5 ms·

This is just your cognitive bias away from an extreme position. Actually election integrity in the US is pretty close to perfect. 10s of cases out of 100s of mi

This is just your cognitive bias away from an extreme position. Actually election integrity in the US is pretty close to perfect. 10s of cases out of 100s of millions/low billions of votes cast. This has be exhaustively studied, MIT has produced papers. The closest thing to a widespread problem is voter suppression, where states administer elections in regionally uneven ways to suppress one party's turnout. This is predominately against black citizens in the south after Shelby v Holder.

Consultant32452 6y ago
We don't identify voters and we removed chain of custody on ballots. Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners to collect ballots and put them in the mail. We eliminated signature validation. The list goes on. I have no idea who got the most legitimate votes, but neither does anyone else. >The closest thing to a widespread problem is voter suppression, where states administer elections in regionally uneven ways to suppress one party's turnout. This is predominately against black citizens in the south after Shelby v Holder. I agree with you 100% but that just means every election is illegitimate.
- tylerhou 6y ago
  Your post shows how much disinformation has propagated. > We don't identify voters and we removed chain of custody on ballots. Source? Voters are identified by signature (and in some places voter ID). Re: chain of custody, as far as I'm aware, states generally require representatives from both major parties (plus independents) to be present when ballots are moved or opened. Since states generally have the power to conduct their elections as they deem appropriate, finding a national source is impossible, but I invite you to find me an example where such a chain of custody was violated. Mail-in-ballots do not subvert this chain of custody [1]. > Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners to collect ballots and put them in the mail. Drop boxes are locked with keys and are monitored with video surveillance. Sometimes, people set fire to ballot boxes, but when this happens security is tightened [2] [3]. In any case, the small number of ballots damaged by arson would not change the outcome of an election. > We eliminated signature validation. This is not true. Give us a source. The closest thing to "eliminating signature validation" is giving voters the chance to fix signatures [4]. "Eliminating signature validation" is a false claim that Trump has spread [5]. > I have no idea who got the most legitimate votes, but neither does anyone else. The fact is Biden got the most legitimate votes. End of story. Any other claim is refusing to accept the overwhelming evidence that there was no significant fraud. That's not to say that the vote count is accurate, but all evidence shows that any inaccuracies would not have changed the outcome of the election. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/fact-checking-mail-in-voting.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/fact-checking-mail-in-voting... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/elections/in-boston-someone-set-fire-to-a-ballot-drop-box-officials-called-it-a-disgrace-to-democracy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/elections/in-boston-so... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/20/us/trump-biden-election#ballot-box-fire-california https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/20/us/trump-biden-elect... [4] https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-election-2020-pittsburgh-elections-presidential-elections-fc464c287c18823ff57fedc13facf7e5 https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-election-2020-pittsb... [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/trumps-latest-falsehood-democrats-are-trying-end-signature-verification-ballots/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/trumps-la...
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules ballots can't be rejected based on signature comparisons. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-ballot-signatures-431794 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-... Your link about mail in ballots says they are secure because of measures like signature validation, except we got rid of that. Not that it should matter, but I'm not a Trump supporter. He is a war criminal as far as I'm concerned.
    - tylerhou 6y ago
      > Your link about mail in ballots says they are secure because of measures like signature validation, except we got rid of that. I was not accurate, but you were also not accurate. Pennsylvania did not "get rid" of signature verification for absentee voting; it never had signature validation in the first place. States have the power to hold elections in the manner of their choosing, and of the last 28 years, Republicans had trifecta control of the legislature for twelve [1]. They had the full power to amend the election code as they saw fit, but they chose not to. In any case, the absence of signature validation still does not prove fraud. The purpose of signature validation is to "prove" is the person who cast the ballot is the person who registered to vote. To take advantage of a lack of signature validation, an attacker would have to: 1. Find people who are registered to vote, but who don't intend to vote -- even in person. 