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They make it sound so simple: Bribe the Judge of Elections who oversees everything. Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes

• the_snooze 4y ago
  All the more reason why risk-limiting audits [1] should be standard procedure to sanity-check precinct results, especially for thinly-attended elections where fraud has a bigger impact on the outcome. Unfortunately, these things take time and money, and there's little immediate payoff in doing it, especially in the small elections that need it the most. [1] https://www.vote.pa.gov/About-Elections/Pages/Post-Election-Audits.aspx https://www.vote.pa.gov/About-Elections/Pages/Post-Election-...
  • ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
    Risk limiting audits as described in your link would only catch ballot miscountings. In this case fraudulent ballots were added to the system, so the RLA result would not show anything suspicious.
• routerl 4y ago
  > Dilute the vote tallies by using the voting machines to increment the votes for specific candidates > Why is it so easy? I don't know, it doesn't seem easy to me. I mean, it seems like the result of a ton of long-term planning to implement processes that allow each instance of this to be easy. But the fight against electronic voting machines was fierce, and took a long time. We lost, by the way.
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    There is no mention of electronic voting machines. Nothing described in this press release would even require electronic voting machines. They cast actual (fraudulent) votes and then falsified the records in the polling books to match.
    • bpicolo 4y ago
      > The voting machines at each polling station, including in the 39th Ward, 36th Division, generate records in the form of a printed receipt documenting the use of each voting machine...Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine Sure there is
      • LadyCailin 4y ago
        How is this different than dropping in additional paper ballots into a ballot box? If it isn’t, then this has nothing to do with the machine, but rather control of the “ballot box”.
      • cyberge99 4y ago
        Tabulator could have printed a receipt from scantron sheet feed.
      • tunesmith 4y ago
        They didn't hack the machine. They actually voted on the machines multiple times. The same scheme would have worked with mechanical machines or paper ballots.
        • hef19898 4y ago
          I know for a fact that where I vote it is impossible to vote more than once (or close to, Berlin managed to fuck up voting last year for some reason). How is it impossible? Everyone is centrally registered with their primary residence. Based on these records, invitations are sent out prior to elections. With that invitation, or passport or ID, you show up at your voting local (of which there are plenty, the school just across the street has three of those and it is far from the only place in our town). There volunteers check you invitation or ID, hand you your ballot, verify you drop in the ballot box and strike from the voting list for this election. Not on the list? No ballot. No documents? No ballot. Since there are thousands of those locales, preliminary results are available in the first two hours after voting closes. We have no waiting lines (most of the time, Berlin is the exception that proofs the rule but then we talk about Berlin...). Mail-in voting works just fine and without any constraints. ballots are archived (for a very long time, I'm too lazy to check the exact duration), so if there are any doubts everything can be rechecked. No idea how the US just fails at the most simple thing in a democracy, voting. Or rather I have an idea, with gerrymandering and such shenanigans it seems to be by design to keep certain demographics from voting too much.
  • seoaeu 4y ago
    Stuffing paper ballots into a box or tapping the screen of an electronic voting machine are both very easy. This stuff has to be fixed at a higher level, like by making sure the folks running the precinct aren’t corrupt or by having a neutral observer present
    • ohgodplsno 4y ago
      Stuffing paper ballots is infinitely harder if your election system isn't entirely fucked. Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right, invalidation of the entire ballot box if any cheating is found post-votes, increase the amount of voting places so that scaling this up becomes impossible. Voting has been solved centuries ago. And voting machines will never be part of the solution.
      • seoaeu 4y ago
        > Multiple assessors, both from parties and individuals who just want to ensure that everything goes right The story is literally about ballot stuffing at precincts where there weren’t observers like that watching. Which makes the electronic voting part a complete red herring
        • sidlls 4y ago
          And 100% of the votes from those precincts without observers should’ve been discarded. The real problem is that we don’t fund elections properly. This sort of thing isn’t a problem in other developed democracies. It’s only one here by design.
          • seoaeu 4y ago
            What you’re proposing is that the official in charge of running elections can cut funding to precincts that usually vote for his opponent, and then later invalidate all ballots cast there?
            • 4y ago
  • shadowgovt 4y ago
    Having some familiarity with the Pennsylvania election machinery specifically, there is nothing about this story that required (or would have been stopped by the absence of) electronic voting machines. If it was the old iVotronic system, there would be no ballot to check against (the vote was held in the machine memory in redundant locations), but that's no protection against the machine being activated illegitimately and the judge of elections entering illegitimate votes. In the new system, the machines are just tabulators and physical "SAT-style" fill-the-oval vote cards are used as ballots, but again, there's nothing stopping a judge of elections from filling out a pile of invalid ballots and entering them into the machine if the other team members (majority and minority inspector, and the clerks of election) have been bribed to look the other way. In fact, the judge would have to do that, because the fraud will be obvious if the total count of record doesn't match the total count of paper ballots in the box... But structurally, this is equivalent to just activating the iVotronic machine several additional times to cast fraudulent digital-only ballots. The nature of the fraud here is simple, old-fashioned stuffing the ballot box, and the only protection against that is physically barring access to the hardware (be it a computer or a pine box with a padlock), which is incompatible with the duties of the judge of elections.
• throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? You don't just cold call a judge. Presumably he knew enough about what his options for judges were that he could pick the ones who would be amenable to the idea and approach them. The bribe at that point is just payment for risk (because the judge presumably doesn't have plausible deniability)
  • yakak 4y ago
    The risk clearly doesn't fit the crime. A risk of being hung for treason is harder to recruit for.
    • cultartawayyyi 4y ago
      "Treason" is one of the few crimes which is defined in the US constitution. It has a fairly narrow definition which does not include election fraud: >Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
      • unethical_ban 4y ago
        The person you are responding to is clearly suggesting their personal belief that election crimes are so antithetical to American values that it constitutes a crime on par with treason.
        • yakak 4y ago
          Yes, though more generally I am interested in the criteria and thought process that takes place in discussions leading to constitutional conventions to build a republic that is self maintaining despite various threats. The US is not Cannon to me, it is one template and we are poking at a flaw in it.
        • cultartawayyyi 4y ago
• codedokode 4y ago
  > Why is it so easy? Because nobody was watching when they meddled with voting machines. If there was someone oberving or at least a camera, this would be easy to discover.
• iepathos 4y ago
  Easy to do? Probably, they only pay judge of elections about minimum wage. Not exactly positions of high standing. Easy to get away with? Not really, that's why he's been caught and pleading guilty.
• cge 4y ago
  Apart from everything else, if you're not trying to ensure that a candidate wins, regardless of their popularity, and are instead trying to skew the odds toward a candidate who already has a reasonable chance of winning, election fraud becomes easier and harder to detect. As others have pointed out, these "judges" were actually minor, elected election officials, close to being volunteers. They were doing this to make small additions at a local scale. There was no need to add fake voter registrations, to modify vote counting, or to add votes not connected to legitimately registered voters: they just added ballots and records for registered voters they knew weren't going to show up. At a local enough scale, you might simply know, personally, of voters who are out of town, for example. This doesn't require any major conspiracy at multiple levels. Depending on the organization of the election, it might be possible for a single poll worker to do it on their own. It would be very hard to defend against at higher levels. Most voter ID ideas wouldn't help (short of digital IDs and cryptographic signatures), because it's being done by the people who would be checking the IDs. Having multiple, adversarial officials keeping records of each person coming in could help, but now you've multiplied the number of people you need at each precinct. Contacting people listed as having voted could help, but they could well have been chosen specifically because they would be unlikely to notice or respond. Checking counts and registrations wouldn't help, because the counts and registrations would be valid. Voting technology mostly doesn't matter, and in fact, the method is likely easier with paper ballots. It is limited in how much of an effect it can have, of course, but in tight races, or down-ballot races where few people actually fill out those races on their ballot, that might be all you need, or you might be interested in just statistically helping your party by making larger numbers of your party's candidates win, rather than helping one particular candidate.
  • tptacek 4y ago
    EJs pretty much everywhere are volunteers. A big part of the integrity of the system comes down to controls that are instituted at the precinct level, where there's less oversight but also less ability to plausibly influence the election, coupled with much stricter oversight at the central counting stations. Downballot elections typically happen concurrently with statewide elections, so that doesn't help you: they don't get counted separately, and you're still stuck evading the same controls that protect the statewide elections. There are tight elections, but in a reasonably run election system, any one precinct is going to have a very narrow margin --- in the best case for attackers --- to influence results. You can't predict where that narrow margin is going to actually be helpful. But it's going to be incredibly risky anywhere you try it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a crime.
• gumby 4y ago
  > This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? Apparently this demonstrates the power of the invisible hand of the marketplace.
  • jokethrowaway 4y ago
    Very true. And that's why we should decentralise power to the most local entity we can (somewhere between a central government and the individual affected by a choice) and have as few elected officials as possible.
    • guerrilla 4y ago
      Indeed, confederations of liquid democracies. The only people to make a decision should be the ones effected by it.
      • daenz 4y ago
        Now try to define "affected" and that's where the war will be fought.
        • guerrilla 4y ago
          Definitely. That's where the conversation needs to shift. Those are the kinds of questions we should be debating on a case by case or inductive basis, not these asinine and useless popularity contests.
    • gumby 4y ago
      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.
      • giantg2 4y ago
        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.
• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  And for so little money! $300 to $5000.
• hammock 4y ago
  Could it be widespread?
  • tamaharbor 4y ago
  • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    As a skeptic by natural, I first go to wondering how we would ever know if it wasn’t.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• dqpb 4y ago
  At least they were caught.
• upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Your ideology allows you to lie and cheat because you know that outcome is what's best
• bigwavedave 4y ago
  > This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? Easy and cheap! TFA says it was only $300 to $5k per election total... Which was then split _at least_ two ways?? I mean, sure, the average politician hasn't been accused of having integrity in a long time, but this is just ridiculous.
• ellopoppit 4y ago
  >This person did this with 2 separate judges. Why is it so easy? Why does a conspiracy involving only 3 people seem so impossible to you?
• Fellshard 4y ago
  It certainly would not be difficult if the judges themselves shared the desire to see votes cast a specific way, I expect.