Forget the Russians: Corrupt, Local Officials Are the Biggest Threat To Elections (securityledger.com) 287
chicksdaddy writes: Do you think that shadowy Russian hackers are the biggest threat to the integrity of U.S. elections? Think again. It turns out the bad actors in U.S. elections may be a lot more "Senator Bedfellow" than "Fancy Bear," according to Bev Harris, the founder of Black Box Voting. "It's money," Harris told The Security Ledger. "There's one federal election every four years, but there are about 100,000 local elections which control hundreds of billions of dollars in contract signings." Those range from waste disposal and sanitation to transportation."There are 1,000 convictions every year for public corruption," Harris says, citing Department of Justice statistics. "Its really not something that's even rare in the United States." We just don't think that corruption is a problem, because we rarely see it manifested in the ways that most people associate with public corruption, like violence or having to pay bribes to receive promised services, Harris said. But it's still there.
How does the prevalence of public corruption touch election security? Exactly in the way you might think. "You don't know at any given time if the people handling your votes are honest or not," Harris said. "But you shouldn't have to guess. There should be a way to check." And in the decentralized, poorly monitored U.S. elections system, there often isn't. At the root of our current problem isn't (just) vulnerable equipment, it's also a shoddy "chain of custody" around votes, says Eric Hodge, the director of consulting at Cyber Scout, which is working with the Board of Elections in Kentucky and in other states to help secure elections systems. That includes where and how votes are collected, how they are moved and tabulated and then how they are handled after the fact, should citizens or officials want to review the results of an election. That lack of transparency leaves the election system vulnerable to manipulation and fraud, Harris and Hodge argue.
How does the prevalence of public corruption touch election security? Exactly in the way you might think. "You don't know at any given time if the people handling your votes are honest or not," Harris said. "But you shouldn't have to guess. There should be a way to check." And in the decentralized, poorly monitored U.S. elections system, there often isn't. At the root of our current problem isn't (just) vulnerable equipment, it's also a shoddy "chain of custody" around votes, says Eric Hodge, the director of consulting at Cyber Scout, which is working with the Board of Elections in Kentucky and in other states to help secure elections systems. That includes where and how votes are collected, how they are moved and tabulated and then how they are handled after the fact, should citizens or officials want to review the results of an election. That lack of transparency leaves the election system vulnerable to manipulation and fraud, Harris and Hodge argue.
OH MY GOD (Score:2)
Gerrymandering (Score:2)
And they don't even think of gerrymandering at this level.
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Gerrymandering is tough to be fare.
Do you take a city and split it into two and split it with a rural area, To either get two people from the same party, while having no representatives from the other. Or do we have the full city. to get that one party, while leaving room for easy wins for the other.
The biggest problem with the American System today, is if the minority party (right now the democrats) even if it is a slim minority. Have been drained of all power, so the majority party (right now the republic
Re:Gerrymandering (Score:4, Insightful)
"Have been drained of all power, so the majority party (right now the republicans) is pushing their agenda"
If you've been paying attention, you would not write this.
Despite the President being elected as a Republican, the Republican Party, especially the leadership, wants nothing to do with him. the bureaucracy is actively undermining him daily. The opposition, of course, is engaged in preventing him from implementing his policies, and this is both expected and tolerable.
But the clearly active soft coup is an actual threat to our nation. If this is successful, as much as 40% of the electorate will abandon the process and subvert it, having been shown that 'playing by the rules' doesn't work any more. This will happen across all level of government and will be nasty.
The majority party, right now the Republicans, is in fact pushing their agenda. Their agenda is to depose the current, lawfully elected President. It will be interesting to see if this is actually tolerable, that is, if they can 'get away' with this by 'playing by the rules'. Their rules. The intelligentsia's rules. The governing class rules.
