Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges • Hacker News Board

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#511

Post by skissane » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:09 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #377

_-david-_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Republicans do offer free IDs in every state where they mandate IDs for voting. It may not always be the easiest to get since you have to go to the DMV though. Do you think Democrats would be willing to have voter ID laws if the post office offered free IDs?

> Do you think Democrats would be willing to have voter ID laws if the post office offered free IDs? No because proximity to a Post Office isn't a reasonable criteria for suppressing a persons right to vote. Especially because: > It may not always be the easiest to get

> No because proximity to a Post Office isn't a reasonable criteria for suppressing a persons right to vote.

In rural areas, one often has to travel a long distance to reach a post office or DMV. In urban or suburban areas, while the distance may vary, on average it is significantly less.

So, if requiring someone to go to a government office to receive ID to vote suppresses the vote of people who live far away from that office, you'd expect that to produce more voter suppression in rural areas than in urban or suburban areas. But, since rural areas tend to skew Republican and urban areas tend to skew Democratic (with suburban areas being more mixed/swinging), this would seem to suppress Republican voters much more than Democratic ones.

Does it follow therefore that Republicans would be primarily suppressing the vote of their own voters? If that's true, why should Democrats be upset about such a self-inflicted wound on their political opponents?

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#512

Post by Banana699 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:10 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #192

helloguillecl wrote: post #178

I cannot imagine a system more transparent than the one implemented in the country where I come from (and some others as well): After closing the polls, the paper votes are counted manually (in from of candidates representatives and public in general) by the poll station "vocales". "Vocales" are citizens (4 in total) randomly selected for each poll, who must operate the poll during the entire day. They must report th…

It sounds like this is worse than what I've experienced in multiple US jurisdictions. Any of the random nominees can unilaterally discard my vote without detection. In the US, I physically insert my ballot in a sealed counting machine that the poll workers cannot tamper with without detection. Nobody who has access to my ballot knows which vote is mine, so nobody can censor me without detection.

If the 4 people counting the ballots are chosen truly at random after the voting is done, and they count the votes independently from each other, and there is some punishment (even a mild one, like a moderate fine) for disagreeing with the majority count, why would a counter discard your votes ? they have 0 gaurantess that others would discard the same number of votes so why risk being the minority report and getting punished ? bonus points if there is a reward for agreeing with the majority.

If the randomness gaurantees hold and everybody knows they hold, I have trouble imagining a better system. It has a blockchain-y feel to it, you have no reason to trust any single rando, but a bunch of random non-colluding people all acting consistently is a very strong indicator that they are actually telling the truth.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#513

Post by rootusrootus » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:11 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #500

hef19898 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still this never happened in any other democratic country doing paper ballots. Simple reason: If there are more votes in the ballot box then registered voters (ideally this means everyone above voting and eligible to vote) you know someone tempered the ballot box. And having more than one (where I live I'm always puzzled how they find the hundreds of people to monitor the dozens of polling places since we have at…

Most other democratic countries (1) require photo IDs for voting, and (2) don’t support postal voting at scale. Either (1) or (2) not being true makes elections way less secure.

If the US would stop using photo IDs as a bludgeon to keep "the wrong people" from voting, everyone could get on board with requiring it. That has always been the real blocker.

I do like postal mail. I've yet to see a convincing argument that the coercion risk is substantial enough to offset the other benefits. Voting slowly at my living room table is awesome.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#514

Post by dpierce9 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

jbritton wrote: post #437

nostromo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two steps to the process: Step one, check the signature, the voter roles, and remove the envelope. Throw the ballot into the bin to be counted. Step two, count the ballot. This ballot now has no identifiable information on it at all. There's no way to verify that a person's ballot was correctly tallied. So if you wanted to ballot stuff, you could do so prior to step two. Recounts wouldn't identify fraud, you'…

With respect to the 2020 election, I have wondered about the chain of custody of the ballots once separated from their envelope. In some regions boxes of ballots were transported to counting locations. Could someone swap out the entire contents of a truck. The boxes were then unloaded and brought in through back doors late at night. Could the boxes get swapped out during unload. Some boxes were left sitting under tab…

Are you saying ballots were separated then transported to be counted? I don’t know of anywhere where that happens. In Detroit there were allegations that ballots were ‘left unattended under a table’ which amounted to actually meaning ‘most of the employees left a secure facility which was videotaped the entire time and live streamed’. Trump actual gained votes in Democratic Wayne County. I read all of the allegations of fraud filed in Michigan and they were, to put it politely, drivel.

