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So here's the thing - thousands of Republicans and conservatives have made claims of widespread vote/voter fraud. I'm not aware of a single claim that withstoo
by coolgeek 6y ago
So here's the thing - thousands of Republicans and conservatives have made claims of widespread vote/voter fraud.
I'm not aware of a single claim that withstood scrutiny or that was even attempted to prosecute, let alone done so successfully.
I'm not talking about isolated instances. That certainly has happened. I'm talking enough fraud to actually change an election. And I'm going to restrict you to the state or federal level, as I wouldn't be surprised that it happens at the local/county level in some hick outposts.
So what do ya got? Show me an election that was actually affected by widespread fraud.
- manigandham 6y agoThis isn’t a right-wing situation but a real valid concern given plenty of reports between gerrymandering, polling center availability and security, chain of custody, paper processing, electronic machine hacks, suspect company backgrounds, etc. The major problem is you can’t measure it in the first place because there is no truth set. Unless you can follow up with every single individual and confirm their vote, you dont have the data.
- coolgeek 6y ago> gerrymandering, polling center availability and security, chain of custody, paper processing, electronic machine hacks, suspect company backgrounds These are all important concerns, but they have absolutely nothing to do with vote fraud. The first two are voter suppression activities. The last four are election fraud, which is a very different thing than voter fraud. The notion that you have to follow up with every single voter is absurd. You can statistically sample anywhere you suspect (imagine) that fraud transpired and dig deeper in areas where you get hits. OP's first article even cites Rick Hasen who notes that there were only 491 prosecutions for absentee ballot fraud between 2000-2012. There is no widespread vote fraud problem. There hasn't been for decades
- manigandham 6y ago> "There is no widespread vote fraud problem. There hasn't been for decades" This is absolutely unproven. And absentee ballots are not the only way people vote, with prosecutions are only those who are caught and convicted. Here's a list of 1071 proven instances (more than twice) from the very first search on the subject: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p... There is no way to know what the real votes are supposed to be unless you confirm with the person who voted. Whether you want to call it election fraud or voting fraud, it's the same problem because you don't know it occurred unless you have the ground truth to check against. There is no mass confirmation stage for votes to be able to gather this data and thus it's completely unknown.
- coolgeek 6y agoSo, 1,071 proven instances over what period of time? Over what overall count of cast ballots? Here are some other reviews: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com... https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud... https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/05/politics/ohio-illegal-voting-2018-election/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/05/politics/ohio-illegal-voting-...
- manigandham 6y agoThe first article you link is only looking into 1 specific type of fraud of voter impersonation, and even mentions many other instances of other kinds. Again, without confirming the votes independently, you have no truth set to compare for finding the real results easily. There is still no answer to this. Also 99.9% of people already have IDs and need them for living in society so it's strange to say that voting is the only thing that should be defended from requiring it. I find this outright dismissal of no fraud existing to be worrisome. It's the same as antivax and other conspiracy theories and more aligned with a narrative than any discovery of truth.