Vote fraud

[Balta1701]

Of all things to spend money on, I consider making sure people have the opportunity to vote to be awfully high on the list. This is basic stuff.

Here's the counter-point though...if it's an unfunded mandate to do it...where does that money come from? The problem is concentrated in areas that can't afford it anyway. So...if you need a couple billion dollars to be spent...are you happy with it coming out of schools?

 

I know the right answer is to have the Federal Government take charge and just pay for the bloody things...but you know what the reaction would be to that.

[EvilMonkey]

Here's the counter-point though...if it's an unfunded mandate to do it...where does that money come from? The problem is concentrated in areas that can't afford it anyway. So...if you need a couple billion dollars to be spent...are you happy with it coming out of schools?

 

I know the right answer is to have the Federal Government take charge and just pay for the bloody things...but you know what the reaction would be to that.

Even with voting machines runing 100k, how do you get billions? It's not like there are NO machines out there at all. And if they are funded locally, no one locality will need billions. A million, perhaps, or few million for larger places, but not billions. Each town fire a few overpaid government workers and you have your voting machnes paid for.

 

Here is a much lower cost example.

Santa Barbara, CA example:

$1,300,000 spent on a 200 machine system to count 100,000 votes per election. I think Santa Barbara can find $1.3 million in waste they can trim for at least one year to get new machines if needed. That is only about $6500 per machine.

[Balta1701]

Even with voting machines runing 100k, how do you get billions? It's not like there are NO machines out there at all. And if they are funded locally, no one locality will need billions. A million, perhaps, or few million for larger places, but not billions. Each town fire a few overpaid government workers and you have your voting machnes paid for.

 

Here is a much lower cost example.

Santa Barbara, CA example:

$1,300,000 spent on a 200 machine system to count 100,000 votes per election. I think Santa Barbara can find $1.3 million in waste they can trim for at least one year to get new machines if needed. That is only about $6500 per machine.

You don't think that there are more than a couple hundred Santa Barbara size districts in the country?

 

Just do the math here. 100,000 votes per election for $1.3 million. Last presidential race, the turnout was somewhat around 100 million. Carry those numbers through...and that's $13 billion using that ratio. And remember...if you're solving this problem...you need to buy enough voting machines to handle the largest turnouts.

 

And really, stop pretending that there is "waste" that can be trimmed. If we're talking about finding more money for schools, using your old voting machines longer or having fewer voting machines is counted as trimming waste. That'd be heroic if it we were discussing school funding, and most districts are going to think so.

[EvilMonkey]

You don't think that there are more than a couple hundred Santa Barbara size districts in the country?

 

Just do the math here. 100,000 votes per election for $1.3 million. Last presidential race, the turnout was somewhat around 100 million. Carry those numbers through...and that's $13 billion using that ratio. And remember...if you're solving this problem...you need to buy enough voting machines to handle the largest turnouts.

 

And really, stop pretending that there is "waste" that can be trimmed. If we're talking about finding more money for schools, using your old voting machines longer or having fewer voting machines is counted as trimming waste. That'd be heroic if it we were discussing school funding, and most districts are going to think so.

Just do the math. Not every town needs to buy all new machines. They DO last longer than one election, you know. You are also talking about BILLIONS as if Santa Barbara itself has to come up with that. It doesn't, just it's own small slice of the pie. Santa Barbara can't come up with a million bucks? Really? There is always waste that can be trimmed.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2010 by Alpha Dog

[Balta1701]

There is always waste that can be trimmed.

Like I said...if someone came forwards and said that they're going to cut back on buying new voting machines, you'd be happy because that person had just cut waste.

[NorthSideSox72]

You don't think that there are more than a couple hundred Santa Barbara size districts in the country?

 

Just do the math here. 100,000 votes per election for $1.3 million. Last presidential race, the turnout was somewhat around 100 million. Carry those numbers through...and that's $13 billion using that ratio. And remember...if you're solving this problem...you need to buy enough voting machines to handle the largest turnouts.

 

And really, stop pretending that there is "waste" that can be trimmed. If we're talking about finding more money for schools, using your old voting machines longer or having fewer voting machines is counted as trimming waste. That'd be heroic if it we were discussing school funding, and most districts are going to think so.

 

My point is, you have to prioritize all spending. And making sure people can vote, to me, should be near the top of any list.

 

[Balta1701]

My point is, you have to prioritize all spending. And making sure people can vote, to me, should be near the top of any list.