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1. Just because Trump is complaining about being treated unfairly, doesn't mean he is being undermined. He doesn't realize the diversity of the nation and the diversity of his own party. During the Obama care debates we had the "Blue Dog" democrats who pushed for the ACA to be far more conservative then a lot wanted. However actions such as using the Nuclear options to bring in a supreme court justice. And only 3 republicans voting down Trump Care (Just enough to make it fail) isn't undermining, but just
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While it is, indeed, tough to create fair voting district boundaries, to approximate fairness is relatively easy compared to the effort that is put into gerrymandering.
OTOH, since gerrymandering isn't a criminal activity, it's not, legally at least, corruption. I may think it *ought* to be, but that's a separate matter.
doin' that old / cold war turnaround (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forget Threat A! Focus all your attention on Threat B!"
Nice try, every scoundrel ever. I think we can comfortably stand to worry about two things.
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You have a point, but not the one you probably think.
No candidate in recent times would have won a strict majority wins vote. What we've really got is a plurality wins vote, which means that if four candidates are running it's possible to win with 25.01% of the vote. And people know that, so they are coerced into voting for the one of the two front-runners who they despise least....or not even bothering to vote.
All systems have their problems. I favor the Condorcet system, many prefer the Instant Runoff
PS: The problem with IRV and Condorcet voting (Score:3)
The problem with IRV and Condorcet voting is information overload. In order to choose between all the candidates you need to have some idea of what they all stand for. Even with the current system I often don't know anything about the Judges or school board members I'm supposed to vote for. Either IRV or Condorcet voting would make this worse.
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3. NBC
South Carolina Hotbed of Election Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in a rural city in South Carolina and I can say first hand that there is total election fraud going on in this state. I was an election observer during the 2016 Presidential election - that is - for about 20 minutes.
From the get-go, election officials repeatedly turned away minority voters for "technical issues" with their voter registrations. They only provided provisional ballots to those who absolutely demanded them. Not a single white person was turned away or had "technical issues" during the time I was observing, which lasted until I was escorted out by police for trying to bring this to the attention of the higher ups. I was threatened with charges for interfering with an election and given a trespass warning until the end of the day.
South Carolina is corrupt through and through. It would probably be a blue state were it not for corrupt election officials in the rural counties making sure that whites and republicans won.
Re:South Carolina Hotbed of Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a rural city in South Carolina and I can say first hand that there is total election fraud going on in this state. I was an election observer during the 2016 Presidential election - that is - for about 20 minutes.
From the get-go, election officials repeatedly turned away minority voters for "technical issues" with their voter registrations. They only provided provisional ballots to those who absolutely demanded them. Not a single white person was turned away or had "technical issues" during the time I was observing, which lasted until I was escorted out by police for trying to bring this to the attention of the higher ups. I was threatened with charges for interfering with an election and given a trespass warning until the end of the day.
South Carolina is corrupt through and through. It would probably be a blue state were it not for corrupt election officials in the rural counties making sure that whites and republicans won.
It's not just the rural counties of South Carolina. I live in a fairly urban area that is over 50% minorities. Our wait time to vote in a Presidential election is typically 3hrs. Never enough voting booths. Lots of people don't vote because the wait is too long.
People on the other side of town where it is mainly white and affluent tell me how they were in and out in under 10 minutes.
Why does one side of town have 10 minute waits every election and the other side of town has 2-3 hour waits to vote? I don't believe it's a coincidence.
Voting booths are not the bottleneck. (Score:2, Insightful)
I very much doubt the delays were due to there being "never enough voting booths", like you claim. The voting booths are used for 30 seconds to a minute at most by each voter. In fact, the election officials and observers will get suspicious if somebody spends more time than that completing their ballot.
Most of the time the voting booths themselves are empty, because it's the check-in process (i.e. identity checks and ensuring that the person can vote in the jurisdiction in question) that is the real bottle
Re:Voting booths are not the bottleneck. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a matter of race or "corruption", like you're trying to pretend it is. It's a matter of some people being more prepared, and thus the process moves swiftly for them. Other people don't come prepared to vote, and this unfortunately introduces delays that affect all subsequent voters.
