US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by vienna

Low tech is often the best tech, but what will we do about all those voter wannabees who would just ink their own fingers?...

<O>

They they ink their own fingers before casting their ballot, they would not be allowed to vote (or would probably be able to cast a provisional ballot).

It would not make sense to pre-ink your own fingers if you intended to vote.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Well, do you think that the following would work:
- each state has a separate, state run database. Ie the federal goverment doesnt access it.

It would be possible for the individual states to share their data without involving the federal government.

- registration for the voting (I assume that it happens before the vote?) is done using proof of citizenship (birth certificate + social security number?). Ie you can sell it that you need to have right to vote in order to vote. Registration is linked to the state's photo ID or other means of ID (for example biometrics) supplied by the person.

Registration for voting is something that is confusing to a lot of people. The information given to the registrar is only one part of the information that is involved in determining the eligibility of a voter. This is why it takes weeks to process registrations properly and why there are deadlines where citizens must request registration well in advance of the election. I am adamantly against any proposed "same day registration" as it simple does not give the registrar enough time to check the various databases.

- after registration and before the elections states run the check to verify that there are no double registrations.

Yes, this is supposed to be done, but while everyone expresses concern about elections, legislators are reluctant to allocate funds so that registrars are fully staffed and have the necessary tools. We care about elections but don't care enough to spend money fixing the system.

[quote}- person uses those means of ID at the elections. [/quote]

We are still a confederation of independent states and unfortunately that means that there are few laws the govern how states run elections other than the laws enacted in that state. We have states that have photo ID laws, other states that have non-photo ID laws and states that have no ID laws. As a precinct chief, I am in favour of photo ID laws as long as the state makes it easy and affordable for citizens to get the necessary ID in time for the election. In Virginia, it is possible to get a photo ID issued after the election if the citizen does not have a photo ID on election day. That's making it as easy as they can.

What would be the expected counter arguments to such a set up?

Counter arguments can be financial. enacting more stringent voting procedures has a cost and that cost must be ultimately born by the citizens. Many states simply don't think that their individual way of running elections has any problems and it ain't broke, don't spend money you don't have fixing it.

A lot of these problems can be solved by having a National ID card, but that is a touchy topic with many citizens. We came up with a compromise in the REAL ID ACT where the federal government mandated what consists a good ID card but left the implementation up to the states. That way it is not a National ID card but a State ID card that adheres to national standards. A good compromise but it also mandated that the states (meaning the citizens) pay for this. Several states balk at this and want the maintain control over the ID but want the federal government (meaning citizens from other states) to fund it and we are at an impass

There are always claims that photo ID laws discriminate against certain types of citizens and can lead to disenfranchisement. I have honestly not seen a logical supported argument that supports that.

We are in the 21st century. It is getting more and more difficult to operate in our society without Photo ID. You can't open up a bank account without it, you can't cash a check without it, you can't get on a commercial airliner without it. In many states you can't see your doctor without it.

For those low percentage of citizens that truly don't have a photo ID, then the citizen should be allowed to obtain one easily and inexpensively (or free).

[ikalugin]

Thanks for a detailed and constructive repply!

While a lot of people like to have systems with iron clad verification, they forget that a lot of what happens in our society is based on an assumption that the citizen will do the right thing until proven that they have done the wrong thing.

True, one is not guilty untill proven to be so. However you need instruments to detect the indicators of the crime being commited in order to investigate it.

Yes, if I were willing to risk committing a felony, I could manage to vote twice, but my voting twice in a federal election will not have much of an effect on the outcome as we have tens of millions of votes. Would any of you risk being charged with a Felony knowing that your crime won't affect the outcome of an election? I suspect few would.

It is true that individual double votes won't change the outcome, the problem that I see is that the system appears to be vulnerable to organised fraud. Ie an organised group of people registering to vote in multiple areas and then casting multiple votes.
While this may not end in a land slide victory, this may well tip the scales.

Lets try to affect the outcome of federal elections in my county.

That is where the criminal (entity) would min max, by fixing the votes that are tied. They would get the maximum effect out of the minimal effort. Depending on the predictive power of your model the actual fraud can be kept to minimum.