2. Acquire their ballot by either: 2-a. Re-register them under a new address controlled by the adversary (which notifies the voter). 2-b. Steal their ballot from their mailbox (and the voter may become suspicious if they don't get a ballot). 3. Fill out their ballot and mail it in. Steps 1 and 2 each very difficult to do without raising suspicion. Step 3 is nearly impossible to do by a single person for a large number of votes. The vote difference in Pennsylvania was 81660 votes. So if Biden had 81661 fraudulent votes, then Trump should be the winner. Let's assume that if more than a hundred people notice that their ballots were missing/voter registration changed, then there would be an investigation and the attacker would be exposed. In other words, the attacker must flip ~80,000 votes, while only alerting suspicion 100 times. Their success rate per ballot must be therefore greater than (1 - 81661 / 100) = 99.878%. A thousand? That would still require a success rate of 98.775% per ballot. How many reports are there of missing ballots in Pennsylvania? I can't even find one person claiming such a thing, much less a hundred or a thousand. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Pennsylvania_state_government https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Pennsylvania_state_...
- oezi 6y ago
  One important thing missing here that even without signature verification you can only cast votes for people registered to vote. That really isn't very fraudy in my book.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    You can only run credit card charges against someone with a credit card. How much credit card fraud is there in the United States? One difference here is that everything I need to know to vote for someone is public record. Your name, address, political affiliation, whether or not you have voted in recent elections, etc. are all public record. Your credit card information is not.
    - crowbahr 6y ago
      1. You don't swipe your vote every time you go to the gas station 2. You only get to vote once. Unlike credit cards. The comparison is such an insane false analogy as to render the rest of your comment meaningless. You clearly have no clue how the system actually works if you think that comparison is reasonable at all. Go read up on why voting is secure instead of Googling more doggrel that fits your confirmation bias.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - salawat 6y ago
        Google doesn't exactly help people find what doesn't already speak to their biases anymore, and hasn't for a long while.
      - Hnrobert42 6y ago
        I agree with the logic of your argument, but I disagree with your last paragraph. Please let me appeal to your better nature.
  - makomk 6y ago
    The other thing that Democrats and organisations like the ACLU have been campaigning to stop (with some success) is the removal of people who're no longer living in that state from the electoral register. Along with shut down any attempt to detect whether people have apparently voted in more than one state. This gives a nice pool of "registered" voters who are not in fact eligible to vote and probably don't even realise they're still registered there.
- newacct583 6y ago
  But no one has ever, once (AFAIK) gotten caught doing that. Surely if this was the kind of widespread thing you're imagining SOMEONE would have put a camera on one of those boxes and caught someone? I mean, just think about it: this is completely impractical. To "steal" any one election you need to swing thousands of ballots. Each box holds a few dozen ballots at a time at most. You'd be talking about a huge crime spree to manage to collect and resubmit all those ballots. And yet... we've never seen it happen. The simple truth is that stealing elections doesn't happen because it's too expensive vs. just winning elections with more persuasive arguments.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    I don’t like the idea of saying that this isn’t fraud because no one‘s ever been caught doing it. Everyone, every state, every side, every ideologue should be jumping up and down for 100% transparency. and if anyone saying we really have that they are a liar.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      "Transparency" isn't free, though. You take those boxes away and now a bunch of people who rely on them for easy access can't vote. Mail takes too long (and is subject to the same criticism). People with long commutes can't be at home on election day. People with hourly jobs can't take the time off. People without cars can't get there. And all those demographics have a partisan skew. So when you say "transparency", in the absence of any proof of real fraud, is what other people hear as "suppression". We don't think you care about voter fraud at all, we think you just want more republican votes. Is that not true? Then come to the table in good faith and find a compromise. There are many (e.g. voting day holidays, guarded drop boxes, etc...). Republicans have blocked them every time they come up.
elhudy 6y ago
>10s of cases out of 100s of millions/low billions of votes cast I know of at least 2 people in my friend group who voted in their "home states" that they haven't lived in for 4+ years. I don't know if this is considered voter fraud, but if it is, it certainly undermines integrity of this claim. In any case, at the macro level, there isn't reason to believe one party participates in this more than the other.