Your rationale doesn't hold up - statistically, we would expect conscientiousness to be randomly distributed throughout the populace with no real geographical bias - so why would there magically be a lot of people with registration problems on only one end of town? And, if there are, then the election committee should preferentially allocate resources to that end of town to get things moving faster.
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Your rationale doesn't hold up - statistically, we would expect conscientiousness to be randomly distributed throughout the populace with no real geographical bias...
Why in nine hells would anyone expect that in very localized samples like voting districts!? Do you think voters in the Rodeo Drive district would be more or less conscientious than voters in the Compton district?
And, if there are, then the election committee should preferentially allocate resources to that end of town to get things moving faster.
Any time steps are proposed to improve the integrity of the voting system in the US, the Progressive Democrats start tearing their hair out screaming about disenfranchising some group, which assures that the same corrupt system stays in place.
Strat
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Bwaahaahaa!
Thanks for proving my point!
I did not suggest any such thing, but there *you* go, "frothing at the mouth" as you put it.
It's probably a good thing nobody is requiring a literacy test, as your post would indicate you'd be in some difficulty.
Strat
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"we would expect"? Why would you expect that? I've watched both affluent and less well-to-do groups.
The affluent, whether by birth or training, tend to approach a problem with preparation. And, their time seems to be valuable to them. That is one of many reasons they become affluent. In this case, that would mean that they would arrive at the check-in table with a valid ID out and ready.
In the less affluent areas, you will see a contingent of ignoramuses who have not read the many signs posted to be re
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I don't think you should expect "conscientiousness" to be randomly distributed. In areas where people are stressed for other reasons one should expect "conscientiousness" to be lower. Your second point, however, that "then the election committee should preferentially allocate resources to that end of town" does, indeed, appear valid.
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A 20 minute sample sounds like honest direct observation. If a system is corrupt, I wouldn't expect someone who was complaining about it to be allowed to observe very long.
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What did the feds say when you brought this to their attention?
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Only if you are an idiot that doesn't understand statistics. Voter impersonation has never and will never be a credible threat. Having meatbags double vote is the least effective and most dangerous method of electoral fraud.
Re:What's the other side of the story? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hard to make claims one way or the other about voter fraud when voters need not present reasonable identification. It's impossible to know if there were fraudulent votes if you can't identify legitimate voters.
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The left keeps saying and but we live in a nation where you can't buy cough syrup without ID.
The arguments against voter ID are equally illegitimate. Who does not have ID? Seriously? I don't buy it all. There may be a handful of very elderly who don't. That is problem that could be easily addressed, everyone else has little excuse.
The simple fact is in person voter fraud is possible, there is no reason not to control for it because if anything it would give the election a greater appearance of legitima
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And places where you have a 110% voter turnout is never a credible threat?
I personally know of an abandoned trailer park.... that had several hundred registered voters and people from that trailer park that actually voted in recent elections (according to the county clerk). By abandoned I mean literally there is nothing but an empty parking lot there and no homes of any kind or even homeless folks.
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No, election fraud is incredibly easy. A technologically sharp teenager could rig just about any local election results, provided moderate interest and effort. But physically defrauding that one meatbag is another meatbag, and having meatbags do so on a grand enough scale to change results is the stupidest way to rig an election.
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In order to get a Social Security card, you need to have an ID of some sort. Heck, to collect most welfare benefits you also need an ID card. You also need an ID simply to enter most courtrooms. It is also neither complicated nor incredibly difficult to obtain an ID card in most states other than you need to know how to read a form and fill it out or get somebody you know to help you with that process if you are illiterate.
It really isn't an onerous task to obtain an ID and it is needed for so many thing
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You can't live in out modern society without some sort of id. You can't get social services. You can't cash a check. You can't even buy alcohol. And the state issued ids generally cost around $10. You assertion baseless.
