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

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

probablydance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 467 posts

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

#251

Post by guscost »

tptacek wrote: post #129
adjkant wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reductively easy to see that the basic premise is incredibly flawed here: that ballots are uniformly shuffled in all states. Some very basic things that would cause those exact shifts in the data witnessed: 1. Mail vs Drop Box could very easily have a different ratio, which would easily explain a sharp shift if they counted them in different sets for some states when it's a plateau and a hard line jump. 2. S…

To repeat myself because I think it's worth being clear about this: we have enough insight to know that the premise of ballots being randomized statewide does not hold, at all. The reason we were all hitting refresh on Wasserman and Cohn's feeds on Twitter was that each Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday batch was attributed to a specific county, and we had expectations about what returns in those counties would look li…

This pretty much adds up, and invalidates the whole analysis in my opinion.

But I still believe that the first conspicuous batch of mail-in ballots being dumped in the witching hour, after poll watchers were told the counting was done for the night, is fishy, and I will not be surprised if the court considers it part of a larger pattern of behavior which causes ballots (legitimate but unverifiable, in many cases) to be thrown out.

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

#252

Post by cycomanic »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #219
majormajor wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

People in rural areas think similarly due to a similar environment. What a rural area desires in the nation's leader does not necessarily align with city voters. You must see the danger of minority having the majority of the voting power.

Say Louisiana and the mid-west would decide that a fascist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents in the cities stand up against that in any way but force.

Works just as well, and is what is actually happening.

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

#253

Post by js2 »

Glyptodon wrote: post #8

Always keep in mind that however distorted the electoral college is, that distortion is tremendously magnified by the cap on the size of the US house of Representatives and the fact that the Constitution specifies a lower bound for district population but no upper bound.

We could apparently add about 5,500 reps through ratifying a long lost amendment:

https://thefederalist.com/2016/03/14/want-to-fix-congress-ad...

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

#254

Post by nl »

rndgermandude wrote: post #159
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…

>No, California [...] always vote Democrat Except 1988, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972 and so on. Aka in my lifetime (yes, I am old). Georgia always votes Republican, except in this election (probably) or when Carter is running. An acquaintance who hails from Indiana recently told me Indiana always votes for the Republican candidate, and was surprised to find out Obama took Indiana in 2008. The Rust belt is deeply blue, exce…

Always red Texas is another example.

While it didn't flip this year it is increasingly competitive.

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

#255

Post by dragonwriter »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #219
majormajor wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> 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.

By having a Constitution that protects a basic model of government and requires a supermajority of states to consent to changes.

People having unequal representation in the national legislature or Presidential elections doesn't help that and isn't useful too it (well, the general problem. It might help specifically against unwelcome government supported by large-population states, but only by magnifying the risk of such when supported by small population states.)

Urban/rural isn't really the divide the Senate/EC works on. California’s rural population, whose voting power is deweighted by the Senate and EC just as much as that of the urban population, is bigger than that of the six smallest states combined.

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

#256

Post by chaz72 »

guscost wrote: post #247
chaz72 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard of this source - I hope it’s okay in this time of misinformation to ask for a recognizable source? Edit: I mean I am okay with leaving it as “somebody on the internet says”, but wondered if the evidence was more clear than that.

Not much else for that one online, Giuliani cited it and it’s funny. The other one he cited was a woman who registered to vote the day after she died: https://www.swgfuneralhome.com/obituary/Denise-Ondick https://twitter.com/clewandowski_/status/1325256319176224770... The tweet has a screenshot, and unless they’ve already corrected it, you can probably find it on the PA website yourself.

Okay, so your source is Giuliani. Well that is an answer, I guess. Sorry I was looking for a news source and not a political one. This is not nearly as credible - until evidence reaches a courtroom - as “somebody on the internet”.

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

#257

Post by cycomanic »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #32
Glyptodon wrote: post #8

Always keep in mind that however distorted the electoral college is, that distortion is tremendously magnified by the cap on the size of the US house of Representatives and the fact that the Constitution specifies a lower bound for district population but no upper bound.

I have been thinking that maybe states should get an equal number of electoral votes. We would get the protection of the electoral college and every state would have an equal say.

It would be worthwhile to look at the history of the electoral college [1].

It was not there to balance state powers (that's what the senate is for). It was a compromise between the people who did not want congress to be part of the voting (due to opportunity for corruption) and the ones that did not want a popular vote, because they did not trust the uneducated masses and feared mob rule. So the electoral college was born as compromise.

The distribution of votes was actually performed based on population which even included slaves (as 3/5 people as another compromise, because the southern states wanted slaves to count for their votes, but not have them vote). It's just state populations have changed dramatically since then and the electoral college has not.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fath...

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

#258

Post by croon »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #219
majormajor wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Say that less people, but in key states decide that an autocratic fascist should be best for the country, despite more people voting for someone else?

How do the majority stand up against that?

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

#259

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

gwd wrote: post #239
btilly wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. This I find impossible to believe. How hard is it to intercept mail-in ballots, sign them, then mail them in? Who knows that you did so? I personally find it very implausible that in both elections that Trump was in he produced results about 3% better th…

> How hard is it to intercept mail-in ballots, sign them, then mail them in? Who knows that you did so? Well first of all, the person who was supposed to get the mail-in ballot in the first place. In Michigan, you can check to see whether they've received your mail-in ballot. Don't you think that if 100k Republicans in Michigan didn't receive their ballot at all, but checked and found that they had been registered as…

If 50% of the country hates the president (rightly or wrongly) and much of the media argues that he's a bad person, and everyone who supports him are racists, then I could easily see people lying to pollsters.

Like, the shy tory effect comes from a much less polarised election in the UK (the 1992 GE).

That being said, I actually think that it was the likely voter models that messed up this year, given that turnout was so much higher than expected.

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

#260

Post by belorn »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #20
ve55 wrote: post #12

What I dislike about a lot of these potential fraud analysis techniques is that if a group that was performing fraud was aware of them, then they would simply perform the fraud 'properly' such that the given technique(s) don't show evidence (since they know what others are looking for and hoping to find, they simply ensure it isn't there). The same goes for similar techniques like Benford's law: once you know about t…

The system is secure and robust, at least with regards to the mechanics of individual votings. Among the main factors is its distributed nature. You just can't run a scam with senior citizen volunteers in thousands of individual precincts. Then, there are observers. Famous case from this week's election was Republicans complaining that their two dozen(!) observers weren't allowed closer than 6 feet to the ballots. It…

This is a golden opportunity for the left to implement a policy which historically the left has been advocating for and the right been blocking. National Identification. No more social security numbers, no knowledge about a name or a street. Practically every other country in the world has national identification and uses them as the building block for holding elections, social security, health care, licenses, drugs and so much more.

It would be a political tragedy if the sides on national identification would swift sides just because the status quo has shifted.

Post reply on HN