I'll agree that it should be higher. But I would also argue that a lot of things should be higher...and that cutting taxes on high-earners should be lower to balance that out. When it comes down to making that choice though, I think we can see which way the wind is blowing.

[NorthSideSox72]

I'll agree that it should be higher. But I would also argue that a lot of things should be higher...and that cutting taxes on high-earners should be lower to balance that out. When it comes down to making that choice though, I think we can see which way the wind is blowing.

Eh? You have an odd way of looking at budgeting. I'm saying, with the given budget constraints, this should be higher on the list than some other things. So, you can choose to cut some things from the bottom, or, raise taxes in some fashion. But either way, this is higher than many things the government at any level is spending money on.

 

[Balta1701]

A number of folks on the left are noting that the claims of widespread, organized voter fraud have seemingly vanished since Tuesday.

 

Think that means the correct side won?

[NorthSideSox72]

A number of folks on the left are noting that the claims of widespread, organized voter fraud have seemingly vanished since Tuesday.

 

Think that means the correct side won?

What does that even mean?

 

[StrangeSox]

What does that even mean?

 

I think he's implying that, had Democrats won a bunch of races, we'd still be hearing ranting and raving about another right-wing pseudo-problem and Fox almost certainly would still have broadcast it's planned-before-the-election "Voter Fraud in Nevada" special.

[EvilMonkey]

Well I could post how magic boxes of ballots are just appearing in races where Dems are losing, and of course we all know about the voting machines in Nevada alrwady checking Harry Reid, machines serviced by a company that employs SEIU members, or how in several races where Dems won, there were huge surges of Dem votes at the last moment, but you would just find some way to say that it was all coincidental, made up or otherwise meaningless, so why try. You had one race where they 'ran out of ballots', so they photocopied ballots to use. And two bags of those ballots just happened to appear as the vote tally was about done, with the Republican leading. But that is all a mirage, nothign to see here. Or the one where the guy and his campaign manager were caught with absentee ballots at their desk and in their car. But there surely has to be a good reason for that. Isn't there?

[StrangeSox]

Well I could post how magic boxes of ballots are just appearing in races where Dems are losing, and of course we all know about the voting machines in Nevada alrwady checking Harry Reid, machines serviced by a company that employs SEIU members, or how in several races where Dems won, there were huge surges of Dem votes at the last moment, but you would just find some way to say that it was all coincidental, made up or otherwise meaningless, so why try. You had one race where they 'ran out of ballots', so they photocopied ballots to use. And two bags of those ballots just happened to appear as the vote tally was about done, with the Republican leading. But that is all a mirage, nothign to see here. Or the one where the guy and his campaign manager were caught with absentee ballots at their desk and in their car. But there surely has to be a good reason for that. Isn't there?

 

Real vote fraud should be investigated and severely punished.

 

Imagined vote fraud like ACORN stealing elections in 2008 (and some of the left was guilty of it re: Ohio 2004 and Diebold) is orders of magnitude worse than reality and is always partisan.

 

But, if you could provide links to reliable sources on those incidents, I'd be interested in reading them.

 

edit: see the Maddow video in the Dem thread for the problem with trusting anything from the echo chamber. It's likely to be just as true as the "ZOMG! $200M and 10% of the NAVY!" bulls***.

Edited November 5, 2010 by StrangeSox

[EvilMonkey]

Real vote fraud should be investigated and severely punished.

 

Imagined vote fraud like ACORN stealing elections in 2008 (and some of the left was guilty of it re: Ohio 2004 and Diebold) is orders of magnitude worse than reality and is always partisan.

 

But, if you could provide links to reliable sources on those incidents, I'd be interested in reading them.

 

edit: see the Maddow video in the Dem thread for the problem with trusting anything from the echo chamber. It's likely to be just as true as the "ZOMG! $200M and 10% of the NAVY!" bulls***.

I'll look for the rest when I get home, bt about the Acorn thing, there have been discussions on here about voter registration and its link to potential fraud. Several of the more liberal posters insist that registration of false names is no big deal, they dont vote, etc. But in my district, I was not asked for ID, I could have been anyone voting. They didnt even really look at my signature before I voted. And with false registration, you leave the potential for abuses, especially with absentee ballots and mail ballots. And some states have it for if yu sign up to get your ballot by mail once, they auytomaticly mail it to you every year after that. No potential for missues there at all. SOME groups get paid per voter registered. Some don't. So what is the incentive to register false people if you are not getting paid per registration? Just askin.