Ask Athens, Tenn. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask the folks who were in Athens, Tn,. who were around just after World War 2 ended.
Hint - GIs came home and kicked ass over election and voting issues.
http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/at... [jpfo.org]
Don't forget the Russians (Score:2)
Study recent 25 years history of Russian election. You'll find a lot of lessons of corruption, administrative pressure and so on yet to be learned by American politicans.
Local party dominance is a major problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I live, the Democratic party has a total lock on municipal government. No elected official has been a Republican in 30+ years. The last Republican mayor's term ended in 1961. I think the last non-Democratic elected official was the city councilor for my ward in the early 1990s, and he was an "independent".
When one party controls the city government, you don't need to cheat at the ballot box to have corruption because the party already controls who can get elected. Even without criminal intent, you wind up with a narrow group of people who ultimately control an awful lot of resources without much oversight.
And it's not like the outcome would be any different had the party roles been reversed, it's the lack of active competition that's the problem.
bullshit (Score:2)
I've worked in elections and I can say that our local system is excellent. Poll workers are well trained and management is responsible and trustworthy. There may be other states/counties where management is less dependable (I'm thinking of Florida handing the election to Bush), but the reality is that hundreds of volunteer workers are not going to tolerate any shady practices. Furthermore, in an election with a number of candidates and issues, is it reasonable to believe that one of those can corrupt the en
Poll workers are paid for there time as well! (Score:2)
Poll workers are paid for there time as well!
I did a few times and it's an long day but you can take an 1 hour lunch break in the middle.
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Our new president has made a major effort to find election irregularities and so far has come up empty.
He just didn't find the irregularities he wanted.
It is a pity that a Demoncrat didn't get elected with a minority of the votes cast. Then we would see the Republicans dismantling the Electoral college and pronto.
Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college. Presidents Hayes, Harrison, Bush, and Trump all took office with a minority of votes cast. We'll ignore Jackson vs Adams for this argument. What is especially concerning is tha
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college.
I think you have to dig deeper and start to look at geographical political divisions and ask if even a majority vote winds up being "fair" if deep divisions exist between rural areas and the West Coast/NE Corridor.
It starts to come down to some basic constitutional-level questions of governance structure, like the reasons why we have bicameral legislature -- to prevent populous states from dominating low-population states.
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Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college.
There is no question why. It is by design. What you see is a flaw is a built in protection of the majority from being able to totally control the government. Now the exact way the electoral college works is flawed, but the reason we don't do a strict popular vote is completely valid.
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Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college.
There is no question why. It is by design. What you see is a flaw is a built in protection of the majority from being able to totally control the government. Now the exact way the electoral college works is flawed, but the reason we don't do a strict popular vote is completely valid.
All you are saying is that you reject majority rule for minority rule then. Give me a rational reason that a candidate who received 3 some million more votes than another canditate should lose. The winner certainly had much more radical ideas and associates than the loser, who was about as establishment as you can get.
Do you support a winner who polls at 33 percent favorable? Your idea of fair government is intriguing, you should have a newsletter we can subscribe to.
Regardless, if you think that a la
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No, I reject a majority rule for a rule of law. I don't care how unpopular a candidate is if they are elected and have limited power to restrict my freedom as intended by the Constitution. The candidates should be representatives, not kings. They may be bad at representing me, but they shouldn't be able to rule me.
Give me a rational reason why population centers should be able to pick a candidate that isn't supported by the majority of communities in America. There are flaws to both systems, but straight po
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I support the candidate that won under the rules of the election that were in place when the campaign and election were run.
Okay, so you are a Trump supporter. Good for you, You and your ilk are polling at 33 percent favorable, so you'll probably call it fake news. If and when your guy is ousted, and calls for aremend innsurrection form you and his other supporters, will you take to the streets and kill your enemy?
