Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization • Hacker News Board

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#211

Post by xyzzyz » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

guildwriter wrote: post #202

js2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You found one in the 0.00002%. Notably, this occurred during a primary. It's still awful, but the GOP trusts the Democrats to run their own primaries and vice-versa. I wonder how this came to light years after. https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

Twisted things being done in our elections goes back to Tammany Hall. If you know where to look in American history it's not hard to find credible instances of important elections having substantial amounts of fraud. Why do people believe that when the chips are down and vast amounts of money and power are at stake that people are simply going to play fair? Especially when the players are some of the most ruthless, n…

This "Chicago political machine" was later shown to have committed voter fraud in 1982. 26 people were convicted[1], and here's the grand jury report[2]. They had been getting away with it, until they didn't.

Fortunately, as media reassure us, today voting fraud simply cannot happen: you'd need a whole conspiracy of dozens of people, a real, as one could call it, machine.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Illinois_elections#Allega... [2] - https://sites.duke.edu/pjms364s_01_s2016_jaydelancy/files/20...

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#212

Post by zerocrates » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

guscost wrote: post #94

Here’s someone who did analysis of 2020 NYT time-series data, and is trying to make a case that the currently-contested states show odd patterns. Note that this would be circumstantial evidence at best , but still a little fishy when compared with the timeline: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1325592112428163072.html I made a GitHub repo of this analysis ported to Python3, with a quickstart and a matplotlib script…

Here's some more of their trenchant analysis:

https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1325148807546376193

They're showing results from Prince William County in Virginia to say, a-ha, a huge number of people voted for Biden but didn't vote at all for a downballot race: clearly a sign of fraud, irregularities, malfeasance, perhaps even skullduggery!

Except the image doesn't show the titles of those races: the second is obviously for President, and the first, with fewer votes, is... for the representative for the first Congressional district. There are three different Congressional districts that are partially within Prince William County.

These aren't nefarious, suspicious Biden-only votes, they're just showing one race that's on everybody's ballot and comparing it to another that isn't. The count of reporting precincts also seems to have been edited for the listing of Presidential votes: it shows 44 in the image instead of the actual number of 94.

You could chalk these things up to mistakes or misunderstandings, but judging by the content of the rest of this person's messaging I think it's pretty clear that assuming good faith isn't warranted here.

(edited to fix Twitter link... I think)

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#213

Post by Gibbon1 » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #176

tptacek wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of this analysis appears to be that mail-in ballots are a uniform sampling of Democrats and Republicans. But of course, in 2020, that's not at all the case; the Republicans made a campaign issue out of not voting absentee, and of attempting legally to reject absentee ballots under a number of conditions. As a result: mail-in ballots are sharply more Democratic than Republican this year. Further, any analy…

I collected Florida ballot returns and early voting by party registration by date. I allocated independent registrations 50/50 to each party, and ignored 3rd party registrations. Obviously this isn't the same as actual votes, but it is instructive. The Democratic party had a large lead at the start from postal votes, but that shrunk as more early voting happened. Date Likely Democratic lead 24 Oct 2020 386,908 26 Oct…

I've watched California's election results for decades. You totally see mail in ballots trend Democratic. And urban areas tend to be slow to report. The tallies always shift towards Republicans then shift back toward Democrats.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#214

Post by EricDeb » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

guram11 wrote: post #85

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the improvements can be made in relation to voter registrations and rolls. How a state can keep people who have obviously died on voter rolls should be a red flag.

I agree and like to point out the downvotes to your comment raise a "red" flag itself

I think most democrats would agree purging dead people from the voters roles is something that could be improved. However, dead people voting is not a significant problem. Trump is using it as a reason to cast doubt on the election outcome.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/07/tweets/lis...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/may/18/chain-emai...

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#215

Post by zerocrates » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:37 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #183

yongjik wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California has 55 votes, Montana and DC only have 3 each. Is that not enough influence? No, California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter. In fact, even Democrats in CA and Republicans in MT have zero voice - because these states' outcome is predetermined, no presidential candidate ha…

> California and DC always vote Democrat, and Montana always vote Republican. Individual Republicans in CA and Democrats in MT have zero voice - their voices literally don't matter. This is only true if you hyper focus on the President (and ignore Bush/Reagan/Ford/Nixon in CA, Clinton in MT, etc.) - those voices are heard in the House and Senate, which have key impacts on what a President can actually do. It’s also o…

This discussion is about the Electoral College, of course it's focused on the President.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#216

Post by throwaway3846 » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:40 AM UTC

> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/declaration-of-non-depende...