The other way to maximise the effects is to move the group of people between as many voting areas as possible (within the physical constraint ofc)

p.s. the reason why I discuss this is because from what I know, the accusations of voting fraud in Russia tend to come from the multiple voting or people not eligible to vote voting. As as pro-democracy person (strange as that may appear) I think that the voters should be concerned about how they vote and try to minimise the effects of the fraud.
While I have great respect for your experience as an organiser of the vote, I am concerned about you possibly not seeing the greater picture due to that same experience.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

It is true that individual double votes won't change the outcome, the problem that I see is that the system appears to be vulnerable to organised fraud. Ie an organised group of people registering to vote in multiple areas and then casting multiple votes.

It would have to be extensively organized which, of course, increases the chances of discovery. To effectively affect the outcome of a federal election you would have to fix many precincts in many counties across the whole country. Incidentally, this is a very good reason not to adopt a popular vote system for President. Out of the more than 3,000 counties in the US, 50% of the population lives in about 200 counties. The warty Electoral College helps spread out the effectiveness of the votes across many counties in the country.

But let's take my precinct. Lets assume that my precinct does not require ID to vote. Using the numbers I already posted, I would need to fraudulently cast about 1,700 votes out of a voting population of 5,000. How am I gonna do that?

If I want to fraudulently vote in place of Mary Smith, then I need to have my fraudulent voter at the polls before Mary Smith votes. It does me no good to have my fraudulent voter arrive at the polls after the legitimate Mary Smith votes as my fraudulent voter won't be allowed to vote and will only call attention to my scheme.

I would need to generate a list of the registered voters in my precinct that would not normally vote for the Purple Party. It would be silly to fraudulently take a vote away from a citizen who intends on voting Purple after all. I would need their names and addresses. I would then need to distribute and assign each of my fraudulent voters one or perhaps two names and addresses of legitimate voters. I don't want two of my fraudulent voters to use the same name. Awkward!

The assignments would have to match sex and aproximate age. I would not be a good choice to impersonate 22 year old Sally Smith when I am an old guy.

So I have my crew of fraudulent voters and their assigned identities. They have to be in line early in the morning because voters in my precinct tend to vote early in the morning on their way to work.

Precincts are simply a collection of neighbourhoods. The election officers in most cases live in those neighbourhoods. So if I am in line trying to impersonate Mike Jones, there is a not insignificant chance that one of the election officers or someone standing in line knows Mike Jones and will challenge me. Even the attempt to fraudulently vote is a felony. Each fraudlent voter can be used only once perhaps twice but the chances of being caught increase greatly the more times one tries to vote, especially when you are trying to vote as early as possible.

And I want to successfully do this 1,700 times. That is not easy.

Let's assume that I am successful and I do arrange fraudulent votes 1,700 times in my precinct and my precinct's results are a win for the Purple Party. That's one precinct out of about 100 just in my county and there are about 100 counties in Virginia.

In my example, I estimated that I need to sway 40 precincts to sway my county to the Purple party. That means that I need 39 other masterminds, each with their own crew of 800-1,700 fraudulent voters. That is about 40,000 people in on the conspiracy just in one state. What is the likelihood of keeping this a secret? And that's for one state. Their are 49 other states in which a federal candidate needs a minimum of 11 states to win and those are very specific states.

So theoretically it may be possible to fraudulently significantly affect a federal election but practically, it is pretty hard.

It would be a whole lot easier if the voting were to take place directly at the state level. But our decentralize precinct based balloting has an intrinsic safety level in that each precinct individually has little effect but must be infiltrated separately.

Ie an organised group of people registering to vote in multiple areas and then casting multiple votes.

The only way that would work would be to get enough people to register in two states (It can't be both in the same state as the state database is shared across the state) and pick two states that will accept dual residences. You would still be faced with assigning these dual residencies to specific precincts so that their double Purple Party vote makes a difference. Again, what's the chances of enough people across many states doing this and not keeping it a secret. Some one is going to film themselves doing this and post it on their facebook site. It might work, which is why I hope we adopt a system where interstate voter registration data can be shared. We are starting to do that with driver's licenses but still have driver's falling through the cracks so we have a lot of work to do.


The size of the voting population in federal elections and the decentralized balloting systems we have makes successfully altering the outcome fraudulently a lot harder than state and local elections where a few hundred votes can make a difference.

As was demonstrated in our last election it is not just the number of votes but the location of those votes that can sway an election.