This is of course, a hypothetical. But if asked by Trump, will you declare war on the rest of us and act upon his demands?
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Ok, so you are a partisan ideologue... I happen to be a libertarian and hate Trump's guts. I also hate Hillary's guts. If assholes on both sides start shooting each other in the streets, I'll be the one hiding in the woods. Or Canada.
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I could get behind a direct popular vote if we went back to limited constitutional government, but right now we have a enormously powerful federal government that intrudes into everyone daily life.
People not in the NE Corridor or on the West Coast have vastly different political interests than those who do. Its would be total BS to allow two large population centers to strip those folks of any influence.
Shrink the federal government until state taxes are higher than federal taxes and then we can talk about
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" should the loser of the popular vote immediately be declared the winner?" The loser should be strapped to the Altar of Presidential Power so they can be sacrificed and the winner can consume their heart and vitality! We must return to the true basic ideals of government!
Finally heard from the Mississippi delegation!
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Absolutely! One of the points of the electoral college is that support for a candidate can't be geographically limited. You need to get a broad consensus across a whole bunch of different states in likely multiple regions in order to get elected President. If you are talking majority votes for office winning, that is the point of the U.S. House of Representatives.... which was designed from the beginning to be precisely that kin
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Absolutely! One of the points of the electoral college is that support for a candidate can't be geographically limited. You need to get a broad consensus across a whole bunch of different states in likely multiple regions in order to get elected President.
Here's the problem. If we are to comply with the wishes of rural voters over urban voters, we have to comply over all, not just taken on a state level. The concept of Alaska or Montana being more equal because they are largely rural, is ignoring that large portions of say, Pennsylvania or New York are extremely rural, with low population density. So we need to give the Rural voters perhaps 10 votes per person to urban dweller's one vote.
Then you don't have to come up with these cockamamie ideas that turn
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So you are saying that the legislature doesn't have to be elected too?
I think so. I think you have to poll the public, then find the group who has the least popular outlook, then ask one person who shares that outlook, and have them decide who rules, or even better, declare them absolute ruler until someone comes along with an even less popular ideology.
This is really the insanity of the concept that the loser must win because some farmer in Kansas doesn't like how the city slickers on the east and west coasts don't kowtow to his ideology.
This is what state's rights are
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Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college.
I think you have to dig deeper and start to look at geographical political divisions and ask if even a majority vote winds up being "fair" if deep divisions exist between rural areas and the West Coast/NE Corridor.
It starts to come down to some basic constitutional-level questions of governance structure, like the reasons why we have bicameral legislature -- to prevent populous states from dominating low-population states.
So should we disenfranchise populated states and allow the least populous states to rule? How about if the least populous states all voted for the candidate who won the popular vote, yet lost the electoral college. According to what I read, you would both support and reject the idea.
The problem such as it is, is addressed within states rights. There is no way to address this "fairly" within the federal voting system. Why should the majority of voters have to be ruled by rural voters?
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No, the Electoral College does not need to go. We are still a nation of states, a republic. States elect our President.
A nationwide popular vote will, in the current circumstances, guarantee Democrat presidents for the foreseeable future. Whether or not this is reflective of our nation is an interesting question, but it will leave many states entirely without representation.
Though, if we did abandon the Electoral College, maybe things would in fact change. Concept.
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Think if the states changed their laws so that individual elector votes could go to a candidate instead of the entire state based on a majority it may do better.
What is really crippling the political process in this country is that we have allowed two private organizations to obtain a stranglehold. And the only way to undo it is via legislation, which would need to be written and passed by the people who benefit from the stranglehold.
For some reason, my sig seems to be even more appropriate in this thread.
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Think if the states changed their laws so that individual elector votes could go to a candidate instead of the entire state based on a majority it may do better.
I'd love for an honest poll of who supported what party, and their opinion on the electoral college. As an independent, I suspect that the number of Republicans supporting the present system hovers near 100 percent. Of course, all they will need is a Demoncrat to win this way and the opinion will shift rapidly.