[StrangeSox]

For instance:

 

Well I could post how magic boxes of ballots are just appearing in races where Dems are losing, and of course we all know about the voting machines in Nevada alrwady checking Harry Reid, machines serviced by a company that employs SEIU members,

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate...orted-in-nevada

 

Well, I know now that this came up on conservo-land, but that there have been no official reports of this happening. And the SEIU isn't some sort of demonic organization bent on voter fraud. The owner of Diebold is Republican; does that mean all votes cast on Diebold machines are suspect?

 

or how in several races where Dems won, there were huge surges of Dem votes at the last moment, but you would just find some way to say that it was all coincidental, made up or otherwise meaningless, so why try.

 

Sorry, I like to examine the facts of a story instead of buying into echo chamber bulls***. The current India flap should tell you why you should be extremely skeptical of what gets pumped out of conservative media.

 

You had one race where they 'ran out of ballots', so they photocopied ballots to use. And two bags of those ballots just happened to appear as the vote tally was about done, with the Republican leading. But that is all a mirage, nothign to see here. Or the one where the guy and his campaign manager were caught with absentee ballots at their desk and in their car. But there surely has to be a good reason for that. Isn't there?

 

Couldn't find much on these through Google. Sources?

 

[StrangeSox]

I'll look for the rest when I get home, bt about the Acorn thing, there have been discussions on here about voter registration and its link to potential fraud. Several of the more liberal posters insist that registration of false names is no big deal, they dont vote, etc. But in my district, I was not asked for ID, I could have been anyone voting. They didnt even really look at my signature before I voted. And with false registration, you leave the potential for abuses, especially with absentee ballots and mail ballots. And some states have it for if yu sign up to get your ballot by mail once, they auytomaticly mail it to you every year after that. No potential for missues there at all. SOME groups get paid per voter registered. Some don't. So what is the incentive to register false people if you are not getting paid per registration? Just askin.

 

The problem is that widespread voting irregularities have not been observed. Polling prior to the elections, exit polling and statistical models like Silver's at 538 indicate that the races almost always turn out within the expected statistical margins. This wouldn't work if their was voter fraud. There are problems here and there, but not nearly the level imagined/fabricated by some.

[Balta1701]

Massive surges in Dem voting at the end of vote-counting is incredibly, incredibly common...because urban areas in a lot of states tend to be the last ones to report, and urban areas tend to give you a lot of Democrat votes. In the governor's race in Oregon, for example, even though there was a 1000 vote lead for the former NBA player, everyone did the math and said "There are several thousand votes remaining to be counted from an area that typically goes 80/20 Democrat". It was easy to predict in that instance.

 

I can personally recall watching the early returns on Indiana in the 2008 election and insisting to a co-worker "don't worry, Obama's only down 8 points, that's insanely good, look at the counties that haven't reported yet, Indianapolis and Gary are sitting there with 1% reporting".

[Rex Kickass]

Massive surges in Dem voting at the end of vote-counting is incredibly, incredibly common...because urban areas in a lot of states tend to be the last ones to report, and urban areas tend to give you a lot of Democrat votes. In the governor's race in Oregon, for example, even though there was a 1000 vote lead for the former NBA player, everyone did the math and said "There are several thousand votes remaining to be counted from an area that typically goes 80/20 Democrat". It was easy to predict in that instance.

 

I can personally recall watching the early returns on Indiana in the 2008 election and insisting to a co-worker "don't worry, Obama's only down 8 points, that's insanely good, look at the counties that haven't reported yet, Indianapolis and Gary are sitting there with 1% reporting".

 

Actually, the same thing happened in my Congressional district. My candidate was down 20 points for most of the night, then 8 points. When it got to 7 or 8 points, we felt good because my city hadn't reported yet - and I tracked those numbers throughout the day, and I knew that they had turned out more voters for a non-Obama election than anytime in the past five years. Sure enough, the 8,000 vote edge our city gave our Congressional candidate the win. There were problems with three machines that resulted in delays of vote totals for a couple hours.

 

In 2005, I worked on a campaign where the reverse happened. My state leg candidates were pacing out of their minds in much of the district, but the last town (and largest) hadn't yet reported. It was the firewall for the Republican candidates. We were winning, we were winning, we were winning and then, oops we lost!