Consultant32452 6y ago

We don't identify voters and we removed chain of custody on ballots. Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners to collect ballots and put them in the mail. We eliminated signature validation. The list goes on. I have no idea who got the most legitimate votes, but neither does anyone else. >The closest thing to a widespread problem is voter suppression, where states administer elections in regionally uneven ways to suppress one party's turnout. This is predominately against black citizens in the south after Shelby v Holder. I agree with you 100% but that just means every election is illegitimate.

tylerhou 6y ago
Your post shows how much disinformation has propagated. > We don't identify voters and we removed chain of custody on ballots. Source? Voters are identified by signature (and in some places voter ID). Re: chain of custody, as far as I'm aware, states generally require representatives from both major parties (plus independents) to be present when ballots are moved or opened. Since states generally have the power to conduct their elections as they deem appropriate, finding a national source is impossible, but I invite you to find me an example where such a chain of custody was violated. Mail-in-ballots do not subvert this chain of custody [1]. > Instead we put unsecured boxes on street corners to collect ballots and put them in the mail. Drop boxes are locked with keys and are monitored with video surveillance. Sometimes, people set fire to ballot boxes, but when this happens security is tightened [2] [3]. In any case, the small number of ballots damaged by arson would not change the outcome of an election. > We eliminated signature validation. This is not true. Give us a source. The closest thing to "eliminating signature validation" is giving voters the chance to fix signatures [4]. "Eliminating signature validation" is a false claim that Trump has spread [5]. > I have no idea who got the most legitimate votes, but neither does anyone else. The fact is Biden got the most legitimate votes. End of story. Any other claim is refusing to accept the overwhelming evidence that there was no significant fraud. That's not to say that the vote count is accurate, but all evidence shows that any inaccuracies would not have changed the outcome of the election. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/fact-checking-mail-in-voting.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/fact-checking-mail-in-voting... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/elections/in-boston-someone-set-fire-to-a-ballot-drop-box-officials-called-it-a-disgrace-to-democracy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/elections/in-boston-so... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/20/us/trump-biden-election#ballot-box-fire-california https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/20/us/trump-biden-elect... [4] https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-election-2020-pittsburgh-elections-presidential-elections-fc464c287c18823ff57fedc13facf7e5 https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-election-2020-pittsb... [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/trumps-latest-falsehood-democrats-are-trying-end-signature-verification-ballots/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/trumps-la...
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules ballots can't be rejected based on signature comparisons. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-ballot-signatures-431794 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-... Your link about mail in ballots says they are secure because of measures like signature validation, except we got rid of that. Not that it should matter, but I'm not a Trump supporter. He is a war criminal as far as I'm concerned.
  - tylerhou 6y ago
    > Your link about mail in ballots says they are secure because of measures like signature validation, except we got rid of that. I was not accurate, but you were also not accurate. Pennsylvania did not "get rid" of signature verification for absentee voting; it never had signature validation in the first place. States have the power to hold elections in the manner of their choosing, and of the last 28 years, Republicans had trifecta control of the legislature for twelve [1]. They had the full power to amend the election code as they saw fit, but they chose not to. In any case, the absence of signature validation still does not prove fraud. The purpose of signature validation is to "prove" is the person who cast the ballot is the person who registered to vote. To take advantage of a lack of signature validation, an attacker would have to: 1. Find people who are registered to vote, but who don't intend to vote -- even in person. 2. Acquire their ballot by either: 2-a. Re-register them under a new address controlled by the adversary (which notifies the voter). 2-b. Steal their ballot from their mailbox (and the voter may become suspicious if they don't get a ballot). 