For some reason, my sig seems to be even more appropriate in this thread....
I voted for Cthlulu - why vote for the lesser of two evils?
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I voted for Cthlulu - why vote for the lesser of two evils?
He didn't get enough signatures to make it on my local ballot...
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I voted for Cthlulu - why vote for the lesser of two evils?
He didn't get enough signatures to make it on my local ballot...
Dammit, we have to change that law.
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You are complaining about the first past the post voting system, which as a tendency produces two major political parties and shuts out 3rd parties except when one of the major parties flounders. That historically did happen with the Whigs in the 1840s-1860's when the Republicans took over starting as a 3rd party and getting one of the major party slots.
There are multiple voting systems that encourage groups besides the majors to be involved including IRV, approval voting, and others. I happen to like IRV
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No, the Electoral College does not need to go. We are still a nation of states, a republic.
Irrelevant.
States elect our President.
A nationwide popular vote will, in the current circumstances, guarantee Democrat presidents for the foreseeable future.
And there you have it. Your get out of jail free card. The way in which you achieve minority rule, enabling your candidate to win without actually winning. Damn, pretty amazing that you talked some folks into this being a great idea. More on that near the bottom.
Whether or not this is reflective of our nation is an interesting question, but it will leave many states entirely without representation.
God, I just love this stuff. What do you mean leaving states entirely without representation? The majority of the governors are Republican, the majority of the house of representatives are Republican, the Majority of the Senate is Republ
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You had them at "it'll boost tax revenues"
Some oversight, local control (Score:2)
I find much to disagree but there is some room for improvement.
I think some oversight or setting standards and best practices and maybe a little of what NGO's do for underdeveloped countries where they don't control the election but have some federal officials which "witness" what is going on. And maybe not in *every* district just problematic ones or random ones to see if there are issues.
The risk is that if you set up a federal election system then you *can* have control and fraud on a national scale. R
"Forget the Russians"? (Score:2)
Was this submitted by Trump himself?
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"Election problems local. No Russians, bad people. SAD. Must make local elections fabulous again, the best ever. #MAGA"
Blame it on whatever, I want an audit (Score:2)
I want an open and fearless look at the integrity of our voting system. I want surprise audits, investigations, and tests along the lines of AT LEAST what we do to test the effectiveness of the TSA. If the FBI can get bombs through a TSA check point... I think some fbi agents can probably get a bag of illicit votes through all the checks.
Absolutely the case (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a relative who works as a sysadmin for a local water district. Technically these things are run by a publicly-elected board. In this particular district, the board was long ago populated by a bunch of contractors who primarily get their business from... the water district. So now, the "public election" means that there's a tiny classified ad buried in the back of some newspaper to advertise the election, the board members vote themselves back in every year, and they've got an understanding with the district employees that as long as the right contractors (the board) keep winning the bids, they'll generally vote for whatever budget items are requested by the staff.
Corrupt as hell, but it's local, and there aren't hardly any journalists around to report on things like that, and if there were the story probably wouldn't get any news time because it's more important to talk about the Kardashians or something.
Not "corrupt" - working as intended (Score:2)
Strictly speaking, the practices described are not "corruption". To speak of corruption implies that a system has been subverted and is not working as intended and designed.
In the case of Western "democratic" political systems, that is untrue. Those systems were intended and designed to work they way they do. It is only the naively igenuous who believe that election rigging and similar practices are "corrupt".
My run-in with local corruption (Score:2)
The power consumption and cooling capacity didn't match up with any known air conditioner. Its power consumption was simply too low for it to b
Define Corruption (Score:3)
Without common sense campaign finance rules, corruption is defined by the highest bidders.
So true. (Score:2)
General rule of thumb, smaller = more corrupt.