 

If you wanna talk about legit fraud, youd need better examples than Bridgeport, CT - especially since those issues were well known before the polls closed. Polling places had to be kept open two extra hours because of a lack of ballots among other issues - you'd need a sudden shift to Alexi in Illinois where it was super tight or a sudden shift to Sestak in PA where it was super tight, after the GOP had started to creep into a lead. The CO-Senator error came from the AP actually, when it accidentally reported 40,000 extra votes for the Republican candidate from Boulder (the most liberal area of the state) that were actually for the DEM candidate.

[EvilMonkey]

http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/volus...r-ballott-fraud

 

The investigation revealed that Henry and Robinson devised a strategy to boost Henrys re-election bid by obtaining absentee ballots for numerous people, most of whom never requested the ballots. By law, residents are only allowed to request absentee ballots for themselves, immediate family members or for someone for whom they’re acting as legal guardian.

 

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/electio...-106727208.html

 

n what has become one of the stranger twists in an already bizarre Governor's race, a bag of uncounted ballots was found in Bridgeport Thursday night.

 

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_detai...er-ballots.html

 

In a petition filed Tuesday, county Republicans say the name of Murphy's campaign manager appeared on a Bristol post office box where voters were urged in a series of letters paid for by the state Democratic Committee to send absentee ballot applications.

Edited November 6, 2010 by Alpha Dog

[Balta1701]

You had one race where they 'ran out of ballots', so they photocopied ballots to use.

The Republican in that race just conceded, and he went out of his way to specifically state that he believes those ballots reflect the will of the voters and he will not mount a legal challenge.

Foley said that his campaign team examined various irregularities that did occur, particularly in the city of Bridgeport -- where an under-printing of ballots resulted in non-regulation photocopied ballots, polls being kept open longer, and various problems in the count that even included a bag of ballots being found -- to determine whether changes to the totals in that city or elsewhere could potentially reverse Malloy's lead of several thousand votes. In the end, he said, they determined that the vote totals could not change by more than several hundred votes.

 

"Once all this information was available to me this morning, deciding what to do was easy," Foley said. "I have told my team that I am not willing to pursue a legal challenge to exclude photocopied ballots. Despite their irregularity, I believe that they do represent the will of well-intentioned voters, and should be included in the results."

 

Foley further explained that the election was a genuine victory for Malloy, "And this result should not be questioned. I hope my supporters will accept my word on this. As soon as I am done with this press conference, I will call Dan Malloy to congratulate him on winning the election, and wish him good luck."

[NorthSideSox72]

The Republican in that race just conceded, and he went out of his way to specifically state that he believes those ballots reflect the will of the voters and he will not mount a legal challenge.

That's actually quite classy.

 

[jasonxctf]

I'll look for the rest when I get home, bt about the Acorn thing, there have been discussions on here about voter registration and its link to potential fraud. Several of the more liberal posters insist that registration of false names is no big deal, they dont vote, etc. But in my district, I was not asked for ID, I could have been anyone voting. They didnt even really look at my signature before I voted. And with false registration, you leave the potential for abuses, especially with absentee ballots and mail ballots. And some states have it for if yu sign up to get your ballot by mail once, they auytomaticly mail it to you every year after that. No potential for missues there at all. SOME groups get paid per voter registered. Some don't. So what is the incentive to register false people if you are not getting paid per registration? Just askin.

 

I'll tell my early voting story. Each polling place has a Republican/Democratic judge (or at least they are supposed to). I walk in about 20 minutes to closing on a Sat afternoon and give my id to the poll worker. My DL has my old address (which is also in the same County/District) and the Republican judge overhears me talking to the Democratic judge saying that the address they have in the system is correct, not my DL address. I changed the official address with the SOS on-line and got one of those good driver stickers to place on my old ID. I've been voting this way for years.

 

She comes running over yelling, he can't vote.. he can't vote. I calmly explain the situation, bust out my Allstate Insurance Card showing my name and proving the address that they have in the system as a 2nd form, and she calms down and says, "well I guess its ok. But we probably shouldn't let him vote." I then say, my wife's in the car with the Baby, she'll be coming in 2 mins when we switch who's watching the baby. Her DL has the correct address.

 

I vote, go to the car. My wife goes in and as she's walking in the door, the Republican judge starts racing towards the door to lock it (even though it was 5 mins before closing) my wife gets to the door first and she says, i guess we'll let one last one in.

 

Nice huh.