3. Fill out their ballot and mail it in. Steps 1 and 2 each very difficult to do without raising suspicion. Step 3 is nearly impossible to do by a single person for a large number of votes. The vote difference in Pennsylvania was 81660 votes. So if Biden had 81661 fraudulent votes, then Trump should be the winner. Let's assume that if more than a hundred people notice that their ballots were missing/voter registration changed, then there would be an investigation and the attacker would be exposed. In other words, the attacker must flip ~80,000 votes, while only alerting suspicion 100 times. Their success rate per ballot must be therefore greater than (1 - 81661 / 100) = 99.878%. A thousand? That would still require a success rate of 98.775% per ballot. How many reports are there of missing ballots in Pennsylvania? I can't even find one person claiming such a thing, much less a hundred or a thousand. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Pennsylvania_state_government https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Pennsylvania_state_...
oezi 6y ago
One important thing missing here that even without signature verification you can only cast votes for people registered to vote. That really isn't very fraudy in my book.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  You can only run credit card charges against someone with a credit card. How much credit card fraud is there in the United States? One difference here is that everything I need to know to vote for someone is public record. Your name, address, political affiliation, whether or not you have voted in recent elections, etc. are all public record. Your credit card information is not.
  - crowbahr 6y ago
    1. You don't swipe your vote every time you go to the gas station 2. You only get to vote once. Unlike credit cards. The comparison is such an insane false analogy as to render the rest of your comment meaningless. You clearly have no clue how the system actually works if you think that comparison is reasonable at all. Go read up on why voting is secure instead of Googling more doggrel that fits your confirmation bias.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - salawat 6y ago
      Google doesn't exactly help people find what doesn't already speak to their biases anymore, and hasn't for a long while.
    - Hnrobert42 6y ago
      I agree with the logic of your argument, but I disagree with your last paragraph. Please let me appeal to your better nature.
- makomk 6y ago
  The other thing that Democrats and organisations like the ACLU have been campaigning to stop (with some success) is the removal of people who're no longer living in that state from the electoral register. Along with shut down any attempt to detect whether people have apparently voted in more than one state. This gives a nice pool of "registered" voters who are not in fact eligible to vote and probably don't even realise they're still registered there.
newacct583 6y ago
But no one has ever, once (AFAIK) gotten caught doing that. Surely if this was the kind of widespread thing you're imagining SOMEONE would have put a camera on one of those boxes and caught someone? I mean, just think about it: this is completely impractical. To "steal" any one election you need to swing thousands of ballots. Each box holds a few dozen ballots at a time at most. You'd be talking about a huge crime spree to manage to collect and resubmit all those ballots. And yet... we've never seen it happen. The simple truth is that stealing elections doesn't happen because it's too expensive vs. just winning elections with more persuasive arguments.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  I don’t like the idea of saying that this isn’t fraud because no one‘s ever been caught doing it. Everyone, every state, every side, every ideologue should be jumping up and down for 100% transparency. and if anyone saying we really have that they are a liar.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    "Transparency" isn't free, though. You take those boxes away and now a bunch of people who rely on them for easy access can't vote. Mail takes too long (and is subject to the same criticism). People with long commutes can't be at home on election day. People with hourly jobs can't take the time off. People without cars can't get there. And all those demographics have a partisan skew. So when you say "transparency", in the absence of any proof of real fraud, is what other people hear as "suppression". We don't think you care about voter fraud at all, we think you just want more republican votes. Is that not true? Then come to the table in good faith and find a compromise. There are many (e.g. voting day holidays, guarded drop boxes, etc...). Republicans have blocked them every time they come up.

elhudy 6y ago

>10s of cases out of 100s of millions/low billions of votes cast I know of at least 2 people in my friend group who voted in their "home states" that they haven't lived in for 4+ years. I don't know if this is considered voter fraud, but if it is, it certainly undermines integrity of this claim. In any case, at the macro level, there isn't reason to believe one party participates in this more than the other.