You have 10 million people as a base, it is not hard to find 1000 honest people willing to volunteer, and everybody has someone else looking over their shoulder.
You have 10,000 people as a base, you can find 1 honest person willing to volunteer and have to hire 3, and all of them are on their own some of the time.
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Surely the Slashdot editors wouldn't publish this piece of drivel? Must be a slow news day...
Why do you consider it drivel?
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Why do you consider it drivel?
Local corruption in elections has been a mainstay in U.S. politics since the American Revolution. Russian interference is a far more serious threat to the country as a whole. Any article that tries to take attention away from Russia is drivel.
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Both issues are just two sides of the same issue: weakening checks against corrupting influence. That influence can be a foreign power, the mob, a local businessman, whatever. If you're willing to accept local corruption, then you shouldn't complain when those same corrupt officials make bigger deals in bigger playing fields.
I'll give you this: Republican voters definitely don't seem to care so long as the corruption works to their favor. Democrat voters didn't seem to care until it stopped working in the
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The "firehouse", huh? You illiterate tick.
I blame autocorrect. I'm also 20 mikes away from my skinny vanilla latte for this morning.
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"my skinny vanilla latte"
Racist.
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"my skinny vanilla latte"
Racist.
Especially since the black woman barista is always hitting the "white chocolate" button before correcting it to a latte with extra syrup.
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Attention is a numbers games.
Having a thousand people in a big city turned away from voting due to corruption finding way to stop the vote from the group they don't want. Will get more notice then in a small town where only 25 people are turned away.
However in the rural town, those 25 people can really turn the election. Being that they can get away with it, without much media attention. Means chances are that they will. Small towns also have a smaller base of people who are qualified to run. So the Us
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Well, sort of. I'll explain:
My 'neighborhood' in the Oregon Coastal Range has a population density of 14/sq. mi., and I know (and often hang out with) 10 of them personally (there's one family that's gone all the time, so we rarely get to see them. One of the "people" they count in that density is the local timber company, who owns logging lease property out behind mine). The nearest town to my house (20 miles away) has barely 2,000 souls in it.
Let's just say the population base is real small out here.
Now -
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However this close nit community also has a lot of herding mentality. While Independent in nature, they also need to rely on everyone. So chances are they may change their personal belief, if that is what the others strongly think.
And the bastard who everyone hates, may also be the only guy who is not afraid to tell you the truth.
Re:Note the concentration on rural votes (Score:5, Interesting)
Corruption isn't correctly measured by the amount of money involved. It is best measured by the impact on individuals.
Wasting millions on failed urban renewal or public housing is a tragedy and a crime. Taking the guns of an elderly veteran because of a mistaken Social Security number is a tragedy also, and a crime. Denying a farmer the use of their land to establish a pond for irrigation and livestock is a crime and a tragedy. Choking a man to death, even inadvertently, because he was selling cigarettes one-at-a-time, without a license, on the street, is a crime and a tragedy.
It's never really about the money. It's about the people who could have done something else, productive or not, with that money. It's about the people who live diminished lives and who are broken in spirit. It;s about people killed, killed, because power corrupted those in power.
Re:Note the concentration on rural votes (Score:4, Interesting)
In one particular county that was at 144% registration a 66% turnout means we got 99.3% of the citizenry to turn out to vote. Quite the miracle...
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Re: Note the concentration on rural votes (Score:2, Informative)
Jesus, dude. Any county with significant population turnover will eventually cross over 100%.
If you move somewhere, register to vote, and then move somewhere else, how often do you file paperwork to have your name taken off the registration? Never? Right. Same as everyone else. People also tend to die at some point.
Voter registrations are supposed to be maintained. Sometimes that doesn't happen quick enough.
But produce some evidence of significant numbers of people voting in two states, or voting
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They've also occasionally gotten my name wrong when I changed party affiliation. Whoops, I guess I was registered twice. I didn't vote twice.