> > Some cheating leaves barely a shadow of evidence. In other cases, the evidence is massive. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children — children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms — vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.

> The “seven million” figure appears to be accurate, as noted in a December 2000 National Tax Journal article by Jeffrey B. Liebman that drew its data from a 1990 Internal Revenue Service conference report:

The same people claiming there is minimal voter fraud on the basis of the relatively few in number convictions for voter fraud probably would have also claimed in 1986, before the IRS rule change, that there was minimal IRS dependent tax credit fraud.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence unless you make a sufficiently thorough effort to actually collect the evidence (i.e., to detect voter fraud).

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#217

Post by TheDong » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:46 AM UTC

tastyfreeze wrote: post #143

TheDong wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of that fact. I'm hopeful the popular vote interstate compact[0] will get adopted by enough states to make it so each person's vote counts equally. What you suggested above is a way to weight citizen's vote's even less equally than they do now, which is what I was responding to. The situation we have now is bad too, imo, but better than each state having an equal vote, irrespective of population. [0]: https…

Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains. Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country? This is a dark path to tread.

> Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains

Popular vote will only remove state sovereignty if the majority of people are aligned with that, at which point yeah, it should be done away with.

However, the reality is that people generally do agree that quite a few laws are state-level, not federal, and so even with a popular vote for federal laws, states would retain the sovereignty they have now.

Your reply there seems like a drastic overreaction. If we voted on our president via popular vote, we would have had a few different presidents in recent times, but I doubt any of them would have reduced state sovereignty significantly.

States are still free to set their own taxes, run their own police as they see fit, etc etc.

Basically, I don't think the popular vote would vote to repeal the 10th amendment, so it seems silly to say it would "destroy any shred of sovereignty". Especially since in this election, the outcome would have been identical.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#218

Post by Igelau » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:49 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #71

dionian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are cases in court right alleging this was not allowed to happen. "The Trump campaign said it is calling for a temporary halt in the counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania until it is given “meaningful” access in numerous locations and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed." - https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-seeks-voting-stop-25...

Michigan case was dismissed by the judge: https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/... As was the PA case: https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/11/07/trump-campaign-pa... Has the Trump campaign taken further action beyond what is discussed in your link? I know they had a press conference at the Four Seasons in Pennsylvania, did anything come of that?

> I know they had a press conference at the Four Seasons in Pennsylvania, did anything come of that?

Yeah, funny thing about that...

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#219

Post by tastyfreeze » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #185

tastyfreeze wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is how it should be. Each state has different interests. By having electoral votes based on population we are not avoiding the problem of population centers directing the country. How is electing a president different than votes for a constitutional amendment? Each state gets one vote there.

Why do you believe "population centers directing the country" is a bigger problem than "arbitrary historical boundaries directing the country?" If you replace the euphemism "population centers" with the word "people" you get "the problem of people directing the country"... which doesn't sound like a problem to me compared to the minority direction we have today.

People in population centers tend to think similarly due to a similar environment. What a city desires in the nation's leader does not necessarily align with rural voters. You must see the danger in a few, albeit large, groups having the majority of the population.

Say LA and New York decide that a communist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents outside the cities stand up against that in any way but force.

Re: Looking for Voter Fraud (In Old Elections) with Data Visualization

#220

Post by js2 » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #211

guildwriter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twisted things being done in our elections goes back to Tammany Hall. If you know where to look in American history it's not hard to find credible instances of important elections having substantial amounts of fraud. Why do people believe that when the chips are down and vast amounts of money and power are at stake that people are simply going to play fair? Especially when the players are some of the most ruthless, n…

This "Chicago political machine" was later shown to have committed voter fraud in 1982. 26 people were convicted[1], and here's the grand jury report[2]. They had been getting away with it, until they didn't. Fortunately, as media reassure us, today voting fraud simply cannot happen: you'd need a whole conspiracy of dozens of people, a real, as one could call it, machine. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Illi…

Okay, here’s a non-media non-partisan source. What I’m linking to was written in 2007. This seems prescient:

In the aftermath of a close election, losing candidates are often quick to blame voter fraud for the results. Legislators cite voter fraud as justification for various new restrictions on the exercise of the franchise. And pundits trot out the same few anecdotes time and again as proof that a wave of fraud is imminent.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/trut...