Like most conspiracy theories, they initially sound feasible but when you start working the details and the numbers, they usually start to fall apart.

Of course even if they don't alter the outcome of an election, fraudulent votes are still wrong and we need to come up with systems that reduce (but probably never eliminate) fraudulent votes.

If you want to affect the election, it is much easier and cost effective to simply have a mud slinging advertisement campaign to discredit the opposing candidate..... which is what happens.... and the press eats it up like ice cream.

I have no idea how elections are run in Russia so I can't opine on how easy or difficult it would be to affect those elections.

[August]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Ie an organised group of people registering to vote in multiple areas and then casting multiple votes.
While this may not end in a land slide victory, this may well tip the scales.

I don't agree. You'd need a huge number of operatives to effect the outcome of just about any election. A least in the hundreds but more likely in the thousands. All maintaining legal residences in every one of the 50 states. Valid street addresses mind you. Not made up ones because that list they check off when we walk into the polls is maintained and run by the local authorities who would know what's real and what isn't. Nor could they cluster their registrations to one address as those same local authorities would know there can't be 500 people living in one single family house.

Now assuming that its possible to surmount such a mountainous organizational hurdle they have an even larger logistical hurdle to overcome. They would still need to bus those thousands to the polls where ever they might be needed, even if it is thousands of miles and several time zones away. They must do this relying only on often inaccurate exit polls since official tallies aren't going to be available until it's too late to vote.

Finally like Santa Claus they must do all of this in one night and even then Santa has all night to get his job done whereas the election polls close by 8pm.

[Buddahaid]

I agree. You will likely always be able to prove cases of voter fraud, but never in numbers that would effect any of the elections. This is more smoke to hide u-boat dives.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Platapus

They they ink their own fingers before casting their ballot, they would not be allowed to vote (or would probably be able to cast a provisional ballot).

It would not make sense to pre-ink your own fingers if you intended to vote.

I meant my post humorously; there was a previous mention of an inked finger as a 'badge of honor', so I just played on the idea of someone inking their finger as sort of 'stolen voter honor'...

The fellow being cited by Trump as his source of authority for his claims of not only voter fraud, but of also costing him the election's popular vote is named Gregg Phillips. On the local newsradio station here in Los Angeles (KNX 1070 AM) yesterday, Phillips was interviewed, live and at long length, by one of the reporters who is well known in this area for being very hard and tenacious on interview subjects of all stripes, politically. The reporter just basically blew holes in Phillips' claims and it was amusing to hear Phillips squirm; there has not been a better exhibition of tap dancing since those old MGM musicals. I just wish the reporter had had a database expert along with him since a lot of what Phillips was spouting about his databases and methodology was sheer nonsense...

Gregg Phillips ("with two g's") was similarly upended by Chris Cuomo live on CNN (please excuse the poor quality of the clip, but some of better quality were not complete by a few seconds either at the beginning or the end, and I did not want to give the impression something was being hidden):




When watching the above clip, it brought to mind the sort of 'proof' Sen. Joe McCarthy and his minions would try to foist off in the 1950s:




The more things change, the more they remain the same; same swamp - not much different 'gators...



<O>

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Oberon

That's 100% what I tried to express in my last post!

[Onkel Neal]

It's cute & appropriately simplistic.

[yubba]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I don't recall us constitutional moderates/Republicans,, burning cars,, smashing windows,, and beating on people,, it seems that it is mostly done by democrats and the new world order types,, that don't get their way,, we changed the direction by voting out the fascist that didn't have the peoples well being at heart,, that's right I called them fascist because they are a little less evil than communist.. even with all the voter fraud they still couldn't win.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bombshel...s-in-2016.html

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by vienna

Gregg Phillips ("with two g's") was similarly upended by Chris Cuomo live on CNN (please excuse the poor quality of the clip, but some of better quality were not complete by a few seconds either at the beginning or the end, and I did not want to give the impression something was being hidden):

Here's the second interview, didn't go much better for him.

[yubba]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Here's the second interview, didn't go much better for him.

Sorta like them saying the Russians hacked the election and not showing any proof

[Oberon]

The Iraqi translator for the 101st airborne is currently sitting in detention in JFK airport.

GG

Originally Posted by Oberon

The Iraqi translator for the 101st airborne is currently sitting in detention in JFK airport.

GG