There were also a number of reports on the integrity of the election, many legitimate audits (including in Antrim county). Did you read them? Did you look for them? Or are you trying to undermine something by feigning concern and sowing doubt?

Edit: also it is useful to remember that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t close. Nothing like 2000. Neither in total votes, electoral votes, or the margin in any of the marginal electoral-vote supplying states.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#515

Post by tootie » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #472

tootie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> racism Odd that you'd throw that in there - care to explain how the linked comment is racist?

It uses the n-word? Are you looking at the comment marked dead?

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#516

Post by rlewkov » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #488

dangoor wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgia replaced their machines with ones that have paper trails.

Good. I never understood a rationale for not having a paper trail.

Assuming your a member of a union

Before election

Union boss: "we expect everyone to vote for candidate X"

After election

Union boss: "show me your vote receipt"

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#517

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #468

tptacek wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls. Obviously, I believe this actually happened. But: how? What is Philadelphia not doing that we do in Chicago? You couldn't do this here; it's hard for me to even imagine how someone could walk into a precinct and cast multiple votes. And how would they cast their se…

Unless you're checking IDs, yeah - a single person could drop in a dozen signatures that all look different enough to fool a poll taker. I don't see how you're so incredulous here - a person with access to ballots filled them out and literally stuffed them in a box, it's not difficult!

They can't just make people up. They need to have the name and address of the registered voter who's voting.

They can't just re-vote at the same precinct. The EJs will absolutely notice a person coming in and voting more than once. If that gets noticed a single time, the EJ calls the sheriff (in Cook County, at least).

It takes, like, best case, 10-15 minutes to vote in a precinct. There are lines!

How many votes can you cast this way? 10? 20?

I'm not saying you couldn't manage to cast a fraudulent vote by doing this. I'm saying that your odds of influencing the election by doing it, while at the same time not guaranteeing you end up in prison for trying, are so low that my mind boggles that anyone would try.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#518

Post by tomp » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #513

tomp wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most other democratic countries (1) require photo IDs for voting, and (2) don’t support postal voting at scale. Either (1) or (2) not being true makes elections way less secure.

If the US would stop using photo IDs as a bludgeon to keep "the wrong people" from voting, everyone could get on board with requiring it. That has always been the real blocker. I do like postal mail. I've yet to see a convincing argument that the coercion risk is substantial enough to offset the other benefits. Voting slowly at my living room table is awesome .

Keeping “wrong people” from voting is essentially half of election “security”.

It’s not just coercion risk. It’s the whole chain of custody.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#519

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:16 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #476

tptacek wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense when you write it that way, but not in reality. There is a risk/reward to doing this. Part of your premise is that you can know when an election is going to come down to 6 votes. But in fact Meeks vs. Hart was newsworthy because results like that are incredibly rare. 99 times out of 100, if you try to juke the election, you're putting yourself at pretty grave legal risk and accomplishing absolutely not…

Part of your premise is that you can know when an election is going to come down to 6 votes. Assuming that's true, you just need to know when it is going to be close, and that only requires polling, not prescience. https://www.thegazette.com/article/polling-shows-iowa-2nd-di... Slightly more than two months before Iowans begin voting, polling shows the open-seat race in the U.S. House 2nd District as a dead heat. In…

No, it's easy to know what the tight races are likely to be, and very difficult to predict which races are going to come down to a margin of just dozens of votes; it's much harder to predict those races than it is to predict the winners of races, since they're very uncommon, and lopsided polling is not.

No, this doesn't sound plausible.

Re: Former U.S. congressman, operative pleads guilty to election fraud charges

#520

Post by gumby » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:16 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #475

gumby wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US tried this with their first constitution which lasted barely a decade. And the the macro scale issues these days are significantly larger than what they had to deal with back then.

I was going to say, with the increase in mobility today it could be a nightmare having a patchwork of laws at the municipal level.

Coase’s theory doesn’t only apply to firms but to other organizations as well.

Imagine if San Diego wanted water from the Colorado River (what nerve!). They’d have to negotiate with every little town next to the river. And if one town doesn’t want to negotiate, well, they can attract business with offers of “take as much water as you want” and “emit as much toxic waste as you want”, and we’ll fuck the people downstream.