If the data were trustworthy, that would be good evidence of corruption, but it takes more than an assertion before I'll believe the data. (OTOH, most rural counties in California are conservative, so what are you even trying to prove?)
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Republicans voting absentee AND in person are the majority of convictions,including Adams-apple Annthrax
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I doubt that this used to be any different last year.
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Several Biographies of Lyndon Johnson famously discuss him meeting with various South Texas Precinct Captains the day after the election with a trunk full of boxes containing ballots. You had to bribe the Captains back then.
He didn't during his first election and lost. He did during the second election and won.
Local corruption was rampant back then and there is little evidence it has improved.
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It may, or may not, be Trump propaganda. It's also, however, true. E.g., if it weren't for local corruption, it would be more difficult to hack voting machines...and impossible to do it remotely.
That said, for a politician to conspire with a foreign government against the US should be treated as a serious felony. Period. That neither means nor implies that that is the only problem going on...or even that it's the worst. (AFAIKT the Russians only engaged in propaganda and a bit of hacking of non-governm
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And most of the conservatives don't realize they are the victims of it.
"fake news" (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Personally, I'd like to see ALL electronic voting of any kind, done away with."
Amen and amen. Electronic voting in the U.S. is unnecessary, not even solving a problem that doesn't exist.
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The problem with Florida, was Algore, or his "group" wanted to hand pick counties to recount. Instead of recounting the entire state, he wanted to pick only areas they knew would be heavily democratic. Plus, had Ralph Nader not run, Al Gore more than likely would have been elected, just as Bush 41 would have been elected, had Ross Perot not run in 92. Personally, I'd like to see ALL electronic voting of any kind, done away with. Every ballot should be paper, with an X or similar to denote who you pick. Plus, I'd like to see everyone that votes, have their index finger dipped in that hard to remove purple ink you see in a lot of 3rd world countries, along with everyone that votes, should present a government issued photo ID. (for those that have a hardship, the ID should be given at no cost). Sometimes, I think the corruption in elections is a backhanded way to make people think "what difference does it make" to the point they don't bother voting, so our soft tyranny we have now, can be transformed into a hard tyranny, or dictatorship. If you look at it now, we already have 2 classes of people. The politicians and the surfs (citizens). How many laws are on the books now, that WE as citizens must obey, but, those elected, do not. Obamacare, Social Security, insider trading and what not. They make laws for us, but then exempt themselves from those same laws.
You're focusing on the wrong problem. By the time the election comes, the 2 major parties have long since locked in their candidates, who were chosen by the most vocal and committed people in the party. Both parties are currently being led from the fringes, since those people yell the loudest and are more likely to show up during primary election activities. The recent election is a prime example- many of the most electable candidates on the republican side lost to those with strong backing from vocal mi
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I heard more than one *whoosh* a moment ago... Wha happen?
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What was especially appalling was those people who were trying to "infer" the way the voter wanted to vote based on minute marks and folders.
Voting carries responsibilities, one of which is to fucking mark the ballots correctly.
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So the rest of the thread goes off on chads, butterflies, and court decisions. What was missed was Florida having tens of thousands of voters thrown off the registry under sketchy circumstances. I don't have the demographics of those voters at my fingertips, nor do I have the eventual disposition of their eligibility, so I won't make anything up. But we can say that the number of disenfranchised voters swamps the number of votes under "mechanical question."
By the way, they eventually did finish the recou
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So you're blaming this on local government incompetence?
Hmm. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same.
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Hacking, cyber warfare, whatever you call it, is the most excellent example of asymmetrical war we have. Of course other state-level actors are fully engaged in it.
Not much blood.
Virtually no attribution, so virtually no risk or direct consequences.
Potentially limitless impact.
Terrorists and freedom fighters are so 90s. today you run chatbots, fake accounts, social media blitzes.
Of COURSE Russia is doing all this and more. It's so bad they have to take a number to get in line to hack away at even private