald Trump tells you. (c) If only Republicans are getting caught doing voter fraud, then by your argument, Democrats are smarter, which is.... accurate. (d) You haven't even posited a posisble mechanism by which millions of fraudulent votes could be achieved. Believing things without evidence is called "faith" and is not the basis on which we develop laws.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#163

Post by monero-xmr »

mrj wrote: post #142
hackyhacky wrote: post #7

> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.

He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.

Having bare minimum protections against invalid voters, illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system.

I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#164

Post by hackyhacky »

dplgk wrote: post #87
cogman10 wrote: post #49

Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple states' voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea. (No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way…

Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets

> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets

They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#165

Post by teravor »

hackyhacky wrote: post #162
teravor wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because what you describe is not survivorship bias then you should look up what survivorship bias is. the visible group in this scenario are the individuals who were caught. which says nothing about any conspiracies or even other more competent individuals. the sampling is also poor. > mail-in voter fraud cannot be detected, then why do people claim that mail-in voter fraud exists isn't that obvious? if it were eas…

> then you should look up what survivorship bias is. I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were…

survivorship bias is a statistical error, why would you invoke planes? especially after saying this:

    Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
also, you are the one invoking domestic political factions. I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue. it's probably more likely that a state actor is going to be committing the fraud just to saw chaos and to perhaps one day be too obvious about it.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#166

Post by Freedom2 »

margalabargala wrote: post #88
RickJWagner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source, please.

You're replying to someone's personal interpretation and opinion asking about a source? That is the source. Do you not understand how discussions work?

Is there a source for how discussions work?

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#167

Post by hackyhacky »

teravor wrote: post #165
hackyhacky wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then you should look up what survivorship bias is. I know what survivorship bias is. The classic example of survivorship bias is analyzing damage patterns of planes returning from war. Clearly, some planes were shot down and did not return: we know that, because we know how many planes we started with. In this case, though, you are asserting that there are uncounted fraudulant voters (presumably Democrat) who were…

survivorship bias is a statistical error, why would you invoke planes? especially after saying this: Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead? also, you are the one invoking domestic political factions. I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue. it's probably more likely…

> why would you invoke planes?

I already told you why planes are relevant. It sounds like you really don't know what survivorship bias is at all. Please read the article [1]. Why are you in such a hurry to a discuss a topic that you don't understand?

Applying survivorship bias to the current "invisible fraud" situation is putting the cart before the horse.

> I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue.

It's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone in most systems, including systems where there is no fraud. Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists, and that bar has not been met. Does that answer your question?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#168

Post by kulahan »

stouset wrote: post #119
hackyhacky wrote: post #7

> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.

And when it all goes to shit, they can just use that as evidence that mail-in voting shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place. It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.

It’s worth mentioning that destroying the USPS has been a largely bipartisan effort, for reasons I cannot understand.

Edit: when the PAEA passed in 2006, it had 410 “yes” votes. Not a single democrat, and only 20 republicans voted no. This was, and still is, the primary reason the USPS is no longer able to function.

Re: Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

#170

Post by teravor »

hackyhacky wrote: post #167
teravor wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

survivorship bias is a statistical error, why would you invoke planes? especially after saying this: Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead? also, you are the one invoking domestic political factions. I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to attribute fraud to anyone should be allowed to continue. it's probably more likely…

> why would you invoke planes? I already told you why planes are relevant. It sounds like you really don't know what survivorship bias is at all. Please read the article [1]. Why are you in such a hurry to a discuss a topic that you don't understand? Applying survivorship bias to the current "invisible fraud" situation is putting the cart before the horse. > I'm merely wondering why a system where it's difficult to a…

it has been amusing watching you try to pretend that you knew what survivorship bias was. first you assumed it had something to do with death. then you invoked the plane anecdote.

now you link the wikipedia without realizing that over 90% of it has nothing to do with planes.

    > Before attempting to attribute fraud, one must first determine that it exists.
this is an assertion not an argument. I suppose there is no further point to this discussion.
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