Live data from Hacker News

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

probablydance.com

461–467 of 467 posts

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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16,000 votes is only a half a percentage of people in AZ committing voter fraud, and that's assuming they each only submit one fraudulent ballot. Apparently people have been caught submitting dozens of ballots in the names of people they didn't have any right to. If 0.02% of people did that, it flips the state. You can also make the "doesn't make sense" argument about voting itself, since exactly zero of the states w…

What do you think a fraudulent ballot is? You can't just make a person up; there are voter rolls. Whatever means you find of coming up with a name and address that will be accepted as a vote, you have to do it (here, hypothetically) 16,000 times. If you use real people's names, which you have to because, again, voter rolls, many of them have already shown up to vote. The epollbook shows that on the screen, and you're…

> The epollbook shows that on the screen, and you're standing there being asked for ID by a suspicious poll worker. Meanwhile, you would need thousands of coconspirators, and count on none of them ever leaking.

You're talking about someone showing up at the polls to commit voter fraud in person, when the contention here is primarily about mail-in ballots.

If someone has access to the voter rolls from the previous election, how do you detect if they've submitted mail-in ballots for people who were registered but didn't vote last time, on the theory that most of them still won't? Or who registers new people without their request and then submits ballots in their names? That entire process would be taking place outside of the polling location.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s on the accusing party to provide that evidence and they haven’t. But that's what I'm saying. What measures can we put into place to allow them to do that if it's actually true, or rule it out if it isn't? I'm asking for a good way that someone could find evidence that someone else e.g. mailed in a large number of ballots fraudulently, and you're telling me that there is no evidence of that happening. Well yeah…

Before you ask for people to help you preclude that anyone mailed in a large number of fraudulent ballots, I think it's fair to put to onus on you to describe how that actually could have happened. Start at step 1 and talk us through it: what does the "thousand ballot mail-in attack" look like? Bear in mind voters are registered with ID and proof of address into every state's voter rolls, states have records of when…

So let's come up with a couple of scenarios here.

Probably the hardest one to catch is where they have access to the voter rolls and submit ballots in the names of people who were legitimately registered but didn't vote. The stealthier way to do that would be to have real-time access and then inject the ballots at the last minute in the names of people they know didn't vote, so there wouldn't be duplicates.

The scattershot method would be to predict who isn't likely to vote, e.g. because they didn't vote last time, and submit ballots in those names. Then they would have some duplicate ballots, but if the predictions about who wouldn't vote were mostly right, they could submit thousands of ballots and only have a small percentage of duplicates. There would be some duplicates, but then what do you do? You could throw out the duplicates, but one of the two was a legitimate ballot, and the majority of fraudulent ballots wouldn't be duplicated and would still get counted. It's also not obvious how to distinguish between whether a small percentage of duplicated ballots out of millions cast are a result of a single act of intentional fraud or many independent acts of incompetence.

Another alternative would be to register people who didn't request to be, e.g. people who are institutionalized and a worker at the institution is in a position to register them and then intercept their ballots and submit them.

Some privileged positions would allow someone to do this at greater scale, e.g. postal workers. A postal worker in a high density city could have many thousands of residences on their route, each with multiple eligible voters. Get a copy of the voter rolls, register every eligible voter on their route who isn't already in there, use their real social security numbers obtained from a copy of the Equifax leak or similar, then request mail-in ballots to take and submit.

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you ask for people to help you preclude that anyone mailed in a large number of fraudulent ballots, I think it's fair to put to onus on you to describe how that actually could have happened. Start at step 1 and talk us through it: what does the "thousand ballot mail-in attack" look like? Bear in mind voters are registered with ID and proof of address into every state's voter rolls, states have records of when…

So let's come up with a couple of scenarios here. Probably the hardest one to catch is where they have access to the voter rolls and submit ballots in the names of people who were legitimately registered but didn't vote. The stealthier way to do that would be to have real-time access and then inject the ballots at the last minute in the names of people they know didn't vote, so there wouldn't be duplicates. The scatt…

[deleted]

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you ask for people to help you preclude that anyone mailed in a large number of fraudulent ballots, I think it's fair to put to onus on you to describe how that actually could have happened. Start at step 1 and talk us through it: what does the "thousand ballot mail-in attack" look like? Bear in mind voters are registered with ID and proof of address into every state's voter rolls, states have records of when…

So let's come up with a couple of scenarios here. Probably the hardest one to catch is where they have access to the voter rolls and submit ballots in the names of people who were legitimately registered but didn't vote. The stealthier way to do that would be to have real-time access and then inject the ballots at the last minute in the names of people they know didn't vote, so there wouldn't be duplicates. The scatt…

1. You have to get the actual ballot for the people who haven't voted (you have to request that ballot, of course). You can't just fill them out from a template.

2. To register, you need enough information to steal someone's identity. In states like PA, the first time you vote after registering, you have to present photo ID.

3. The largest mental institution in the United States houses 1,400 inpatients. In the implausible event that you were able to somehow vote for all of them without being detected, you'd have flipped none of the states this cycle.

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

#465
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It comes down to the question of whether we are a nation of a single people or a nation of autonomous states. We cannot be a nation of a single people due to the diversity of people spread across an immense chunk of land. What is important to me in Alaska is only tangentially related to what is important in NYC. A popular vote is a path to disbanding states and removes an important protection by the states against a…

That's a very limited/specific scope.

What you are also saying is that you are ignoring up to half of the people of Alaska as the elections are winner-takes-all. If instead it was one person one vote, and representational per state, everyone would have a say. Everyone in Alaska with your views would be heard, as well as everyone in NYC with your views.

What you are calling "tyrannical national government" would be majority rule (ie what more people wants, as opposed to now), and is just as true on a state level, just on another scale.

Also how the presidential election is structured isn't actually related to the question of federal control. Federal control over state control has been a hot topic in the last 4 years either way.

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

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusting the people to hold the government to the Constitution may have been the fatal flaw. I know that being a Constitutional idealist is a weak position. I feel that is very unfortunate. The Constitution was intended to protect against human natures of avarice and corruption and limit to paths to tyrannical government. Every time the Constitution is weakened the paths to corruption and tyranny are widened.

Allowing a minority of welfare states to extract the money and blood of the united states while voting in their representative to oversee the extraction literally weakens the constitutional protections afforded to everyone as we have seen in the last 20 years.

Thread is dead but I want to add that it isn't a minority of welfare states. There are only 11 states that pay more in federal taxes than they spend in federal benefits.

https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-taxes-federal-servic...

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

#467
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud obviously happens that doesn't come to light until later: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele...

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...

According to an article at the “The Daily News” that stated that the New York police department issued 397 jaywalking tickets in 2019. Now in 2019, New York Population 2019 – 20.106 Million (estimated).

So according to your logic(and the Brennancenter), it is only 0.0000197% that someone in New York is going to Jaywalk. That percentage is so small, Any vehicle driver should not worry about Jaywalkers when we travel to New York city.

Or is it that nobody is really proactively monitoring to catch the Jaywalkers in the act or are they waiting a week, 10 day, a month or 2 later trying to investigate alleged infraction after all the “evidence” is now across the street?

Post reply on HN